“Her (Monica Berlin’s) candle burned brighter than

here at Monmouth-Roseville High School. Can’t wait to see folks at Homecoming in October!”

Dan Rosenberg: Our older son Jonah graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in May 2022, and our younger son Evan is a freshman at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. My wife, Debbie, and I still live in Highland Park, Illinois, and I now write about the financial markets for Charles Schwab’s education site. My wife is an academic advisor/Spanish professor at Northwestern University. See you all in October at our reunion! ❯ There were not a lot of updates this go around; I guess folks are saving them for when we meet in person. Details are already in progress for my trip out to Galesburg for Homecoming, and I hope to see everyone there. We still have the Knox College Class of 1993 page on Facebook which will be a place for gathering ideas and sharing information about planning for Homecoming.

Class Correspondent: Rebecca Gillan rebecca.m.gillan@gmail.com

1994

LaShawn Brownlee reports she graduated in June from DePaul University in Chicago with a master’s in nursing. She is now an advanced practice nurse/nurse practitioner specializing in adult-gerontology primary care. ❯ Craig Bechtel says: “After losing my last position in the meetings and conventions industry due to the COVID pandemic and the associated downturn in travel, I did some soul-searching and decided to focus on obtaining a position using my English writing degree to a greater extent. Thanks to the miracles of social media, I discovered Kathy Dix Biallas ’96 was looking for a colleague to be a technical writer, and I started doing that in June 2021 working from home in Chicago, while Kathy is in Phoenix. My son with Andrea Miklasz ’95, Luke, recently graduated summa cum laude from DePaul University with a B.F.A. in film and television with an editing concentration, and minors in radio/TV/new media and motion graphics. I still write about music for NewCity Chicago, almost fulfilling my dream of becoming the next Ben Kim. My pieces appear in the monthly magazine about once every three to four months. I sing/shout in Chicago’s longest running acapella group that performs covers of punk, new wave, and alternative classics, the Blue Ribbon Glee Club, whose membership also includes recent recruit Melanie Brown (and whose painting graces the cover of the recent poetry book, They Can Take It Out, by Cheryl Clark Vermeulen ’96, which I recently added to my overflowing bookshelves). Since 2007, I have been a volunteer for CHIRP Radio, 107.1 FM, a low-power FM station in the North Center neighborhood, and I have been a DJ since June 2010. Currently I host Your Sunday Sonic Sundowner from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Central Time on Sundays, and if you’re outside of the area, you can listen to DJ Craig Reptile at www.chirpradio.org Season Clauss ’99 is also a DJ and volunteer for CHIRP. Speaking of reptiles, in addition to my wife (nine years at press time!) and cat (18 years at press time!), I have a day gecko and a milk snake and a master herpetologist certification from the Amphibian Foundation in Atlanta. In my free time, I watch TV, read, write poetry, listen to music, and go to concerts, sometimes with Brenda Gregoline ’93.” Because all of his other emails are full of junk, he recommends finding him on Facebook, LinkedIn, or at bechtelcraig@gmail.com. ❯ While he didn’t know her that well, Craig was always a fan of Monica Berlin’s ’95 talent, and her passing was a great loss for Knox and the literary world in general. “I can’t pretend to be an authority about her or her work, but it seemed to me she was a rising star who regrettably became a shooting star. Her work is the asteroid impact she left behind, and it is worth reading and remembering.” He read one of her poems on his radio show the weekend after