April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College

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CLASS NOTES Book Store at prices that always seemed exorbitant; we kept the pinball machines hopping at the Gym Lunch; and at the Walden Theater we could see An American in Paris, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Wages of Fear, High Society and many others. Ernie recalls Rudnick’s Master Cleaners, which was run by the street’s unofficial rabbi, Louis Rudnick, a colorful character on the town’s board of selectmen. The street had two competing drug stores: The College Pharmacy on the northwest corner and Hart’s Drug Store on the mideast side. The dearly departed in town were often handled by Hopkins Funeral Home, which also sold furniture near the money changers at the Williamstown National Bank. Then there was Richard Gold, the diamond merchant, who urged students to “Come in and Get Stoned.” And just down the street from Gold was the District Court, where Ernie covered drunk driving charges and other sins unearthed by the town’s constabulary. Being a local resident he particularly liked the two stores at the bottom of Spring Street that in 1952 ran competing ads for the presidential candidates, one saying “I like Ike” and the other saying, “But I’ll vote for Stevenson.” Good memories— thanks, Ernie. We just received news of the sudden death of Richard Crews in San Jose, Calif., on March 7. Our condolences to his family. Please keep the notes coming. That’s the view from hear. 1960 Michael Penner 38334 South Desert Bluff Drive Tucson, AZ 85739 1960secretary@williams.edu Joe Masino responded from Wisconsin while visiting his daughter Julie. Joe and Jackie now live in Kentucky. Joe reports he is in good health and has become a stay-at-home person taking care of their dog Gabriel, a miniature German Schnauzer. Joe has retired from selling products in the Midwest and is hoping to write a book about his life if he can overcome writer’s block. Duncan Brown reports he and Susan, and Susan and Tony Roberts, Jill and Ned Benedict and Nancy and Peter Berkley all had a great rendezvous with Phil Scaturro and Rey Enriquez, who hosted them at Casa de Campo 28 | Williams PeoPle | aPril 2012 in the Dominican Republic in November. They had beautiful weather and fantastic accommodations on the water. Golf, biking, hiking, swimming and boating were some of the activities, while the superb cuisine and excellent wines were frequent and abundant. Jim Pilgrim writes from Plainfield, Mass., that on Nov. 8 he had his left knee replaced by Dr. John Cluett ’96. Recovery has been slow, with physical therapy classes, but Jim hopes to be cleared to drive soon. Jim reports that his right knee now feels fine. He feels it’s scared to act up or it will be replaced also. Stew Smith responded early so as not to be outdone by that laggard, Nimetz. He reports that he and Nancy were huddled on the eastern shore of the chilly Chesapeake Bay for the solstice holidays. The demands of work and responsibility must still be met, mainly by schlepping more firewood and defending the camellias from Bambi and friends as they make sweeps through the shopping mall of their shrubbery. Stew professes no envy of those Prestons, Healys, Cutlers, Stegemans, Alfords, Browns and other loyal legions of our classmates still in Yankee land right now. Or even of the Roaches and the rest of those expatriates perched on a West Coast fault line. Harvey Brickley writes that he has joined the advisory board of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The school includes 3,700 of the university’s total enrollment of 32,000. Initially Harvey will focus on the work being done in career services and using opportunities presented in that area to bring all the members of the board in contact with students. Harvey reports that Andy Young has attended all the meetings, bringing his experience as a lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King, mayor of Atlanta and congressman and ambassador to the United Nations to bear on national and international issues. I received a great note from Dick Holliday, who asked that I remind classmates about Alumni Fund season. Dick’s goal as our new class agent was raising our participation percentage from last year’s 66 percent to well above 70 percent. We all should thank Dick for taking such an important job. Dick continues to divide his time between the printing equipment business and several community and sailing organizations. Ardis maintains her shared studio in nearby Stonington, experimenting with new ways to express her artistic vision. Dick keeps in shape bicycling and walking with Ardis and 10-year-old lab Gretta. Dick and Ardis left the New England winter to visit friends in San Miguel de Allende in the high interior of Mexico. San Miguel is an old Mexican town with spectacular weather and is a mecca for artists and their patrons. The Hollidays just loved it, and a return trip was scheduled for February. Dave Banta reported on the minireunion weekend Oct. 21-23. Dave writes: “A relatively small but typically enthusiastic number of classmates were back for the minireunion weekend. The ‘locals’ spearheaded the list, namely Ned Benedict, Duncan Brown, Foster Devereux, Jim Briggs, Dave Paresky and Bob Stegeman. We on the traveling squad included: Dick Alford, Fred Combs, Jon Gilman, Win Healy, Marshall