Notebook New telescope, In the Round, All-College Symposium, Behind the Curtain, 100 trees, the hidden cost of thrifting, AI@Conn, Men’s Soccer wins NESCAC, Ink
Literary Legacy Novelist and Professor Emeritus Blanche McCrary Boyd mentored generations of writers, shaping America’s literary landscape in the process.
Staffing the Hospital For more than 35 years, Casting Director Mark Teschner ’79 has found the talent to sustain the longestrunning active soap opera.
Shelter from the Storm The era of extreme weather is upon us. How do we adapt to this new normal?
How AI Solved Biology’s Biggest Mystery Machine learning cracked the protein-folding problem and opened up new possibilities in drug discovery.
Answering the Call The Rev. Pamela Holmes ’89 provides spiritual guidance and support to NYC firefighters.
18 24 30 36 40
On the cover: Intensified storms, rising sea levels and increased flooding are just some of the impacts of climate change. Story on page 30. Photo by Fernando Astasio Avila/Shutterstock
On this page: At dress rehearsal for the Dance Department’s fall performance in Palmer Auditorium in December.
Photo by Ed Harrison ’28
One of the most distinctive aspects of Connecticut College as a private, undergraduate residential liberal arts college is our stunning campus. As I traverse campus, it is a joy to see students laughing together as they walk to class, immersed in study at the Charles E. Shain Library, rehearsing on Palmer Auditorium’s stage, practicing on Freeman Field, playing chess at Coffee Grounds or enjoying a stroll in the Arboretum. In conversations with alumni, I am struck by the profound connections forged over the years through beloved spots and cherished places, each with its own distinct character and features. One alumna fondly described Freeman House as a warm hug—a quiet retreat on the edge of campus, yet steps from everything. Another reminisced about jumping into snow banks during a blizzard and working late into the night on art projects in the Plex hallway with Steely Dan playing in the background. These stories illustrate how places and people intertwine, shaping our students’ future selves and grounding their most treasured memories of Conn.
Our campus is not just a backdrop for learning; it is integral to the academic experience: a place of profound personal growth, experiential education and immersive discovery. The classrooms where ideas come to life, the residence halls where lifelong friendships form, the common spaces where we gather to socialize and celebrate. Faculty, staff and students carefully steward our ecosystem of land, water, air, outdoor spaces and buildings, honoring those to whom this land once belonged and the generosity of the New London community that enabled Conn to exist in this place.
Yet, as Nathaniel Hawthorne so eloquently put it, “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” That shadow now rests on many of our well-loved buildings, underscoring the pressing need to reinvest in the very spaces that have sustained and enriched our mission for more than a century.
We have already taken important steps to revitalize our campus, from transforming Palmer Auditorium into the Athey Center for Performance and Research at Palmer Auditorium to reimagining our waterfront and renovating the College Center at CrozierWilliams.
Over the past year, the Board of Trustees and administration have undertaken a comprehensive assessment to better understand the state of our campus infrastructure. The findings reveal an immediate need to establish a more robust annual capital budget, while charting a path to restoring several residence halls and academic facilities in a way that both preserves their historic beauty and ensures that Conn remains a place where students will continue to learn, play, live and thrive for generations to come.
It is a moment that calls us to collective action and I invite each of you into this conversation. How do we more fully use our campus assets to provide the best learning experience and environment for our students? What are the educational, co-curricular and experiential synergies not yet realized? Your voices are vital in shaping this vision and ensuring Conn’s vibrant legacy continues.
As I pass the midway mark of my first year at Conn, I am incredibly grateful to be part of this remarkable community. Your support—whether through advocacy, engagement or philanthropy—has been and will remain instrumental in preserving and enhancing our beloved College for today’s and tomorrow’s students. Thank you for being a steward of Conn’s past, present and future.
With gratitude,
Andrea E. Chapdelaine, Ph.D.
From the President CC
CONNECTICUT COLLEGE Magazine
VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS: John Cramer
EDITOR: Amy Martin
ART DIRECTOR: Benjamin Parent
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Sean D. Elliot
SENIOR WRITER: Melissa Babcock Johnson
WRITER: Tim Stevens ’03
CLASS NOTES COMPILED BY: Alumni Relations
CC Magazine is published by the Office of Communications. We are committed to covering a diverse group of stories in order to profile the human condition as seen through—and sometimes written by—our alumni, faculty, students and staff; we strive to publish features and photography that illuminate the College’s story.
CC Magazine (ISSN 1060-5134) (USPS 129-140) is published in winter, spring and fall, and is mailed free of charge to Connecticut College alumni, parents and friends of the College. Standard rate nonprofit postage paid at New London, CT, and at additional offices.
Contributions: CC Magazine will consider, but is not responsible for, unsolicited manuscripts, proposals and photographs. Address correspondence to:
Editor, CC Magazine, Becker House, 270 Mohegan Avenue, New London, CT 06320-4196
Phone: 860-439-2526
Email: ccmag@conncoll.edu
Alumni: Send address changes to: Alumni Office Connecticut College 270 Mohegan Ave. New London, CT 06320-4196 or email to alumni@conncoll.edu
Postmaster: Send address changes to: CC Magazine, 270 Mohegan Ave., New London, CT 06320-4196
CONNECTICUT COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Seth W. Alvord ’93, Chair, Jessica L. Archibald ’95, Betty Brown Bibbins ’73, Maria Wyckoff Boyce ’85, Vice Chair, Andrea E. Chapdelaine, President, Isaac H. Clothier V ’79 P’10, Loulie Sutro Crawford ’89, Lawrence B. Damon III ’93, Mark D. Fallon ’92 P’28, Marisa G. Fariña ’93, Hannah E. Gonzalez ’23, Young Alumni Trustee, Kim-An Hernandez ’99 P’28, Samirah Jaigirdar ’22, Young Alumni Trustee, Jonathan A. Krane ’90, John D. Linehan P’18 ’23 ’24, Erica L. Lovett ’14, Sarah A. Mudho ’98, Devon Danz Preston ’93 P’28, Leslie Rosen ’02, Peter D. Skaperdas P’17, Vice Chair, Dwayne C. Stallings ’99, Vice Chair, Jonathan S. Stavin ’85, Susan Ekberg Stiritz ’65, Diane E. Stratton ’91, Maarten D. Terry ’83, Anne A. Verplanck ’80, Rajneesh Vig ’93, Shawnia A. Yon ’24, Young Alumni Trustee, John S. Zeiler ’74
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Thomas Anderson ’07, Angela Bannerman Ankoma ’97 P’27, Taylor Austin ’24, Laila Bera ’23, Michael Boswell ’10, Isaac Chip Clothier V ’79 P’10, President, Philip Dolan ’99, Daniel Garcia ’02, Susan Mabrey Gaud ’68 P’07, Susan Peck Hinkel ’65, M. Grant Hogan ’07, Deion Jordan ’17, Julia Kaback ’18, Betty Fluegelman Kahn ’68 P’92, Mario Laurenzi ’90, Jennifer Lapan Mann ’94, Secretary, Rasheed Mitchell ’13, Erin Holstein Mogel ’09, Samantha Capen Muldoon ’88, Derrick Newton ’18, Jacob Nozaki ’22, Steve Owen ’80 P’12, Allan Rogers ’14, Harris Rosenheim ’09, Vice President, Katrina Sanders ’92, Tamsen Bales Sharpless ’89, An-Ming Sze Truxes ’71, Aidyn Urena ’10, Richard Vancil ’82, Veronica Venture ’86, Vice President, Denise Wheeless ’80, Mariko Wilcox ’99, Yoldas Yildiz ’18
CC Magazine Copyright 2025 by Connecticut College, all rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official policy of the College.
For Class Notes submissions: classnotes@conncoll.edu Visit us online at ccmagazine.conncoll.edu.
CC Magazine is printed on Rolland Enviro 100, a 100% PCW recycled paper. Printed by Lane Press, a FSC/SFI certified printer in Burlington, Vermont.
Sean D. Elliot
Celestial Wonders
In November, “Solar System Astronomy Lab” students observed the moon under the guidance of Professor Geoffrey McLean from the F.W. Olin Science Center observatory. Soon, they’ll have an even better view of the night sky; an anonymous alum has donated $100,000 to the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics for the purchase of a new telescope and upgrades to the observatory.
The 14-inch telescope, a CDK350 Observatory System built by PlaneWave Instruments out of Michigan, is more efficient and easier to use than the current 20-inch scope that was installed in 1996, said Assistant Teaching Professor of Astronomy Alex Gianninas, who is also
the campus director for the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. The gift will also fund other upgrades to the observatory atop the F.W. Olin Science Center.
Associate Professor Emeritus of Physics Leslie Brown, who taught at Conn from 1992 to 2022, said, “This most generous gift of a new telescope and dome upgrades ensures that opportunities for astronomy students to engage in hands-on learning and research, and for the campus and the local community to share in the joys of the night sky that were enjoyed in the past, will be available long into what looks to be a very bright future for astronomy at Conn.”
Gianninas said students in his
“Observational Techniques” course will be able to train on the new telescope, an activity that mechanical and electronic issues prevented on the current one for the past five years. “We’ve been able to work around that by using publicly available data,” Gianninas said, “but the whole point is to give students handson experience, and we’ll be able to start doing that again.”
The public will have opportunities to experience it, too. Department staff are hopeful the new telescope will be set up in time for a planned April open house event, at which guided observations, astronomy-themed activities, talks and videos will be offered to the public.
Sean D. Elliot
In the Round
I encourage you to reflect on how you can contribute, in whatever ways you can, to the vision of a world that continues to advance equality and freedom.
— PRESIDENT ANDREA CHAPDELAINE TO STUDENTS, FACULTY AND STAFF IN HONOR OF MLK DAY
89% of the Class of 2024 reported engaging with the Hale Center for Career Development while at Conn.
CONFERENCE IN KUCHING
Brooke Brandenburger ’26, Manan Isak ’24 and Russell Kosovsky ’25 recently traveled to Kuching, Malaysia, to present their computer science research at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Themed “Sustainable Futures: Harmonizing Humanity and Technology for a Thriving World,” the event featured presentations by researchers from 44 countries on topics ranging from intelligent systems to cybersecurity and robotics. “Every time we attend a conference, our undergraduates are the only undergraduates there,” said research assistant Jim O’Connor ’13, who accompanied the students on the trip. “The rest are third- to fifth-year Ph.D. students from places like Harvard and MIT who are shocked that these undergraduates are there at all, never mind presenting work alongside them.”
SPRING SEMESTER CLASSES WE WANT TO TAKE:
▪ Archaeology of North America
▪ History of Dance
▪ Plants, Protists and Fungi ►
▪ Economics of Gender
▪ Machine Learning and Data Mining
▪ Theater for Young Audiences
▪ Marine Biodiversity and Conservation
▪ DEI in Sports
The first snow of winter in December didn’t stop students from getting out on campus for a run.
Students got down at the Student Activities Council Fall Ball on Tempel Green.
MOST POPULAR CONDIMENTS
Food Pathway Coordinator and Associate Professor of Anthropology Rachel Black spoke to Newsweek in October to help break down Ranker’s list of most popular condiments by state. Black explained that distinct regional cuisines and exposure through television and social media contribute to differing choices. Nature’s Way Extra Virgin Coconut Oil took the top spot after ranking most popular in five states: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota and Oregon. Connecticut’s top choice, Nutella, came in third.
OK, Google. It’s time to learn Spanglish.
— ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISPANIC STUDIES
EMILY KUDER IN A JAN. 2 HOUSTON CHRONICLE
OP-ED ABOUT THE NEED FOR TECH DEVICES TO BETTER REFLECT MULTILINGUAL REALITIES
ACADEMIC ASSISTANTS UNITE
Conn’s 18 academic assistants recently published an op-ed in Inside Higher Ed about the Faculty Administrative Support Team—aka the FASTeam—a committee they created to share knowledge and standardize processes and procedures across campus. “The FASTeam allows us to do our work more
2028 ENTIRE CLASS FEATURED IN CC MAGAZINE !
174 lbs.
Weight of the “The Great Sprout Pumpkin,” the largest winter squash grown in Conn’s sustainable garden this year. It was turned into a Sprout-o’-lantern at the annual Botany Department pumpkin carving event in the Arboretum.
Women’s Cross Country’s Grace McDonough ’26 was one of only three athletes across the NESCAC to earn a spot on the AllNESCAC, All-Sportsmanship and All-Academic teams.
*Almost! As part of their first-year seminars, all members of the Class of 2028 met weekly during the fall semester for “Common Experience,” group meetings that focus on different aspects of the college experience, including career preparation, the honor code and Connections. At their last meeting, they gathered to take the photo below in Castle Court.
Brilliance and Creativity on Display
Surrounded by a captivated audience of students, faculty and staff in a bright room on an unseasonably warm November day, Zale Peart ’25 made a passionate argument for investing in America’s railways.
“Affordable, efficient and electric rail transportation is an achievable goal in the United States,” he said. “Passenger rail should be viewed as a public good—an essential service designed to benefit the American people, rather than a network purely driven by profit.”
Behind him, his poster details his case: Strategic government investment in electric rail routes and high-speed rail lines would support economic growth and social equity by creating jobs and providing rural communities with accessible travel options, while also significantly lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Peart, an international relations and history double major and scholar in the Social Justice and Sustainability Pathway from Brooklyn, New York, was one of 202 seniors who presented at Conn’s sixth annual All-College Symposium. The culminating conference for Connections,
the Symposium highlights students’ integrative learning through four years. In talks, panels and poster sessions, the student presenters showcased the connections they have made among their courses and research, their jobs and internships, and their work in local communities and around the globe—along with the questions that animated their choices.
Peart’s fellow seniors covered a broad range of topics, including financial literacy in youth education, sustainability in the fashion industry, eelgrass restoration in Long Island Sound, access to mental healthcare in the U.S. and France, factors influencing information sharing decisions, the ethics of displaying human remains in museums, the disproportionate impact of plastic manufacturing on vulnerable communities, socioeconomic barriers in melanoma care, and preventing heat stroke death in high school sports.
Bianca Falcone ’25, an art and psychology double major and scholar in the Creativity Pathway from Wellesley, Massachusetts, presented her research on how museums and art galleries can enhance accessibility and engagement
for neurodiverse audiences. Falcone, who curated the annual all-student art show at Conn and completed internships at two New York City galleries, showed the audience how even simple steps can make a significant difference.
“After graduation, I am hoping to go into art administration or communication design. My research in the Creativity Pathway helped me affirm this interest by bridging my studies in art, psychology, art history and design,” she said.
Justin Finkel ’25, a biology major and scholar in the Public Health Pathway from Cheshire, Connecticut, said the Connections curriculum allowed him to use an interdisciplinary lens to explore ways to prevent opioid overdoses in veteran populations. At a celebratory gathering at the end of the daylong event, he commended his fellow seniors for their own interdisciplinary work.
“Today, I had the chance to see the brilliant and creative work that my classmates have been developing throughout these last few years, and I could not help but think of how proud I am to be a part of such a gifted group of students.”
Behind the Curtain
After the first working photo booth debuted on Broadway in New York City in 1925, they began to pop up all over the place—in train and bus stations, stores, arcades, amusement parks and on the street. Anyone from any walk of life could step inside. It was a partnership between human and machine; no photographer told subjects how to hold their heads or where to place their arms or whether to smile. In this intimate space, they could do anything; they could scream, cry, kiss, make silly faces.
For a century now, this environment of accessibility, freedom and privacy has produced countless keepsake squares of memorable moments, but also photos for driver’s licenses and passports, for work and school IDs, and for posterity in yearbooks, newspapers and the like. The photos are a declaration: “I was here.” These quick and easy snapshots might not sound like art, but about two dozen Conn students know better.
This fall, students taking “Perspectives on Photography” with Lucy C. McDannel ’22 Professor of Art History and Anthropology Christopher Steiner and Associate Professor of Art History Karen Gonzalez Rice worked for over a month with 2024 Krane Art History Guest Residents Brian Wallis and Näkki Goranin to
interpret and curate Behind the Curtain, a Shain Library exhibit that showcased “a seldom seen view of one of the most prolific forms of vernacular photography— small photo booth portraits that reveal poignant moments of self-expression.”
Wallis, who is executive director of The Center for Photography at Woodstock in Kingston, New York, and was deputy director and chief curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City from 2000 to 2015, and Goranin, a Vermont photographer and writer who owns the more than 100 of the photo booth portraits, self-portraits and related ephemera featured in Behind the Curtain, are the second pair of distinguished scholars and collectors to be selected for participation in the annual Krane Art History Guest Residency Program, which began in 2023 and is supported by a gift from Trustee Jonathan Krane ’90.
“The program is really revolutionary,” Wallis said, “and everyone who is engaged with it as student curators or as visitors is really quite lucky, because there isn’t anything else like this in the world—especially this curatorial program that’s focusing on vernacular photography.”
At the exhibition opening in
November, a few hundred people, including students, faculty, staff and the Krane residents, enjoyed a rented photo booth in Shain foyer. In the Chu Room, Wallis gave the keynote lecture, “What is Vernacular Photography?” About 99% of all photos fall into this category, he said. “Vernacular photography is all those photographs that we have, that we cherish, that we compile in our phones and in our photo albums and in shoe boxes. … It is the people’s photography.”
In fact, the Museum of Modern Art, which Wallis said previously “shunned” vernacular photography, has now embraced it and defines it as “an umbrella term used to distinguish fine art photographs from those made for a huge range of purposes, including commercial, scientific, forensic, governmental and personal.”
Vernacular photos may be considered ordinary, but Steiner hopes his students will continue to see what makes them special.
“By introducing our students to such distinguished scholars and leaders in their field, it is our hope that students will recognize the importance of photography and photo collecting in the study of art history, and in the social construction of contemporary identities,” he said.
Sean D. Elliot
Big Leafy Dreams
Paloma Doyle ’26 is on a mission to plant 100 trees in New London.
BY AMY MARTIN
Paloma Doyle ’26 is determined to bring urban forestry justice to Conn’s host city. The botany major, art minor and scholar in the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment is on a mission to increase the tree canopy in the city with 100 new plantings in the next two years.
“Trees shade, beautify and benefit our public urban spaces and are directly linked to a variety of environmental benefits, including reduced summer heat, improved air quality, stormwater absorption, habitat creation and general community wellbeing,” Doyle said.
“New London has one of the lowest tree canopy densities in the state. And while most of New London could benefit from more canopy, the areas with the least canopy coverage correspond to communities of color and of low socioeconomic status, demonstrating the trend between urban forestry and environmental justice in which the benefits of urban canopy are not equally experienced.”
Last summer, Doyle and her classmate Zach Wheat ’26 served as urban forestry interns for New London Trees, a six-year-old nonprofit dedicated to increasing the city’s tree population through community planting and care, education and advocacy. To prepare for the internship, they took a course on vector-based geographic information systems, a mapping software they then used to update and expand a municipal tree inventory and create an interactive map. Their work documented 2,046 trees
on public and private lands in the city, including 107 that had been planted by New London Trees since 2018. However, they also documented the removal of more than 160 trees in the same timeframe.
“Tree inventories provide the foundation for better community forest planning and management,” Doyle said. “New London has a long way to go to break even.”
Following her internship, Doyle joined the board of New London Trees, which recently secured a two-year, $115,300 grant from the USDA Forest Service and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to plant the targeted 100 trees and expand community programming, including offering more internship opportunities. Doyle is serving as the tree inventory liaison; Maggie Redfern, director of the Arboretum, serves as board president.
“Part of my role will be helping to identify planting locations, which can be challenging in the highly paved environment of New London,” said Doyle, who added that the group often targets front yards for planting, which increases the overall canopy and has the additional benefit of involving homeowners or tenants who can help care for and establish the trees in their early years.
“The two-year timeline of the grant lines up perfectly with the rest of my time at Conn, so I’ll get to see the whole thing through,” she added.
It was Doyle’s interest in trees that brought her to Conn in the first place.
A native of Austin, Texas, Doyle conducted fieldwork as a high school student comparing the difference in tree canopy coverage in historically redlined neighborhoods vs. non-redlined areas.
“It was clear to me that these disparities stemmed from inequalities in our systems, and that began my fight for environmental justice through the lens of urban forestry,” she said.
Doyle chose Conn for its storied, standalone botany program and Arboretum campus, and was invited to join the Science Leaders program. “I knew this combination would be perfect for me to study trees and all things plant-related,” she said.
She quickly joined the Arboretum team as a landscape assistant under Redfern, who she says she is proud to call her mentor. On campus, Doyle is also the chair of the Botany Student Advisory Board, a Sprout Garden manager and a trip leader through the Outdoor Adventures program. In January, her extraordinary commitment to trees and tree care was recognized with a $2,000 Arborist Scholarship from the Connecticut Tree Protective Association.
This summer, Doyle will serve as an internship coordinator for New London Trees, overseeing two Conn interns, two college-aged interns from the New London area, and several local high school students.
“I will be able to teach them all that I learned last summer, but also share with them my passion for urban forestry,” she said.
Sean D. Elliot
The trendiness of thrift shopping has given retailers the opportunity to increase prices ... it alienates those who have a genuine need for secondhand items.
— EMILY SEMMELROCK
Poppin’ Tags
Thrift shopping is trendy and sustainable. But there’s a hidden cost.
BY SYLVIA BROFKA-BERENDS ’27
As an only child, I’ve never had someone to hand me down clothes, yet almost all of my clothes are still hand-me-downs. Ever since I started caring about both fashion and the environment, thrifting has become part of who I am. I sit in my macroeconomics class searching on Depop for a pair of boots and make trips to the Groton Goodwill on the weekends.
There has been a rise in popularity of thrifting as it has become a trendy pastime and a way to consume clothes more sustainably. Goodwill, one of the biggest thrift empires, explains that thrifting is better for the environment because fewer items are thrown away and it contributes to less chemical pollution and resource consumption. This kind of research on the environmental benefits of thrifting has become extensive. Journalist Andrew Yarrow summarizes thrift to mean “wise spending, conservation of resources, elimination of waste, moderation, selfcontrol and careful use of time.”
But with this rise in popularity, there has been a rise in the price of thrifted items and an overall gentrification of thrift stores. The danger of this trend is in how it negatively affects lower-income communities by driving up prices and reducing availability of certain items for those who rely on it. The Echo explains, “Thrifting as a trend, rather than a means to survive, is inherently classist and should not exist. The gentrification of thrift shops has only further harmed low-income families.”
As a state with cities varying widely in socioeconomic status, Connecticut is a direct witness of this issue. Many Connecticut households have been
feeling financial pressure and facing hard economic realities. A recent survey found that “40% of Connecticut adults [are] struggling financially or ‘just getting by.’” There has been a decline in economic stability over recent years in the state, negatively affecting housing, food and clothing costs. Therefore, thrifting for many lower-income families is not something they do to follow trends, but is instead driven by economic necessity.
“The trendiness of thrift shopping has given retailers the opportunity to increase prices because they are aware that there has been a shift in demographics … It alienates those who have a genuine need for secondhand items,” Emily Semmelrock, who works at Groton’s Serendipthrifty, told me in an interview. Many of these families view thrift stores as “one of the last few places where they can afford to buy the goods that they need to maintain their standard of living.”
So what should we do? How can we work toward sustainable fashion without harming low-income communities?It’s the job of both thrift stores and consumers to find a balance, Semmelrock says.
