Class Notes
1934
Betty Black writes: I went from Shady Hill to Milton Academy with little difficulty except that I missed old friends. I graduated from Milton in 1938 and went on to Vassar for an A.B. Ten years later I added a social work degree from Bryn Mawr. I married Woodruff Emlen in 1942. Woody was a Quaker and I soon joined. We then gave five years to our volunteer work—first relocating Japanese Americans to college and later helping refugees in France. We returned to Philadelphia to Woody’s work in finance and to my work in social work. We added three children to our family and have had a good life together. Woody died and I am physically challenged and living in an excellent skilled nursing facility called Quadrangle. I’d love to hear from Shady Hill and any who would remember me. I have fond memories of those days in Cambridge.
1941
Roger Wales writes: I am ninety one and fortunately in good health. I have never smoked. I play tennis weekly and I am looking forward to starting my vegetable garden this spring.
1945
Alan Carpenter writes: My wife Betsy and I moved into ‘an old folks home’ here in Portola Valley, CA sixteen years ago. Soon thereafter our neighbors Bill and Susie Lattin crowed about their granddaughters’
To submit a Class Note, please contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes. We welcome photos of alumni and will publish as many as space allows. To be published, please submit photos in highest resolution available. Submissions may be edited.
great school in Massachusetts where I had grown up. Since then Shady Hill has been our link to the Lattin’s granddaughters, and we share the SHS News together. A nice and cozy small world here at ‘The Sequoias’ CCRC.
1946
Nancy Feldman writes: Still here: same address and same husband (63rd anniversary coming up in June). We had our first grandchild, a boy, in December! We are both well (age considered). Love to hear from anyone who wants to correspond. All the best to any remaining classmates!
1947
JOANNA BAILEY HODGMAN
64 MONTEROY ROAD
ROCHESTER NY 14618
‘joannahodgman@frontier.com’
It was a fine reunion! Eleven ’47ers and significant others came together in early June 2017. Thank you for your planning and hospitality, David and Mary! These classmates gathered: David Clarke, Rick Eliot, Jock Forbes, Jo Hodgman, Harriet Myers, Mary Ann Streeter, and Bob Weiss.
Nat Bowditch and his wife Margaret write: We pondered ways of celebrating our 60th wedding anniversary on 12/21. After trips to New Orleans for the 40th and a grand gathering of all the family in Santa Fe for the 50th we were aware of our limitations and decided to go out to a local fancy restaurant. Then came a journey we didn’t expect: a diagnosis of breast cancer. My prognosis is excellent—both flu virus and bronchitis were problems as well—but now we can resume our very pleasant life at Kendal, nestled between Longwood Gardens and Winterthur. Nat had two shoulder replacements last year and is enjoying life with no shoulder pain.”
David Clarke writes: Of course, one of highlight of the past year was the 70th reunion of the Shady Hill Class of 1947.
So glad that many of our classmates could come to the events at Shady Hill and to the evening gathering the next day at my house in Concord. We had a great time reminiscing the old days, catching up with our current lives, and toasting those who could not be with us. Life continues to be busy and active though the pace has slowed. I enjoy my involvement with the Concord Trails Committee and the two young grandsons that live with us keep Mary and me ‘young’. Always happy to see/hear from classmates.
Rick Eliot writes: Marcia and I had a very interesting time at the 2017 reunion. A demonstration of the modern science curriculum was very impressive. Special thanks to David Clarke for a wonderful reception at his house in Concord. It was great fun seeing so many old friends. After 50 years in Lyndonville, VT, Marcia and I are enjoying life in Rockport. Not much snow for skiing but kayaking on the Atlantic Ocean is a rewarding experience. An extra Greenland kayak is at hand just waiting for a classmate to join me for a paddle.
Alicia Gardner writes: Despite health problems, I maintain a busy, interesting life. I pass on some tips: put railings on both sides of all stairs; cans with pull rings can be opened with a regular can opener; a vertical vacuum cleaner may weigh 10 lbs., a canister style 18; Peapod delivers kitty litter; Whole Foods has 6-pound bags of kitty litter. I recommend an amusing and fascinating novel, Until the Iris Bloom, about what may be in store for us and our caretakers. I have rented my first floor to a plumber, age 28, He has a discount in return for all maintenance, food shopping, and shoveling.
Joanna Hodgman writes: Dear Much-Loved Chickabiddies: Never say ’47 isn’t hardy and plucky! Adjustments and good humor prevail. Thank you for your news, as always. Love from your ‘my new right knee works fine’ friend in Rochester. P.S. Diana Forbes is your heroine of anonymous quotations. Thank you, Di!
JAMES GOODALE
45 EAST 80TH STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10075
jcgoodal@debevoise.com
Susan (Sukie) Bush writes from Cambridge: Friends of over 80 years are very important to me now and I do have bi-annual reunions with some Foote School buddies from New Haven, my long-term grammar school. Of course, the focus of my life is my family where grandchildren are making interesting choices. I still dabble in Asian art history. Now in my 85th year I am amazed that I survived a trip to India ‘In the footsteps of the Buddha’ and that my ill-received PhD thesis of 50 years ago on the writings of Chinese scholars on painting has just been published.
