Class Note 1966
Happy new year, one and all!
As you read this a few days before 2019 (that’s no misprint), you will know how well the Dartmouth football team finished the 2018 season. Did they sweep mighty Princeton, gritty Cornell, and upset-minded Brown to complete an undefeated season? That would be only the sixth perfect record in the 137 years of Dartmouth football (two of those seasons, of course, happened while we were undergraduates—just saying). Or did the Big Green fall just short?
As we write this before Halloween, the Big Green is a robust 7-0 and just off a key victory over Harvard in the rain, snow, and sleet in Hanover on Homecoming Weekend. Among the many contributors to the win we must, indeed, count the class of 1966 mini-reunion contingent. Rain, snow, and sleet notwithstanding, 90 people, a class record, attended the Friday pre-bonfire supper and 45 classmates and significant others, another record, the Saturday night dinner at the Norwich Inn. In between, our classmates cheered the 11 to victory.
The weekend was a team effort. Special kudos to mini-reunion chairman Al Keiller, class president Jim Lustenader, and Margo and Paul Doscher for hosting the class meeting and pre-game brunch at their Norwich, Vermont, home.
One of the classmates at the Homecoming reunion was novelist Stephen Hayes, who’s just published his third book in six years, The Dance Man, “a Southern novel laced with Southern humor” available on Amazon and elsewhere. He was raised in Delaware, but both of Steve’s parents hailed from Alabama, so he has tapped into his Southern roots in his latest work.
What accounts for this mid-life creative spurt? “My favorite course at Dartmouth was creative writing with professor Noel Perrin,” Steve explains, “but my writing over the subsequent 45 years was largely confined to reports, press releases, and speeches while working in and out of the federal government in D.C. Now I’m retired and, with more time, the ‘inner novelist’ has emerged.”
As of this summer, Steve and wife Barbara are happily ensconced in their new, down-sized home in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia—a vintage 1830 townhouse with a 100-year-old magnolia tree in the courtyard.
Speaking of mini-reunions, three of our most loyal alums and their wives got together in early September in Westport, Connecticut. The couples—Myra and Hector Motroni, Carol and Dean Spatz, and Kathy and Wayne LoCurto—have much in common. They all knew each other at Dartmouth and have been married 50-plus years, they each have graduate degrees from Dartmouth, and they all have children who graduated from Dartmouth. They also share the experience of cruising on Wayne’s boat across Long Island Sound to their mini-reunion lunch in Port Jefferson.
In what could be a first, but most likely will not be the last, Jane and Bill Higgin’s granddaughter, Claire Aube (her mother is Molly Higgins Aube ’92), will be a member of the Dartmouth class of 2023. Claire, a nationally ranked squash player, was admitted early as a recruited athlete. Her twin sister, Haley, is going to Stanford.
We note with profound sadness the passing of two esteemed, multifaceted classmates: John Harbaugh, a teacher, musician, rower, and poet; and Kevin Hughes, a banker, skier, woodworker, and volunteer. More information is available online.
Signed up yet for our 75th birthday party in Newport, Connecticut? Details are on the class webpage and newsletter.
Start the new year by sharing the latest with classmates and friends.
—Larry Geiger, 93 Greenridge Ave., White Plains, NY 10605; (914) 860-4945; lgeiger@aol.com