“In order for thrift stores to stay affordable, they need to have access to affordable inventory,” she said. “The ideal method for this is to be donation-based. If thrift stores can get inventory at low or no cost, they are able to keep their prices low. Eco-conscious shoppers may look to thrift stores not only for shopping, but also for donating items they no longer want. Thrift stores then are able to cater to both lowincome communities and those who are interested in sustainability.”
This recognition that these two groups
are not mutually exclusive is the first step toward finding more of an equilibrium that remains accessible for everyone.
And we, the consumers, have a responsibility, too. Overall, it’s most important to consume clothing consciously, which can be a hard idea to implement without knowing certain steps to take. So, some examples of what you can do on the personal level are:
▪ When buying new, non-thrifted clothing, do so from brands who have a clear focus on sustainability.
▪ Invest in a capsule wardrobe full of basics and staples instead of buying new clothes to follow every trend.
▪ Bring clothes to donate when going to shop.
▪ Go into every thrift trip with a goal of what you want to purchase, and leave things behind that you don’t truly need.
▪ Borrow clothes from your friends and family!
Thrifting is not something that is going to die down in popularity anytime soon, nor is it something that people like me and my friends are going to stop doing. It has clear benefits for the environment and is significantly better than buying fast fashion. But this rise in trendiness needs to also lead to a rise in awareness of the problems that it can cause, and therefore a commitment to working toward sustainable solutions.
Sylvia Brofka-Berends is an international relations and French double major from Exton, Pennsylvania. This article was originally published by The Connecticut Mirror, CTMirror.org.
AI@Conn
The gift-funded three-year initiative will integrate AI into academic programs.
BY MELISSA BABCOCK JOHNSON
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the way people work, learn and conduct research. To prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly AI-driven world, Connecticut College has launched a three-year initiative, “AI@Conn: Empowering Liberal Arts Education with AI,” to integrate AI tools and topics into academic programs and enhance teaching, research and engagement with technology across campus. AI@Conn is funded by a substantial bequest to the Diane Y. Williams ’59 Instructional Technology Fund from Ad Astra and Rosemary Park Society member Harold F. Wiley, who died in 2023.
“AI@Conn adds a new dimension to our signature academic program, Connections, and prepares students for successful careers in a modern world,” said Dean of the College and Interim Dean of Equity and Inclusion Erika J. Smith. “This multidimensional initiative will position Conn as a leader in innovative technology education across disciplines.”
replace your job, but the person who knows how to use it might,” he said.
A cornerstone of the initiative is the creation of a two-year fellowship. The Harold F. Wiley Fellow in Artificial Intelligence will bring specialized knowledge to the College to support faculty in AI-related projects, assist in course development and lead summer workshops.
“The idea is that this dedicated position will help oversee academic AI interests and support various departments. This will allow Computer
Stipends will be available for faculty members who wish to modify assignments within existing courses, create new assignments, update existing courses to include significant AI components or create new AI-focused courses. AI@Conn will also provide stipends and resources to support student-faculty summer research projects focused on AI.
Jean C. Tempel ’65 Professor of Chemistry Marc Zimmer, who joined the faculty in 1990, said students will benefit greatly from guidance on how to incorporate AI into their current studies and future careers. “AI is here to stay,” he said. “It might be intimidating, but our students have to learn when and how to use it efficiently and ethically.”
AI@Conn adds a new dimension to our signature academic program, Connections, and prepares students for successful careers in a modern world.
— ERIKA J. SMITH, DEAN OF THE COLLEGE AND INTERIM DEAN OF EQUITY AND INCLUSION
Science faculty and other campus experts to focus on the research and creation of AI, whereas the AI fellow will help with faculty development and address issues like ethical concerns and safety,” Gardzina explained.
Wiley’s gift, designated for academic technology, inspired Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College Matt Gardzina to develop an AI focus shaped by input from faculty, the Generative AI for Teaching and Learning Community, and discussions with Library and Information Technology staff. “We led with the idea that AI won’t
Through professional development workshops, course development support and new technologies, faculty members who believe their courses would benefit from AI—or are interested in exploring whether they would—will be given the tools and knowledge needed to incorporate it into their teaching and research practices.
An early adopter, Zimmer uses AI as a tool to enhance his teaching and help students absorb the material in a way that best works for their learning style.
By uploading his textbook, notes and previous tests into ChatGPT 4.0 and inputting his own written instructions for the length and level of answers to provide, he created a private interactive tool for his students called Marc’s Chemistry Tutor.
Last fall, students in Virginia Eason Weinmann ’51 Professor of History Leo Garofalo’s “Latin American Immigration and Migration” seminar used AI to facilitate data analysis. “They used it very effectively and ethically to help with recording and transcribing the interviews that they conducted for their
oral history projects. I was amazed at what they could do, and how much time it saved them so that they could focus on the higher-level analysis and organization to create a compelling narrative,” Garofalo said.
AI, which refers broadly to the process of a computer mimicking human behavior in response to specific instructions input by a user, can be used to organize and identify patterns within huge amounts of data and produce results that far surpass human capability. At the same time, the technology and its uses raise serious questions about accuracy, authenticity, bias, copyright, honesty and privacy. It also blurs the line between academia and the corporate world as companies like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI become a larger presence in the classroom, and some have questioned the environmental
impact of running the computer systems required for AI.
Gardzina said the AI@Conn initiative is designed to empower faculty, staff and students to explore and address these questions. “The idea is to get many faculty members across many disciplines thinking about the use of this technology in a more advanced way.”
Zimmer said the solution to the environmental impact issue, ironically, might be found in AI itself. “Climate change is something AI could eventually solve. For example, we can use [genomeediting technology] CRISPR to generate bacteria that will consume carbon dioxide. AI could be the answer to its own [environmental] problem.”
The College plans to share its resources and expertise with other small liberal arts institutions through workshops, conferences, digital media
and symposia at Conn in the fall of 2025 and 2026.
Director of Gift Planning Laura Becker, who worked directly with Williams and Wiley and helped facilitate the bequest that supports AI@Conn, said, “We are deeply grateful for Mr. Wiley’s gifts and Miss Williams’ ongoing support, which enable Connecticut College to continue its tradition of innovation in liberal arts education. Through his friendship with Miss Williams, Mr. Wiley was a generous supporter of Connecticut College for a long time and established several charitable gift annuities with the school.” Becker called this latest donation “a testament to the power and impact planned gifts can have on the College.”
Watch a CC: Magazine video exclusive with Marc Zimmer ►
A Good Run
Men’s Soccer won its first NESCAC championship and took Amherst to extra PKs in the NCAA DIII final.
BY AMY MARTIN
The 2024 Men’s Soccer team put on a post-season show, winning the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) tournament championship for the first time in program history and making an NCAA run that took the team all the way to extra PKs in the championship game.
To say the team got hot at just the right moment is an understatement. Packed with talent, the team lost only twice during the regular season, but five ties kept their win total to just eight. The Camels were seeded sixth heading into the NESCAC tournament, and, after the team dropped its regular season finale against Wesleyan, head coach Reuben Burk admits things weren’t looking stellar.
“We totally didn’t show up,” Burk told New England Soccer Journal of that final regular season game. “There was a malaise over the team. We lost 3-1 and got counterattacked several times.”
Making matters worse, the team needed a NESCAC tournament run to even qualify for the NCAA tournament.
“Fortunately, the team really came together and we had conversations about the reasons of why we can’t be a highly successful team. It was, ‘What barriers are stopping us?’ It was, ‘What are the excuses if we can’t get this done?’”
It must have been one heck of a pep talk. The Camels drew Amherst in the quarterfinal round of the NESCAC tournament—the 11-2-2 Mammoths had
beaten Conn 1-0 in the regular season.
The Camels got on the board first, when forward Matt Quiros-Newton ’26 found the back of the net in the 31st minute. But the Mammoths tied it up with 19 minutes left, and the game remained locked at 1-1 through two overtime periods. With the game—and the season—on the line, Conn converted four penalty kicks to Amherst’s two to move on.
In the semifinals, Conn came out hot and went up 2-0 on Williams with goals by Jake Creus ’25 and Matt Scoffone ’25. The Ephs scored with 5:24 left in regulation to make it to 2-1, but the Camels held on for the win to advance to the NESCAC finals for the third time in four years.
Facing mighty Middlebury (then 14-03) in the championship game, the Camels had erased all trace of malaise—the team looked poised and confident. Conn scored first in the 21st minute and never trailed en route to a 3-1 victory, with goals by Marco Perugini ’27, Gavin Vanden Berg ’26 and Elliot Spatz ’26 and seven saves from goalkeeper Peter Silvester ’25. The win marked the first NESCAC championship for the men’s program and earned the team an automatic bid to the NCAA DIII tournament.
By now, the Camels were on a roll. Conn hosted first- and second-round games on Freeman Field in front of spirited home crowds—and never once trailed, beating Suffolk University 4-1 in the first round and Franklin andMarshall 3-0 in the second. In the Sweet 16,
In the end, our season can be defined by resiliency.
— MEN’S SOCCER HEAD COACH REUBEN BURK
Kenyon battled Conn to a 2-2 tie in double overtime, but Conn took the contest in PKs 3-0; the Camels then beat Denison in the Elite Eight round 2-1 to punch their ticket to the Final Four in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The semifinal matchup against Washington and Lee was a rematch of the 2021 NCAA semis, which Conn won 2-1 in overtime. This time around, defender Alessandro Hovarth Diano ’25 sent a bending free kick past Washington and Lee’s goalie and into the top left corner of the net in the 60th minute to propel the Camels past the Generals 1-0 and into the National Championship game for the second time in three years.
If Camel Nation wasn’t already feeling a bout of déjà vu, the championship final was also a rematch of the 2021 final (which Conn won in PKs after a 1-1 tie)—against oh-so-familiar NESCAC rival Amherst.
The Camels battled Amherst to a 0-0 tie through regulation and two overtimes. Amherst outshot Conn 2413, including 6-3 in shots on goal, and had a 17-0 advantage on corner kicks,
but Silvester was spectacular in his final game in goal, finishing with six saves through open play. Silvester added three more saves when the match once again came down to PKs, but this time the Camels fell just short, eventually losing the penalty kick battle 4-3.
“In the end, our season can be defined by resiliency. We were resilient
We are really optimistic about the future.
— MEN’S SOCCER HEAD COACH REUBEN BURK
when it mattered most,” Burk said. “We beat three nationally ranked teams on the road to winning the NESCAC championship, we came from behind to win in both the NCAA Sweet 16 & Elite Eight games, and we defended like warriors against Washington and Lee in Vegas to scrape out a grueling shutout. Our character came through this year.”
Horvath Diano, Dylan Hoke ’28 and Charlie Miles ’27 were named to the NCAA DIII All-Tournament Team, while Silvester earned Most
Outstanding Defensive Player of the Tournament. Burk, assistant coach Andrew Storton and goalkeeper coach Lee Elliott were named the 2024 Division III National Coaching Staff of the Year by the United Soccer Coaches.
“I’m so proud of our 12 seniors, who have given more to this school, community and athletic program than probably anyone will ever realize,” Burk said. “They lead through their character and bleed blue.”
Looking ahead, Burk said Conn is returning and recruiting many promising young student-athletes, but each year the team is “completely new and different” and past success is no guarantee of future success.
“We have to embrace going through the whole process again: of coming together, finding our identity, buying into our roles and sacrificing for the team. We are really optimistic about the future, while at the same time humbly conscious that everything must be earned.”
Watch a video recapping Conn’s road to the Final Four ►
Sean D. Elliot Camels in the desert? Conn’s amazing NCAA run led them to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the DIII championship game in December.
Kitchen Conversations
By Barbara Ballinger ’71 and Margaret Crane
The kitchen is the epicenter of the home. To serve its multiple purposes, its design must be functional, comfortable and chic. Whether you are working on a budget, sparing no expense or trying to find a nice balance, this book will guide you to make crucial decisions on details large and small, and be your companion on the journey of imagining, planning, designing and building the kitchen of your dreams.
Securitizing Marine Protected Areas
By Elizabeth M. De Santo ’95
decarbonizing the economy. Drawing on archival evidence and interviews, Flagg offers many lessons for other nations aiming to curtail planet-warming emissions and shows how investments in the public good enhance social development.
Party Animals
By Tara Lazar; illustrated by Anna Raff ’88
Drawing on more than two decades in the field, De Santo, a professor of environmental studies at Franklin & Marshall College, makes the case that Marine Protected Areas are not only a critical tool for protecting marine biodiversity in a changing climate, they also play an important role at the intersection of geopolitics and environmental justice and provide a case study of environmental governance at the science-policy interface. With an interdisciplinary and critical approach, the book provides key insights to help the international community move toward meaningful, equitable and effective conservation approaches.
Aiming for Net Zero
By Julia A. Flagg, Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies
Among the few nations that have committed to ambitious emission reduction plans to mitigate climate change is the small Central American country of Costa Rica. Its pioneering policies include a Payments for Environmental Services program, a carbon neutrality pledge and a goal of
This delightful picture book is equal parts silly and thoughtful—perfect for read-aloud parties and library-going parties and learning-to-be-friends parties. Beatrix, Theodore and Phoebe are party animals; they can make a party out of anything. Then they meet Horace. He’s a party pooper. “You can’t have so many parties!” he says. Could Horace be right? Join the Party Animals in this whimsical celebration of friendship and empathy.
Body Image Inside Out
By Deb Schachter ’89 and Whitney Otto
With playfulness and humor, Schachter, a seasoned therapist, and Otto, an executive coach, expertly guide readers through a new approach to body image healing. Weaving together Internal Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness and Attachment Theory and highlighting a diverse spectrum of client stories and bodies, each chapter features teachings, journaling prompts and innovative exercises to help readers find a kinder, more collaborative relationship with body image.
In Common Things
By Jefferson Singer, Faulk Foundation Professor of Psychology
of relationships over a full life course encompassing origins, conflicts, steady habits and loss. They explore the roots of creativity and spiritual awakening with gratitude for every common and uncommon pleasure—“the hallelujah of azaleas everywhere” and “the spark, the light, the yes.”
Write About Now
By Jonathan Small ’89
When Small began interviewing bestselling writers for his podcast
Write About Now, he didn’t anticipate how moved and inspired he’d be hearing their origin stories. Now, he’s curated these revelations into a book of surprising, insightful and heartwarming conversations with a mind-boggling list of the best of the best in journalism, fiction, nonfiction and illustration, including science writer Mary Roach, Secret Life of Bees author Sue Monk Kidd, designer Betsey Johnson, and New York Times bestselling author—and former Conn classmate—David Grann ’89.
This Is A Love Story
By Jessica Soffer ’07
Singer’s meditative lyric and narrative poems trace patterns
This achingly intimate novel takes readers on a 50-year journey of love and loss. The story begins at the end, with Jane dying and Abe recounting their life together to keep them going. Readers follow them when they first meet in Central Park as starryeyed young lovers and aspiring artists. Soon they find themselves as frustrated and exhausted parents, later as creatives watching their careers take flight. From the outside, their lives seem ideal, but the years bring undeniable struggle— depression, temptation, failure, denial, terminal illness and more. Through rotating perspectives, Soffer captures the magic and heartache of life unfolding in its various seasons.
LITERARY LEGACY
Novelist and Professor Emeritus Blanche McCrary Boyd mentored generations of writers, shaping America’s literary landscape in the process.
BY EDWARD WEINMAN
Sean D. Elliot
Walk into your local bookstore and you’ll see their names on the bestsellers’ display.
To name just a few: Ann Napolitano (Hello Beautiful), David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon), Sloane Crosley (Grief Is for People), Jessica Soffer (Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots), Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief).
These influential writers have a commonality—they belong to a literary family tree with deep roots tracing back to Blanche McCrary Boyd’s classroom on Connecticut College’s campus. Having developed their literary tradecraft with Boyd, these writers share a familiar shibboleth, a linguistic password that has led them to critically acclaimed careers.
“The accomplishments of writers who were in my classes are astounding,” says Boyd, the Roman and Tatiana Weller Professor Emeritus of English and former Writer-in-Residence at Conn. “I won’t start to list them because whenever I do, I inevitably leave some out because there are so many.”
She has “so many successful students” that Boyd, who retired in 2022, has helped shape this country’s storytelling terrain.
One of those writers is Ann Napolitano ’94, whose novel Hello Beautiful was an instant New York Times bestseller, not to mention the 100th Oprah’s Book Club pick.
“Connecticut College has produced many excellent writers, and I attribute that to Blanche and the program she built,” says Napolitano.
“She was our school, and it’s a great one.”
DISTINCT VOICE
The writers who traveled through Boyd’s classroom learned the techniques of writing, such as plot, pacing, point of view, structure and character development, of course. Perhaps more importantly, though, Boyd instilled in her students a sense of courage and belief.
“Her gift was making us feel worthy and sensible in our endeavor to write,” says Soon Wylie ’09.
Wylie is the author of the crime thriller When We Fell Apart, which The New York Times Book Review called a “suspenseful debut … a story about young people constrained in their self-
Blanche Boyd greets members of the standing-room-only audience, including Herbert Klagsbrun, second from right, at the 20th Klagsbrun Symposium in April, 2024.
Sean D. Elliot
development, one by his own internal pressures, the other by social expectations that are at odds with her true desires.”
Wylie says that Boyd was “one of those rare teachers who instilled wonder, excitement, fear and ambition in those of us taking her classes. She pushed us because she knew the business of writing was tough and unforgiving. I am forever grateful to her for it.”
Although 15 years have passed since Wylie left Conn, he still hears Boyd’s distinctive voice, which was “melodious and perfectly attuned, reading our stories aloud in class. It was a voice that could make even the rough drafts of scrappy undergraduates sound polished and wise.”
Boyd’s voice is a popular topic among her former pupils. When Hannah Tinti ’94, author of Animal Crackers, The Good Thief and The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, reads her own work out loud, she still hears the echo of Boyd’s voice.
“Blanche would often read stories to us out loud, student work, as well as pieces by well-known authors. This would reveal what was working (or not), line for line, on the page, an important revision tool for a writer. You can often hear what’s wrong with a sentence after it’s been released into the air,” says Tinti, who is also co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine.
“I’ve kept this lesson with me throughout my writing life.”
‘MESMERIZING, FUNNY, BRILLIANT’
As a writer, Boyd’s own legacy leaves no doubt. She’s renowned for her fearless storytelling about characters who live hardscrabble lives in stories that are incisive explorations of identity, politics and social justice.
Boyd gained widespread recognition for what’s often called autobiographical fiction (as well as her journalism), especially The Revolution of Little Girls (1991), Terminal Velocity (1997) and Tomb of the Unknown Racist (2018). The trilogy grapples with themes of personal transformation and societal reckoning by following characters like Ellen Burns, an independent woman who challenges traditional gender roles and societal norms.
Boyd tells an anecdote that’s a forward echo to the backstories of her characters. She was in her first days at Stanford, where she earned the prestigious Wallace Stegner fellowship. At a dinner party for writing fellows, one of her classmates mistook Boyd for a server. “He asked me to bring him a glass of wine.” That night she went home, lopped off her hair and began wearing all black.
In the classroom, she was engaged, whip-smart, biting, hilarious and always had a smirk lurking just beneath the surface. She was cool in the effortless way truly cool people are.
— LEE EISENBERG ’99
A writer’s life is often filled with rejection, which creates self-doubt, an inner critic that stifles creativity. Every writer slips into this mindset on occasion, especially when just starting out, which is why Boyd helped her students to believe a writer’s life was a possibility for them.
The essayist and novelist Sloane Crosley ’00, in an interview with Writer’s Digest in July 2023, said Boyd showed her students that their voice mattered, what they wrote mattered. It helped Crosley stop “aping other writers and start writing like myself,” she said.
Crosley has a list of bestsellers from The Clasp to How Did You Get This Number to I Was Told There’d Be Cake. She recently published Grief Is for People, a memoir that explores the death by suicide of her friend and mentor. Like Boyd’s own work, the memoir veers from the traditional.
According to NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, “There’s nothing traditional or twice-cooked about Crosley’s voice, her arresting observations.”
Boyd’s workshops were where writers like Crosley found their distinct voice.
“Blanche was invaluable to me and to so many of my peers. She applied the care and rigor of an MFA program to an undergraduate writing program. It’s not hyperbole to say she single-handedly improved the education I received at Connecticut College.”
“I learned what I wore mattered. There are men. Women. And me. I didn’t want anyone to put me into a category,” she says. It’s difficult to categorize Boyd’s work. She weaves complex, resonant narratives that have earned her numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Tomb of the Unknown Racist was nominated for the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Boyd was one of five finalists for the award.
But not every successful writer has the drive to help others reach their calling. Not every author can teach writing. What made Boyd an effective teacher?
“Blanche was the first real writer I ever met, and she was an amazing teacher— mesmerizing, funny and brilliant,” says Napolitano, whose novel Dear Edward, also a New York Times bestseller, was recently adapted into an Apple TV+ series.
She was also tough. “She didn’t let anything slide. But she was incredibly supportive and encouraging. She made me believe that I could be a writer.”
Boyd’s toughness also influenced Tinti, who says that her former instructor “pushed us to ask hard questions, not just about our characters but about ourselves. Blanche believed that the best writing comes from a place of vulnerability, and she created a space where we felt safe enough to take those risks.”
Writers take risks throughout their entire career. Writing requires courage and so-called thick skin. Sometimes, these risks are in pursuit of comedy gold. The reward, for film and television writer Lee Eisenberg ’99, was The Office, a sitcom beloved by millions of fans who couldn’t get enough of the hilarious Dunder Mifflin gang.
Conn was an excellent fit for me. I never would have imagined it, never would have even known to want it, and it turned out to be key for me as a writer.
— BLANCHE BOYD
Eisenberg, who wrote for the show, executive produced and directed selected episodes during its run from 2005 to 2013, studied with Boyd. In fact, Boyd was his first writing teacher.
“She taught me so much: wit, taking in your surroundings, crafting a character, surprising the audience with the unexpected,” Eisenberg says.
In addition to The Office, Eisenberg developed Lessons in Chemistry, starring Brie Larson (Captain Marvel, Room), a show about chemist Elizabeth Zott who begins hosting her own feminist cooking show in 1960s America. He executive produced and wrote four episodes. His Hollywood credits are abundant. Also, his cool factor is off the charts, something he learned from Boyd.
“In the classroom, she was engaged, whip-smart, biting, hilarious and always had a smirk lurking just beneath the surface. She was cool in the effortless way truly cool people are, and I was and am desperate for her approval because I only play cool on TV,” he says jokingly.
NEVER JUST A JOB
Boyd’s teaching career started as a happy accident with a onesemester visiting appointment back in 1982 when she was a “scrambling, broke writer who suddenly got subsidized to do what I love,” she recalls.
What this transplant from South Carolina loved was to write. And to teach writing, which came surprisingly easily.
“Teaching was never just a job for me—it was a partnership. Watching my students grow into the writers they were meant to be has been one of the great joys of my life,” Boyd says. “I didn’t create their brilliance; they had that all along. My role was to help them uncover it and to encourage them to keep going when the world tried to convince them otherwise.”
