Class Notes

C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G 2 0 1 0Sally Behr Schendel writes from Montana,where she is a school librarian andart teacher. “My husband Logan and Imet with Marian Lindberg and her sonJustin at the Roosevelt Lodge cabins atYellowstone in August to search fortrout, wolves, and lost memories. Adawn escapade with Marian brought usface to face with a nice mule deer buckbefore he melted back into the brush,while Logan spotted a black wolf. Justinwas asleep, of course. Justin is a greatguy, Marian is the cool mom, and thecycles of life continue to soothe mysometimes weary soul.” Sally sawIsabelle Carlhian at the LivingstonFarmers’ Market last summer. Isabelle isa dedicated farmer/baker/gardener/artist,whose insights into our culture nevercease to enlighten me. Evalyn Bemissends news from Santa Fe: “I haverefound my youthful passion for photography(EvalynBemisPhotography.com).Gone are the days of swishing printsthrough the developer trays in CA’s darkroom.Digital is the new magic and anyonecan take pictures, so the challengeis defining a vision that feels unique tome. All the best to my classmates.”Randi Danforth lives in Cairo andreports, “Our daughter Claire is a seniorand is deciding where to go next year forcollege. Bob has just come back from amonth in Sudan, where he doesresearch in the Nuba Mountains documentinga tribal language. I am seniordevelopment editor at American Universityin Cairo Press, working on book properformanceof Orff’s showy masterpiece,Carmina Burana. “Our girls havefinished/are about to finish college, andwho knows what the job market willbring this year? I have stayed in touchwith Sandra Rosenblum and JanetEisendrath and hope they will be able tocome to the reunion. My mother is inBedford, healthy at 78, so I see heroften, as well as Susie Wood Vermeulen,Stephanie PickmanMonahan, Edie Chase Keller, and mysister Brooks Stevens ’75, who lives inConcord.” “The last five years havebrought much change to my life,”reports Sally Trafton. “I missed our35th reunion because I was visitingorthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeonsto get their opinions about trying a fifthspinal fusion. Ultimately, I had amarathon, 11-hour surgery, and despitethe relatively low odds for success, thegrafts ‘took’ and I truly received a newlease on life. I left the University ofRochester and returned to my ‘roots’ asa health advocate in the community,serving as chief operating officer of theFinger Lakes Health Planning Agency,until Kevin and I decided to pursue ourlongtime dream of moving back toMaine. We bought a house in Brunswick,home of Bowdoin College; we moved inJune and haven’t looked back. I continueto work 10 hours a week for myemployer in Rochester, mostly doinghealth policy analysis and grant writing.Our daughter Megan spent 2+ years inthe Peace Corps in Turkmenistan in CentralAsia, and after a brief period inRochester, is teaching English in Busan,South Korea.” Ann Williams lives inWare Neck, VA, a small community onthe Middle Peninsula of the Tidewaterregion. She works part-time in customerservice at Brent and Becky’s Bulbs andas an administrative assistant/bookkeeperfor Frontier Adjusters. “My constantcompanion (he goes to both jobswith me) is Stockton, aka Lord Stockton,aka the Enlightened One. He is sweet,loyal, loving, and low-maintenance. Itook a trip to Holland and England in Maywith my sister Cathy, my aunt Betty,and my cousin Sally. It was my first overseastrip in 10 years.” Carol Williamsstill works full-time as a school improvementspecialist for the Prince George’sCounty (MD) public schools. “My avocationis quilting. My quilt guild, UhuruQuilters Guild, is holding its quilt showJune 26–27. I am the president of theguild and the quilt show chair. You canvisit the guild at uhuruquiltersguild.org;my Web site is quiltsandsewon.net. I amalso on Facebook! I have contacted andbeen contacted by quite a few classmatesboth on Facebook and on classmates.com.My son Jonathan graduatedin May from Hampton University with adouble major in psychology and graphic56design. I am so very proud of him. I hopehe will deign to update my Web site todemonstrate what he has learned.”1971Class Secretaries: Elizabeth AmesMacdonald, elizabeth.macdonald@comcast.net; Anne S. Lee,aslee640@hotmail.comLeslie Brothers is content with the fundamentals(work, family) and feels theyare actually quite rewarding. She startedusing a Linux operating system on hercomputer, which is a great opportunity tolearn something new. And—unlike herintense athletic activities —there is norisk of physical injury. “It’s a good choicefor someone my age who is beginning toexperience wear and tear (alas).” Shesends best wishes to her classmates.Catherine Carter is working toward amaster’s degree in forest resources andhopes to get a job that involves helpingto save the Salish Sea—the body ofwater that includes the Canadian part ofPuget Sound. She is going to “be thechange” and cut her consumption, startingwith her car. It will not be easy. LisaCompton Bellocchio was laid off justafter the new year from her