Peter Castle writes: We all owe a debt to Jamie our primary class appreciator and historian. Goaded into action by him, we try to connect and recollect once again. To say as I occasionally do: 75 years ago, I remember birding in Mount Auburn Cemetery, is both remarkable and unsettling. And yet, it is not only true but ‘natural’. Simply put, it was inevitable if much luck prevailed this would happen. We do not choose our histories, but we can learn to appreciate them (and be them). Our Shady Hill class was, in my view, a kind of marvel. Was it us, our parents, the school itself, the war, the zeitgeist? All, no doubt. The agonies of youth
are often downplayed, rightly, but we did get through them there together. And it really is far away and long ago, faintly mythical. But at the center were love and friendship, however varied and transient their forms. Schooling is an erotic adventure among other things. Jamie and I have had wonderful Boston adventures recently, exploring and revisiting our family and geographical roots. I talked recently with Ann Tracy Ross in Florida to our mutual surprise and pleasure.
Sandy Churchill writes that Freddy died last July. He graduated from Harvard, earned a Master’s in history from Columbia and received a PhD from Harvard in 1967 in the history of science. Thereafter he joined the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University in Bloomington. He retired in 1997. His research focused on understanding the important German biologist August Weisman. Three years ago he completed his second book on Weisman, which explained the development of Weisman’s cytology and embryology work. He ended his bachelorhood in 1981 when he married Sandy who had two sons from a previous marriage. Fred loved Strafford, VT where he lived off and on since childhood.
Dick Coveney writes from East Falmouth: I divorced 13 years ago and now live on Ashumet Pond in East Falmouth. The winter ducks have arrived and fill the pond when it’s not frozen. I had back surgery about 6 months ago
and am doing none of the things I love (windsurfing, kayaking, hiking, sailing). My companion of 10 years just sold her 40-foot stinkpot on which we cruised to Maine, Florida, and Canada. I saw 83 locks in a month! She has a captain’s license so gave me no end of orders! We enjoy season tickets to the Cape Cod Symphony and The Playhouse and she visits from her home in Edgartown when I don’t travel there. We cruised the Caribbean, have circumnavigated South America, and plan also to do Iceland and Europe. I stopped flying to my daughter’s home in Barcelona, but her youngest daughter, Julia, started at Wellesley this fall and is continuing a starring fencing career. Her mother, Kymm, just joined her Barcelona fencing club and loves it. I have done lots of genealogy and it makes me feel ‘relatively relevant’. Years ago I did a walking tour of Boston with my daughter and many of the places my ancestors lived were mostly unchanged. When I visited SHS I wondered if my secret smoking place had been discovered yet!
Eddie Ginsburg writes from Newton: I had lunch with Fred Churchill and his wife Sandy at the Hanover Inn about ten days before he died. His monumental work of a life time, August Weismann: Development, Heredity, and Evolution, was published by the Harvard University Press less than two years ago. He was relevant to the history of science until the end. All of us were given great opportunities and a head start in life. Hopefully, we played
Shady Hill alumni, parents, and past faculty joined Head of School Mark Stanek for a gathering in San Francisco in February 2018.
a small role in making a better world. As I work with law students and young lawyers, I think that we are still relevant.
Emily Putnam Link writes from Madison, WI: I am well and grateful to be able to still do the things I enjoy: working at Gilda’s Club (so no one endures cancer alone) as a group facilitator, playing the clarinet, yoga, lots of walking, and of course, birding.”
Tom Metzger writes from Stanford, CA: I’ve been married 59 years, even longer than Jamie, but to three different persons. I have to say that I was marvelously fortunate in all three cases, but I envy Jamie, because divorce is a bad experience to avoid. I also have to say that my life, beginning with my parents and grandparents, has been extraordinarily blessed by encounters with a very long list of terrific persons, including Smitty and Mr. Chapin, and just about everything undesirable in my life has been due solely to my shortcomings. Unless more senile than I think, I’m still working effectively on the problems that have interested me for so many decades. I love what Confucius said about his old age: “I wake up every day so interested in things that I forget to eat and am too stupid to know I’m getting old.” Admittedly, I never forgot to eat until some years ago, but then I lost maybe 50 lbs. Those folks who have nothing better to do than find out what these interesting things are can look up Thomas Metzger in Wikipedia, one of the few internet resources I am able to use. My opinions are very un-New-England, since Donald Trump’s successes are the main aspect of the political scene that brings me joy.
Anne Carpenter Robertson writes: Bruce and I moved to Missoula, MT in 2017 because of back surgery which made me better, thanks to Dr. Gordon Sakamoto. My daughter, Kristy, and her husband, Michael, live here. Her son, Bruce, is working on a second BA in computer science. His girlfriend, Alie, just finished nursing school. Their daughter, Rachel, is studying psychology. The Republican Party feels like a dictatorship to me. Republicans pack Senate and Congress and the Supreme Court. Is there any hope for the Democrats?
