Class Note 1981
This winter classmate Mark Hansson received his seventh Directors Guild of America Award nomination for his assistant director work, this time for an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The two TV series on which he works, Glee and Curb, garnered four out of the five nominations in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series category. I have to be honest and say that I don’t regularly watch either, but I will ask Mark to intro me to actress Jane Lynch; she makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. Mark’s upcoming projects include the Fox TV series Terriers and the feature film Beautiful Boy, with Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, due out this fall.
John Dodd is well and busy and living in Greenville, Delaware. He works at Security Global Investors, joining this joint about two years ago after his old company U.S. Trust was purchased by Bank of America. John tells me that they are hiring, “particularly on our alternatives, hedge funds, quantitative and product side of things. We’re rolling out many new offerings now and this spring. I’ve been on the road, talking to institutional investors all over the country.” On the family side John and his wife, Chrissy, have been skiing on what passes for mountains in the Mid-Atlantic with daughters Haley (9) and Grayson (7) and son Reece (3). “We got Reece up on skis for the second time last weekend,” John wrote. The girls are at the Sanford School, an 80-year-old institution started by a Dartmouth grad, and John and Chrissy have trouble keeping their beanstalks in clothes that fit these days. For example, Haley is already 5 feet, 2 inches and playing volleyball with middle school-age teams. Guess that happens when John marries Chrissy, who can just about dunk at 6 feet tall.
Mark Zehner called when I was shoveling snow—come soon, spring, please—and it was great to hear about new work challenges, his wife, Peggy, and their boys Ryan and Brendan. “Ryan’s a sophomore at Dartmouth,” Mark told me, “and just pledged Sigma Alpha Epsilon.” Brendan is a junior at St. Joseph’s Prep in Philly—both boys went there—and takes part in forensics, where he specializes in extemporaneous speaking. Peggy teaches AP American history at Springfield Township High School in Erdenheim, Pennsylvania. After 12 years in private practice at the Philadelphia office of Saul Ewing, Mark has been at the Securities and Exchange Commission also for 12 years, where recently he was promoted. Within the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mark is now the deputy chief of the municipal securities and public pensions unit.
Former ’81 column scribe Stephen Godchaux is busy writing the screen adaptation of Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award in 1962 and is set in New Orleans. “I’m not the first screenwriter to be asked to take a crack at it,” Stephen wrote, “and I have no illusions about being the last. But a kid can dream.” He’s renting a house in the Big Easy from January to May, looking for inspiration, and just sold a pilot to USA Network with its basic premise, as Stephen wrote, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—if you have a good lawyer. Lawyers in Vegas. So we’ll see.”
Lastly a quick note from Charlie Jacobs: “My daughter Katherine is a member of the class of 2013 and we enjoyed helping her and the Dartmouth Outing Club attempt the AT In a Day in October by hiking a challenging section in Maine.”
—Abner Oakes, 4807 Dover Road, Bethesda, MD 20816-1772; aoakes4@gmail.com; Julie Koeninger, 2 Wilson St., Wellesley, MA 02482; jkoeninger@comcast.net
