Class Note 1988
Happy summer! This is likely reaching you around the time of our reunion, but since I am writing in April (during a blizzard) the Hanover news will be in the next issue. (Which will be my last Class Notes—who will step up to be our next class secretary? Send an e-mail if you’d like to help with this or other class roles.) For my penultimate column I asked a few classmates to describe their most memorable meal in the last year.
Laura Weylman Turner: “Surprise dinner on the deck. When my husband and I came home from work one night last summer, my kids (ages 13, 11, 8) waited on us. They acted as waitstaff and served us wine, salad, main course, dessert. We sat out on the deck and were not allowed into the kitchen. My husband and I were absolutely in heaven...not sure how the food tasted, but it didn’t matter.”
Cuong Do: “My wife, Lori, and I love fine foods—especially fine French food. Our 11-year-old daughter Stephanie has picked up our culinary habits. Her favorite meals involve joining Lori and me for tasting menu meals at top restaurants around the world. Her favorite place is Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, and Pierre beams when she returns each year. Last year we discovered a restaurant in Paris named La Truffiere—seven courses, lots of truffles and too many paired wines later, we’re hooked.”
Anne Irza-Leggat: “Working in children’s publishing I am often greeted with blank looks when I mention the names of the wonderful authors I work with. Last fall at a conference I had the chance to have dinner with Katherine Paterson (U.S. national ambassador for young people’s literature, author of Bridge to Terabithia and more recently, for my company, The Flint Heart) and Marc Aronson (an author who has written on enormously diverse topics from Israel to J. Edgar Hoover and is a well-known name—in my world—on nonfiction for kids). Such illustrious people! It was a small dinner and the conversation was marvelous—ranging from kids to the old days of publishing to current events. I could have stayed all night. I am sure the food was good, but like all the best dinners the company made the night.”
Bob Fitzpatrick: “My most memorable meal in the last year was dinner with my 15-year-old son at one of the Boston steakhouses. For the last few years we have tried to do it every year.”
Scott Gentry: “A year ago our family spent spring break in Brazil and had many wonderful meals, including an amazing dinner at the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) in Rio de Janeiro, lunch on a secluded island after a day of boating in the Bay of Kings and a traditional Brazilian barbeque (churrasco) with my extended Brazilian host family. During a gap year before Dartmouth I spent a year in Brazil as a foreign exchange student, living with three host families who all treated me as one of their own children. I hadn’t been back to visit, although we’ve kept in touch through the years. Finally I was able to share this experience last year with Traci and my kids, and they were as warmly accepted as I was almost 30 years ago. We hope to go back next year for the World Cup and perhaps again in 2016 for the Summer Olympics.”
Susie Belgrad Hayes: “It’s a tossup between Chuck E. Cheese and Red Robin.”
Cheers.
—Jane (Grussing) Lonnquist, 4510 Drexel Ave., Edina, MN 55424; jjlonnquist@earthlink.net
