Class Note 1966

Sixty-sixers continue to receive accolades for their achievements and continue to contribute to their communities in a variety of meaningful ways.

The U.S. Navy Supply Corps Foundation has selected Bill Gruver as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Navy Supply Corps School at its November 2018 convention. Bill served as a supply officer on a nuclear submarine during the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972 and was responsible for millions of dollars of inventory. “The gravity of my military responsibilities,” Bill said in accepting the award, “made possible whatever I may have accomplished later in life.” And those accomplishments are many. Bill spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to chief administrative officer of its largest division—equities. Bill remains active in finance, as an arbitrator of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and through service on numerous boards. Today Bill occupies the Howard I. Scott Chair in Global Commerce, Strategy & Leadership at Bucknell University. He has also served three terms as mayor of Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania.

Bob Cowden has been selected for inclusion in the 2018 Massachusetts Super Lawyers rating. Bob, a partner at the Boston-based law firm of Casner & Edwards, was selected for his practice with nonprofit organizations, from social services organizations to grant-making foundations.

In 2005 Joff Keane says he “hung up [his] diplomatic spurs” after a 39-plus year career “that [he] would not trade for anything,” culminating in an ambassadorship to Paraguay. In an unprecedented coincidence, classmate Jim Cason succeeded Joff as ambassador in Paraguay. Joff worked to restore or maintain democracy and human rights throughout Latin America. “For my significant role in turning back a coup d’état in Guatemala when I was acting chief of mission (interim ambassador),” Joff recalls, he received a presidential letter of commendation. Joff has not stood still in retirement. He lectures about Latin America, averages 25 sailing races per year, and birdwatches (in 2018 he identified 570 distinct species in one month in Colombia). And Joff walks, really walks, covering 110 miles of the St. James Way in Spain in 2014 and 70 miles of the Portuguese St. James Way in 2018.

Also moving fast in retirement is David Johnston, who is “working happily at three part-time gigs” around Hartford, Connecticut—substitute teaching, recruiting and counseling adults to qualify for community college courses, and running the Center for Higher Education Retention Excellence, which just held its 22nd conference on college retention for challenged students. David and wife Hera, a practicing psychiatrist, are celebrating the birth of first grandchild Fiona in Oregon, whose mom, daughter Mariah, is a family practice doctor.

Peter Dorsen has written a personal look back on our 50th reunion. “There was indescribable joy reconnecting with men I had not seen for 50 years,” he writes. You can read his moving reflection, which may resonate with many, at www.dartmouth66.org/downloads/Men-0ver-60-dont-quit-now.pdf.

Signed up yet for our 75th birthday party in Newport, Rhode Island, this June? Details are on the class web page and in the newsletter.

—Larry Geiger, 93 Greenridge Ave., White Plains, NY 10605; (914) 860-4945; lgeiger@aol.com