Over the years, Boyd brought many other professional writers to campus through the Daniel Klagsbrun Symposium on Writing and Moral Vision, established in 1989 by Emilie and Herbert Klagsbrun to create a positive, living memorial to their son Daniel Klagsbrun ’86. The symposium has allowed students to interact with and be inspired by the likes of Dorothy Allison, Saul Bellow, Joseph Brodsky, Sandra Cisneros, Michael Cunningham, E.L. Doctorow, Jhumpa Lahiri, Wally Lamb, Colum McCann, Jay McInerney, Adrienne Rich, David Sedaris, Art Spiegelman, Amy Tan, Elie Wiesel and Tobias Wolff.
Boyd says she always told her students that she couldn’t turn them into professional writers, but she could assure them that when they left her class, they would be better writers.
“Talent is not the issue,” she says. “It’s how do you cross that inch between talent and good. I couldn’t teach them that. I could teach them where the inch was.”
David Grann ’89 soared past that inch. He learned to hone the narrative precision that characterizes his bestselling nonfiction, some of which has been adapted into feature films, including The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. The latter, which was directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, received 10 Oscar nominations.
“Blanche had this incredible ability to see the heart of a story and to make you see it, too,” Grann says. “Her encouragement gave me the confidence to dive deeper into my subjects and to trust my instincts.”
Boyd retired in 2022 after 40 years in the classroom. She now splits her time between New England and the Caribbean island of Vieques—“I’ve had enough of Yankee weather,” she says— and continues to write. She has a Substack and has written several pieces for Journal of the Plague Years, an online magazine created by Susan Zakin ’79.
As she reflects on her (admittedly accidental) academic career, Boyd is grateful. “Conn was an excellent fit for me. I never would have imagined it, never would have even known to want it, and it turned out to be key for me as a writer.”
Boyd says that she taught writing the way she wished she’d been taught, and modeled much of her pedagogy after Wendell Berry at Stanford, whom she had as an instructor. “He mostly just demonstrated his great love, his passion for literature.”
Boyd’s students picked up on her great love and passion. As a result, her teachings became fingerprints on the imaginations of her students. One such fingerprint, Tinti says, was when Boyd had students write a secret down on a piece of paper, something they had never told anyone.
“We carried those secrets outside and as a group we burned them in a trash can. Blanche told us that this was the power of writing, the act of putting something unspeakable on the page,” Tinti recalls.
“And afterwards, what we chose to do with writing was up to us.”
A favorite portrait of Boyd’s, taken by photographer Jill Krementz, wife of Kurt Vonnegut, hangs in the portrait gallery on the second floor of Shain Library.
STAFFING THE HOSPITAL
For more than 35 years, Casting Director Mark Teschner ’79 has found the talent to sustain the longest-running active soap opera.
BY TIM STEVENS ’03
see possibilities/Underneath there’s something there,” Linda Lavin sang in the 1960s musical It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman. One day during its four-month run, a 7-year-old Mark Teschner ’79 was in the audience of the Alvin Theatre, experiencing his first Broadway show. It was then, perhaps even during that very tune, that he first fell in love with performance.
But the words would have far more relevance to his life than just marking the occasion of his first musical. They’d come to define his own superpower, if you will; the one that would take him from Mohegan Avenue in New London to the hustle of local theater to Broadway’s lights and, then, finally, to the front gate of The Prospect Studios in Los Angeles.
Teschner’s exceptional ability to see possibilities led him to the set of General Hospital, television’s longest still-running soap opera, where he has served as casting director for more than 35 years. Renowned for his ability to discover new actors, Teschner is the most honored casting director in the industry with 11 Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Achievement in Casting” and
seven Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America.
As we meet in his office at the L.A. studio in early December, it’s clear neither time nor honors have dulled Teschner’s commitment to the job: He’s as active—and enthusiastic—as ever. In front of him sits a tablet loaded with audition tapes he’ll watch after I leave. His Emmy and Artios statues adorn the top of a long wooden credenza against one wall; a set of TVs hang along another, giving us a live feed of the scenes being shot downstairs. What we are watching in real time will be broadcast to fans in about three weeks. As we talk, Teschner occasionally directs my attention to the monitors to share anecdotes and trivia about the actors.
At one point, Lynn Herring, who plays Lucy Coe—one of the few active General Hospital characters cast before Teschner’s time on the show—is performing in a one-shot in the series’ bar. Teschner points to the screen. “I was at my shoe repair guy. He had a color General Hospital cast photo from 15 years ago and out of the 45 people in the in the photo, only four are still on the show,” he says.
Daily dose of drama: Cameron Mathison and Laura Wright on the set of General Hospital, the longest-running American soap opera currently in production.
“People say, ‘Isn’t it the same cast?’ But we’re bringing on new characters constantly. You have to keep the show fresh by bringing in new actors and new energy. At the same time, you can’t alienate your core audience who has this tremendous emotional connection to the characters that they’ve been watching for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It’s pretty powerful.”
Finding just the right people to fill those roles and make those powerful connections is Teschner’s specialty.
“It’s so exciting to find that special person who has the star potential, the talent, the charisma to be a character the audience will invest in and want to watch,” he says. “There’s an incredible feeling when you find an actor and it’s their first job, and they blow up on the show and become hugely popular, like Nicholas Chavez (just coming off of Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story).
“But what I really love, what gives me that special feeling, is when you discover somebody and then they bring this show to life. They’re not just great, but they’re great for the role I cast them in.”
Ironically, Teschner almost miscast himself.
Raised in Scarsdale, New York, by “very artsy parents,” he remembers many trips to the big city to catch the ballet or a Broadway or off-Broadway show. “So I had the bug for theater, for the arts, at a very young age,” he says. At Conn, Teschner took almost all the acting classes offered. “I didn’t major in theater because I didn’t want to take the Russian literature class,” he says with a laugh, adding that he majored in English instead. “But I was immersed in the theater scene, so I knew my thing was theater arts.”
calling. I’m one of the lucky ones to have found what I love so quickly,” he says.
“It’s funny. I was once one of the youngest casting directors. Now I’m 67 and, well, I’m certainly not the youngest. But that foundation from Connecticut College, from the National Theater Institute, it was important. It helped me understand what good acting was and how to communicate with actors.”
By 1982, Teschner was casting the Broadway debut of Oh! Coward and an early show of Alan Menken, who is perhaps best known as the key composer/conductor of the late ’80s/early ’90s Disney renaissance, providing songs for the films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Pocahontas
Hollywood came calling for the first time in 1985. The casting director of an ABC weekday soap, Loving, was going on maternity leave, and the show was looking for someone to guide the ship for six months. For Teschner, those six months ended up being four and a half years. When it was over, he had found his new passion.
It’s so exciting to find that special person who has the star potential, the talent, the charisma to be a character the audience will invest in and want to watch.
—MARK TESCHNER ’79
He attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center during his senior year and, inspired by that experience, moved to New York City after graduation intending to become an actor. Soon, though, he realized acting wasn’t his true calling.
“After about two and a half years, I had an epiphany,” Teschner explains. “I loved the idea of being an actor more than actually being an actor. I didn’t feel that passion that you need to be an actor.”
Still, he didn’t want to leave performance entirely. In what he describes as a fluke, he learned of a casting director looking for an assistant and gave it a shot.
It wasn’t always the most glamorous of gigs. His first desk was a piece of wood held up by two sawhorses, for instance. The pay was enough to keep him in New York, but little more than that. And yet, it finally felt right.
“From the first day, I just knew, ‘This is it.’ I found my
“I’ve cast hundreds of plays, and they rehearse for four weeks and sometimes they close opening night or you can’t always go see them. I’ve cast movies that you either don’t see or they never get released,” he explains. “But with daytime, you cast an actor. Five days later, you’re actually watching them on the monitor, doing the work. Then, three weeks after that, they’re on the air. You get to see your work immediately. I loved it.”
One of Loving’s producers, Joseph Hardy, became General Hospital ’s executive producer in 1989. Hardy reached out to Teschner to see if he’d like to come along for the ride. He’s been there ever since—in the same office, on the fifth floor, just down the hall from the elevator.
While Teschner’s location hasn’t changed, plenty about the industry has. For one, the daytime arena is a lot less crowded than it used to be. Starting in the late 2000s, networks began to reduce their daytime offerings. Giants of their timeslots like All My Children, Guiding Light and As The World Turns went off the air between 2008 and 2012. After a golden era in the ’80s and early ’90s, daytime soaps no longer commanded the audiences they once did.
“The big hit in daytime was the O.J. Simpson trial,” Teschner says. “Soaps weren’t available to people for almost a year because of it. There was no way for people to catch up, either. No streaming services. So we took a big hit on the audience, and they just never fully came back.”
Ironically, streaming—the single biggest disruptor to network television supremacy in the past decade—has proved something of an unlikely savior for daytime soaps.
Since COVID, there’s been a big shift with actors sending in their auditions ... I’m casting people who might not have even gotten a look before.
“The numbers are nowhere near where they were in the ’80s and ’90s, but that goes for everyone. Shows that would get canceled back then were being seen by so many more people than hit shows now. But for us, streaming has been this great second viewership. It gives people a chance to see it who otherwise might not have a decade ago,” Teschner says. “That includes people who were fans who lost track of us, but also new fans who might have heard the name General Hospital when they were younger but are really just watching us for the first time. It’s also been another way to generate revenue, and that keeps the shows going. It’s not just the ratings on the day of anymore.”
—MARK TESCHNER ’79
In fact, streaming has proven encouraging enough that the first new daytime soap in some time is set to debut later this year. A
joint venture between CBS Studios and the NAACP, Beyond the Gates will feature the first predominantly Black cast since Generations went off the air in 1991.
Teschner says advances in technology have also enhanced his approach to casting.
“Since COVID, there’s been a big shift with actors sending in their auditions, so now we can watch them on our computers, our tablets, in the office, at home,” he says. “And the actors are no longer constrained by having to physically be in L.A. or New York. It allows me to see more actors than I’ve ever been able to before, and that means I’m casting people who might not have even gotten a look before.”
What technology hasn’t changed, Teschner is quick to note, is the importance of storytelling.
“The mission doesn’t change: Emotionally connect with the audience,” he says. “That’s let us do some incredible things. Historically, I think daytime television has told such powerful stories. In the early ’90s, during the AIDS crisis, we had a character with AIDS to show that it was universal, that it wasn’t just a ‘gay disease.’ On that note, daytime television has been at the forefront of telling the stories of gay characters. And just recently, we had a character played by Max Gail who developed Alzheimer’s and died from it on the show. And because of how soaps work, we were able to show that not just in a few episodes, but over three years, so audiences could be a part of that story and see how it affected all the characters.”
The passion that has driven Teschner’s awardwinning work for decades is evident as he gives me a tour of General Hospital’s vast set—a long hall with a series of partially walled rooms, each quickly dressed and redressed to represent Port Charles’ living rooms, offices and restaurants. At the end of the hall sits the Nurses’ Station, arguably the most famous and longest-present location in the show. Spider-webbing out from the set are corridors lined by wardrobe, makeup, dressing and green rooms. At each location, he introduces me to actors and to crew alike. To a one, he has quick joke or earnest word of encouragement. It’s obvious just how in his element he is here.
“I never had a master plan,” he confesses. “I was so excited to get the job and move out to the West Coast. Hollywood is where the action is, and the weather’s fantastic. So I never really thought about it beyond, ‘Here I am with this terrific job.’
“Before you know it, it’s 10 years. 15. 20. Now, I’ve spent more than half my life here at General Hospital. As corny as it is, this is my other home. This is also kind of my family. And to reach a point where I’m not just doing a job I love, but I’m being appreciated and acknowledged for it by my peers—that’s just the icing on the cake.”
EM-AZING CAREER
Since the Daytime Emmys started honoring casting in 2001, Mark Teschner ’79 has been nominated 22 times and won the statue a record 11 times. Additionally, he’s scored seven Artios Awards against 23 nominations since 1992. Finally, just this past year, he was inducted into the Daytime Emmy Silver Circle for over 25 years of outstanding service in television.
Left: Port Charles’ pool, officially known as The Metro Court Pool and Spa, is one of the newest filming sets on General Hospital, debuting in the summer of 2021. As with the other General Hospital locations, it is modular, capable of being set up and broken down rapidly to maximize shooting schedules.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
The era of extreme weather is upon us. How do we adapt to this new normal?
BY EDWARD WEINMAN
Satellite imagery captures Hurricane Helene swirling over Florida.
Hurricane Helene raged across the southeastern United States in late September 2024, causing catastrophic flooding and ravaging communities from Florida’s Tampa Bay all the way inland to North Carolina’s Appalachian mountain towns. The Category 4 storm killed at least 219 people and inflicted more than $63 billion in damages.
Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton intensified into a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico. It hit the west coast of Florida as a slightly weakened Category 3, killing more than 30 people and causing an estimated $34 billion in damages.
The numbers do not lie. More Category 4 and 5 hurricanes hit the U.S. from 2017 to 2021 than from 1963 to 2016. By 2100, the number of major hurricanes, including a new breed of “ultraintense” Category 5 storms with winds of at least 190 miles per hour, is expected to increase by 20%, according to recent studies analyzed by Time.
These are devastating predictions considering that 129 million people— nearly 40 percent of the nation’s total population—live in coastal counties.
As climate change intensifies, extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, atmospheric rivers and drought strike more frequently, leaving a trail of destruction and prompting a critical question: Now what?
Much of Huber’s work takes place in politically diverse states, where lawmakers may not be working through the lens of climate change action, but are focused on the impacts of disasters.
“There’s real progress happening under the radar, led by state officials who genuinely care about this issue and the well-being of their constituents,” Huber says.
It’s work that supports state planning and helps localities understand their risks and “create a vision for a more resilient and strong community.”
The word “resilience” is frequently used in the climate change space. But how can communities become more resilient in the face of superstorms when one of the key ways to remain safe during an extreme weather event is to evacuate?
Janan Reilly ’11, the senior climate advisor for Hazard Mitigation Assistance Programs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), says the “biggest misconception is that all FEMA does is disaster response.” Reilly majored in environmental studies and, like Huber, was a Goodwin-Niering scholar at Conn. She earned a Master of Science in marine research management from Oregon State University.
We are aware that flooding is an issue and our coastlines are a major part of our economy.
— KATY SERAFIN ’08, COASTAL SCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
Adapting to this new reality won’t be easy, especially when 51% of Americans say they have felt suspicious of the groups and people pushing for action on climate change, according to Pew Research Center. A Pew poll also reveals that only 46% of Americans believe that climate change is anthropogenic.
“Climate change can be a politicized issue,” says Kristiane Huber ’11, an environmental policy analyst focused on state-level climate adaptation and flood-preparedness policy at The Pew Charitable Trusts.
“But there is widespread agreement that disasters are impacting people more severely. There’s a growing acknowledgment that gradual changes like sea level rise are happening, leading to more frequent ‘sunny day flooding.’ The trends point to this worsening in the future, and communities are ready to engage,” says Huber, who majored in environmental studies and government and was a scholar in the GoodwinNiering Center for the Environment at Conn, before earning a Master of Science in natural resources and the environment from the University of Michigan.
“My personal big goal is to have people think of FEMA as a resilience agency. Our primary role is to help the nation and communities be more prepared for climate change and disasters before they happen.”
The resilience projects that Huber and Reilly advocate for empower communities across flood zones and in the paths of storms to become more prepared. These projects include wetland restoration, as healthy wetlands soak up excess rainfall and reduce flood risk; green roofs and walls, which are vegetated surfaces that can absorb rainwater and reduce stormwater runoff; and living shorelines, which use plants, sand and other natural materials to stabilize coastlines and protect against erosion and sea level rise.
While these natural solutions might sound like a wish list for environmentalists, they are actively sought out by those living in low-lying communities, no matter their political affiliation.
“After a few major flooding or wind events, we don’t have to convince anyone of the risks,” Reilly says.
Huber recently returned from Savannah, Georgia, where she visited Tybee Island to observe storm impacts and how naturebased projects have fared, including planting marram grass, the roots of which slow beach erosion, and constructing dunes that help protect houses and infrastructure from storm surge, high tides and erosion.
“During Hurricane Milton, Savannah hotels were nearly full with families and retirees (and dogs) who had evacuated from Florida. Administrators at Savannah State University also talked about students sheltering on campus without power for three days following Hurricane Helene,” Huber says.
“Their experiences show the need to ramp up investment in community and infrastructure resilience, and Tybee’s projects show that nature-based infrastructure can be a big piece of the puzzle.”
Human-made solutions—like elevating buildings, constructing floodwalls and levees, laying permeable pavements on roads allowing rainwater to infiltrate the ground, reducing stormwater runoff and implementing early warning systems—can also make communities more resilient.
But natural or human-made, resilience projects cost money. While a large portion of the funding comes from FEMA, “states play a critical role” in developing resilience projects, Huber says. “They work directly with communities, build trust, and drive policy and leadership on resilience. We’re seeing a lot of innovation at the state level, with bipartisan support for resilience and adaptation projects. We need more effort and funding to
meet the challenge, but there’s a lot to celebrate.”
All FEMA-funded projects must comply with environmental laws, regulations, executive orders and the National Historic Preservation Act, which passed in 1966 and established “a national preservation program and a system of procedural protections, which encourage both the identification and protection of historic resources, including archaeological resources, at the federal level and indirectly at the state and local level,” according to the National Park Service.
“When a town applies for funding to repair or replace infrastructure, I review their project plans,” says Victoria Pardo ’14, a historic preservation specialist at FEMA.
“This involves considering potential impacts on above-ground resources, below-ground archaeological resources and historic districts. If the project complies with all laws, regulations and executive orders, the application proceeds and communities receive funding.”
This work takes place in what Pardo calls a “steadier state,” when a natural disaster is not unfolding, or during recovery directly after a storm hits. But these so-called steadier states are becoming more sporadic as disaster events hit more frequently.
Hurricane Helene damage in St. Petersburg, Florida
Glen Richard/Shutterstock
After a few major flooding or wind events, we don’t have to convince anyone of the risks.
— JANAN REILLY ’11, SENIOR CLIMATE ADVISOR FOR HAZARD MITIGATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS AT FEMA
Pardo, who majored in architectural studies at Conn and earned a Master of Science in historic preservation at Columbia University, is currently in Florida managing a team in the aftermath of Helene and Milton.
“Once the damage assessments begin, we’re in resilience mode, not rescue. We evaluate the damage, conduct preliminary assessments and speak with historic preservation offices to understand how recovery projects might potentially impact historical resources. We then hold recovery exploratory meetings and conduct site inspections, taking pictures and GPS coordinates of buildings that might need further inspection. This informs the project phase, where we evaluate proposals for compliance.”
These efforts can be perceived as slowing down resilience projects. However, rebuilding is complicated, and news coverage of recovery efforts isn’t as appealing for the media as broadcasting floods, displaced boats, or soaked and wind-blown news reporters during a storm. So, much of the work takes place out of the nation’s view.
FEMA shares the burden of funding recovery far beyond the infamous $750 that was mocked in some media circles after Helene and Milton.
“We have immediate-needs funding of $750 for disaster survivors. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg,” says Reilly. “After a disaster, it’s all about recovery. This involves going door to door to check on survivors and give them information about support. I’ve even worked the phone lines for survivor assistance, talking people through what their opportunities are and giving them the initial steps to take in the days and weeks after a disaster. We also handle debris management on the ground, assessing damage.”
Reilly says that in her role as senior climate advisor, she works to find out how “FEMA can better provide guidance to community members on how to use our grants to improve resilience and how they can use climate science to make better investments.”
Climate science comes from a variety of sources, including federal government data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, better known as NOAA; Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation tools; and FEMA’s Community Risk Index.
Climate data also comes from professors like Katy Serafin ’08,
a coastal scientist who researches extreme events at the University of Florida. Serafin, who majored in environmental studies and was a Goodwin-Niering scholar at Conn and earned a Master of Science and Ph.D. in ocean, Earth and atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University, combines observational data with statistical and numerical models to understand the frequency, drivers and impacts of coastal flooding and erosion events.
“We can expect sea levels to continue to rise, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeast Atlantic,” Serafin says bluntly. “With no coastal management, we can expect our shorelines to continue to erode.”
But management is possible, and even those who publicly deny climate change—including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently signed a bill that erases most references to climate change from state law—are beginning to take action.
“We are aware that flooding is an issue and our coastlines are a major part of our economy,” Serafin says. “Sometimes it’s politically charged in the media, but the state of Florida is funding pragmatic resilience grants, including the Resilient Florida Program.”
That legislation was signed in 2021—by DeSantis—to protect Florida’s “inland waterways, coastlines and shores, which serve as invaluable natural defenses against sea level rise.” It marks “the largest investment in Florida’s history to prepare communities for the impacts of sea level rise, intensified storms and flooding,” according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Through the program, the state has awarded nearly $1.5 billion to support 664 planning, implementation and regional resilience entity projects.
At the University of Florida, Serafin has students majoring in all fields taking her courses, which include “Living With Rising Seas,” “Water Risk and Extreme Events” and “Sea Level Science.” That gives her hope for the future.
“Our coastlines will look very different in 100 years,” she says. There is an urgent need for “architects, landscape designers, scientists, engineers and policy makers” to come up with transformative ideas about how to adapt.
“We now have an opportunity to reimagine how we live on the coast,” Serafin says. “It’s difficult to move away from the status quo, but we can rethink how we live with water. Because we have to.”
U.S. Route 21 in Grayson County, Virginia, was impassable after damage from Hurricane Helene.
HOW AI SOLVED BIOLOGY’S
BIGGEST MYSTERY
Machine learning cracked the protein-folding problem and opened up new possibilities in drug discovery.
BY MARC ZIMMER, JEAN C. TEMPEL ’65 PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY
Artificial intelligence often crosses traditional boundaries, blending different fields to achieve groundbreaking results.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch.
This award stood out because it honored research that originated at a tech company: DeepMind, an AI research startup that was acquired by Google in 2014. Most previous chemistry Nobel Prizes have gone to researchers in academia. Many laureates went on to form startup companies to further expand and commercialize their groundbreaking work—for instance, CRISPR gene-editing technology and quantum dots—but the research, from start to end, wasn’t done in the commercial sphere.
Although the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry are awarded separately, there is a fascinating connection between the winning research in those fields in 2024. The physics award went to two computer scientists who laid the foundations for machine learning, while the chemistry laureates were rewarded for their use of machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest mysteries: how proteins fold.
The 2024 Nobel Prizes underscore both the importance of this kind of artificial intelligence and how science today often crosses traditional boundaries, blending different fields to achieve groundbreaking results.
THE CHALLENGE OF PROTEIN FOLDING
Proteins are the molecular machines of life. They make up a significant portion of our bodies, including muscles, enzymes, hormones, blood, hair and cartilage.
Understanding proteins’ structures is essential because their shapes determine their functions. Back in 1972, Christian Anfinsen won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for showing that the sequence of a protein’s amino acid building blocks dictates the protein’s shape, which, in turn, influences its function. If a protein folds incorrectly, it may not work
properly and could lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis or diabetes.
A protein’s overall shape depends on the tiny interactions, the attractions and repulsions, between all the atoms in the amino acids it is made of. Some want to be together, some don’t. The protein twists and folds itself into a final shape based on many thousands of these chemical interactions.
For decades, one of biology’s greatest challenges was predicting a protein’s shape based solely on its amino acid sequence. Although researchers can now predict the shape, we still don’t understand how the proteins maneuver into their specific shapes and minimize the repulsions of all the interatomic interactions in a few microseconds.
