April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College

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