Ann Tracy Ross writes from Sarasota: I left Shady Hill before the start of the 1946 school year and right after 6th
grade. I spent 2 years at the Out of Door School (seriously, most of our classes were under a huge banyan tree!) which is now a renowned K-12 in Lakewood Ranch, FL. For 4 years, I attended Chatham Hall in Chatham, VA. I met my Canadian husband, John Ross, at the U. of Michigan. He was an Olympic runner in the 1952 games in Helsinki. Fresh out of college, we moved to Switzerland where John had been accepted for graduate work at the Centre d’ Etudes Industrielles in Geneva. From there, we moved about the world living first in England where our two children were born. Back to Boston, then Cleveland before John became sales manager for Alcan in Cali, Colombia. From there, we spent two years in Puerto Rico before returning to the states. We lived in St. Louis and Atlanta before heading back to Sarasota in 1970. To help John with a new career in Florida, I went into the real estate business from which I retired at the end of 2017. My sisters, all from Shady Hill School, are living in Sarasota as well. We have lived a life enjoying sports, running, bicycling, tennis, skiing, sailing and boating. The biking, skiing and sailing have taken us to far away and exotic places. We lost one daughter at age 18. The other, Wendy Ross Riva, is a Realtor and a TV personality doing weather on weekends in the Tampa Bay market. She has provided us with 2 grandchildren who in turn have produced but one great-grandson. Life is good!
Kathryn Shohl Scott writes from Bethesda, MD: I wish I could be there for our 70th reunion, but I will be traveling. I hope someone will share photos! I managed only 2 trips abroad in 2017: in January my daughter Emily and I enjoyed a trip up the Nile, and in May I joined an OAT group to visit Florence and the Italian and French Rivieras. I am amazed that I still enjoy ‘stable’ health,
but surgery in June to repair a tendon in my left hand has taken much longer than anticipated to return to normal so I had to cancel a trip through the Northwest Passage in September. I have rescheduled it for this year. The extended family will be celebrating the 90th anniversary this summer of my father’s original purchase of land on Lake Winnipesaukee—still a wonderful shared vacation spot for three generations. After more than fifty years singing with Bach and Beer, a non-performing madrigal group, I am now in search of a more congenial bunch. I continue to attend theater and chamber music performances. When he retired, Ken and I took half a dozen trips together since the kids had more or less flown. After he died in 2004, I started traveling on my own, first once a year, then more often. I count 28 (all but one outside the continental US). That doesn’t count family trips to Alaska, NH, or NY. I’ve been to all the continents except Antarctica— which for some reason I have no desire to visit, although I’ve been above the Arctic Circle three times! My bucket list gets shorter every year, but there are still lots of places I want to see. I guess travel helps keep me active in my (slower) senior years.
Len Wheeler writes from Arvada, CO: I married a second time now for 27 years to a nifty former RN, Katie. Feeling my 85-year age, but am healthy, taking many Olli (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) classes, delightfully free as it is from any tests. Still doing some volunteering, meals with friends, woodworking, and involved with our local Unitarian church.
James Goodale writes from New York City: As your scribe,I have had a great time collecting the above information, emailing and talking to classmates. Here are some observations. If you count all the boys in our last three to four years
Ann Tracy Ross ’48 with daughter Wendy Ross. Kathryn Shohl Scott in Egypt
at SHS, there were 18 in all. Of this number—5 became PhDs, 4 professors, 3 doctors, 2 lawyers, 2 MBAs, a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, a college president, a minister, an anthropologist, an actor and this list doesn’t count Sukie’s PhD or other achievements of the girls (women); but when you do, we authored more than 15 books, and four of us are in Wikipedia. I find these achievements amazing since we were told we were the most unruly SHS class ever. We were tamed, if at all, only by Bart Chapin who was our homeroom teacher for three years. I second Dick Coveney’s suggestion that we leave money in our wills to the Bart Chapin Fund (which Dick started some time ago).
1949
JIM BARTON
130 APPLETON STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 redwing1986@hotmail.com
Jim Barton continues to live at the same house in Cambridge since l967. His wife of 60 years, Vaughan Barton, remains physically well but has been a resident of a nearby memory-care facility since 2017. She recognizes people easily but has a tenuous connection to reality, Jim says. He will welcome calls and visits from you all.
Marjorie Forbes writes that she enjoys her retirement career as an oboe player: I am playing in coached chamber ensembles at Lucy Moses School of Music here in New York City, mainly duets with another oboist. I keep improving, especially in sight-reading, and I love having music-making (practice!) part of every day. My teacher is a top freelancer and wonderfully inspiring. I talked briefly with Susie Thurman Kleeman when the California fires were raging. She was OK, but it was worrisome. We reminisced about playing our violins in the school orchestra along with the late Nancy Aub Gleason. SHS music was wonderful back then.
Steve Shohet reports: Our family and dozen grand kids are all thriving. We enjoy our country farmhouse in Normandy with some of them in May and June, and during the rest of the summer in Buzzards Bay. Professionally, I closed my red cell membrane research lab at the U. of California at San Francisco
ten years ago, but continue as an emeritus consultant to laboratory medicine. Also, for several years I’ve enjoyed working on the board of Amphastar, a small generic pharmaceutical manufacturer in Southern California. This has provided an eye-opening view of an entirely different corporate world and an opportunity to advise them on matters of hematology and social responsibility. My one peculiar mania is collecting antique 19th-century cameras. This takes us to Paris and London every year in efforts to preserve and understand these artifacts. Both the ingenious elements of design, and the superb craftsmanship of some of these confections of wood and brass seem to have enchanted me. Finally, Geraldine and I are dumfounded by the events in Washington and worry about the internal and international posture of our wonderful country. We need a new Adams or Jefferson, but I don’t see anyone out there right now. I send warm regards to all my SHS classmates. The few years I enjoyed at SHS remain the most important of my entire education.
