April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College

CLASS NOTES
perfect antidote to the 60 event.
Constant motion it certainly was.
At first, I had a hard time figuring
out when these travels took
place. Maybe in the 37 years
since graduating from Williams?
No, it turns out in a two-month
period from the end of summer
through mid-fall. Meris started
by heading west from her home
in Colorado to “the gorgeous
wedding of my nephew Noah at
my sister Jan’s place on the water
at Whidbey Island, Wash.” She
stayed for a week with her sister
“in Coupeville, catching up,
hiking and feasting on massive
amounts of stone crab and oysters
(a fantasy for Coloradans)
pulled every couple of days from
the bay.”
Then to the East Coast
for another wedding (niece
Catherine) “on Cape Cod at her
dad’s 50-acre horse farm.” Then
to the Southwest and Austin in
September “to see my ‘daughter’
Joanna, Rob and their four
kids” (ages 4-14). The eldest is a
dancer, and that allowed Meris
to experience the extravaganza
of Texas high school football
“with a halftime that made Glee
look like amateur hour. There
were literally hundreds of band
members, dancers, cheerleaders,
etc., on the field for a production
that was far from the
humble offerings I grew up on
in Connecticut.” Meris tactfully
did not dare compare the Texas
show to the unique experiences
of Weston Field.
Then back to the East Coast
and NYC “in early October to
officially celebrate my 60th with
my sister Jan, who flew in from
Washington. We had a great time,
including breakfast with Bill Finn
’74, who is still working on his
Little Miss Sunshine musical.
They also got the chance to tour
the Metropolitan Museum at
“a leisurely pace” on one of its
closed days “with nary a soul in
sight.” Then back to Colorado to
drive back to the North Carolina
mountains for more celebration
and the southern version of
Berkshires foliage. Meris says
she is recovering as 2012 begins
and planning to start to cut
back on work at the business
she runs, Flatirons Marketing
& Communications, “which
provides community relations,
technical writing, proposal
management/writing and editing
to engineering and environmental
firms as well as nonprofits.” She
says her enjoyment of the travel
around her “seminal birthday”
and the realization that “we are
50 | Williams PeoPle | aPril 2012
all not getting any younger” is
leading her to think about cutting
back a bit on work. Suggesting
that getting older and acting
older are different events, Meris
follows that statement with plans
to spend next July in Venice and
study Italian for a month.
After continuing to receive
these tiring reports of adventurous
athletic and travel feats
(exhausting to read if not to
experience), I was relieved to
finally come across a note about
an actual retirement.
Barbara Smith Mitchell writes
that Wylie “decided it was time
to retire as the dean of admissions
from Bates after 33 years.”
Alas, retirement comes hard to
this Class of ’73. Barbara notes
that the retirement lasted “all of
a couple of weeks until he joined
the admission staff at Bowdoin
as the Distinguished Visiting
Dean of Admission.” From
emeritus to visiting dean sounds
like a nice, active inversion of the
traditional emeritus pattern. One
of the first people Wylie ran into
at Bowdoin was Gil Birney ’72,
“now Bowdoin’s rowing coach.”
Barbara notes that Wylie is “also
doing some consulting at the
Waynflete School in Portland and
putting all of his years of experience
to work doing some private
college counseling. He’d love
to hear from any of you who
still have kids facing the college
admission process.”
Dave Butts went west from his
dental practice in the Virginia
suburbs of DC and visited Steve
Hobbs “in the Bay area as well as
up the Sonoma coast. We were
able to visit with his two daughters
as well.” Dave also noted
the next-generation education/
career progress of his son David
’06 and Larry Shoer’s son Joseph
’06. Both recent graduates, good
Eph friends, completed PhDs in
engineering: David at MIT and
Joseph at Cornell. David started
work at Draper Labs at the start
of 2012.
Bill Eyre just had to walk the
streets of New York, where he
“literally bumped into” John
Loeffler in early December and
expressed amazement that John
looks the same as at Williams.
I can vouch for that, having
run into John at a high school
graduation six months earlier.
Bill reports that his daughters at
Williams have graduated, and
his “youngest is in college at
Princeton playing number two
on the women’s squash team.”
One classmate has discovered
the ability to enjoy mountains
by looking up at them without
scaling to the top. Linda Vipond
Heath writes, “My husband and
I took a trip to Hawaii for our
shared 70th and 60th birthday
celebrations. We didn’t scale
any major mountains but did do
some scuba diving and hiking
in the Volcano National Park.”
Linda reports, “All three children
are out of the nest; my youngest
just went off to Occidental
College.” Linda also notes
(literally) that she has returned to
singing, joining “a local women’s
a cappella group. Not having
sung a cappella since my Ephlats
days, I am finding it challenging
but a lot of fun. We sing in
nursing homes and at community
events in Greenwich.”
Milton Grenfell reports a
significant milestone for Antonio
Lulli Almenara, who “has finally
become an American citizen.”
Milton feigns shock “to think
I was harboring an alien in my
Bryant House suite for three
years!”
A number of classmates are
adventuring into the wilds of in
town apartment living. Chris Pitt
reports: “Dottie and I sold the
house in Milton and moved to a
condominium in the old Baker
Chocolate Mills in Dorchester,
and I started a one-year term as
president of the Massachusetts
Real Estate Bar Association.”
John Vestal has made a similar
move to a downtown apartment
in Dallas. One son, Andrew, was
married In September; another,
Charles, is to be married next
September.
At the Art Institute in
downtown Chicago, Suzanne
Folds McCullagh advanced to
become the chair and curator
of the department of prints
and drawings. Suzanne has
been in the prints department
at the Art Institute for over
35 years. The museum says
she has “acquired some of the
most significant works of art
held by the Department of
Prints and Drawings” and has
curated “dozens of exhibitions”
including one for this spring on
“Capturing the Sublime: Italian
Drawings of the Renaissance and
Baroque.”
I have another tidbit to add
to the continued success of the
Williams art mafia. My daughter
Kate Werble ’02 was featured in
The New York Times Sunday
arts section in October as one of
New York’s new leading contemporary
gallerists for her gallery in
Chelsea, Kate Werble Gallery.
Several classmates weighed