To understand how proteins work and to prevent misfolding, scientists needed a way to predict the way proteins fold, but solving this puzzle was no easy task.
In 2003, University of Washington biochemist David Baker wrote Rosetta, a computer program for designing proteins. With it he showed it was possible to reverse the protein-folding problem by designing a protein shape and then predicting the amino acid sequence needed to create it.
It was a phenomenal jump forward, but the shape chosen for the calculation was simple, and the calculations were complex. A major paradigm shift was required to routinely design novel proteins with desired structures.
A NEW ERA OF MACHINE LEARNING
Machine learning is a type of AI where computers learn to solve problems by analyzing vast amounts of data. It’s been used in various fields, from game-playing and speech recognition to autonomous vehicles and scientific research. The idea behind machine learning is to use hidden patterns in data to answer complex questions.
This approach made a huge leap in 2010 when Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind, a company aiming to combine neuroscience with AI to solve real-world problems.
AI has predicted the structures of over 200 million proteins— essentially all the proteins that scientists have sequenced to date.
Hassabis, a chess prodigy at age 4, quickly made headlines with AlphaZero, an AI that taught itself to play chess at a superhuman level. In 2017, AlphaZero thoroughly beat the world’s top computer chess program, Stockfish-8. The AI’s ability to learn from its own gameplay, rather than relying on preprogrammed strategies, marked a turning point in the AI world.
Soon after, DeepMind applied similar techniques to Go, an ancient board game known for its immense complexity. In 2016, its AI program AlphaGo defeated one of the world’s top players, Lee Sedol, in a widely watched match that stunned millions.
In 2016, Hassabis shifted DeepMind’s focus to a new challenge: the protein-folding problem. Under the leadership of John Jumper, a chemist with a background in protein science, the AlphaFold project began. The team used a large database of experimentally determined protein structures to train the AI, which allowed it to learn the principles of protein folding. The result was AlphaFold2, an AI that could predict the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences with remarkable accuracy.
This was a significant scientific breakthrough. AlphaFold has since predicted the structures of over 200 million proteins— essentially all the proteins that scientists have sequenced to date. This massive database of protein structures is now freely available, accelerating research in biology, medicine and drug development.
DESIGNER PROTEINS TO FIGHT DISEASE
Understanding how proteins fold and function is crucial for designing new drugs. Enzymes, a type of protein, act as catalysts in biochemical reactions and can speed up or regulate these processes. To treat diseases such as cancer or diabetes, researchers often target specific enzymes involved in disease pathways. By predicting the shape of a protein, scientists can figure out where small molecules—potential drug candidates— might bind to it, which is the first step in designing new medicines.
In 2024, DeepMind launched AlphaFold3, an upgraded version of the AlphaFold program that not only predicts protein shapes but also identifies potential binding sites for small molecules. This advance makes it easier for researchers to design drugs that precisely target the right proteins.
Google bought DeepMind for reportedly around half a billion dollars in 2014. Google DeepMind has now started a new venture, Isomorphic Labs, to collaborate with pharmaceutical companies on real-world drug development using these AlphaFold3 predictions.
For his part, David Baker has continued to make significant contributions to protein science. His team at the University of Washington developed an AI-based method called “family-wide hallucination,” which they used to design entirely new proteins from scratch. Hallucinations are new patterns—in this case, proteins—that are plausible, meaning they are a good fit with patterns in the AI’s training data. These new proteins included a light-emitting enzyme, demonstrating that machine learning can help create novel synthetic proteins. These AI tools offer new ways to design functional enzymes and other proteins that never could have evolved naturally.
The Nobel-worthy achievements of Hassabis, Jumper and Baker show that machine learning isn’t just a tool for computer scientists—it’s now an essential part of the future of biology and medicine, and it is the best chance we have of solving the climate change problem.
By tackling one of the toughest problems in biology, the winners of the 2024 prize have opened up new possibilities in drug discovery, personalized medicine and even our understanding of the chemistry of life itself.
Marc Zimmer is the Jean C. Tempel ’65 Professor of Chemistry at Connecticut College. This article was originally published by The Conversation. To learn more about how Conn is integrating AI into the classroom, see pages 12-13.
ANSWERING THE CALL
Reverend Pamela Holmes ’89 provides spiritual guidance and support to NYC firefighters.
BY MELISSA BABCOCK JOHNSON
As a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department, the Rev. Pamela Holmes ’89 knew she’d be providing spiritual support to firefighters and first responders after they’d experienced tragedy or trauma in the field. But she was surprised to learn she’d be wanted on the scene, too.
“Probably my first week there, I asked one of the firefighters, ‘Why do you need us to go out to the fire? We’re not going in the building, right?’ And he said something that was very profound for me,” she recalls.
“He said, ‘Because we feel like God is with us.’”
In March of 2024, Holmes, a full-time associate pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, was sworn in as the first Black woman (and second woman overall) to serve as an FDNY chaplain. She’s one of six chaplains who work part time to serve the department’s more than 11,000 firefighters and 4,500 EMTs, paramedics and EMS employees across New York’s five boroughsfive boroughs; FDNY is looking to hire more.
The chaplains are there for the department’s highs and lows— promotion ceremonies, graduations, family days, funerals, weddings and more. “Interestingly enough, the department wants spiritual representation at every event, so there’s an invocation and a benediction in every ceremony,” Holmes says.
They’re also there for the daily ups and downs. “We visit EMS stations and fire houses to check in, to see how things are going,” Holmes says. “Sometimes they’ve had a crazy day—a baby died, someone had a fatal heart attack or somebody was hit by a train and they had to slide under the train to get the body. And they’re dealing with the challenges of their own life on top of that. When you’re a single parent, or you’re in the midst of a divorce, or you’re taking care of elderly parents, and this is what you go into every day, it’s nice to be able to have a space to unload.”
her. Neither was her next move, but she was on the right path.
“I had always been concerned about the community, concerned about the plight of people, and so I started working for some nonprofits doing community organizing and ended up getting a master’s degree in campaign management,” she explains. “I did some of that for a little while, and said, ‘That’s not it either.’ There was too much giving up of your soul to be connected to politics for me.”
Not to worry—Holmes’s soul would be just fine. Her mother’s relatives were tobacco farmers in North Carolina, and the young Holmes had gone south every summer to join her devout Christian family in the fields and in the pews. But life had distracted her for a few years. In her 20s, she reconnected with her spiritual roots and became a member of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn.
She recalls, “I started going back to church again in the mid-1990s, and that began the tug between me and God, with God saying, ‘Come,’ and me saying, ‘No, I’m kind of enjoying myself out here. I’m loving my life going to bars on Friday night and having boyfriends and doing all this stuff,’ and God saying, ‘I don’t care, come.’”
I have always been concerned about the community, concerned about the plight of people.
— THE REV. PAMELA HOLMES ’89
It can be heavy work, Holmes admits. “You don’t have any idea, I think, in the beginning, of the magnitude of things that you’re going to be walking through with people, or the demands that people have on you,” she says. “That sort of pressure is immense and makes the job hard, but that’s also the good part, too. You get to be there for people in their greatest time of need.”
Holmes never planned—or even wanted—to be a pastor. She actively resisted the call for years. But, she says, God had other plans.
At Conn, the New York City native majored in government and minored in American history, intending to become a lawyer. After graduation, she worked as a paralegal for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office but decided it wasn’t for
Still, Holmes didn’t feel worthy of the role of pastor. “I was wrestling with it like, ‘I’m going to come to church and I’m going to sing in the choir, but that’s it.’ I thought the person in the pulpit needed to be perfect. Now I know better.”
She instead started working at Long Island University after partnering with the institution for some of her nonprofit work. Holmes spent several years in the early to mid-2000s in higher ed, running diversity programs and connecting Black and Latino students to various opportunities, first at LIU, then at SUNY Downstate and finally at Brooklyn College.
But the call to the clergy only grew louder. In the early days of her return to church, Holmes remembers sitting in a pew next to two other young women. “African American church can be very participatory,” she says, “so the pastor tells us to form groups and pray for each other right in the middle of the service. I join the two ladies, and we’re like, ‘Well, who’s going to pray?’ and they were like, ‘You should pray.’ I pray, and one of them says to me immediately after, ‘You should be a preacher.’ They didn’t know my internal struggle, but I did.”
Then there was the round-robin prayer activity during a church retreat, after which someone said, “Pam, you should really be a preacher. You’ve got a preacher’s voice.” And then after she gave a sixth-grade graduation speech, “a mom comes to me at the end of the ceremony and says, ‘Are you a preacher? Where’s your church? I want to come to your church.’
“Those kinds of things confirmed what God had already placed in my spirit, and so at some point I surrendered and said, ‘Lord, I got it.’”
What I love about being a reverend is the people factor. That’s always been who I am and how God has wired me.
In 2011, she left her job and apartment in New York City and moved to New Jersey to enroll at Princeton Theological Seminary. “The first year was kind of crazy because I was 45 or 46; I hadn’t been in school in years and I’m living in a dorm with a bunch of 22- to 24-year-olds. It was quite a shock.”
She earned her Master of Divinity degree in 2014 and was fortunate to find a full-time job as an associate pastor at her home church of 27 years, Emmanuel Baptist, where she still works more than a decade later.
“What I love about being a reverend is the people factor,” she says. “That’s always been who I am and how God has wired me. At church, there’s a running joke where they call me Reverend Woo-Woo, because they’re like, ‘If you want a good hug, if you want to feel better, if you want to feel loved, go to Reverend Pam.’”
Building relationships is particularly important at FDNY, where Holmes supports first responders from a range of cultural and religious backgrounds.
On one firehouse visit, for example, she was chatting with a woman firefighter who said she was Muslim. “She was floored that I had read the Quran,” Holmes told The New York Times
about the encounter last year. “She said, ‘Hey, chaplain, we don’t have an imam right now. Until they get one, if I need one, can I call you?’”
Holmes says growing up in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side prepared her for spaces like FDNY “because it really was a melting pot. When I was growing up, I had Jewish, Latino, Black and Asian friends. We were right on the edges of Chinatown and a big Jewish community. Everybody kind of lived in the same building and coexisted, and that was helpful for me.”
On the flip side, going to Conn was a bit of a culture shock for a young Black woman from densely populated and diverse Brooklyn, Holmes says. “Even though my high school in Manhattan was predominately white, it was different because I got to go home to my community. Now I didn’t get to go home. That was home.”
On campus, Holmes worked to address racism and inequity, and on May 1, 1986, she was one of 54 students who locked themselves into Fanning Hall in an ultimately successful attempt to move Conn leadership to agree to a timeline to bolster minority life on campus.
“There was a core group in my class who really just cared about people, and that was pretty amazing,” she recalls. “We
The Rev. Pamela Holmes ’89, far right, with two members of FDNY.
shared a lot of experiences and had a lot of difficult conversations around gender, around race, around economics. I’m grateful that there was space then for those kinds of conversations to happen when we didn’t always agree, but we were able to have them.”
Holmes’s future career was already starting to take shape, too, even if she didn’t realize it at the time. One Conn memory that always stays with her includes two of her Jewish friends and her best friend, a Black student from Philadelphia.
If you want a good hug, if you want to feel better, if you want to feel loved, go to Reverend Pam.
“One night, the four of us were sitting around just talking and drinking wine. We get on the subject of religion—Judaism, the Catholic Church. My friend and I started talking about Jesus and the Black church. We must have talked such a good game that these two Jewish boys were like, ‘We want to experience it! We want to go to a Black church!’”
The next morning, the two Christian women took their Jewish friends to Shiloh Baptist Church in New London. “At
the end of Black Baptist church, we do something called the invitation where we invite you to walk down the aisle to give your life to Christ. The pastor begins his invitation, and he says, ‘If you want peace, come. If you want joy, come.’”
To the shock of the two women, one of their Jewish friends stepped into the aisle.
“Me and my best friend reach out and we snatch him back, like, ‘No, you would be giving your life to Christ! What are you doing? You’re Jewish!’ He was like, ‘Oh. The pastor said if you want joy, if you want peace, come.’ When I say we laughed, we all laughed the entire school year,” she recalls.
Years later, she learned that friend is now a Messianic Jew, and he told her the visit to Shiloh was the beginning of his journey. She also heard from the second friend; he reached out to her on Facebook about 20 years after graduation.
“We catch up and I tell him I’ve begun my journey as a minister. He wasn’t surprised.”
Class Notes
Men’s Ice Hockey alumni scrimmage at Dayton Arena during Fall Weekend in October.
CC Magazine welcomes your Class Notes and submissions. Please contact your class correspondent, email notes to classnotes@conncoll.edu or submit Class Notes online at: conncoll.edu/news/cc-magazine
denotes a Reunion class year. The next Reunion is May 30-June 1, 2025.
Jane Worley Peak celebrated her 104th birthday in October, with four generations marking the occasion. Jane lives in the assisted-living section of Vinson Hall, the retirement community for maritime military officers and spouses in McLean, Va. She still reads the alumni news and listens to PBS NewsHour and other public television. The Class of ’42 was a remarkable group of ladies. They called themselves the class that came “in with the blow, out with the draft.” The “blow” was the Hurricane of ’38, which hit New London during their Freshman Week, swamping roads, pulling down trees, and changing the face of the campus and the Arboretum forever. Jane wrote in her memoirs that her resolution was to stay up-to-date on her classwork no matter what fell apart that first week on campus. Because the electricity was out in Thames Hall (then a freshman dorm), she couldn’t study after dark for several weeks. The “draft” was the Selective Service law that took effect their junior year. Of course, for many of the class, the war years meant volunteer service and worrying about sweethearts, brothers, and friends fighting overseas. Perhaps even more remarkable, the Class of ’42 was born the year the 19th Amendment was passed. Jane and her surviving classmates have lived the history of women’s suffrage in this country. The class celebrated their 50th Reunion way back in 1992. In 2015, while she was a member of the alumni board, Jane was the oldest CC alumnus at graduation and had the honor of leading the academic procession! Now, Jane says that if she’s old enough for her younger daughter, Martha Peak Helman ’75, to be looking forward to her 50th Reunion next summer, Jane must be old indeed. After all, if we’re counting, this year she would celebrate her 82nd Reunion. Now that is Camel spirit!
51
Correspondent: Mona Gustafson Affinito, forgivenessoptions@earthlink.net, 723 Water Street, Apt. 1001, Excelsior, MN, 55331, 612-760-5007 Mary Stuart Parker Cosby P’81 writes, “Mona, thanks for keeping the Class Notes coming. A few of us are still enjoying the long-standing friendships that started in September 1947!” Alice Haines Bates P’81 GP’18 is well and happy in Connecticut. Kathy Parker Stell is doing well in Massachusetts, and Mona Gustafson Affinito is also happy and well in Virginia! Mona noticed that Marianne Stimson Lewis’ death years ago was not noted in college records. “We may be fewer in number, but we are still wise, and I still enjoy wearing my cap on occasion!” Helen Johnson Haberstroh’s fall focus was twofold: literary and design. “1) Having watched the seamless efficiency of the crew repaving one of the main streets of my retirement home, I was inspired to write a thank-you essay to management that was published in our monthly Resident
son and a happy, healthy New Year.” Barbara Wiegand Pillote and Bob are “still living together” and will celebrate their 72nd anniversary in July. Since CC went coeducational, she says, she hasn’t seen much alumni action in Washington, DC. She now has five great-grands: two girls and three boys under the age of 7. “All’s good.” Mona Gustafson Affinito writes this in a cozy rental cottage at Cove Point in Beaver Bay, Minn., on the shores of Lake Superior. “It’s our favorite Thanksgiving-week spot, where Doug (my son) does all the cooking and I catch up on stuff like writing this newsletter. If all goes as planned I’ll be in Williamsburg, Va., at my daughter’s home for Christmas. The family is small; the joy will be large. I make a big Swedish deal of Christmas, in spite of the name I acquired back in 1955. One last word: Please keep sending me news of your life. I love hearing about it and reporting it.”
52
Monique Maisonpierre Wood is still active and living in a great, active Del Webb community in Lincoln, Calif. She enjoys hiking, electric biking, and her classic book group. Her husband, David, manages the hiking website, which keeps the group functioning.
53
We may be fewer in number, but we are still wise!
— MONA GUSTAFSON AFFINITO ’51
Reporter, including an illustration of its primary behemoth machine. 2) I answered the call to design a new communion tablecloth to celebrate the four Sundays of Advent in December, the theme of candles suggested by our pastor.” A team of four brought specific skills to the task, which began midsummer. Helen designed the piece, creating life-size patterns for each element. A quilter and an expert seamstress and teammate assembled the pieces, and they all placed the candles. The quilter and seamstress completed the finishing touches. Together they arranged the tablecloth for the live and streaming worship services. Mona Gustafson Affinito responded, “I resonate with the issue of roadwork. My street has seen a long period of changes on the part of our senior living staff and the sewer replacement folks—variations from day to day on how we get in and out and how guests have access. Of course they’ve kept a course open for emergency vehicles. Mona asked Helen if she could share Helen’s essay with her resident council and staff—it was much appreciated! Harriet Bassett MacGregor sent November greetings to all friends and classmates. “I still live in an apartment in a retirement community in beautiful Kennebunk, Maine. Our granddaughter was a contestant on the game show Jeopardy. She had a one-night appearance and said the experience was lots of fun. We had a great-grandchild in October, bringing the total to 13: six girls and seven boys. Wishing you all a merry holiday sea-
Correspondent: Sue Weinberg Mindlin, sue@mindlin.com CJ Hirsch Ginder still plays tennis and walks two miles daily. She also still loves to cook. Sadly, her husband of 69 years passed away. Our condolences to her and her family. CJ says Elizabeth (Libby) Hamilton Mueller moved to Iowa. Welcome to the Midwest, Libby! (Libby’s grandfather was a renowned and beloved person in Lawrence, Kans., as he was the most famous basketball coach of all time at the University of Kansas. The basketball arena is named for him: the Phog Allen Fieldhouse.) Leta Weiss Marks P’76 has a Ph.D. and has written a book. She has been an active docent at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford for 20 years. She no longer teaches but facilitates a writing group and is active on the board of her women’s group. It’s great how many of us are still active and involved. Barbara Weil Grant reminisces that Renee Rapaporte Burrows ’54 introduced Barbara to her future husband, Bob Grant. Barbara left college to be married during our senior year. She and Bob went to Japan, where Bob was in the Air Force and Barbara worked as a secretary. They returned to our country after the Korean War, and Bob attended Harvard Law while Barbara again found secretarial work. They moved to Chicago, their hometown, and had three daughters and several dogs, one of which was pictured in People magazine! Bob passed away two years ago; Sue Weinberg Mindlin saw the obit in the Chicago Tribune and now they email each other daily updates! Barbara is still in close contact with her roommate, Annellen Fine Guth Barbara and Bob moved into a senior-living facility 12 years ago. They were married 70 years. Mary McCorison Mourkas has lived happily in a retirement community in Palo Alto, Calif., since 2006. “Being across the road from Stanford and in the heart of Silicon Valley makes it a lively experience … much intellectual stimulation and lots of entertainment opportunities, to say nothing
Jane Worley Peak ’42 gathered with family to celebrate her 104th birthday. Four generations helped her blow out the candles!
Helen Johnson Haberstroh ’51 designed a new communion tablecloth to celebrate the Advent season in December 2024.
of the amazing people living here. Never a dull moment.” Joan (Flugy) Fluegelman Wexler sadly wrote that Jerry, her husband of 71 years, died last October. You may remember Jerry as he spent much time on campus with Flugy. They had three children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren! They lived in the Boston area for many years, where Flugy, after receiving a master’s degree, was director of admissions for Wheelock College. They moved to Sarasota, Fla., 25 years ago and enjoyed making new friends and playing golf. Flugy and Sue Weinberg Mindlin co-chaired the class correspondents’ role many years ago and loved being in touch with so many of you. Flugy and Sue have stayed in close touch for the 70-plus years since graduation. She hopes many of you will take a moment to email Sue so we can all stay in touch. Annellen Fine Guth and husband Murray live in an adult-community townhouse in Tinton Falls, N.J. Their daughter and her husband live in Princeton. Their son and his wife are in Wilmington, N.C. They have six grandkids and two great-granddaughters. Sadly, their son Michael died two years ago. Annellen still plays bridge and enjoys needlepointing. She stays in touch with college roommate Barbara Weil Grant, who is in the Chicago suburbs. Jane Graham Pemberton missed our Class Notes so much she considered taking on the role of correspondent again but decided not to, so Sue is doing it! After Jane’s husband, John, passed away, she moved to a lovely retirement village in Bedford, Mass., encouraged by her daughters living in the area. Jane and John had a beautiful home in the
country with lovely property for 33 years. Jane’s first great-grandchild is 3. Jane’s other children live in Colorado and New York City and visit her. She plays bridge and enjoys the lectures, movies and concerts offered by her senior-living community. Carol Gerard McCann still lives in Huntington, Long Island, where she has lived all her life except for the years in New London. Amazing! She escapes the cold northern winters to her home in Jupiter, Fla. She’s in great health and has a child nearby. She has seven grandchildren. Carol still loves to cook. (How many others of us still cook?) She still plays bridge. We all must have mastered that skill in college. (Remember when we used to play bridge after dinner in the dorm living room before heading to Palmer Library to study?) Carol does Wordle daily. (How many of you also do that? And the Spelling Bee and Connections?) She also does sudoku, jigsaw puzzles and paint-by-number flower paintings. What a great example she is! Carol is still in contact with a high school penpal from Barcelona, Spain. Our condolences to Joan Rudberg Lavin, whose husband passed away, and to others who have suffered such a loss. Joan has lived at the Village at Duxbury, Mass., for five years and enjoys the great opportunities for learning: lectures, concerts, etc. She’s delighted that her three daughters and their families live nearby. Joan reminds us of the passing of Jeanne Garrett Miller in May 2024. Sue Weinberg Mindlin is still in Kansas City, Kans., having retired as an active museum docent after 45 years. She also closed her VIP Customized Tours business, which she’d oper-
ated for 25 years. She gave tours of the area to visiting museum groups and potential relocating executives. How much fun! She now reads a lot and attends classes of all kinds. Like Carol, Sue does Wordle, Connections and the Spelling Bee. She has reconnected with Barbara Weil Grant, and they constantly vie on the Spelling Bee. Unfortunately, we’ve lost many classmates over the years. Let’s try to keep in touch with those who are still here.
54
Correspondent: Joanne Williams Hartley, jodihartley69@icloud.com, 69 Chesterton Road, Wellesley, MA 02481, 617620-9385; Sally Ashkins Churchill, sachurchill@ comcast.net Ann Marcuse Raymond is fine and sent good wishes to all. Ann Matthews Kent reminisced about rooming with Ann Heagney Weimer on Third Avenue in NYC after college. They overlooked the last elevated subway, and when it was torn down they witnessed all the neighbors waving white handkerchiefs in fond farewell to their El. It was thanks to Ann that she met her husband, Tom. Ann had organized a cocktail party for CC college grads at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel, also inviting a list of single men the CC grads had submitted, offering them free martinis and Manhattans. For Ann and Tom it became an “across a crowded room” event. Ann also invited her roommates to Cuba the following summer, where they were royally entertained by Ann’s family and had a wonderful time. Ann’s father was a prominent banker in Cuba, and she was married there in a large double wedding with her
Why should YOU leave a legacy at Connecticut College?