Isabel Utter writes: Our grandson Max Benjamin Utter has very much enjoyed his internship at Shady Hill. The experience has led to his decision to go on with a career in teaching. We are very pleased.
Marina von Neuman Whitman announces: After over 32 happy and rewarding years in Ann Arbor, I have retired from teaching at the U. of Michigan. We will be returning to our eastern roots by moving to an apartment at Newbury Court in Concord. Though we will miss our friends and activities
here, we are looking forward to being nearer to our children, one of whom is on the Harvard medical faculty and the other on Yale’s, and also to picking up and expanding our network of friends and acquaintances in greater Boston. Address after March 2018: 80 Deaconess Rd., Concord, MA 01742.
1950
JEFFERSON FREEMAN 77 BROAD STREET GUILFORD, CT 06437 jeffreeman77@gmail.com
NIKI SPALDING 15 GURNEY STREET CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138
Your class co-correspondents, Niki Spalding and Jeff Freeman, contacted each classmate. Of those who replied (22 of 28), most did so by email or letter. Two were glad to catch up by phone, but never managed to follow up the delightful conversations with written messages. In these instances, their class notes are presented as dialogue from the calls. In June 2017, six of us—Landa and Jeff Freeman, David Kaplan, Joel and Joey Wechsler, and Lucy Weiss—gathered in Harvard Square for a lunch reunion. Of course, the best part was not the food or surroundings, rather the animated conversation about past, present, and future. Underneath our somewhat aged exteriors are the same friends each of us has known ‘forever.’ All agreed we should gather again in 2018, and hopefully add to our numbers. We’re
1950 Class Luncheon in June 2017 with Jeff and Landa Freeman, David Kaplan, Joel & Joey Wechsler, and Lucy Weiss
of June. By the time you read this, I hope we’ll have a confirmed date and roster of attendees—enough this year to occupy a larger private dining room on the first floor of the Red Door.
Svetlana Leontief Alpers writes from New York: I am in the midst of writing a book on Walker Evans. I have always worked on historic European painting so this is my first photographer and my first American. I won’t comment on the world other than to say that it seems to me to be in a dismal state and getting out of the USA to spend my usual 3 months a year in France is a godsend.
Joëlle Cabot (honorary classmate) writes: Still in Cambridge at the same address. Enjoying life, music, movies, cooking, walks, all that it has to offer, with Conrad Dike, a great artist, poet, architect, and lover of nature. Both of my daughters are now in Paris. One grandson is at URI and next year my granddaughter will be going to Savannah College of Arts and Design. We have been to Japan and France and will go this spring to Costa Rica. So, life is good.
Frederic Chang writes from Wichita, KS: I still play golf 3 times a week, weather permitting. We were fortunate to be able to celebrate our 60th reunion last year by taking our entire family on a Caribbean cruise. It was fun being with everyone, though we had a hard time keeping up with them. What happens in the Caribbean, stays in the Caribbean. Actually we were in a ‘Stingray Preserve’
in Cozumel. The picture shows me with one of the stingray caregivers. We were able to feed and touch them. It was a fun experience; we also had an opportunity to swim and snorkel with the stingrays and sharks in a contained area. I was recently sent an article by my daughter about a story in Newsweek about a man that lived to be 100 and wrote about how he lasted so long. He had good genes, was physically active (including stretching) all his life, played all kinds of sports, ate healthy foods, survived mumps, smallpox, traveled and wrote books, but most importantly drank two martinis a day since he was 35. My daughter said it sounded like me, especially the two martinis. Interesting reading for us octogenarians.
Patricia Smith Elvebak writes from Corte Madera, CA: This has been a busy year for me—fortunately I am in good health and spirit! The trips from SF to Middlebury, VT, at Christmas are taking their toll! For several years the message ‘all flights cancelled’ is the norm. That means an overnight hotel stay, and may mean a Greyhound trip and being met at 7:30 am by a friend driving 1½ hours. The end result is pneumonia and a 3-week visit instead of 1. This is the USA! Vermont is beautiful, lots of snow, sunshine and 10 degrees below zero. My niece has taken up wheelchair tennis, a very fine sport. She has entered distant tournaments with her Auntie Patty and Mom to carry the luggage! In other news, we are encouraged to prepare for an incoming missile (California). It could happen.
Jefferson Freeman writes from Guilford, CT: I’m busy as ever volunteering for Shady Hill, my class at Yale, various a cappella and choral groups and our church in New Haven. Landa is equally busy on her chosen volunteer opportunities. Each week, we find time for miles of walking and some (but not enough) hiking, locally around Guilford and elsewhere. Cycling, Nordic skiing? Sadly, none in 2017. Insufficient motivation? Or maybe accepting the passage of time? Never thought it would happen. We’re fortunate to be reasonably close to older daughter Willoughby and her family in Mount Kisco, NY and our son Peter and his wife in Georgetown, MA—visiting them, having them here and meeting in between. Daughter Allison and her family live in Durham, NC. We don’t see them as frequently, but visit for longer stretches.