Lapidus, Jon O’Brien, Bob Pyle, Dave Banta and Toby Smith. Buck Frederickson won the distance award—a Tebow bobblehead. Penny and Foster Devereux hosted us all for dinner (as they have done many times before) on Friday night. Some played golf on the upgraded, always challenging Taconic course that afternoon. Saturday featured lectures, tailgating and Tufts football, an Eph triumph. Saturday night the class gathered at the ’6 House (private room) for a down loose dinner. Our prez, Buck, welcomed all and posed the following question: What do all Williams and Amherst students have in common? Answer: They all got into Amherst! Toby Smith took the floor and told a Scottish joke with a burr that was worthy of Robert Burns. We ended the get-together with the following idea: It’s a shame for so few to have so much fun, so let’s try to double the number for next year. Give it some thought. After all, why wait for the 55th?” Thanks again to Dave Banta for a great report. I had planned to attend (and win the distance award), but an important family event took precedence. Our daughter Jane Penner ’90 presented us with our first granddaughter in October. I received a very interesting note from John Whitman. John has been engaged
Ephs gathered at the Mount Desert Island Garlic Festival in Southwest Harbor, Maine, last fall included (from left) Eliot Coleman ’61, James Thompson ’68 and Hal Crowther ’66. during the past year in a none-too-practical but very interesting self-motivated study of how difficult it is to improve upon the vertical accuracy of public topographic data using GPS and GIS methods. Even with good equipment and software, GPS data are none too accurate, particularly in the vertical coordinate. What’s worse, that inaccuracy grows almost an order of magnitude larger when trying to receive GPS signals under a forest canopy. Nevertheless, John has amassed data (convincing to him) that show he can improve upon the best available public data for his region. Since this accomplishment has required more data collection and processing than any sane individual would wish to attempt, John suspects that the most appropriate conclusion may be that Whitman has too much time on his hands. John does hope to present a paper on his work next July at the ESRI User Conference. John, be sure to report back on how it went at the conference. For all you non-science majors, aren’t you sad you weren’t a physics major? Earla Sue and Colin McNaull report settling into their first Christmas in Trumansburg, a suburb of Cornell and Ithaca College, outside of Ithaca. Colin has learned Cornell gives no senior citizen discounts for PhD programs, so “Sex, Drugs and Rock-and-Roll Eugenics, a Modern Retrospective” will probably never make it into print. Colin may have reached the limits of his desire to be a cowboy last fall. Seven days on a horse with the cows at the Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming may have been two days too many. Earla Sue, on the other hand, finished her 350-mile bike ride from Buffalo to Albany along the Erie Canal with a zest to do more in 2012. Spain perhaps? Sounds to me like Colin and Earla Sue are one of the most active couples in our class. Bob Stern remains active in the practice of law and has published the book Pennsylvania Nonprofit Corporation Law. It looks like a very complete coverage of the subject. With many of us retired, it’s great to see Bob publishing new material. Noelle Ho-Lam ’02 writes that although Tao Ho remains mostly bed-bound, he enjoys his grandchildren’s visits (Noelle’s 2 1 ⁄2-year-old son Noah and 11-month-old daughter Gabi). The noise (cries and screams) the children make add much life and joy to his daily routine. At the beginning of November, President Adam Falk visited Hong Kong with Geraldine Shen ’01. Tao’s wife Irene and daughter Noelle had tea with President Falk and enjoyed getting to know him and hearing his vision for Williams. On a sad note, Ron Stegall reports the death of Lael, his wife of 44 years, after a year of struggle with pancreatic cancer. Ron writes the outpouring of messages and appreciation of her from around the world has been overwhelming and gratifying. There was a celebration of her life in Deer Isle, Maine, in November and a similar n 1959–61 celebration was to take place in Washington on Feb. 11 at St. Marks Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Ron expresses his gratitude for the wonderful support from so many of our classmates. 1961 Bob Gormley P.O. Box 3922 Westport, MA 02790 1961secretary@williams.edu It’s mid-January of a relatively mild winter as I post these notes; it’ll be April and spring when you read them. So welcome to spring, baseball and flowers again, and with a cumbersome national election process plodding toward summer conventions and anointed candidates. One thing I urged when soliciting these notes was something on how you all stood on the presidential election. Remember that in the fall of 1960, just before that historic election, as John Chandler pointed out in his letter for our 50th class book, the student body chose Nixon over JFK by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent. I think it’s interesting to see how we of ’61 stand 51 years later. Here follow a handful of replies but I hope that by September, when the next notes come out, more of you will take the opportunity to declare yourselves. John Mayher, who