Because you have a sense of gratitude for the opportunities Conn provided to you, and you want future Conn students to achieve the same success you have achieved, expand their world and become leaders of tomorrow. A bequest gift is more than just a document from your estate. It speaks to your beliefs and your values.
When is the best time to finalize your estate plans?
NOW! Whether you are just beginning or thinking of revisions, age 25 to age 85, there is no better time to solidify your plans and peace of mind
How is this achieved?
The easiest way is to name Connecticut College as a beneficiary of your retirement plan, life insurance policy or other account. Any asset can be used as a statement of your beliefs.
Already have Conn in your estate plans? Tell us! We would love to welcome you to the Rosemary Park Society. Considering your legacy and want to add Conn in your plans? We can work with you!
sister. Time and again in her life she ran into people in the U.S. who remarked that they had been at her wedding. Ann Reagan Weeks continues to do well; her retirement home is in New Jersey, near one child and between her two others in Boston and Philadelphia. She sounds great; with walking areas, workout facilities and friends there she feels very fortunate. Catherine Pappas Rappaporte is doing well in her home and sends her best to all. Barbara Guerin Colon and her husband are in Asheville, N.C.; they were OK through the fall storm, but it was tragic to see the horrific damage to property—so many destroyed homes—and to have lost so many people in the storm. Joanne Williams Hartley writes: “Our 70th Reunion is in the rearview mirror, and the fast pace of change in our world astonishes us. Though you may feel you do not have any news, a visit from a friend, a move to another place or change occurs for us all, and we care about each other. Please let me know so I can share with our classmates. Some of you met my wonderful husband, Dick Hartley, from the Naval Academy, a native of Hawaii. We lost Dick three years ago, but this year our family of 10 honored his wishes and traveled to Maui. After a breathtaking service in outriggers offshore he is now swimming with his dolphins. We all then flew over to Hawaii, the Big Island, to his home of 18 years, walking on the rocks and beach that lapped up to his door. His three grown grandsons now have a deeply personal intimate memory of the young life of their beloved ‘Commander’—awesome. Take care, and be in touch.”
Correspondent: Elaine Diamond Berman, 100 Riverside Blvd., Apt. 20C, New York, NY 10069, elainedberman@ comcast.net Helene Zimmer-Loew writes, “At the recent meeting of the Council for Former and Emeritus Trustees at the College, I had the opportunity to hear President Chapdelaine speak … as well as have a short conversation with her at a reception. She is fully in learning mode and, through open discussions with students, faculty, staff, trustees and the New London community, she is becoming aware of what needs to be accomplished in the short and long run. The community has a positive opinion of her cooperative effort to meet the many needs of the College. I found her warm and curious. I was the most senior of anyone there.” Helene has been involved in community activities wherever she has lived. She is now on the board of the Guild of the Chicago History Museum. June Ippolito Hoye does publicity for the East Lyme Public Trust Foundation, which sponsored the boardwalk in East Lyme, Conn., a project in which June was involved. Now she works with Buoys by the Bay, a community project in which members decorate buoys to hang in a Main Street park in East Lyme. The proceeds pay for boardwalk maintenance. Thousands of people visit the boardwalk each summer. June has two daughters, one in East Lyme and the other in Pawcatuck and Florida. Class Correspondent Elanie Diamond Berman spoke with Nora Richman Myers, a dear friend in her first two years at CC, after which Nora switched to Tufts to be with Steve Alfred, a Harvard law student. They subsequently married and had several children. Later, Nora was a reading specialist in a facility
for severely emotionally disturbed children in a community near Shaker Heights, Ohio, where she lived and had grown up. Steve practiced law and became mayor of Shaker Heights. Many years later they divorced, and after some time Nora met Hal Myers at a seder and then married him. Hal was a Holocaust survivor; they spent more than 40 years together. He passed away from dementia four years ago. Nora has lived in Carolina Meadows, a senior residence in Chapel Hill, N.C., for some years, first with Hal and then by herself. She loves the weather and the many activities.
58Fall River friend, Barbara Sharples Sturtevant ’57. She continues in Medford, Ore., in a sweet cottage at Rogue Valley Manor, where she gardens, golfs and plays bridge. Barbara’s husband, Winnie, died in 2022. In addition to the losses of David Carson, Bob Sargent and Bruce Biddle, two classmate deaths are of note: Rae Lunnie died on Sept. 23, 2022, in Rhode Island, and Sydney Wrightson Tibbetts died on March 17, 2023, in New Hampshire. The class offers deep sympathy to all their families.”
Reaching out to each other matters.
— CYNTHIA ENLOE ’60
Correspondent: Judith Ankarstran Carson, djcarson35@gmail.com Judith Ankarstran Carson writes, “It’s good to be back with the Class Notes. I resigned last year under the stress of David’s final illness. He died in April 2024, after seven months of good care at our retirement home, Castle Peak in Eagle, Colo. I miss him always but feel fortunate to be in a warm and friendly place, still near Andrea and Alex and their families. We’d like to hear from you! The news may not be as exotic as it once was, but let us know you’re out there, please. I’ve had multiple conversations, first with Jane Maurey Sargent (if you need a boost, call Jane). Bob Sargent died, also in April 2024, after a long illness, always at home. Jane stays on in their enormous eight-bedroom house on Penobscot Bay, Maine. Her grandson Rory gave up teaching in Wellesley to be a butler/valet at Raffles Hotel in Boston, often catering to the Middle East rich. Next, I reached Marilyn (Lynn) Leach Cassidy in Swampscott, Mass. Busy as ever, she runs the property management side of the family real estate/insurance business. She also teaches Spanish in an ongoing Explorers program and serves on a town preservation committee. Lynn was looking forward to Thanksgiving with, among all her progeny, five great-grandchildren, who provide the entertainment. Finally, Barbara Bearce Tuneski told me about Betsy Wolfe Biddle’s husband Bruce’s funeral, in 2024. She and Atheline Wilbur Nixon caught up on that occasion. Betsy lives in a care home in Mystic, Conn. Barbara recovered well from a recent health incident and is back to playing contract bridge and enjoying her two great-grandchildren. I emailed Patricia (Patsy) Steiger de Salazar P’88 in Peru, and received good news in reply. Patsy has long sung with the Lima Women’s Chorale (find them on Facebook). She continues to tutor in English for university students preparing to teach the language there. Since two grandchildren live in the U.S., she usually visits at least yearly. However, happily, she has four great-grandchildren in Lima. I also phoned my old
Correspondent: Millie Price Nygren, 1048 Bedford St., Fremont, CA 94539, 408-464-2907, m.nygren@att.net Remember, Reunion comes up in 2025; hopefully we can have a wonderful Reunion. First I want to quote the meaning of a “friend”: Fight for you, Respect you, Include you, Encourage you, Need you, Deserve you. For your correspondent, Mildred Price Nygren, “the past two years have been difficult, as my husband is now on permanent oxygen; although he is portable it is difficult for him because he has problems with his pancreas area. I have a diabetic foot, which can get an infection, so I have to wear a boot every day. I fractured my right wrist, which makes writing these notes difficult.” Barbara Paust Hart is doing well; she recalls writing in that her husband, Wally, died in 2018 from cancer. “I still miss him terribly but count my life with him as one of my many blessings. My biggest news is that I am a great-grandmother to the most adorable 8-month-old precious little girl. My love to all.” Harriet Kaufman Breslow says, “Life is still very busy for me as I continue to work 10 to 15 hours a week in social work. I’m going to St. John, V.I., for two weeks, then I have two ski trips planned. I hope my knee replacements and my hip replacement will not slow me down. I had a third hip replacement in June. I’m eager to get back to tennis. My husband, Jerry, served on the board of Strathmore Hall, a $100 million music center, for 20 years. He’s now retired from the board but still does some work for them. They gave us two golden tickets, so we can attend any Strathmore college event for free. We have scheduled about 30 concerts! Our two children and 13-year-old granddaughter live in Bethesda, Md., and DC. Life is good.” Susan Hillman Crandal is happily retired after 30-plus years of elementary school teaching and still lives on eastern Long Island. Her husband founded and directed the local summer sports camp. Their two granddaughters are in college; “it has been a joy to watch them grow up.” Cynthia Enloe writes, “65 in 2025, wow! Conn ’60ers reaching out to each other matters. What a crew.”
Correspondent: Bonnie Campbell Billings-Wauters, bsq22@aol.com, 1348 Winding Oaks Circle W, Vero Beach, FL 32963, 802-734-1876 At writing, Marie Girard Roeder was in San Francisco on a Holland America tour and still traveling with her husband of over 60 years. They went to Mexico in December out of San Diego—easy since they live just across the bridge in Coronado. Traveling is getting more difficult, so they will have to start flying soon. Cruises seem to be a popular travel option,
Two Camels, Janet Blackwell Bent ’59 and Karoline (Karrie) Martin Kirchner ’02, met in the wild through their mutual love of gardening.
coming out of Covid and arriving at a “certain age.” Madeline (Mady) Siegfried Lesnik responded to Bonnie’s plea for news from aboard a fairly rocky Seabourn ship in the Caribbean Islands. “More fun when seas are calmer.” She was with her husband of 62 years. They winter in West Palm Beach, Fla., and return to Winnetka, Ill., for the rest of the year. Their children and grandchildren are all in the Chicago area, so she spends much time with them. Her event-planning career, involving lots of travel, became too much “at 80+.” “I still enjoy travel, museums, painting, friends and shopping. Sad that we no longer have a dog—too physically taxing. I really miss my Conn friends. I see Phyllis Hattis in NYC.” Gail Martin Reed traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, for her high school (Ecolint) Centenary and its World Reunion, held every five years. “Any other Ecolinters out there?” She also visited dear Conn friend Jeanette (Jay) Cannon Ruffle in Burlington, Vt. “With Jay’s husband, we made an overnight trip to Montreal. My first visit there—I loved it!” And they keep in touch with Wallace (Wally) Coates Paprocki Bonnie Campbell Billings got together with Jay a couple years ago—and hopes to again in the fall. She and husband Joe Wauters returned to Vero Beach, Fla., from summer in Stowe, Vt., in October, shortly after tornadoes had devastated areas slightly south of them. “In our community of Sea Oaks, we were very lucky. On the way down, I met up with Roberta Slone Smith for breakfast. In September, Roberta and I went to our Winchester, Mass., High School 65th reunion, where we caught up with Ann Neville Howell. It’s been great fun, as class correspondent, to be in touch with so many of you. But there are many more of you that we’d love to hear from. I can’t make this stuff up, so please help … with news!” Joan Snyder Abelson and husband Chuck sold their Florida house in 2022, just before Hurricane Ian. Back in Baltimore (with children and grands living elsewhere), they moved to a local senior community, Blakehurst, in September. They both have health challenges and wanted to prepare for the future together. “The good news: This should be our last move! We have de-crap-itized to the nth degree, taking many fewer possessions for our smaller living quarters.” Follow up: Months later, they are happy to be in Blakehurst! “It reminds me of my years in CC. So much to do here. So much stimulation with classes and fitness spaces, new friends with common interests, dinners cooked for us, medical care when needed—and much more. We could be busy 24/7 if we wished! While our ’63 classmates (and many other octogenarians) still travel the world, we are staying close to our new home for now.” No retirement for Martha Joynt Kumar: “I continue to track presidential interchanges with reporters and regularly attend Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s briefing. I am currently following the transition of President-elect Trump and plan to write about how it was organized and operated.” Martha’s latest published work is “Presidential Transitions in the Twenty-First Century,” in The Shifting 21st Century Presidency. Earlier she published the article “Transferring Presidential Power in a Post-9/11 World” in Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama, edited by President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley
Martha and Vijay moved from their Georgetown house to an apartment five blocks away. “Downsizing was painful but we followed up moving with a nice family trip. In July we went to Palm Beach with son Zal, daughter-in-law Ailsa, and grandchildren Kiran (12), Mira (9) and Stella (4)—and enjoyed the waves, sand and sun.” The class sends deep sympathies to Nancy Feuerstein Milsten on the recent loss of her husband, Dick, whom she married soon after graduation. After a long career as a physician in New Jersey, Dick and Nancy moved to Orchid Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla., in 2000. Over the years their love of travel took them to all seven continents.
Correspondents: Susan Peck Hinkel, 1064 N. Main St., Danby, VT 05739, rerob@mac.com; Pat Antell Andrews, 2800 S. University Blvd., Unit 4, Denver, CO 80210, pandre0615@gmail.com Mary Lake Polan and husband Frank Bennack produced a short documentary, Below Surface. It was broadcast from their home to 765 YMCAs. Monica Blum enjoyed a dinner with Ann Brauer Gigounas and Barbara Barker-Papernik. The Ledyard Lions Club has chosen Eileen Pleva Akers as its district governor. Eileen has served on its board of directors and as president twice, and she has chaired the Lions Low Vision Center of Eastern Connecticut, the Accessibility Youth Outreach committee and the Eyeglass Extravaganza. To expand the areas accessible for blind patrons, she produced braille menus for many local restaurants. Eileen taught for 50 years in Norwich public schools, where her duties also included counseling and tutoring. She lives in Norwich with her fifth guide dog, Hannah. Ginny Chambers Keim retired in June from consulting to two great organizations (Physicians for Reproductive Health and The Floating Hospital). Previously she retired from her full-time development post at the New York Foundling. She is still deeply involved with programs that support enhancing the quality of hospital life for children through Laughter League. They are exploring using the same techniques developed for “hospital clown doctors” for work with older patients in memory care centers. She is also on the board for the Untermyer Gardens. She and Dick are in good health, and Ginny plays tennis almost every day. They have a four-month hideaway in Vero Beach, Fla. After 22 years in North Carolina, Beth Overbeck Balkite moved to Daniel Island, S.C., just west of Charleston, to be closer to her daughter. She enjoys the low country and what it offers: beautiful beaches, learning about a new culture and warm weather. She didn’t teach via Zoom at Duke this past year but is doing so
this winter. Change always presents challenges as well as opportunities, so she is happy to say she’s dealing with both. V. Jill Andrist Miller is retired from Woman’s Touch Gardening and mostly retired from Miller Microcomputer Services. She still walks many of the trails in suburban Boston, particularly on the wildly popular Cochituate Rail Trail just across the lake from her house. She stays active with several knitting groups that make warm clothing for the needy, and she’s been instrumental in moving the Natick Garden Club’s focus toward sustainable garden practices. She thanks her botany professors Goodwin and Niering for inspiring her love of ecology and commitment to sustainability at the beginning of the era of environmental concern inspired by Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring. Leslie Setterholm Curtis continues to play duplicate bridge, sings alto in the chorus, and organizes various outings for her Kimball Farms neighbors, such as visits to the Clark Art Museum and Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass. Jenny Bartlett Fricks had dinner with Susan Harris Griffin on St. Simon’s Island, Ga. In a period of just three months, Judie Abbott Raffety P’01 and her husband, Don, sold their home in rural Vermont, downsized and settled into RiverMead in Peterborough, N.H. The move, originally contemplated for the distant future, prompted a surprise health development for Don, an avid long-distance cyclist. Class Co-correspondent Pat Antell Andrews and her husband traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia in late summer. They are still trying to understand the horrible (and horribly confusing) story of the 1990s war. The committee for our 65th (!) Reunion (May 30–June 1) is planning fun activities such as tours of the new waterfront area, which most of us have never seen, and of the CC dorm in downtown New London, followed by a Saturday evening private dinner instead of joining the noisy all-campus picnic on Tempel Green. Remember: Your donation any time to the 2024-’25 CC Annual Fund will go to our class gift.
Correspondents: Carol Chaykin and Bridget Donahue Healy; ccnotes66@ gmail.com Julie Baumgold Kosner writes: “Still alive, just finished The House of Lost Fortunes. Its fate is uncertain as of now.” Carol Chaykin attended the memorial mass for Claire Gaudiani at the St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan on Nov. 5, 2024. Claire’s husband, David Burnett, greeted everyone at the beginning of the service. The priest spoke glowingly of Claire, who was very involved at St. Paul’s
Roxanne Lake Johnson ’65, Karin Kunstler Goldman ’65 and Lucia Pellecchia Correll ’65 visited the room they shared in Branford.
Carole McNamara Malcolmson ’65 and Genevieve (Jenny) Bartlett Fricks ’65 cheer the holiday season.
Former roommates Dana Hartman Freyer ’65, Pam Gwynne Herrup ’65, Marge Raisler Fisher ’65 and Karen Metzger Ganz ’65 gathered in Vermont.
for many decades. Two of Claire’s friends spoke during the service, and Claire’s children, Graham and Maria, spoke at the end. President Chapdelaine was seen greeting David before the service. Carol sat with Bonnie Ross Fine ’62 P’91; Bonnie’s daughter, Natalie Fine Margolis ’91; Brian Laung Aoaeh ’01; and Hermina Johnny ’04. Carol and Marianne David met as people were filing out of the church. Bridget Donahue Healy celebrated her 80th with her twin brother, Bill, who is husband of Kate Curtis Donahue. In May, the family partied on an Audubon puffin cruise from Boothbay Harbor to Egg Rock, Maine, where puffins nest. The puffins were plentiful and remain fascinating. Eleanor (Holly) Drew’s grandniece/goddaughter was accepted by her first choice, Connecticut College, and is happily enrolled and playing varsity squash. Holly is over the moon! Kathleen Dudden Rowlands and her husband have finally settled in their retirement home in Kaneohe, Hawaii. They live next door to Kathleen’s younger son and his wife. Moving there was her son’s idea: “If you are far enough away that I can’t hear your bad jokes, it will be okay!” His first child, their 10th granddaughter, was born in January 2024 and is healthy and thriving. Kathleen spends many mornings walking the beach cleaning up rubbish and then sharing “beach treasures” with others. In fact, when Kathleen’s roommate Dede Nie Good visited en route to Kauai to vacation with children and grandchildren, she brought a large empty duffel bag to load up and take with her. The Rowlands enjoy catching up with friends from years past and are delighted to host visitors in a comfortable guest room with bath. Betsy Greenberg Feinberg, Kathy Ritchell Sommerkamp, Jackie Rustigian, Wilma Cohen Probst Levy and Donna Vogt Cartwright found one another at a gathering in the DC area to meet our new college president. “We hadn’t seen each other for ages. Who knew we had all lived here for so long?” Ellen Kagan continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the Democratic Party through her podcast, Movin’ and Groovin’ with Ellen. Marian Silber has returned to Naples, Fla., for the winter and looks forward to seeing Ruth Zaleske Leibert P’92, Susan Kirshnit Woodall P’94 and Asia Rial Elsbree while there. We extend our condolences to the friends and family of Claire Gaudiani, past president of Connecticut College; to friends and family of Liz Leach Welch P’95, our class co-president and class reunion cochair; and to friends and family of Janet Stein Romero. Please continue sending your updates and photos. We want to share your news!
67Correspondents: Deborah Greenstein, debbyg837@verizon.net; Marcia Hunter Matthews, marciamatthews3@gmail.com Margie Lipshutz Simon, Debby Greenstein and her cousin Judy Barr Wertheim gathered for dinner in Philadelphia. Susie Terrell Saunders, Beth Sapery, Debby Murray Sloan, Margie Lipshutz Simon, Anne Weinberg Mandelbaum and Faith Jackson Parker also had dinner together. Elayne Zweifler Gardstein and husband Hank explored Venice. Alicia Yaffe, Wallis Lindburg Nicita, and Wallis’ son, Jesse Nicita, took in the views overlooking Palm Desert, Calif. Connie Wormser Mitchell and husband Michael met up with Betsy Nodler Pinkert and husband Dale at Highland Park, Ill. Ethel Bottcher Cullinan and daughter Megan Cullinan Byrd completed a 75-mile walk among the hilly towns of Tuscany. Debby Greenstein, Wendy Thompson Noyes, Marilyn Silton Khoury and Laura DeKoven Waxman met up in DC. There was a Class of 1967 mini-reunion at Cape Cod with Trish Carr, Deb Funkhouser Perlman, Elizabeth (Anne) Foss, Anne (Sandy) Clement Haddad, Judy Macurda Oates and Deb Benjamin Judi Rosman Hahn and husband Philip joined Marcia Hunter Matthews and husband Bill on a Viking River Cruise on the Rhine. Anne Moloney Black and husband Stephen continue happily in Washington very near the zoo, which their grandsons, Cal (6) and Jude (8), love. Their 11-year-old granddaughter maybe not so much, as she’s very much a teenager. They were looking forward to the holidays with all three daughters and their families, who live nearby. She is grateful to be in touch with Conn friends on Zoom and FaceTime. Wendy Thompson Noyes is retiring from a career in sales. She and a former neighbor went on a tour of Iceland that they loved. Deb Benjamin spends half her time in Vero Beach, Fla., and the other half on Lake Sunapee, N.H. She enjoys her annual gathering of ’67 friends at Cape Cod and periodic Zoom calls with ’68 friends. She had to give up tennis because of a bum shoulder but still plays golf and bridge, as well as sings and volunteers. She is deciding when to move into a retirement community in Exeter, N.H. Jane Scheffler Harris P’96 ’00 and husband Nick have lived in Chatham, Mass., for 28 years. Two children live in England and France but spend most of their summers with their four children in Chatham. Jane’s study of natural resource management, especially influenced by Dr. Niering at Conn, has led her to work on climate change in her community. She remembers her days at Conn fondly. Lynn Weichsel Hand has moved to Topsham, Maine, to live with daughter Emily. Granddaughter Mia is a junior at Boston University. Suzy Endel Kerner and husband Paul Smirnoff enjoy life in CC’s neighborhood, where Paul is on the Lyman Allyn Museum board and Susan reads plays for the New Play Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center. Susan’s documentary film Eva’s Promise can be seen on PBS and in museums, theaters, schools and universities. Check out the website at Home/Eva’s Promise. Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher has the same husband, two sons, two daughters-in-law and grandchildren. The food and wine archivist of the University of California, Davis Library has reached out to her as among the “influential women in the world of wine” with interest in her papers on the Judgment of Paris wine tasting of 1976 and also the rest of her career.
Margie Lipshutz Simon ’67, Anne Weinberg Mandelbaum ’67 and Faith Jackson Parker ’67 had dinner together.
Connie Wormser Mitchell ’67 and husband Michael with Betsy Nodler Pinkert ’67 and husband Dale at Highland Park, Ill.
Suzy Endel Kerner ’67 P’02 with copies of her documentary, Eva’s Promise.
Ethel Bottcher Cullinan ’67 and daughter Megan Cullinan Byrd after completing a 75mile walk around Tuscany.
Elayne Zweifler Gardstein ’67 P’92 and husband Hank explored quiet canals in Venice.
Alicia Yaffe, Wallis Lindburg Nicita ’67, and Wallis’s son Jesse Nicita overlooking Palm Desert, Calif.
Trish Carr ’67, Deb Funkhouser Perlman ’67, Elizabeth (Anne) Foss ’67, Anne (Sandy) Clement Haddad ’67, Judy Macurda Oates ’67 and Deb Benjamin ’67 in Cape Cod.
Judi Rosman Hahn ’67 and husband Philip with Marcia Hunter Matthews ’67 and husband Bill on their Viking Cruise on the Rhine River.
Debby Greenstein ’67, Wendy Thompson Noyes ’67, Marilyn Silton Khoury ’67 and Laura DeKoven Waxman ’67 P’95 met up in DC.