In March-April, we’ll have a two-week stay in Chapel Hill—close enough to be their neighbors instead of weekend visitors. In July, all 12 of us will have a week together in Bermuda. We’re lucky to be part of a family whose members genuinely enjoy each other’s company. 2017 helped me become a bigger-than-ever fan of ‘Fake News’—you know, like the NYTimes, Globe, Economist, New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, NY Review of Books. For me, a palliative for today’s angst is reading news of varying shades—not watching it on-screen. I’ve also found I’m helped by postponing news until evening. An hour’s reading in the morning—on whatever book I’m in at the moment—is more enlightening and enriching and a better way to start the day. I marvel at millennials with whom I have contact, primarily our aged-20-something grandkids, but others too. Figuring out what makes them tick and how they view life gives me insight into what it will take to get them, their friends, and other contemporaries to vote come fall. What better way to start climbing out of the hole ‘adults’ have dug for themselves? Good wishes to all.
Lee Ginsberg Herbst writes: Art and I are well and enjoying our life in Tucson. I find an hour of tennis and an hour of bridge is a perfect morning. Activities associated with the College of Science and Fine Arts keep us exploring new ideas. Artificial Intelligence is one of the topics this year and electronic drawing is another. We went to the Dominican Republic at Christmas and plan a trip to England and Scotland this spring. One of our granddaughters is a student at St. Andrews, which is a big draw. Never thought I would see the political situation that we have in the U.S. I keep hoping the pendulum will start to swing back and I try to stay optimistic. We need to value our vote and get it out.
John Horvitz writes: Here in NYC it’s ‘same old, same old.’ Subway service in
Fred Chang ’50 and his wife Jan and daughter with a skate in the Caribbean.
Landa and Jeff Freeman ’50
Manhattan is not as bad as the stories you read. Plus NYC has added a new guy from Toronto who ought to be able to fix things. At least I don’t have to ride the T in Boston. Of course, Uber makes the subway less attractive for many of us anyway. Best regards.
David M. Kaplan writes: All’s well this winter in Florida—happy to be able to enjoy years now after many difficult ones. The weather has been glorious and I had a wonderful visit with all my kids and grandkids in Longboat Key at Christmas. My oldest granddaughter is applying to PhD programs at a number of medical schools and my youngest is applying to colleges—so, exciting times. Looking forward to a luncheon in July with some Shady Hill classmates.
Harriet Woodworth Koch writes from Pasadena: Though I can’t recount some exciting trip abroad this year, I can describe a vicarious one—to the Mediterranean via a renovation of our back yard embarked on about a year ago. It was a tired landscape made increasingly untenable by the severe drought here. A landscape-designer friend took on the project and it was lengthy and disruptive—especially for our cat whose habitat was completely torn up for months. But we are finally enjoying the results! It is now a Mediterranean-style garden with largely drought tolerant plants like rosemary and lavender, succulents and additions to the fruit trees we already had. I’ve always felt blessed that I could go out in a winter morning and pick a few oranges or tangelos off our trees for breakfast. (Though as the Winter Olympics approach I become nostalgic for the Cambridge Skating Club of my youth!) My work on the biography of my father, G. Wallace ‘Woody’ Woodworth (choral director, organist, music educator), is both enjoyable and challenging; the latter because of the sheer bulk of the
raw material, the fact that some of that archive resides at Harvard (where I have visited it many times) and that I am too easily distracted by other things around here. The enjoyable part is that I continue to find fascinating personal and musical history, some known and some new to me. Thanks to Jeff for being such a faithful and cheerful communicator!
Eleanor Jones Luopa writes from Fitzwilliam, NH: Reggie has been diagnosed with dementia and I am trying to learn how to deal with it. Therefore, we do not go far from home as he gets so disoriented. He has no memory whatsoever, short or long term. He still knows me but I know that may not always be so. It has totally changed our life. I continue to keep up with community activities for my own health: the town newsletter, garden club and church activities. Two of my grandkids graduated from college in May and one from high school and now in college. Added a great-grandson last March, making a total of two for my family. All our kids and Reggie’s are supportive and as helpful as they can be. I am so thankful for all of them.
Helen Cutter Maclennan writes: Life seems to go faster with less time available to do all the things one hopes to do. I had two visits to the USA in 2017, a week in February to see my brother, Louis, and attend his wife Ann’s funeral, and a two-week visit in August in Randolph, NH for an extended family holiday/ reunion/memorial service for my brother, Louis (who died a few weeks after Ann), which was sad, happy, fun, challenging, and full of conflicting emotions and perceptions. We returned to the UK in August for some weeks in Caithness with our many sheep, then the House of Lords resumed sitting after the recess and we returned to London. Our life at the moment seems to be alternating between Scotland and various doctor’s appointments and political duties in London. Fortunately there are lots of theatre, ballet, and concerts to attend in London and lots of good friends to see as well. I hope to visit the US in the spring. My children, spouses and grandchildren are wonderful; bless them.
Katharine D. (Dex) McGill e-mailed: I’ve been dealing mostly with family matters this year. I hope a spring lunch is planned again.
Thomas B. Molholm writes: Last year, we moved from our 4th floor loft on Reade Street in Tribeca to 118th Street in Manhattan, two blocks east of Morningside Park, which borders Columbia University. The move from Tribeca to South Harlem was the outcome of the sale of the building in which we had a long-term lease on our loft. We are pleased with our new neighborhood. It is a warm, friendly place—a real community with plenty of people on the street who take time to visit with each other. By the time we left, Tribeca had become crowded with parents pushing baby carriages, super-models strolling and municipal workers out at lunchtime—a big change from what it was when I first moved there in the ’60s. I visit with my brother, John, in Vermont, connect occasionally with Svetlana Alpers, but otherwise am pretty much out of touch with Shady Hill classmates. Like others, I’m really distressed by how the President and our government function (or maybe, don’t function is a better way to say it). It’s reached the stage where Kurt Vonnegut’s portrayal of fantastical society has come to be our reality. It’s hard to see how we’re going to get out of the mess. Too many voters in red states seem not to mind; in fact appear not dissuaded from persisting in their support. Maybe elections this year will make a difference (if the Democrats can get it together). We’ll just have to wait and see.
