Class Note 1981
When we started our collective Dartmouth experience, we were young, bright, optimistic, and true. Honest curiosity motivated us. The College, at its initiation, resonated the same spirit. With patina, transcendent truths remain. We are one.
In an effort to reflect on ties that bind us in our personal 60th year and the College’s 250th year, your class executive committee initiated an email-based approach named the Big Questions Series; first one: What moment would you re-experience? The response of Linda Gundal was, “Spontaneously a feeling came to mind. I had just finished playing an interdormitory water polo game. It was nighttime. I was walking alone across the Green back to my dorm, hair still a bit wet, weather cold, crisp, and clear. And a moment of freshness and belonging overwhelmed me and felt just perfect.” Allison Pingel Cooley had a few: “My first meeting with my freshman roomie, Nancy Kopsco Rader, at Hinman Hall. I was flooded with relief since I immediately realized she was the stuff of dreams, not of nightmares.” And “necking with my future husband (class of ’77) at Occom Pond.” Michael Holmes responded that a highlight of his college experience was the night he was tapped for Casque & Gauntlet: “We all had our little corners, but this felt like campus-wide recognition. That meant something.” Two members recalled Moosilauke. Dave Focardi recalls “my freshman trip summit was so clear we could see the Green Mountains in Vermont. Though I’ve had many summits since, none were that clear.” Chip Bettencourt noted the warm post-freshman trip feeling of “walking into Moosilauke Ravine Lodge.” Jon Herron wrote, “Sitting down to dinner backstage with the Grateful Dead before their concert while working as a cook and stage crew freshman fall.” In terms of further exciting moments, Steve Pignatiello recalls “the day John Rassias asked me to be his teaching assistant in Blois, France, for the spring 1980 term.” We all owe a great debt to our teachers, but there is a special debt Vaughn Halyard owes to recently named chairman of mathematics at Oregon State University Bill Bogley. Apparently, Bill’s assistance with Math 3 freshman year eliminated the “very good chance I would be graduating this week from a community college somewhere in Wisconsin.” The experience aided Bill also, since he has earned numerous graduate and undergraduate teaching awards and developed one of the first-in-the-world web-based courses in differential calculus called CalculusQuest.
In “give a rouse” news, our co-presidents Pat Berry and Robert Goldbloom were awarded the 2018 Class President of the Year Award and our very own Lynne Hamel Gaudet was honored at Homecoming as an Alumni Award winner. Bob Gaudet was inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey Hall of Fame just a few weeks earlier.
Stay tuned for the next installment question for our Big Questions Series, and respond as many times as you wish or write to us spontaneously. Long live the inspired.
—Emil Miskovsky, 520 Seneca St., Suite 312, Utica, NY 13502; (802) 345-9861; emilmiskovsky@gmail.com; Veronica Wessels, 224 Buena Vista Road, Rockcliffe, ON K1M0V7, Canada; (613) 864-4491; vcwessels@rogers.com