L-R: Kathy Ritchell Sommerkamp ’66, Betsy Greenberg Feinberg ’66, Jackie Rustigian ’66, Wilma Cohen Probst Levy ’66 and Donna Vogt Cartwright ’66 in Washington, DC, spring 2024
Patricia feels honored and plans to make UC Davis Library a priority in 2025. This year has been a rough year for Sandy Clement Haddad and her family because of the ongoing conflict in the Holy Land. Buildings that Charles built have been leveled, friends killed and other friends needing assistance just to survive. Prayers and pressure on our leaders to bring an end to all this needless violence would be appreciated.
68
Deborah Hastings passed away on July 17, 2024. She was 78 years old. She is survived by her children, Michael, Julia and Andrew; their father, Sam Black; and her grandchildren, Carla, Levon and Sebastian. After graduating from CC, Deb moved to Washington in 1969 to work on Capitol Hill for the House Select Committee on Crime. During the Nixon administration, she worked in the White House on the Special Action Office on Drug Abuse Prevention. Later in her career, she worked at DC Superior Court as a mediator for child custody and divorce cases. Deborah will be dearly missed.
69
Correspondent: Susan Cannon, susecannon@icloud.com Heather Morrison
P’95 was in Seattle in October visiting her granddaughter, who is a sophomore at the University of Washington, and got together with Sharon Smith Broughton and her husband, Gary, for a yummy lunch of local seafood. Stephanie Phillips has been busy setting up a Class of ’69 riverboat trip. She enjoyed almost a week of beautiful fall weather in Maine in October. Having been inspired to visit the Alan Claude Gallery in Gardiner, Maine, by Nancy Barry-Manor, she bought a print of a New London lighthouse and also visited Alice Reid Abbott in Portland. Anne Bonniol Pringle took a small-group tour of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, all with a history and a boundary with Russia. “Ukrainian flags were everywhere. The trip was a real eye-opener.” Alice Boatwright gave a Zoom talk for 300 people on “Writing a Mystery: It’s More Than Whodunnit,” hosted by the Sno-Isle Libraries, Wash. She is working on the fourth Ellie Kent mystery and other writing projects. Jane
Rafal Wilson and Ralph moved into an independent-living cottage at Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, a continuing-care retirement community in Charlottesville, Va. Their house in the country sold without them having to list it, and the downsizing wasn’t all that painful. The move has been a great success so far. They’ve met lots of interesting people, the gym and pool are wonderful, and the place has more cultural and social events than they can attend. They hardly cook anymore, and nobody misses it. Jane plays clarinet and flute in a big band at the local senior center, and had three gigs coming up. Marge Holland retired from full-time teaching in the biology department at the University of Mississippi in 2018 but continues to conduct research with undergraduate and graduate students in the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Research there. She and her students presented scientific papers at meetings of the British Ecological Society in Belfast, Ireland, in 2019, and again in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2020. Unfortunately, she sustained tick bites in New Hampshire while conducting fieldwork in 2021 and contracted chronic Lyme disease, resulting in brain fog, dizziness and digestive issues until 2024, when blood work indicated she no longer had it. Bettina (Tina) Scott Brogadir and husband Dick spent two weeks in September on a trip to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana! “What a fabulous experience, exploring Cape Town, Johannesburg and Victoria Falls; traveling on an elegant private railroad for three days; and going on several game drives to see amazing animals in their natural habitats, right up close!” Cordalie Benoit invites everyone to the centennial celebration of the New Haven Garden Club on May 10, 2025, on the New Haven Green. Her garden and conservancy work has helped Grove Street
L-R: Nancy Payne Alexander ’69, Nancy Brush Edwards ’69 P’02, Susan Cannon ’69, Kris Stahlschmidt Lambert ’69.
Susie Terrell Saunders ’67, Beth Sapery ’67 and Debby Murray Sloan ’67 got together for dinner.
Cemetery in New Haven qualify as an arboretum, and she is currently working with the River Bend Cemetery in Westerly, R.I., to do the same. She suggests arranging a tour of Grove Street Cemetery if you are in town. Judi Bamberg Mariggio’s life as a resident in northwest Italy is even more complete than she had anticipated. “I had more than 40 years of happiness with Giovanni and continue to build on that every day that I am in Canale. I have a growing circle of friends, continue to travel within Italy, and am busy with lectures, concerts and some volunteering with ESOL conversational groups for adults.” She happily visits her sister’s family in Florida but looks forward to going home. David and Linda McCoy Burnett’s son, Ben, was married in September in a beautiful outdoor location with Mount Shasta (Calif.) in the background. Dagny Hultgreen Griswold and husband are going on 38 years in the same house in Simsbury, Conn., enjoying their gardens and traveling to see friends and family, mostly within New England. Last May they attended their oldest grandson’s graduation from the Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md., and saw him play lacrosse against West Point, where his younger sister and brother are cadets. Dagny cares for her 88-yearold husband, who has been declining slowly with Alzheimer’s for eight years, but is in good spirits and good health. Susan Cannon enjoyed several weeks in Maine in September and managed to have a wonderful lunch with Kris Stahlschmidt Lambert, Nancy Payne Alexander and Nancy Brush Edwards P’02, with much laughter.
Cici Simon Holbrook is enjoying traveling to new places and revisiting places she has loved since the 1950s. In July, she befriended an alpaca in the Sacred Valley (Peru) before hiking Machu Picchu. And she completed a two-week tour of prehistoric caves in France and Spain: “It puts current man into perspective.” Mary Sarosi Stuart is thankful for good health, a nice home in the mountains south of Santa Fe, N.M., and five grown children and 10 grandchildren, all of whom are doing fine. “After college, I went to the Union Theological Seminary in New York City and was ordained into the ministry in the United Church of Christ. My daughter is an Episcopal priest and my oldest son, John, is a Unitarian minister. My two youngest boys are both lawyers, and my stepdaughter is a speech pathologist. I retired in
2012, having worked in various churches and ecumenical programs. My husband, Tom, and I have been fortunate to travel. In August we took a cruise from New York City to Greenland and Iceland; earlier in the summer I drove from New Mexico to New York with my new beagle puppy so that my family could meet him. I also make a couple trips a year to visit my youngest son, Michael, in Fort Lauderdale.” Brenda Brown, who is married and lives in New Haven, Conn., is an FCC-licensed radio operator, Extra Class. She has “net control” for three weekly amateur radio nets. “As Facilitator for Radio and Outreach for MakeHaven, a makerspace in New Haven, I teach general radio topics, offer FCC-licensing exam preparation sessions and monitor FCC licensing exams as head of my VE team. I also post all MakeHaven events on five social media sites. My regular hours at the MakeHaven radio bench are on Tuesdays, 5 to 8 p.m. It would be really cool if people who were at Conn when I was there (Classes of ’69, ’70 and ’71) would visit MakeHaven on a Tuesday evening and say hello. Sign up on makehaven.org for the Tuesday night tour or just show up and mention my name for admission.” In Tennessee, Randy Robinson writes that she has been nourished by the nature, beauty and hospitality of that state since 2022. “Casey’s family lives an hour away, and Whitney returned to San Diego, but we talk often and visit. My wonderful grandkids are 3, 11, and 15, and they are the reason for my life. I continue to feel fulfilled in my work with clients and training my precious Newfies. Over the past five years, I’ve been jolted by the increasing recognition of the impact of the Deep State. So, I am feeling hopeful that our country will now be led to progressively develop stability and health and its intended role as a world leader of peace and prosperity.”
Rachel Sherbourne Cooney still lives in Newport, R.I., one block from the ocean. She works part-time as a therapist at Delta Consultants and runs a B&B in her home during the summers. “I travel a lot to L.A. to see my two grandchildren and also to Charleston, S.C., to visit my daughter in her winter home. Any classmates visiting Newport are welcome to stop by and stay at my B&B (CooneyCottage.com).” Lisa Richter continues to work part-time at her market research consulting business, Stakeholder Insights, and she is looking for more market research/brand audit/ customer experience work. “I’ve joined the board of Memory Care Home Solutions in St. Louis,
Mo., which will be a pilot site for GUIDE (Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience) from HMS, testing caregiver-support services to help family members keep people living with dementia in their homes longer at a higher life quality and lower cost than nursing homes. Also, I just joined a Unitarian church that’s working on various social justice and community issues. Studying piano for about the 25th year, and making daily aerobic and strength exercises the number one task on my to-do list. Have four grandchildren (ages 13, 19, and twins, 9) and two daughters and sons-in-law, who live in St. Louis and Minneapolis. Happy to be alive.” Mary-Jane Atwater and Martha Sloan Felch P’07 are co-chairs of our upcoming 55th Reunion, May 30–June 1. “It will be the first time in 10 years that we will be together in person. The College has some fun events planned for all the classes but will include time for our own gatherings, and, of course, our class dinner. To join the planning team, let us know at msfelch1@ gmail.com or mjatwater@gmail.com. We hope to see you in 2025.” Myrna Chandler Goldstein learned that she was nominated for an alumni award. “I was stunned. Next to some classmates, I have actually done very little. Yes, I have been preparing the Notes for years, and like many of you, Mark and I contribute financially. But that pales beside what I received and continue to receive from Conn. In fact, my career as a journalist and nonfiction writer was made possible because of the interviewing, researching and writing skills I learned at Conn. So, thank you to whoever nominated me. I would love to know who you are. But I can never truly give to Conn what it has so generously given to me.”
71Correspondents: Lisa McDonnell, mcdonnell@denison.edu, 134 W Maple Street, Granville, OH 43023, and Lois Olcott Price, loprice@yahoo.com, 933A Alto Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 Susan Schmidt celebrated her 75th birthday with 40 friends on a Lookout catamaran sunset cruise. She’s content in Beaufort, N.C.—kayaking, rowing, swimming, sailing and walking beaches with her Boykin Spaniel, Pippa. She surveys shorebirds on Rachel Carson Preserve, helps photo-ID dolphins, and plants natives at North Carolina Maritime Museum as a master gardener. She still edits scholarly books; leads a fiction critique group; and writes about ocean currents, glacier melting and sea-level rise. As science is changing so fast, she includes her memoir of delivering boats as a captain for 41 years, ignoring prejudice against a woman captain, scientist and professor. Hurricane Helene did not damage her rental houses in Asheville and Brevard; her godchildren at Celo on South Toe River near Burnsville are OK, although exhausted from volunteering to help the community. Susan doesn’t want to move inland when the coast floods. She lives at 14 feet above sea level, but Front Street, a block south at four feet, will flood a third of the year in 10 years. In answer to the query about our experience turning 75 and the long-term effects of being the last class to experience Conn as a single-sex school: Gloria McLean-Hiratsuka is grateful for that experience, for the great friends, for the time to be unperturbed by the constant pushing of the male ego, for the space to explore and reflect on what her/our feminine nature is,
Mary Sarosi Stuart ’70 and her husband, Tom
Susan Schmidt ’71 and her Boykin Spaniel, Pippa
Cici Simon Holbrook ’70 in July 2024 with an alpaca friend in the Sacred Valley (Peru) before hiking Machu Picchu.
and thus to discover that we are all male and female in various proportion and necessarily so. Why has that been so hard for the larger culture to get? As for turning 75: At her 60th birthday, Gloria had a hard time saying it. At 65 she certainly did not retire. At 70, she felt much freer and celebrated with a retrospective of her dance career. Now at 75, she continues to create, to teach, to enjoy life with her sculptor partner Ken Hiratsuka. Age 75 brings a work trip to Oaxaca and a gallery show of women artists in Paris. Gloria still lives in New York City and Andes, N.Y., in the Catskills. She takes no medications and does lots of gardening, cooking, swimming and challenging the cold! She didn’t have kids, for better or worse, but always has a full house. An-Ming Sze Truxes reflects that no one foresaw that the transformation from a women’s college into a coeducational institution was a harbinger of the unprecedented, headlong change we have experienced ever since. Whether at work, in education or as leaders, women have made tremendous gains across society in the last 50 years but have also suffered many roadblocks. Elizabeth Breg Masson reminisces that after four years at CC with no men in her classes, she found herself the only female in her MA program in international history at the London School of Economics! Months later she realized she had always taken care to dress properly for classes at Conn, but now threw on the first thing found in her closet and rushed to the tube station without looking in the mirror! The subject of where one bought their new jacket or shoes never came up while headed to lunch with a group of men. Chris Howells Reed remembers attending CC when other women’s liberal arts colleges were the norm. Her mother’s experience at Wheaton and encouragement to attend a women’s college were major influences. Her mother advised her to not take a typing class in high school because it would pigeonhole her into a secretarial job. She was a liberated woman in ways that Christine did not appreciate at the time, and she would say the same for her experience at Conn: It was a time when women needed to encourage other women to be agents of their professional and personal lives. Susan Pool Moses keeps busy with multiple knitting and quilting projects, presidency of their 51-unit condo association, and involvement with the American Association of University Women (AAUW), promoting equity for women and girls. She and Dale continue summer cruising with their Camano trawler. To the query, Susan notes she has advocated for single-sex education her entire life. For women, it creates great leaders, entrepreneurs and independent-thinking adults. She sent her daughter to the Annie Wright School in Tacoma, Wash., a single-sex school that recently went coeducational due to financial reasons; alumnae are not happy. Susan enjoyed her time at CC and was glad it stayed single-sex as long as it did. Carolyn Swartz says, “Freshman year, who would even recognize me between rumpled, roll-out-of-bed, yesterday’s jeans on weekdays and mini-dress-and-knee-high-boots, neon tights, hair ironed and mascara’d on weekends? Couldn’t have pulled that one off at a coeducational school.” Barbara Yanchek Braun was invited to join the Dull Women’s Group. After the initial insult wore off, she realized she likes a dull
routine. Living at the New Jersey shore means that her NYC daughter, husband and four grandchildren spent most of the summer; their Boston daughter and others visited often. After seeing extended family’s medical issues, including a grandson in the ICU, Barbara feels there is a lot to be said for dull routine: a daily walk with Robert on the beach looking for dolphins or whales or getting ice cream and watching the moon rise over the ocean. Recently, she grappled with the existential question of “Who am I?” when the car salesman noted the light-gray interior of the car matched her hair. Wait! Is she a little old lady with gray hair or a little old lady with blonde hair? It could make a difference. (Her hairdresser swears she’s blonde!) She decided those women in the Dull Women’s Group are pretty impressive, so she’ll keep working on her dullness! Susan Katz, after semiretiring from the University of San Francis-
Am I a little old lady with gray hair or a little old lady with blonde hair? It could make a difference.
— BARBARA YANCHEK BRAUN ’71
co in May 2022, enrolled in a six-month virtual integrative health and wellness coaching program at the University of California, Irvine. After completing the curriculum and passing an exam, she became a National Board of Health & Wellness Certified Coach! She has been working one-onone with USF students on balancing academics with positive choices for well-being. She was also active in the 2024 election canvassing for Harris/ Walz in Reno, Nev., and Pennsylvania. Her love of canvassing started at Conn in 1968 when a team traveled to New Hampshire with Clean for Gene (McCarthy). But the highlight of this past year was spending a week at the amazing northern British Columbia farm of Jennifer Harvey, her roommate in Freeman. They hiked, kayaked, swam in lakes, made ice cream from her raspberries and much more—what a delight! Lucy Van Voorhees decided to retire: 44 years of cardiology is enough! She will miss her wonderful patients but will become a full-time farmer on her 12.5 acres. Her husband has been laid up with foot issues, her farm help quit and her remaining three horses haven’t kept the fields mowed, so she spent her summer MOWING! Lucy hopes to do a little traveling when Mark is more mobile. Otherwise, she is reading great books, cooking good food and begging for cold temperatures to get rid of the pollen! 73
Correspondent: Hester Kinnicutt Jacobs, djacobs@midrivers.com Joe Srednicki was saddened to hear of the deaths this summer of two people who had a long association with the college. “David Clark had been a good friend since we lived in Larabee as firstyears. John Anthony was my organ teacher that year. John also asked me to play at the memorial services during reunions for the last 15 years or so. Future reunions will not be the same for me without David or John.” In addition to studying the organ and doing fiber arts projects, Joe took a classical Greek course at Harvard Extension
School—the first time he has studied Greek since CC. He is surprised by how much he remembers! He has been in touch with Susan Cates, Stephanie Oppenheimer and Candace Chase. Joelle Desloovere Schon P’03 is still in Nairobi working for AkiliTV as a video editor but was looking forward to returning home to Westport, Conn., for the holidays. “Recently we were in Cannes in the south of France for MIPCOM, the media market. We took advantage of being in France to visit Paris for a few days. We visited some wonderful art museums and saw Monet’s water lilies mural. So fabulous!” Michael Farrar writes: “Here in Fritz Creek, Ala., the snow that never leaves descended in early November. For our wedding anniversary, I purchased a Toto seat-warming bidet for Claudia. I know, I’m such a hopeless romantic.” As for Hester Kinnicutt Jacobs, “We have enjoyed a year staying home in Montana. David had back surgery (second in 10 years) so it was good we did not have travel plans. We look forward to escaping the worst cold, which usually comes in January, when my son and family from Dunedin, New Zealand, and my daughter and family in Montana will join us for a week in Tahiti at a beach house. My grandchildren are 20, 18, 16, 14 and 12 and have not been together since 2015. David and I will continue on to New Zealand (sixth trip) until the end of February. I was recently elected financial officer of our local American Legion post. I am still learning about this organization, but I am impressed with what they do for veterans and teaching youth about our democratic form of government. I am in touch with Sherry Alpert ’74 regularly.”
75Correspondents: Miriam Josephson Whitehouse, mirwhitehouse@gmail.com, and Estella Johnson, estjohnson1@aol. com On May 6, 2024, on Capitol Hill, Michael King received a United States Congressional Award for Special Achievement in honor of his 35 years of commitment and service to humanitarian and artistic endeavors. Congressman John B. Larson of Connecticut presented the award. Deborah McGlauflin still appreciates her Asian studies major while taking a level-three classical Tibetan course. Liz Goldstein Newell retired as an elementary school reading specialist six years ago. Since then she has been dancing, hiking, exercising and enjoying lots of travel. Last summer she went with her brother and sister-in-law, Joan Courcey Goldstein ’74, to Compamour, Spain, for a small family reunion with cousins from Spain and France, followed by a cruise with three other friends to Venice, Croatia and Greece. Back home, Liz and Joan went to Portugal for sightseeing in Lisbon and Porto before attending Liz’s niece’s wedding in Coimbra. Most recently, Liz went on a yoga retreat with five other women to Oaxaca, Mexico. Carol Connolly writes: “After 35 years in North Carolina and 10 years in Colorado, I’m calling Twin Lakes, the Berkshires and the northwest corner of Connecticut my home. Daughter Elizabeth turned 37, son Connor (34) is married to Cayla and is a super dad to baby Mason; they live in Greenwich. Looking forward to catching up at our 50th. Please come!” Bob Gould and Christine Knowlton ’78 were married on May 18, 2024, at the KinoSaito Arts Center in Verplanck,
N.Y. Many friends and family members attended, including Eric Kaufmann ’74, Liz Lipschutz, Sally Bunting Kaufmann ’76, Ann Sneath, William (Stan) Sneath ’74, Eric Stocker, Samuel Pillsbury ’74, Barbara (BZ) Reily ’74, Sara Eisenman ’76, Anne Marie Bussmann Heiser, Stetson Heiser, Nancy Weden Shiffrin ’74 P’03, Rob Shiffrin ’74 P’03, Mark Iger, Dario Coletta, Rebecca Coletta and David Russell ’74. David Russell won the farthest-flyer award for traveling from his home in Japan! The ceremony took place in KinoSaito’s outdoor garden, followed by drinks and dinner in the center’s amazing art galleries and dancing to a great live band. Bob and Christine plan to attend Reunion and hope to see you there! Elaine Lang Cornett met up with Pam Cutler Baxter in Alexandria, Va., for lunch and made plans to celebrate at Reunion. Susan Case attended the memorial service of CC’s beloved college organist, Professor Emeritus of Music John Anthony, on Sept. 15, 2024. She was joined by Betsy Brininger, Cindy Crooker and Laurie Garden. They were happy to see Professor Emeritus Paul Althouse and his wife, Roxane Landers Althouse ’72, as well. This mini-reunion brightened an otherwise sad event. Dena Wolf Yeskoo retired last year after practicing estate and trust tax-planning and administration law for over 40 years. However, retirement was not exactly what she expected. Her husband was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in May 2022 and passed away in January 2024. “It’s been an adjustment!” Older son Andrew is a geotechnical instrumentation engineer and lives with his wife in Lowell, Mass. Younger son Tim does strategy for a company that builds clean-energy assets and lives with his wife in Saranac Lake, N.Y. Dena looks forward to seeing everyone at Reunion. Miriam Josephson Whitehouse retired during COVID, and she and her husband did some long-overdue work on the house. In 2022 she ran for a seat on the Kennebunk, Maine, select board and is currently the board chair. It keeps her (mostly) out of trouble. Elaine Lang Cornett, Tim Reinsch and Jane Thompson Reinsch had a great visit in August at Elaine’s family home in Maine. Sally Abrahms has four grandsons, and even the new grand-springer-spaniel puppy is male! So she and her husband spend a lot of time on the road. Her son lives in Newport Beach, Calif., and one daughter is in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Fortunately, another daughter and her two little boys live nearby in Boston. Sally and
her husband both travel a lot for work, so they are on perpetual babysitting standby; she feels lucky to be able to spend so much time with the kids. She still writes for national publications on baby boomers and aging (www.sallyabrahms.com). But since finishing a Columbia University journalism fellowship on 50+ housing last year, she has slowed her pace. “It is delightful!” Tim Yarboro and Lisa Goldsen Yarboro welcomed their third grandchild, compliments of youngest son Jordan (Tufts ’09) and Sarah Hargrove Yarboro ’09. Three boys: Owen (5), Henry (4) and Caleb (1). They met baby Caleb in Boston last May, when they were in New London for the 2024 CC Commencement. As a trustee emeritus, Tim escorted the keynote speaker, who happened to be his niece, Laura Coates (a CNN political analyst/ anchor). They may be biased, but they thought her speech was terrific. Look for it on YouTube. Margie Rosenbaum Bassman and husband Mitch took a Viking River Cruise in August 2024 on the Danube River, traveling from Passau, Germany, to Budapest, where they stayed an extra two days to explore. Pam Cutler Baxter came to Northern Virginia in October, and she and Margie enjoyed an hours-long lunch together. Thanks to the restaurant’s waitstaff for not kicking them out … they stayed so long!
Correspondents: Kenneth Abel, 334 West 19th St., Apt. 2-B, New York, NY 10011, kenn616@aol.com, and Susan Hazlehurst Milbrath, P.O. Box 3962, Greenwood Village, CO 80155-3962, shmilbrath@gmail. com For the past two summers, Amy Zelenetz Kornfeld, Harvey (Hank) Kornfeld and Nancy Hershatter have celebrated Hank’s birthday by sailing on the Hudson on the sloop Woody Guthrie. On Hank’s 70th birthday, the captain gave Hank the helm. Bradford Peck enjoys island living in Casco Bay, Maine. He recently traveled to Vermont for antiquing, with stops in Barton, Cabot, Newport and Craftsbury. In Craftsbury he visited with former Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee, who advised Brad on aspects of collecting baseball cards. Bill’s aunt, Annabelle Lee, pitched for Peoria, Ill., in the women’s baseball league during WWII. She taught Bill how to pitch. Bill Lee’s career stats versus the New York Yankees are 13 and 4. Brad enjoys drawing, painting and other crafts, as well as following his favorite sports teams. Last
L-R: Dan Tucker ’75, Jay Leven ’73, Mike Ridgeway ’75, Steve Brunetti ’76, Jon Draper ’75, Mark Warren ’75, Jim Low ’74 and Bill Thompson ’75 gathered on Sept. 14, 2024, to catch the ConnBowdoin men’s soccer game.