Jeff spoke with Mikey Carmichael Oliphant. She reported she still lives at her apartment in Washington, D.C. Her son, Michael, who lives locally, visits her weekly and “is a great source of comfort and support.” Another son, who lives in New Orleans, is there less frequently, but they remain close. Despite (or maybe because of?) regular visits to multiple doctors, she remains mobile and in good health and spirits. “One of the comforts of being our age is not having to be engaged in work for organizations and groups. Less pressure makes life more enjoyable.” When I asked about what she does, she offered, “I really don’t get out that much any more. I play solitaire on my computer to keep me going. I like watching English TV shows—entertaining if a bit silly. It’s not much fun to watch the news these days, so I tend to steer away and focus on more entertaining fare.” We talked about Shady Hill. “It’s
Home renovation of Harriet Woodworth Koch ’50
interesting to remember for how long many of us were together—ten years, from Beginners through ninth grade; more than any other school. It was a wonderful experience. Recalling now, it often was a bit haphazard when we were students, but the school seemed to understand how to help us grow and learn, how to grapple with the world and learn about ourselves. It was very different from the more regimented life that followed for me when I was a boarder at Winsor, or the life I saw on the campus at Tufts when my family lived there.”
Franny Bailey Pinney writes: Several years ago, I saw a picture of a large sailboat on a brochure. It was the Windsurf, the largest sailboat in the world. I was intrigued, and took a trip. There were about 100 passengers, and it was the most relaxing vacation I’ve ever had. This spring, I sail across the Atlantic again, from Barbados to Lisbon, then on to Barcelona to visit some old friends. This is my fifth ‘repositioning cruise.’ I will enjoy superb food, read a lot, play cards, meet some congenial folks, and recharge my aging batteries. I’m temporarily staying in Maine now, courtesy of Hurricane Maria. The slow recovery has made it impossible for me to be in Luquillo, PR for the winter. In February, I drove along Memorial Drive and connected up with route 20 through Watertown towards Waltham. The Cambridge Skating Club building, and the Cambridge Boat Club look exactly the same as they did when we were young students. Browne and Nichols is still there but much changed. Many memories surfaced. It is a delight to be a member of the Shady Hill family. To quote my dear brother Gage Bailey ’52, “I don’t know what would have happened to us if we had not gone to that school.” Faith E. Rohrbough writes: Having moved to Canada in 1996, this has truly become home now. Although I have some questions about our Prime Minister, I continue to be grateful I made the decision to stay here in 2004 when I retired. For a while I did a good deal of international traveling as I was on the board of Canadian Lutheran World Relief for nine years. Now the only plane travel takes me to Kansas where both of my sisters live—in Lawrence where my brother in law was a professor of chemistry at the U. of Kansas. Since all three girls were born in February we do try to get together to
jointly celebrate our birthdays. This year the focus is on my middle sister, Connie Rohrbough ’54, who turns 80. I, of course, passed that milestone three years ago. Most of my time is taken up with a refugee settlement committee I have been on since 1997. Canada has been very open to refugees in the past so we have raised the money to bring over 50 people in the last 20 years. In 1997 there were refugees from South Sudan. Today they are from Syria and Iraq along with Pakistani Christians who have had to flee their home country. There is still time left to be on the board of our Lutheran Hospital Chaplaincy here in Saskatoon as well as sit on my church council. As for American politics, I find myself having to explain the US constitution and political set up quite often. Canada is so used to the British style of government that it has a lot of trouble understanding what is going on now south of the border. But then I have trouble understanding that as well. My best wishes to you all for a wonderful 2018.”
Jim H. Romer writes from Unity, NH: I’m really just sending this to let you know that I’m still alive and kicking. I’m dealing as best I can with creeping decrepitude, comfortably settled into my newish house here in the woods in west central New Hampshire. Trying to tie up some of the loose ends of my life and not let regrets about things I’ve never accomplished bother me too much. Bothered much less by the idiocy of Trump and Trumpism than I am by the descent of the liberal, democratic, left into the insanity of Russia-gate and the concomitant appearance of the new McCarthyism and the liberal embrace of a new Cold War.
David O. Sears writes from Pacific Palisades, CA: My youngest daughter, Meredith, had her first baby in October, a little guy named Dale. He’s a real cutey. She’s a clinical psychologist and now back at work managing the suicide prevention program at the SF VA hospital. My two older daughters have two kids each, now approaching high school age. My stepson Patrick, who has been with me since his mom died in 2010, graduated from UC Riverside in December majoring in Chinese Language and Literature, and is currently in Beijing doing an intensive language course associated with Stanford. He is aiming to go into international business. In 2017 I won the career contribution
award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, our biggest association. That done, I’m planning to retire from UCLA in June! But only a partial retirement; I will continue to teach graduate students and do my research and writing. But I finished my last undergraduate class in December. It doesn’t seem very long since the first one, in 1961. I imagine my classmates have had similar experiences of time rushing by, and ‘it doesn’t seem like that long ago …’ Still a widower, not my preference, but knock on wood my health has been good. I’ve had first one and now another Chinese student as housemates, friends of Patrick’s who are delightful. I’ve learned a lot.
