Class Note 1978
Marilyn and I had the pleasure of staying with Brooks Clark and his wife, Karen, when we were traveling through Knoxville, Tennessee, in October. Brooks arranged for me to speak about the Ghost Army at the East Tennessee Historical Society. The audience of 120 included classmate William Pender, who has been pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Knoxville for the last 10 years. William graduated with the ’77s and tends to hang out with members of that class for some unfathomable reason! Brooks just celebrated his fifth anniversary as project manager for alumni communications at the University of Tennessee, where he says he is using the Dartmouth alumni playbook to advantage. Karen is chief information officer for OrthoTennessee, which runs several orthopedic clinics in east Tennessee.
Working on the Class of ’78 Bunkhouse in May was an eye-opening experience, not in the least because it afforded me the opportunity to spend time with many classmates I barely knew or didn’t know at all as an undergraduate. I really enjoyed becoming acquainted with Tom DeCarlo,my work partner for the week. Tom and his wife, Hillary, live in northern Vermont, not far from the Canadian border. “We are still searching for the sweet spot for our semi-retirement years. We spend a lot of time with our animals (two dogs, two horses, two goats, and a cat) and taking care of 36 acres of forest and fields. And then there’s the gardens and Airbnb apartment that attracts many mountain bikers lured to our world-class Kingdom Trails.” Tom invites classmates to stop by for a visit, and adds that one goal for spring is to bike to Moosilauke, hike the mountain, and then bike back (not all in the same day!).
Mark Graber recently wrote to say he is determined to be the last member of the class still in the workforce. (You’re going to have some competition on that one, Mark.) He is a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, where he focuses on constitutional law “and anything else in which ‘constitutional’ is used as an adjective.” He has not one but two books this year. He coauthored Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? which examines “the rather poor state of constitutional democracy around the world,” and wrote The Constitution of the Confederate States, which he has subtitled “Everything You Want to Know About the Constitution of the Confederate States and at Least 500 Pages More.” He is married to Dr. Julia Bess Frank, Harvard ’73, a psychiatrist at George Washington Medical School, and they have three adult daughters.
The big news in the life of the Beyers is that we have moved to Chicago, a city with 167 breweries. (That’s not the reason for the move, but it is still awesome to consider!) So the address at the bottom of the column has changed. Please use it to send news. Or come have a beer with us.
—Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com