Elaine Lang Cornett ’75, Tim Reinsch ’75 and Jane Thompson Reinsch ’75 had a great visit in August at Elaine’s family home in Maine.
Elaine Lang Cornett ’75 met up with Pam Cutler Baxter ’75 in Alexandria, Va., for lunch and made plans to celebrate at Reunion.
Susan Case ’75, Betsy Brininger ’75, Cindy Crooker ’75 and Laurie Garden ’75 at the memorial service for Professor Emeritus of Music John Anthony on Sept. 15, 2024.
Amy Zelenetz Kornfeld, Harvey (Hank) Kornfeld ’76 and Nancy Hershatter ’76 celebrated Hank’s 70th birthday by sailing on the Hudson on the sloop Woody Guthrie.
John Moore ’76, Karen Dawson P’19, Carl Dawson ’76 P’19, and Nancy Bellantoni ’76 and husband Peter gathered in Cambridge, Mass.
Richard “The Buzzman” Kadzis ’76, Ken Abel ’76, Bob Zwick ’77 and Tom Kadzis ’78 at WCNI’s 50th anniversary celebration in October 2024.
September he journeyed to Gainesville, Fla., for the Miami versus Florida college football game. Ken Abel returned to CC in October during Homecoming Weekend to help celebrate WCNI’s 50th anniversary of going FM. He coordinated the event, along with Richard “The Buzzman” Kadzis and Jamie Sachs ’85 P’15. Other WCNI alumni were on hand to help make the weekend special, including former Technical Director Bob Zwick ’77, David Cruthers ’78, Tom Kadzis ’78, Dianne Grady Evans ’78 and other current radio station board members and CC alumni. Craig Barth finally retired on Oct. 31, 2024, after 38 years as a private practice clinical audiologist. He looks forward to spending more time with family, as well as reinvigorating his barbershop harmony singing with two different groups and doing substitute organist gigs and other church work. Katherine (Kacey) Jones Ratterree has lived in western North Carolina for several years. Thankfully her town was spared much of the damage of Hurricane Helene, but nearby communities were not so fortunate. Before and since the storm, she has done lots of hiking in those beautiful mountains, and she hiked two Caminos in Spain in the fall. And there was also the decadechanger birthday celebrated for the whole month of March. Four grandchildren (two in Atlanta and two in Raleigh, N.C.) keep her on the road. “Life is good!” David Katzenstein has been a lifelong chronicler of humanity throughout the farthest reaches of the world. His 49-year artistic journey through 37 countries is thoughtfully curated into Distant Journeys (Hirmer Publishers, distributed by University of Chicago Press). Drawn from an exhaustive body of work developed by Katzenstein, the 120 duotone images were taken between 1974 and 2023. After living and working in Boston for almost 50 years, John Moore lives in St. Louis, Mo., with wife Rie. He still works remotely part-time for New England Solar Hot Water. The bad news is they lost their lovable lab rescue dog, Katie, after 17 years. The good news is John can spend time in St. Louis with Martin Lammert ’77 and Charlie Cissel ’78 when they visit. He loves following the men’s soccer team via the web thanks to the links from Coach Burk. Coach Lessig would be proud! Bos Powell wishes his college chums a great new year. He lives in Colchester, Vt., with his boys, Charlie (25) and Bos (23), and things are pretty good. He checks in with the CC thinktank regarding
his fleet of Soling sailboats, four of which are in his barn and others scattered in yards about. These boats need a home. Free. Chuck Roberts remains busy as owner/founder of Wonder Book (wonderbook.com), with three brick-and-mortar used and rare bookstores in Maryland and Books by the Foot (booksbythefoot.com), as well as a three-acre warehouse with 5 million books (2.5 million online) for designers and movie/TV prop masters. He has 120+ employees. Chuck also writes a weekly blog (wonderbookblog. com), with 400 consecutive entries since 2017. He was named as having one of the Coolest Jobs by Washingtonian magazine last March. He has two sons, Chuck and Joey, and two grandsons (one more was due in December). Kevin Wade wrapped up 14 years of writing and producing the CBS drama Blue Bloods in June 2024, and the series finale aired in December. In January, his first novel, Johnny Careless, was published by MacMillan and is heartily recommended by David Greenwald, Mark Iger ’75 and James Berrien ’74! Louise (Holly) Wise P’10 has pulled up stakes from the DC area and will be more full-time in mid-coast Maine. She is happy to have buddy Lynda Batter Munro P’08 around the corner, as well as several other CC alumni up there. She is enjoying shifting her sustainability work from global to hyperlocal. After graduation from the botany department and grad school at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Georgia, Kevin Smith landed the perfect job as a researcher in the USDA Forest Service. Since the early 1980s, he’s had a great run learning how trees and woodland fungi live their lives, and he will retire early in 2025. He has stepchildren and families in Amesbury, Mass., and Glendale, Calif., while he and wife Michelle have lived in Maine for the last 30-plus years (currently in Portland). The one thing he might have done differently was to stay in closer touch with classmates and current faculty. Stay curious!
77
Correspondent: Stuart Sadick, stuart. sadick@gmail.com Andrew Chintz and Barbara Chintz rent a house in Clinton, Conn., every August–September and recently hosted another CC get-together.
78
Correspondent: Laurie Heiss, laurieheiss@gmail.com, and Susan Greenberg Gold, sbggold@gmail.com Winthrop
(Win) Morgan and spouse Ann Levin were in Antigua, Guatemala, in August 2024, assisting the government in planning and costing out a program to prevent cervical cancer in the country. We hope many of you enjoyed reunions for Class of ’74 50th high school reunions this past year. Peter Bellotti P’12, who helped organize his high school’s 50th reunion, is in regular contact with Sam Gibson and several folks from the Class of ’79—details in the next issue! Peter Hallarman and Prudence (Rindy) Regan Hallarman moved to a new home they built in The Cliffs, a community in Greenville, S.C., where they focus on active outdoor living, with hiking, golf, racket sports, fitness classes, and lots of opportunities for socializing and hosting their grown children and four grandchildren, who are all Californians. They moved 10 days before the storm hit the Asheville, N.C., area and although they lost power for a few days, their new home and property were undamaged. Sue Greenberg Gold and husband Steve took an exciting and delicious trip to Morocco, where one “Camel” rode another at sunset on the beach in Essaouira. Last fall your correspondents, Laurie Heiss and Sue Greenberg Gold, were neck-deep in new-voter registration, protecting the vote and traveling from the metro area to swing states to … well, get out the vote. We hope our March 1 deadline brings many notes in our direction!
79
Correspondent: Vicki Chesler, vachesler@ gmail.com David Fiderer writes: “Knocked one off the bucket list. Seeing the Eagles at the Sphere in Las Vegas exceeded my expectations. The most impressive aspect of the Sphere experience is the imagery that is projected on the Sphere’s interior and used to tell the stories of the songs. So when you have these mindblowing visuals combined with pristine sound and the Eagles performing their greatest hits, it was an amazing tour de force. I was joined by Michael Brettler, Steve Gutman and Brad Rost.”
Sue Greenberg Gold ’78 and husband Steve atop dromedaries in Morocco in November 2024. A Camel on a camel!
Andrew Chintz ’77 and Barbara Chintz rent a house in Clinton, Conn., every August–September and hosted a CC get-together. L-R: Steve Cohan ’78, Steve Brunetti ’76, Andy Chintz ’77, Mark Warren ’75, Andy Halsey ’77, Andrew Rawson ’78 and Andy Williams ’77.
At Red Rock Canyon, Nev. L-R: David Fiderer ’79, Brad Rost ’79, Steve Gutman ’79 and Michael Brettler ’79.
Winthrop (Win) Morgan ’78 and spouse Ann Levin in Antigua, Guatemala, in August 2024
Correspondents: Connie Gemmer, chgemmer58@gmail.com, and Lois Mendez Catlin, fabulois824@gmail. com Andrew Dreyfus married Meredith Rosenthal in June in a small ceremony at their home in Brookline, Mass. Meredith is a professor of health economics at Harvard University. Andrew stepped down as CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts in 2022 and now serves on a number of public, private and not-for-profit boards; mentors young executives; and teaches a class at the Harvard School of Public Health. Immediately upon graduating from CC, Barb Priest Focht volunteered at an orphanage in Yorkshire, England. She then taught for five years, in Connecticut, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Virginia, followed by a year at the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College. Next, medical school in Philadelphia and a residency program in pediatrics in California. The Air Force had given her a scholarship for medical school, so she then owed them three years as a pediatrician: two years were in Turkey and a year at Hanscom Air Force Base, in Massachusetts. Barb has been working as a pediatrician in Massachusetts for 30 years, starting her private practice (Kids on the Common Pediatrics) in Grafton 14 years ago. She teaches and mentors medical students and pediatric residents from UMass Medical School and has done volunteer medical trips to the Dominican Republic for the past 20 years. Connie Smith Gemmer P’10 and Fred Gemmer P’10 celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary on Thanksgiving, and they welcomed their sixth and seventh grandchildren. Their four kids all live in the Portland, Maine,
area, so they regularly babysit for a crowd. Fred’s finally staring at retirement (he’s a nurse), but the clinic where he works requests he remain available when they need extra help (which is always). Connie’s retirement job includes making slipcovers and other home decor, and she gardens for a few families. Patty O’Leary Helsingius still lives in rural northern Vermont and volunteers with her husband for the local emergency medical response team. Patty planned a get-together with Holly Burnet Mikula and Martha Brest in Boston. She wishes us all good health and a peaceful new year. Donna Reid Holman and husband Jay sold their home of 30 years in Massachusetts and moved full-time to the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire, where she grew up. They’re living their best life in a lakeside community with lots of opportunities for hiking, boating, volunteering, reconnecting with friends and walking to an ice cream shop from home! Kathy Davis Guay and husband Paul visited Donna from their new home in Maine. In the past year, Donna and her husband worked on their bucket list by traveling to Ireland, England, France, Portugal, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona—with many more places on their list. Their daughter, an elementary school teacher in the Boston area, is engaged to be married this July; their son, an engineer in Colorado, is engaged to be married in August! Donna hopes to reconnect with many of you on Reunion weekend. She wishes everyone peace and tranquility in the year ahead. Ginny Houston Lima and her husband have been traveling a lot. Although retired from teaching Spanish, she found herself in Spain three times in 2024: Bilbao with students, Sevilla with sisters and Cadiz with hus-
band Joseph. The family drove to and from Prince Edward Island in August, and in November she and Joseph spent 12 days in Sicily, where they discovered a piece of heaven. Happily, Susan Gorvine Nelson is retiring from the law and has relocated to New Hampshire to join her significant other. She heads to New Orleans to escape winter and hopes to finally do more writing. Her kids are in and near Boston, so she’s there often and looks forward to seeing how retirement feels! Nancy Neiditz-Pinillos is still a pediatric physical therapist, practicing the Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel Method. She traveled to Athens to give a two-day workshop to pediatric physical therapists on the unique treatment of children with cerebral palsy, post-selective percutaneous myofascial lengthening (SPML) procedure. Nancy has been collaborating with the inventor, Dr. Roy Nuzzo, on a highly specialized and noninvasive procedure to improve range of motion in children struck with the debilitating effects of spasticity in the legs. Only five orthopedic surgeons in the world perform this technique. She has a new, less aggressive way of working with this population and aiding them with locomotion, working with many children from around the world fortunate to receive this treatment. Nancy employs and teaches another method for infants who have torticollis, called Torticollis, Fix It at Home. In 2023, she presented her electronic posture at the International Summit on Health and Safety in Copenhagen. Annie-B Parson choreographed Kim Deal’s video for Deal’s new solo album, Nobody Loves You More, and St. Vincent’s video for her album All Born Screaming. She also made a dance in collaboration with Arlene Shechet at
Storm King titled “Girl Group,” and she is choreographing Elektra in London’s West End. She co-edited a book on dance history, Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study, and her book The Choreography of Everyday Life was published last year by Verso Press. Rick Semiatin has enjoyed retirement for the past two years after a long career at American University as a professor. He’s been catching up on great novels, which beats dull academic journals. Rick also travels, sees friends and family, eats healthy, walks a ton and exercises, and is doing some creative writing. Anne Verplanck and Prescott (Scott) Hafner are heading up our Reunion Committee, joined by Lois Mendez Catlin, Elizabeth (Libby) Orzack Friedman, Denise Wheeless and Timothy Dempsey. We look at our 45th Reunion as a rebuilding moment because we didn’t have a 40th and would love to have a record number of ’80ers reCONNect! Please send us your ideas for events and participation. We look forward to seeing many of you at Reunion.
83
Correspondent: Claudia Gould Tielking, claudiatielking10@ gmail.com George (Eric) Brunstad is in his 35th year of teaching at Yale Law School while also practicing law. His youngest child graduated from law school last year, so his three kids are now finished with their education and well into their own careers. Still traveling and wondering what the next adventure might be, Eric hopes everyone is well! Doug Tulin took early retirement and moved back home near Whiteface Mountain, N.Y., to ski and golf and hike with his dog, Aspen, as much as she wants. Doug takes on a few marketing and copywriting projects but enjoys the good life in the Adirondacks and keeps trying to get Nigel Bentley to come up and ski. Erica Van Brimer Goldfarb is happily enjoying retirement and finding plenty to do. Lots of trips to Great Diamond Island, Maine, where they now have a second home. Activities include chasing their two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels around, trying to keep houseplants alive, making artists’ books, pickleball (of course), a trip to Japan, and multiple trips to the Hudson Valley, where their two grandkids live. Erica gets together with Wendy Buck Brown frequently, who
also lives in Charlottesville, Va. Married since 1986, William Field semiretired last summer after spending the past 11 years running the undergraduate political science program at Rutgers University. Overseeing a program that serves more than 2,000 unique students each semester is stressful, and his health suffered somewhat. While not fully retired, he enjoys himself a lot more working with students to explore the impact of religion and religious belief on the American political system and the rule of law. One daughter is head of outpatient psychotherapy at Penn Medicine. The other is an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, doing antitrust work. William stays in touch with classmates Julia Strauss and Judith Krigman. Judith Krigman lives in Brandon, Fla.; she has finished working as a senior research associate for the Florida Stroke Registry, where she wrote, created graphics and managed the website. She is pursuing an RN degree but still does art, having switched to digital. Son Martin is a technical sergeant in the Air Force stationed in Colorado Springs, Colo. He and his wife, Martha, have two cats. Judith’s younger son, Samuel, received a kidney transplant—a live donation from a stranger—an amazing woman! Samuel works as a paralegal, and he and wife Brittany have two cats and two dogs. Judith is proud that her greatest accomplishment was raising two fine young men. Laurie Reynolds Rardin P’17 is celebrating the retirement of husband Jared (Jed) Rardin ’85 P’17 from the ministry in April after 22 years with his congregation at South Congregational Church in Concord, N.H., and 30+ years overall. A group of dear CC friends gathered on April 14, 2024, to help him celebrate his incredible ministry and spend time with friends and family, including Jill Baker, Alison Ogg Martin, David Tyler ’85, Brynne Rardin ’17, Stephen Murray ’99 and Hannah Schramm Murray ’99. Laurie continues to work in environmental public health and has been with the state of New Hampshire for the last three years, focusing on children’s environmental health. Jared stays busy pursuing interests and volunteer work, along with doing lots of exercise to keep his Parkinson’s at bay.
A family trip to Bonaire last May prompted Laurie and younger daughter Marta to study hard and fulfill all requirements to become open-water scuba divers, joining daughter Brynne and diving the amazing reefs there. Brynne is a dive master and in grad school at American University, in her second year of a three-year MFA program in wildlife filmmaking. 84
Camel field hockey teammates Charlene Toal Best, Caroline Shepard Bolick P’15, Jane McKee Douglas P’15, Paula Trearchis McGeady and Kathryn Dornan Smith gathered in Providence, R.I., to see the hilarious and heartwarming touring Broadway show Shucked
ALUMNI INSIGHTS
A message from your Alumni Association Board President Chip Clothier ’79 P’10
Fellow Alumni,
I’ve been afforded the opportunity, once again, to share with you a message highlighting news that is of particular importance to Connecticut College Alumni.
Activity on campus
I was on campus in January and the first phase of the student walkway on Cro Boulevard has been completed. Stretching in front of Plant down to Smith/ Burdick, this student pedestrian walkway has been in the works since John Zeiler ’74 introduced the idea in a paper when he was a student. Cars now will drive around the outer perimeter of campus, with a new parking lot near Zachs Hillel House to handle the displaced cars from Cro Boulevard. The second phase, going from Smith/ Burdick to the Complex, begins this spring. In addition, the renovation of Crozier-Williams is well underway and expected to be completed this spring as well.
Reunion 2025
The College is gearing up to celebrate the Reunions of the 0s and 5s on May 30-June 1. There is a great deal of excitement planning for this event and members of those classes are encouraged to join us for a weekend of activities. These alumni were unable to gather five years ago due to the pandemic, so their welcome back to campus is overdue.
Supporting Conn with your gifts
The significance of giving to Conn can never be overstated, as donations play a pivotal role in enhancing the institution’s ability to provide a high-quality education, support its students and maintain its facilities. You have heard many times that tuition never covers the full cost of a student’s education. When we were students, alumni were supporting us through their gifts; it is our turn to support today’s students. Please make a gift to Conn today.
How do I stay up to date?
The College has several digital ways to provide information about alumni. Keep checking the calendar of events in the Alumni section of the College’s website at conncoll.edu/alumni and make sure you are following these channels on social media:
If you have any questions, please contact me at alumnipresident@conncollege.edu
Doug Tulin ’83 and his dog, Aspen
85
Correspondent: Sue Brandes Hilger, sue.hilger.1@gmail.com No updates to report for this issue. Got news? Submit your info using https://forms.gle/KHS1CEweEuixK3Fr5. Also, you can find classmates on Facebook in the group “Connecticut College Class of 1985.” Hope to see you at Reunion weekend!
87
Correspondent: Jenifer Kahn Bakkala, JKBBlue@gmail.com, 51 Wesson Terrace, Northborough, MA 01532, 508523-8930 Michael Schadick finished 24 years as the rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Mich., in June 2024. He and wife Susan moved to Navarre, Fla., to escape the harsh Michigan winters. He now serves as the rabbi at Temple Beth Shalom in Fort Walton Beach, a congregation he served as a rabbinic student 30 years ago. Margot Hartley MacArthur joined her mother, Joanne (Jodi) Williams Hartley ’54, P’87, at her 70th CC Reunion last June. “She has been very involved and has done her Class Notes for several decades. We had a great day; we each told sto-
ries about our time at Conn that the other hadn’t heard! How lucky am I?” Marilyn (Lynn) Heiman Newman and husband George Newman ’85 retired in 2022 to watch their grandchildren (future CC Classes of 2044 and 2046)! Besides chasing after the kids, they enjoy spending time with Joan Edwards. Last fall, Lynn and Joan celebrated the 40th anniversary of their first meeting as first-year roommates in Knowlton. Over the summer, Lynn’s younger daughter got married at the Museum of Science in Boston, with several CC alums in attendance. Lisey Good lives with her husband, Lenny Snyderman, and two rescue dogs on the South Shore of Boston. She still does interior design work for a few long-term clients via Good Interiors but primarily works in development, marketing and fundraising for three animal charities, including one based in Washington, DC. Lisey enjoys seeing New London from the train en route to DC! She is in frequent touch with Diana Zimmerman Mahaney and Anna (Kasia) Wandycz and had dinner with Steve Lane. In early November Ruth Taylor Kiakidis ’88 visited Jill Perlman Pienkos in Newington, Conn. Ruth lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, Michael Kiakidis ’88, and their son, Stefanos. Ruth arrived just in time to go with Jill and her husband, Henry, to a 60th birthday party for Renee Darby at Primavera Restaurant in North Salem, N.Y. Elaine Brenner, Lisa Prezioso Ultan P’17, Bill Ultan ’86 P’17 and Marla Reiser Aboulafia ’88 were also in attendance.
88
Deborah Carr was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. She is an A&S Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Innovation in Social Science at Boston University.
89
Correspondent: Deb Dorman Hay, camel89news@gmail.com Congratulations to Abayomi Ajaiyeoba Whint: “I am overjoyed to share my recent milestone: being elected civil court judge in Brooklyn! Reflecting on my journey, I am filled with immense Camel pride, gratitude for my alma mater and excitement to serve my community in this new capacity. This journey has been one of perseverance, purpose and passion, paving the way for me to uphold justice and serve with integrity. ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ –Martin Luther King Jr.” Deb Schachter is the proud co-author of Body Image Inside Out, published in October by Hachette Book Group. She is so appreciative of the sup-
port of Jamie Forbes, Alison Knocke Forbes and Jonathan Schwarz. Jonathan Small’s book, Write About Now: Successful Authors on Overcoming Obstacles, Finding Inspiration and the Birth of Their Careers, was published last summer. It is a curation of surprising, insightful and heartwarming conversations with a mind-boggling list of the best of the best in journalism, fiction, nonfiction, illustration and more—including our own David Grann Louise Mitinger P’28 and husband are the proud parents of a Camel in the Class of 2028. “Our daughter’s dispatches from campus tell of a thriving community of learners who are enjoying the benefits of a small liberal arts college in a beautiful setting. The warm reception from the mighty Class of ’89 helped her make the decision to attend Conn. I’m reminded of how my experiences at Conn have shaped my career as a teacher of English-language learners in public schools in Pittsburgh. My students come from a variety of countries, language backgrounds and educational experiences. Please get in touch with me the next time you are in Pittsburgh, and our daughter the next time you are in New London.” After decades of living less than two miles apart, Deb Dorman Hay and Daniel Ruff finally met in October at a blood drive organized by Dan.
90
Correspondent: Kristin Lofblad Sullivan, kls.sullivan@gmail.com Rob Anker writes: “Since moving to northwest Montana in 2017, my wife, Jen, and I have become very close friends with Melissa Nutant Hartman and her husband, Dave. Jen and Melissa traveled to London together to enjoy the theater, shop along Oxford Street and sip high tea. I spend my time with my four horses and train and compete in three-day eventing with my thoroughbred. I earned several ribbons this season, including Reserve Champion at the Spokane Horse Trials. When I am not working with horses, you will find me in the mountains, either on my gravel bike or skiing.” Rob Chamberlain writes: “Big changes over here! After 26 years in Massachusetts, my wife and I decided it was time to mix things up. We sold our big old home and downsized to a new condo in Brooklyn to be closer to our boys and my wife’s family. These days we enjoy a striking contrast, splitting our time between the energy of Brooklyn and the tranquility of Vermont’s Upper Valley. One day it is all city noise and bustling streets; the next, it’s peaceful mornings in the woods, with only the sound of our resident owls. It’s a balance we feel incredibly fortunate to have. I’ve been consulting in data and analytics for years, so thankfully that part of life hasn’t had to change much. If you’re ever in the area—whether in the
Camel field hockey teammates got Shucked in Providence, R.I. L-R: Caroline Shepard Bolick ’84 P’15, Paula Trearchis McGeady ’84, Kathryn Dornan Smith ’84, Charlene Toal Best ’84, Jane McKee Douglas ’84 P’15.