Monique “Niki” Spalding writes from Cambridge: I have made the transition to Christmas away from home. In 2016 I was in Saint Paul and I spent this past Christmas in Portland, ME amidst an ice storm. However, I’d rather not spend Christmas under a palm tree. Both children have kept some Spalding traditions and added others of their own—which is as it should be. A brief stay in Neville Rehab on Concord Avenue in Cambridge included a visit with Lucy Weiss who is happily ensconced next door in the Neville Assisted Living facility. We regaled each other with funny memories and giggled a lot. I reminded her that in my formal portrait (age 10), which hangs in my living room, I am wearing her pink velvet dress that my mother bought at the Shady Hill clothing sale. I had another great visit with Patty Elvebak this past summer when she came back to Gloucester to spend time with her brother Harvey’s family.
Jeff caught up by telephone with Tom Stout, who reported that he and Susan have moved to Rockland, ME, about a 10 minute drive from where they lived in Rockport. The good news: they’re still in familiar surroundings. The bad news: they still own both houses. They are doing their best as rapidly as they can to become owners of only the new home. Tom retains his Maine pharmacist’s license, but holds inactive status at this point. Macular degeneration results in vision insufficient for Tom to carry out his duties as a pharmacist. Thankfully, he is still able to drive; wisely, he avoids nighttime driving. Susan continues in nursing, and is currently on pretty much full-time duty as the night supervisor of nursing at the Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport.
Tench Vans-Murray-Robertson writes from Orwell, VT: When we purchased Brookside Stock Farm in 2005 it had been neglected and decaying over a century. We found rot from the peak of the roof to the sill plate, and the Wilcox-Cutts House had not been painted in over 25 years. We are now in our eighties. We have decided the best future for the farm is to be conserved and become part of Green Mountain College as a working and teaching farm. The college is a liberal arts institution founded in 1834. We are raising $5 million to restore the buildings and repurchase former lands. We hope to complete this project and move to an historic farm in the Piedmont area of Virginia.
Joel Wechsler writes from Lincoln: Last winter was a good winter for me as far as skiing was concerned. I managed 15 days spread around Sunapee, Waterville Valley, Stratton, and Mt. Wachusett. Winter passed uneventfully into spring and then into summer, with a small SHS reunion luncheon that I’m sure will be written about elsewhere. Unfortunately, things started to go downhill from there as I was diagnosed with constrictive pericarditis, which causes shortness of breath and swelling of the feet and ankles. The only cure is an operation called a pericardectomy, which involves removing the pericardium from the front and bottom of the heart while, if you are lucky, it is beating so you don’t have to go onto a heart-lung machine. I was one of the lucky ones and had the procedure on October 4. The recovery time was short but regaining full strength in terms of lifting heavy objects or strenuous exercise has taken until now. Joey still walks 3–4 miles a day, tries to deal with her sciatic nerve problem, and is happy to no longer have to chauffeur me around, which she had to do post-surgery. My son Mikey still skis 160+ days a year and works at the famous Red Onion in
Aspen, where he has become a local legend. Daughter Karen still skis, plays golf, and cooks gourmet meals for her retired husband, Carl, who also golfs and skis, while keeping busy with consulting projects. Jennifer is still teaching pre-school in Newton and recently moved into a condo in Somerville with a friend from BC. Chris, in addition to becoming engaged, still manages the bar and restaurant in Nederland, CO, is helping a friend get a new brewery off the ground, and is studying for the GMATs.
1952
ANNE WATT
1 HARVEST CIRCLE, APT. 117 LINCOLN, MA 01773
annewatt99@gmail.com
Len Clarke writes: Surprisingly, I still have a few customers using manufacturing software we wrote twenty-five years ago. They won’t let me retire which is great for the pocket book and takes minimal effort. Most of my spare time now is spent trying to become a violinist. Syd and I continue to play in both a fiddle group and an all ages community orchestra (including some really gifted children). It is a really fun challenge to play concert music, (previously only a listening enjoyment) including the suite from Carmen, also Handel, Mozart, Dvorzak and Howard Hanson. We traveled in October to Sorento and Capri and then for a delightful week in Bologna enjoying torteloni, gelato, and a food tour visiting prosciutto, parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinegar factories.
Ibby Curzon writes: I’m aging in place so far in spite of increasingly steep stairs and cold drafts from windows in our old Cambridgeport house. We love the walking access to stores and parks and bus/subway to Boston and its cultural offerings, including concerts and classes to audit across the BU bridge. I travel vicariously by helping adults with English at the library. Regular visits with Sally K. and Sally B. are fun as are visits from our son from the west coast and family gatherings with my sisters and their families. My best to my classmates, whom I think of often.
Rolf Goetze writes: Julie Anne and I, having passed 80 years, are happy relics, and still travel together in our Prius around New England and New York. Julie
is into book groups, cooking, canning, and making music, while Rolf is organizing our 65,000 slides, family jpegs and videos, mainly for his amusement, googling recent views of what we saw in our Asia/Middle East trip in 1965 in our VW bug and many treks around Europe and North America. But who knows, properly identified and captioned, these pictures may be of interest to someone. So many Season’s Greetings to us reflect on extensive, recent travels of our peers, but we instead have eagerly pursued time travel this past year, which we found more rewarding and has such a minuscule carbon footprint: Historic New England opens over 30 historic properties to members on specific summer days in which passionate volunteer docents revealed how people lived there back then. We visited as many as we could, from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont. We are fine, and still know ‘who we are and where we are!’ We keep up with our local chamber music and theater subscriptions.