was editor of the Williams Record in 1960, recalls the poll back then and dug out his “somewhat moldy” copy of the paper to prove it. (The Record also had “an ad for Budweiser, two for long-gone Schaeffer, one for Kools and a ‘humor’ column sponsored by Marlboro.”) In the poll we students liked Nixon’s choice of Henry Cabot Lodge as a running mate, noting he was “far superior” to LBJ. But as John proudly points out, The Record officially endorsed Kennedy, and he and Ben Campbell wrote a brief that concluded: “He can provide the leadership we have lacked for the last eight years.” Meanwhile, George Reath argued for Nixon that “he has professed his reluctance to have government spending any higher.” Notice how much more civil we were in those days about politics. John concludes, ”I’m still a Democrat and ready to work again for Obama. Are you still a Republican, George?” Walt Henrion chimed in that “being on a board with Lou aPril 2012 | Williams PeoPle | 29
Page 1 and 2: Williams PEOPLE April 2012 getting
Page 3 and 4: 118 CONTENTS 4 Class Notes PEOPLE A
Page 5 and 6: General Hospital, joining the Bruin
Page 7 and 8: Bill Brewer ’43 welcomed daughter
Page 9 and 10: is reviewed on the front page of th
Page 11 and 12: Parker Smith died in October after
Page 13 and 14: Emily. Fervent hopes were expressed
Page 15 and 16: years. Always positive, he claims t
Page 17 and 18: John Phillips reported he was sorry
Page 19 and 20: Roger Friedman ’55 (middle) recei
Page 21 and 22: 1956 classmates (from left) Walter
Page 23 and 24: hard to act against the economic in
Page 25 and 26: and all full scholarship. Matt said
Page 27: Festival.” And that’s just the
Page 31 and 32: Friend and sometime neighbor Wally
Page 33 and 34: eceived a wonderful award from my p
Page 35 and 36: six children, three of hers and thr
Page 37 and 38: “Through years of Williams’ eve
Page 39 and 40: 1965 classmates gathered at the Uni
Page 41 and 42: 1967 classmates Bill Taylor (left)
Page 43 and 44: Bankers Life Insurance and Casualty
Page 45 and 46: Skip Kotkins ’70 (right), chairma
Page 47 and 48: David Kubie ’71 (second from righ
Page 49 and 50: een arrested, and if that were to h
Page 51 and 52: in on the varying reminiscences rai
Page 53 and 54: an NSF grant for grad work on solar
Page 55 and 56: 1976 classmates Sandy and Kristi Br
Page 57 and 58: in April to stop by and say hello.
Page 59 and 60: 1979 classmates (from left) Lisa Ru
Page 61 and 62: 1980 classmates Mary Ann Sondrini T
Page 63 and 64: owners of loose Holsteins on her ru
Page 65 and 66: Lohrer, Dan Katz ’79, Bill Spragu
Page 67 and 68: Dave Park ’83 (third from right)
Page 69 and 70: Marianne O’Connor wistfully wrote
Page 71 and 72: find myself at a loss for words. Ho
Page 73 and 74: Mark’ can’t help but stay conne
Page 75 and 76: In addition to drawing Debbie Bernh
Page 77 and 78: and Carrie Collins, and Brooks Foeh
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e doing his research (physics, and
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From left: Josh Kurzban ’91 and h
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was looking forward to skiing with
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Jake Russin ’94 (standing, left)
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From left: Brian Eng ’96, Elise B
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to have CTE, a degenerative brain d
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1998 Andrea Stanton 734 St. Paul St
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coaches the Dartmouth women’s alp
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to get back in touch with these fri
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Mount Sinai in NYC and is going int
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made a trip out to Portland, Ore.,
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Classmates Kam Shahid ’04 (right)
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lives down the street from her in N
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Rowena Ahsan ’07 (kneeling, cente
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grad school updates. Ryan Dunfee le
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Jenny Coronel ’10 (left) traveled
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“As for my regular life, I’m st
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From left: Robert Kim ’11, Michae
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Molly SharlaCh ’05 & keVin hoeSCh
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Jennifer hendi ’99 & MattheW troV
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terri o’brien ’02 & brad hoWell
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WEDDING ALBUM 1952 Raymond E. Georg
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OBITUARIES 1932 F. TAYLOR OSTRANDER
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elonged to the baseball team, Glee
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eceived numerous awards and honorar
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Joshua C. Teitelbaum ’93, and two
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AN ENGAGED COMMUNITY One of the cha
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April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College

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