Renee Darby ’87, celebrated her 60th birthday in North Salem, N.Y., with many CC alumni in attendance: Elaine Brenner ’87, Renee Darby ’87, Bill Ultan ’86, Marla Reiser Aboulafia ’88, Ruth Taylor Kiakidis ’88, Lisa Prezioso Ultan ’87 and Jill Perlman Pienkos ’87.
Camels gathered to celebrate Jared (Jed) Rardin ’85 P’17, who retired from the ministry in April after 22 years with his congregation at South Congregational Church in Concord, N.H., and 30+ years overall. L-R: Jill Baker ’83, Alison Ogg Martin ’83, Jed Rardin ’85 P’17, Laurie Reynolds Rardin ’83 P’17, David Tyler ’85, Brynne Rardin ’17, Stephen Murray ’99 and Hannah Schramm Murray ’99.
Margot Hartley MacArthur ’87 and her mother, Joanne (Jodi) Williams Hartley ’54 P’87, at Jodi’s 70th CC reunion.
The Boston CC holiday party had small but mighty representation from the class of 1990! L-R: Kristin Lofblad Sullivan ’90, Karen Mossman Salvato ’90, Alicia Dieni Furgueson ’90 P’21’24 and Kirsten Ward ’90.
Jill Perlman Pienkos ’87 and Renee Darby ’87 during a visit, holding a photo of themselves in their college days.
Rob Anker ’90 on his horse Stag, 2024
Because it’s fun …
Tim Stevens ’03 looks back on Conn’s yesteryears with a student-created book of funnies from the 1930s.
One night, I was searching eBay for random bits of Connecticut College memorabilia—as you do. Or maybe only I do, but who doesn’t long for a Camel pennant from 1982 or a Conn bottle opener from when George H.W. Bush was in office? My hunt led me to Because It’s Fun, a 1930s self-published book of comic strips written, drawn and marketed by Ninki Hart, Janie (Jane) Guilford and Pokey (Elizabeth) Hadley, all alums from the Class of 1939. As CC Magazine’s resident comic book scholar— it’s a thing, trust me—I snapped it right up.
Sadly, none of these pioneering CC comic creators are with us any longer, having passed in 1969, 2000 and 1992, respectively. However, their jokes and observations live on in their book. At first glance, Guilford’s linework is simple, presenting the avatars of her peers in complete shapes and undetailed features. Spend a moment or two looking at it, though, and the depth reveals itself. No two people look alike. In only three or four lines, she can conjure a space that’s absolutely recognizable as a dorm room or post office. And, best of all, there’s sly visual jokes throughout like half hidden smirks on faces or peers dancing goofily in dorm room halls.
FISH NIGHT:
EXAM. PERIOD:
Who among us hasn’t arrived to our exams only to realize that, perhaps, we could’ve poured a little more effort into our studies? Trick question, of course! A modern Conn student always does all their work on time. Often even earlier than requested. Those Silent Generation women were out of control compared to today’s diligent scholars.
Hart’s one-line captions are an excellent complement. Clever and dry, they don’t beg for laughs so much as they nudge with a “come on, try and deny it” elbow. (Hadley served as the business manager). Things change over the course of nearly 90 years, for sure. And yet, looking through Because It’s Fun one can’t help but dwell on the oft-attributed to Mark Twain axiom, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
BULL SESSION: As a former psych major, I, too, spent no small amount of time grousing to my friends about the ins and outs of Freud. And yes, on occasion, we also would discuss intimate relationships. Some of the elements that especially stick out to me, though, are the presence of other colleges’ paraphernalia on the walls, likely repping their beaus’ institutions of choice. I’m glad to note that today at Conn—even more than when I lived on campus—Camels are more likely to fly their own college’s memorabilia than that Ivy League stuff.
ROOM DRAWING: Another “some things never change” is apparently the dorm lottery. Then, as now, it has the capacity to delight and devastate.
Who would dream of skipping the tasty vittles at the dining hall on Fish Night—or any other night for that matter? This is one I’m sure no current students can relate to. And certainly would never say on Yik Yak.
city or the woods—reach out! We’d love to catch up.” Frances Griffin Phillips reports from Portland, Ore., where she has lived for the past 14 years with her husband (who is from Portland) and three children, with her mother-in-law nearby. Her older two are both at Bates College (senior and sophomore), and she expects her youngest to head east for college too. “I just finished a mini college-visiting trip with my youngest, Annie (a high school junior), and got to grab coffee with Kristin Kissell Miller ’89. It was super fun to visit after not seeing her in person since perhaps 1997. I hope to make Reunion, but it might conflict with my son’s college graduation.” Priorities, Francie! We knew you first. Kristin Lofblad Sullivan is not going down without a fight! Last fall, she participated in her first half-marathon. While she regularly runs shorter races, she had not been in the distance-running game since she did a few Boston Marathons back in the 1990s. “The first 12 miles were awesome!” Here’s to the final mile, KLS. Dana Pierce is in his 22nd year at the Bishop’s School in La Jolla, Calif. His son, Jack, a senior at the school, is being recruited to play football at Division III schools from Washington to Pennsylvania. Good luck, Jack! Kirsten Ward moved back to Boston from Southern California: “I miss the California weather, but my family is in Beantown, so here I am getting ready for winter again! If you’re in the Boston area, please reach out.”
—
with one another, sharing stories old and new of Shannon and all the shenanigans. She made everyone feel special through a knowing look, her infectious laugh and a smile that could light up the room. The impact she had on those who love her will continue to light up our world. She will be missed. A special thank you to Malia Scott Stanley, Ariel Apte Carter, Lisa Herren Foster and Amy Loi (Mei Lan) Low for bringing us all together. Other Camels included Richard Hannah, Craig Low, Christopher Stanley ’89, Gregg Levinson, Lauren Carr Larsen, Richard Mack, Steven Taylor and Debo Adegbile
93
Correspondent: Michael Carson, mike. carson@marriott.com Adam Green and David Brauner had a great time in and around Boston on a mid-July day. Adam will one day take David up on his invitation to Chicago!
94
The first 12 miles were awesome!
KRISTIN LOFBLAD SULLIVAN ’90 ON RUNNING HER FIRST HALF-MARATHON
Anne-Marie Lott Lizarralde’s husband, Professor Manuel Lizarralde, had a mini-reunion with his former student, Micah Lewis ’01. Micah is one of the few summer students who went into the field with Manuel in Venezuela before it became too unstable. They stayed with the Bari, an indigenous group that Manuel studied. Micah was even given a Bari name: Micando, which translates roughly to “left-hand river crab man.” Shannon Gregory Carbon unexpectedly passed away in October 2023, a devastating loss to all who knew and loved her. Camels gathered on Martha’s Vineyard this past September to celebrate her extraordinary life and reconnect
Correspondent: Daniella Garran, dkgarran@gmail.com Jennifer Jablons Marlborough and her family went to the Olympics in Paris and Lyon last summer. They saw the men’s semifinals, women’s semifinals and women’s finals in soccer. They saw the American women twice and watched them win the gold medal! They also saw women’s breakdancing: “We didn’t realize that event would make the news around the world!” They visited the Netherlands and various parts of England afterward. In October, former Conn rowing teammates Igor Serov, Jessica Archibald ’95, Sarah Sansom Williams ’96 and Daniella Defilippo Garran met up at Head of the Charles in Boston, where they cheered on Clayton Kunz, who placed second in his division with his rowing club, Marin Rowing Association. They also crossed paths with Christopher Russell ’93 P’26, who was there to watch his son, Parker Russell ’26, row in the men’s coxed four.
98
Christina Noe Martin, Clifford Gibbons and Beth Darby, neighbors in Knowlton their sophomore year, gathered for a one-night reunion at Assembly Row in Somerville, Mass. It felt like no time had passed and it was great to catch up. Credit to Beth for getting them together while she was up north!
Camels gathered on Martha’s Vineyard in September 2024 to celebrate the extraordinary life of Shannon Gregory Carbon ’91, who passed away in October 2023, and to reconnect with one another. Back row (L-R): Richard Hannah ’91, Craig Low ’91, Christopher Stanley ’89, Malia Scott Stanley ’91, Gregg Levinson ’91, Lauren Carr Larsen ’91, Richard Mack ’91, Steven Taylor ’91, Debo Adegbile ’91. Front row (L-R): Amy Loi (Mei Lan) Low ’91, Ariel Apte Carter ’91, Lisa Herren Foster ’91.
Christina Noe Martin ’98, Cliff Gibbons ’98 and Beth Darby ’98, all neighbors in Knowlton their sophomore year, gathered for a onenight reunion at Assembly Row in Somerville, Mass.
Lily Hinkle ’17 and Michael Peck were married at Mystic Seaport Museum Lighthouse.
Amy Rubinger ’10 married John Rode ’09 in August 2024.
Jillian Sandler Minicucci ’13 married Andrew Minicucci in May 2024 and was joined by fellow Camels Katherine Zink Schoenhardt ’13, Asa Welty ’13, Caleb Garza ’13, Jourdan Perez ’12 and Andrew Duarte ’13.
Camels gathered for the wedding of Nicole Adam ’16. L-R: Russell Adam ’19, Isabella Franz ’17, Ariana Beers ’16, Heather Rochford ’15, Nicole Adam ’16, Amy Klopp ’15, Caroline Leonard ’16, Emily Winter ’16, Ryan Dean ’16, Samuel McKewon ’16.
Bob Gould ’75 and Christine Knowlton ’78 were married on May 18, 2024, at the KinoSaito Arts Center in Verplanck, N.Y. Front row (L-R): Bob and Christine. Back row (L-R): Eric Kaufmann ’74, Elizabeth (Liz) Lipschutz, Sally Bunting Kaufmann ’76, Ann Sneath, William (Stan) Sneath ’74, Eric Stocker, Samuel Pillsbury ’74, Barbara (BZ) Reily ’74, Sara Eisenman ’76, Anne Marie Bussmann Heiser ’75, Stetson Heiser ’75, Nancy Weden Shiffrin ’74 P’03, Rob Shiffrin ’74 P’03, Mark Iger ’75, Dario Coletta ’75, Rebecca Coletta, David Russell ’74.
Sarah Shear Eames ’09 married Ryan Eames on Aug. 3, 2024, at Chatham Bars Inn, Chatham, Mass. Camels Christine Wilson ’08, Nat Taylor ’09, Sarah Allen Neidhardt ’09 and Kyle Neidhardt ’08 joined to celebrate.
Amanda Yacos ’18 and Conor Quilty ’15 tied the knot on June 1, 2024, in Nantucket, Mass.
01
Professor Manuel Lizarralde
had a mini-reunion with his former student Micah Lewis. Micah is one of the few summer students who went into the field with Manuel in Venezuela before it became too unstable. They stayed with the Bari, an indigenous group that Manuel studied. Micah was even given a Bari name: Micando, which translates roughly to “left-hand river crab man.”
02
06
Correspondent: Julia Jacobson, julia.jacobson@gmail.com Jane Ballerini has been distinguished as one of 2025’s Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, making this the fifth year in a row she has earned this prestigious recognition. Jane was recognized for banking and finance law, as well as real estate law in New Haven, Conn. Katherine Wyly also made that list for her work in insurance coverage; she is also involved with legal aid programs including The Pro Bono Project, with an interest in improving access to justice in the New Orleans area. Her firm, Phelps Dunbar, elected eight lawyers to one of its largest counsel classes to date, including Katherine.
It also garnered honorable mention at WildDogs International Screendance Festival (Calgary, Canada) and Bordeaux Shorts Biennale (France). Edward (Ted) Adams was awarded the New England Home 5 Under 40 Award for 2024. This annual award spotlights emerging leaders in New England’s residential design industry. He is currently a principal and partner at Wagner Hodgson Landscape Architecture and is honored to be recognized for his work in landscape architecture.
09
07
Correspondent: Whitney Longworth, whitney.longworth@gmail.com Emma Haritos Peterson is proud to announce she has been named partner at the law firm of Chisholm Chisholm & Kilpatrick. Emma has devoted her career at CCK to representing disabled U.S. military veterans and their families before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Two Camels, Janet Blackwell Bent ’59 and Karoline (Karrie) Martin Kirchner, met in the wild through their mutual love of gardening. Karrie appreciates Janet’s garden and often admires the way Janet’s gardening style complements the natural attributes of the landscape—plus Miss Janet chooses native plantings to promote ecosystem well-being. Claudia Bachmann-Bouchard was selected nationwide to attend the 2024 On the Farm STEM Experience, in Louisville, Ky., in July 2024. Sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Foundation, Science Through the Lens of Agriculture, On the Farm STEM was an expenses-paid professional development and immersive learning program for science educators. The experience showcased food, agriculture and beef production as meaningful context for science teaching and learning to inspire today’s students, our next generation of scientists and citizens, to take action and feel empowered to use food and agriculture to improve society.
04
Correspondent: Nora Mirick Guerrera, noramguerrera@gmail.com Sarah Huntington was married in Ireland on Aug. 8, 2023. She lives in Bridgeport, Conn., with her husband and pup, Iggy. She teaches high school English at Fairfield Ludlowe High School and is an adjunct professor at Fairfield University. She also teaches yoga and meditation in the surrounding areas of New York and Connecticut. Jue (Jeff) Wang and Dave Simpson reunited on the summit of Camel’s Hump in the Green Mountains last fall.
08
Sarah Shear Eames married Ryan Eames on Aug. 3, 2024, at Chatham Bars Inn, in Chatham, Mass. Camels Christine Wilson ’08, Nathaniel (Nat) Taylor, Sarah Allen Neidhardt and Kyle Neidhardt ’08 joined to celebrate!
10
Correspondent: Grace Astrove, gca1223@gmail.com Amy Rubinger married John Rode ’09 in August 2024.
13
Jillian Sandler married Andrew Minicucci in May 2024 and were joined by fellow Camels Katherine Zink Schoenhardt, Asa Welty, Caleb Garza, Jourdan Perez ’12 and Andrew Duarte Samantha Shay and Quinn Menchetti welcomed baby boy Francis David Shay Menchetti on Aug. 21, 2024. Samantha is a social worker and Quinn is a teacher in Chicago, Ill.
15
Jesse Edwards is engaged to Emma Burbank and they are getting married in the fall of 2025.
The first dance film collaboration by Alana Waksman and Jacqueline Cousineau screened in numerous dance film festivals last year. Sameness: Magnificence is an exploration of one woman in two worlds, and of how the push and pull of those worlds allow her (and us) to come to terms with what is inside of us. It is also an ode to the Salinas Valley and its hills—an homage to the Central Coast of California, where Jacqueline grew up. Sameness: Magnificence was part of the 2024 official selection for the Portland Dance Film Festival, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, Dance On Screen FilmFestival (Austria), Moving Body Festival (Varna, Bulgaria), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (Boulder, Colo.), International Dance Film Festival New Orleans, Wicklow ScreenDance Laboratory (Ireland), Corposensibile (Italy), ScreenDance Festival (Stockholm, Sweden) and Frame x Frame Film Festival (Houston, Tex.).
16
Camels gathered for Nicole Adam’s wedding. Those in attendance included Russell Adam ’19, Isabella Franz ’17, Ariana Beers, Heather Rochford ’15, Amy Klopp ’15, Caroline Leonard, Emily Winter, Ryan Dean and Samuel McKewon.
17
Lily Hinkle married Michael Peck on Sept. 7, 2024, at Mystic Seaport Museum, Conn. She has been living and working in Washington, DC, but plans to settle in Connecticut. Family and friends came from all over to celebrate, including Conn classmates Derrick Newton and Madeleine Dickey ’18.
18
Amanda Yacos and Conor Quilty ’15 tied the knot on June 1, 2024, in Nantucket, Mass. Berchem Moses welcomed Andrew Stephens as the firm’s newest associate.
Ted Adams ’08 received the New England Home 5 Under 40 Award for 2024. This annual award spotlights emerging leaders in New England’s residential design industry.
Claudia Bachmann-Bouchard ’02 was selected nationwide to attend the 2024 On the Farm STEM Experience, sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Foundation, in Louisville, Ky., in July 2024.
Samantha Shay ’13 and Quinn Menchetti ’13 with baby Francis and their dog, Scrapple
Professor Manuel Lizarralde had a mini-reunion in 2024 with his former student Micah Lewis ’01.
Jue (Jeff) Wang ’04 and Dave Simpson ’04 reunited on the summit of Camel’s Hump in the Green Mountains, Vt., this fall.
1940s
Jane Delaplane Robinson ’47 died September 3, 2024
Patricia Manning Muller ’49 died August 7, 2024
Elizabeth Brainard Sandwick ’49 P’73 ’76 GP’06 died September 20, 2024
1950s
Barbara Long Savage ’50 died November 12, 2024
Alison Porritt Wilson ’50 died August 12, 2024
Nancy Crouch Baker ’53 died June 18, 2024
Joan Graebe Flint ’53 died November 15, 2024
Freddy Lou Rosenstock Leventhal ’53 died September 1, 2023
Jane Pearlstine Meyerson ’53 died August 24, 2024
Jeanne Garrett Miller ’53 P’84 died May 26, 2024
Celia Cohen Stark ’53 died August 16, 2024
Barbara Blanchard ’54 died October 19, 2024
Regina Tate ’54 died April 9, 2024
Dorothy Beek Kinzie ’55 died November 19, 2024
Katherine Lyon Mell ’55 died October 21, 2024
Joyce Fletcher Keith ’56 died February 5, 2019
Judith Missel Sandler ’56 died August 16, 2024
Gyneth Harris Shires ’57 P’86 died August 13, 2024
Elisabeth Segal Adelman ’58 died May 2, 2024
Joan Waxgiser Goodstein ’58 died November 20, 2024
Susan Satz Kaplan ’58 died October 27, 2024
Mildred Schmidtman Kendall ’58 died September 16, 2024
Barbara Phillips Kurtz ’58 died December 20, 2022
Rae Lunnie ’58 died September 23, 2022
Sydney Wrightson Tibbetts ’58 died March 17, 2023
Susan Borkow Ulin ’58 died September 15, 2024
Janet Blackwell Bent ’59 died September 16, 2024
Sara Flannery Hardon ’59 died September 1, 2024
1960s
Eleanor McPeck ’60 died October 18, 2024
Sylvia Wood Urlage ’60 died August 5, 2024
Lynda Wieland Kramer ’62 died August 23, 2024
Patricia Peck Tooley ’62 died September 13, 2024
Evelyn Ortmann Dennerll ’63 died October 28, 2024
Janet Harris Kamp ’63 died September 25, 2024
Alice Towill Petizon ’65 died October 3, 2024
Patricia Weil Sugiuchi ’65 P’92 died August 9, 2023
Ann Gollan Morrow ’66 died November 12, 2024
Janet Stein Romero ’66 died July 9, 2024
Elizabeth Leach Welch ’66 P’95 died October 30, 2024
Janice Rising Yetke ’66 died August 16, 2024
Deborah Hastings ’68 died July 17, 2024
Elizabeth Butkus ’69 died November 9, 2024
Deaths as reported to CC between 8/9/2024 and 12/11/2024
1970s
In Memoriam
Gretchen Liddle Abernathy ’71 died November 9, 2024
Donna Piazza Lofgren ’71 died October 14, 2024
Peter Newlin ’72 died October 22, 2024
Francis Tyburski MA’72 died October 12, 2024
Ann Bensinger ’73 died November 4, 2024
Peter Carlson ’75 died August 14, 2024
Joanna Miller Jacobus ’75 died August 10, 2024
Richard Kirkpatrick ’75 died May 30, 2022
Patricia Mackey Schach von Wittenau ’76 died October 8, 2024
1980s
Fleur Hahne-Lawrence ’80 died September 3, 2024
George Miller ’80 died August 21, 2024
Laura Tudisco ’80 died November 14, 2021
Christopher Gernhard ’81 died September 20, 2024
Mara Barker ’87 died September 27, 2024
Janis Ingham MAT’87 died September 6, 2024
Lorraine Lorenze ’89 died October 8, 2024
1990s
Shannon Gregory Carbon ’91 died October 10, 2023
Amy Cook-Wright ’92 P’22 died November 22, 2024
Carol Dailey Fabbri ’92 died September 19, 2024
Kristin Page ’96 died September 5, 2024
2010s
Jocelyn Kratzert ’15 died October 8, 2024
Faculty and Staff
Claire Gaudiani ’66, former president, died October 16, 2024
Donna Scott, recently retired bursar, died December 1, 2024
Jason Askri ’26
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Jason Askri ’26, of Brooklyn, New York, on Oct. 28, 2024. Askri was a junior with a passion for science, languages and ecology, known for his kindness and dedication to community. He was double majoring in biology and English, with a concentration in ecology. He planned to pursue a career as a wildlife veterinarian, specializing in conservation efforts to safeguard endangered species. This past summer, Askri was an intern at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he compiled a comprehensive green sea turtle photo identification catalog. At Conn, he was a student adviser/student adviser coordinator; vice president of the Pre-Health Club, which organizes blood drives; founder and co-chair of the Middle Eastern/North African Alliance; a driver for the Holleran Center for Community Action; and an animal care intern at the Beardsley Zoo. Among his achievements was the Henrietta O. Rogers ’28 Academy of American Poets Prize. He touched many lives and left an indelible mark on all who had the pleasure to know him.
Former President Claire Gaudiani ’66 Dies at 79
Gaudiani served as Connecticut College’s president from 1988 to 2001.
Claire L. Gaudiani ’66, a noted scholar of the history and economics of philanthropy who served as Connecticut College’s eighth president— and first alumna president—died Oct. 16 at the age of 79.
One of the country’s leading experts in philanthropy and fundraising, Gaudiani earned her bachelor’s degree in French literature from Conn in 1966 and her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Indiana University. She was a highly regarded teacher and scholar throughout her life, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and received distinguished teaching awards from Indiana University, Purdue University and New York University.
She was the author of scholarly books on 17th century French literature, on foreign language pedagogy and on the management of foreign language departments at the university level, and was a frequent speaker on topics related to education, philanthropy, ethics and the role of colleges in civil society.
During Gaudiani’s tenure as president from 1988 to 2001, the College quintupled its endowment and strengthened its national reputation, and its applications for admission rose significantly. Gaudiani helped secure endowments for 26 endowed professorships and three endowed directorships, oversaw the establishment of four innovative interdisciplinary academic centers and
completed $60 million in new construction and building renovations, including the F.W. Olin Science Center. In her honor, the Claire Gaudiani ’66 Prize for Excellence in the Senior Integrative Project is awarded annually at Commencement to the student with the best senior integrative project in one of the College’s interdisciplinary centers.
“I wish to express the College’s deepest condolences to President Gaudiani’s family,” President Andrea E. Chapdelaine wrote in a message to the College community. “She will always be a Camel.”
Gaudiani is survived by her husband, David Burnett; her daughter, Maria Burnett; her son, Graham Burnett; and five grandchildren.
270 Mohegan Avenue
ccmagazine.conncoll.edu
Players from both teams watch as a free kick by Conn defender Alessandro Hovarth Diano ’25 sails past the Washington and Lee goalie during the NCAA DIII semifinal game in Las Vegas, Nevada. Story on page 14.