museum jobwith the Trustees of Reservations. So,once again, she tries to reinvent herself.Daughter Hollie is a straight-A graduatestudent in urban planning at MIT and hashad fabulous experiences studying andworking in Viet Nam, South Africa, andBrazil. She is engaged to her Armysweetheart, who is heading toAfghanistan. Lisa’s husband Matthewcontinues to build and restore pipeorgans. She deals with aging and dyingparents, the death of loved ones—sometimes in our age bracket—and thehealth issues of growing older. But thedoor is always open in Haverhill, MA.Elizabeth Ames Macdonald has beentaking some creative nonfiction andmemoir-writing classes at the CambridgeCenter for Adult Education and hasbegun to write about the summer shespent in Afghanistan in 1971 as an AFSstudent. In spite of having journals andletters home, she wishes she rememberedmore and in more detail. In the fallof 2009, Anne Lauderdale Lee and herhusband moved from Shanghai to Singapore.“Even though Singapore is verycivilized and the weather fabulously tropical,after almost four years in China, itwas hard to leave.” While in Shanghaishe became certified to teach Pilatesand is teaching part-time in Singapore.They continue to explore Asia andnearby Western Australia and they lookforward to visiting Malaysia and Indonesia.Gail Percy writes that her daughter,Tara Davis ’06, who spent sophomoreyear at CA, has finished up at ColoradoCollege, and her daughter Raina is atStanford. Gail is the North America representativefor Sonam Dubal. SusanPolk and her husband have sent outtheir last college tuition check: theiryoungest has graduated and is joining histwo brothers working in the real world.“I volunteered for a week last August atthe Mt. Washington Observatory (NH),living at the summit, where my son (andco-volunteer) and I cooked dinners,helped with housekeeping, and enjoyedlife at 6,288 feet. We went on hikes fromthe summit, got up at 4:30 am. for sunrises,and saw all kinds of weather conditions,including a great lightning storm.Two of my sons have been summitinterns at the observatory, and we hikeMt. Washington as a family every July toraise money for this unique educationalnonprofit.” Rosamond Smith Rea’s sonStephen is in a PhD program at UC-Irvine. He travels to South Korea eachsummer to do his field work and willeventually be located there for one totwo years. Her son James graduatedwith high honors from Wesleyan. He isin Hawaii, working within a few yards ofthe rim of the Kilauea caldera. Roz is stillworking a few hours a week at a historichouse museum in Ellsworth, ME and ishoping to get more work from othermuseums in the area. “The troubledeconomy has caused lots of cutbackshere, just as it has in most communitiesand in the nonprofit sector in general.”Karen Braucher Tobin is pleased toannounce publication of her first mystery,Poetic License to Kill (Salvo Press,2010). It features mother-daughter amateursleuths and is set in Portland, OR,where Karen has lived for 14 years. ConcordAcademy figures a bit in the plot.Her fifth poetry collection, Grit &Whimsy, is forthcoming from Puddinghouse.Her daughter, Betty Li Tobin, 17,is doing great in high school. KateTweedy’s daughter, Elena, married herpartner Shannon in California and at afamily ceremony on the banks of theColumbia River in Oregon. Both daughtersare in graduate school, Elena atUWisconsin for a PhD in Latin Americanhistory and Alice at Penn for a PhD inEnglish. Kate has written a book, TheMeadow, about her mother, grandfather,their horse, Secretariat, and their farm inVirginia. It will be out in the fall. There isalso a Disney movie, Secretariat, starringDiane Lane as Kate’s mother and JohnMalkovich as the trainer, coming out inOctober. “We got to watch the filminglast fall, and my mom and I played extrasin the stands for the big Belmont win. Itwas huge fun, and Diane is very, verykind. Malkovich is a hoot! Most difficultfor me has been my mom’s ongoinghealth crises, not surprising at age 88,but I seem to be the main caretakermost of the time. . . . If she makes it tothe premiere, I will be really happy.”Cynthia Perrin Schneider’s work leadingthe Arts and Culture Dialogue Initiativeat the Brookings Institution has ledto a global cultural diplomacy projectwith the Abu Dhabi Authority for Cultureand Heritage. She travels frequently toEgypt, Morocco, the UAE, Qatar, andKurdistan. Cynthia believes the arts, culture,and media are universal languagesand the windows onto people around theworld. So she works in the policy realm,trying to bring attention to the importanceof culture in understanding andshaping societies. Her daughter Tommieis a graduate of Washington University inSt. Louis with a psychology major and aminor in women’s studies. Her son Samis at Georgetown, taking courses inevery field imaginable—from jazz historyto psychology and theology. “I am happyto be connected to Concord through theDC CA book group, which Sandra WillettJackson ’61 invited me to join. I amlooking forward to seeing Lucy McFadden’70 and other Concord friends.”1972Class Secretary: Jennifer Wise Blackman,jennyb_05492@yahoo.com