Robin Hartshorne writes: Edie and I were happy to have our son Ben, his wife Christy, and their daughter Clara (now almost 3) living in our house for a year while they were remodeling their house nearby. It was a pleasure to see how Clara grew every day. Now they have gone back to their own house, but we still meet once a week for dinner. Our daughter, Joemy, and her daughter, Yoko, live a little farther away. I celebrated my 80th birthday in March with a three-day math conference in Chicago, where some of my students, co-authors, and colleagues gave talks. This last year, I have been recovering from radiation therapy for prostate cancer. After doing ‘active surveillance’ for thirteen years, my doctor finally said I had to do some treatment. The radiation was not so bad, but the recovery of muscle strength, endurance, and sleep patterns has been very slow. This all leads to reflection on what I have done during my life, and the recognition that even if I wanted to do more, I can only do so much. There is some sadness and nostalgia in letting go of old hopes and ambitions.
Tom Plaut is back in Haiti for another round of children’s health clinics, this time with his son and a second granddaughter to make the trip.
Betsy (Aliza) Shima writes: We are feeling very fortunate having been spared any of the threats from the terrible wild fires
Tench Vans-Murray-Robertson ’50’s Brookside estate in Vermont
and then mudslides, all of which made a pall over Santa Barbara. The community at large has turned out with contributions and housing for those displaced. Over the past year we have managed to travel about with family and friends, revisiting favorite spots like Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and foreign travel to Columbia and England. Though we did not get back to New England I am pleased to get the news from Shady Hill and trust that all my classmates are doing well.”
Judy Stetson reports: Here I still am in this large old summer house on the Cape. And here Tom still is, recovering and rehabbing from a very successful total reverse shoulder operation on October 4 that Nick persuaded him to have. I know we should have moved into smaller quarters when we were in our 70s, but the pain of leaving always outweighed the pleasure of staying. We celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our January birthdays here. So no moving for a while, although I have promised the next generation of the family not to clean my own gutters any more. Children and grandchildren are thriving. What a joy.
Anne Watt writes: Thanks very much to those of you who responded to my late notice this year. 2017 was a big year of changes for the Watts. We sold our condo in Cambridge and bought into a ‘continuing care’ residence in Lincoln plus an apartment in Tarpon Springs, FL. My arthritis has mandated warmer weather during the winter months. Here in Florida, John and I have found a challenging and wonderful watercolor teacher so we paint a lot. I have also risked ‘amniotic stem cell’ treatment in my ankles so next year will have a full report on this therapy. Friends around the US and the world are beginning to leave us as we enter the octogenarian decade so, despite the horrendous political climate I feel very fortunate to be still around to wish everyone good health this year.
1953
Sybil Kinnicutt Baldwin writes: Still ensconced in my nest peering over the Hudson River in Rhinecliff, NY. I go regularly to Wilmington, NC, a pleasant moderate progressive little city on the Cape Fear River near the ocean, to see my son, Ben, who is a therapist, his wife, Rachel, a public health MD, and granddaughters, Sadie and Charlotte. In
ALUMNI SURVEY RESPONSES: WE ASKED … What are examples of the impact(s) you’ve had in community and professional realms?
the winter I often go to Santa Fe to see my daughter, Sarah, and son-in-law, Joey, both writers. There I’ve had the fun of re-connecting with Nick Thompson and his great wife, Penny, who spend winters visiting their kids who are friends of my kids, which is a nice continuation of a connection started almost 70 years ago. I do a little writing, a lot of reading, and opera and movies! I am daily aware of how extremely fortunate I am in this ever fragile world.
Heidi Dawidoff writes: I have a full and busy life. At the top, I’ll have to put my political activities through the Democratic Committee of Francestown and through independent calls to senators and representatives in Washington. New Hampshire is blessed to have sent four people to fight for us and for law, reason, and real government. It’s not easy, but one has to keep trying. I belong to a wonderful study group. In November and December, I took the group through Bleak House. Now we are deep into astronomy getting to know all those enthusiastic scientists who are excitedly identifying exo-planets. My generous children invited all sorts of people from various times of my life to come to an 80th birthday bash in New York. Who ever believed I would get so old? That sort of thing hasn’t run in my family, but I suppose it’s a good thing since a sweet pair of grandchildren came fairly recently. It’s lovely to see them growing up and loving books.
Mary Hill Harris writes: Last winter I was casting my mind back to my 15 years of fieldwork in Barbados in order to write the pottery chapter for a forthcoming book on Barbados prehistory. Next, I need to do the same thing for the prehistoric pottery of Carriacou, where I did fieldwork between 2004 and 2011. In July, I attended the International
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
Congress for Caribbean Archaeology in St. Croix (fortunately several weeks before the devastating hurricanes which hit this year). We had been promised a field trip to St. John, and I was hoping to see Julie Skinner Vargas there. So near and yet so far—the trip was cancelled and we had to make do with a long phone call. From the Caribbean, I went on to Gilbertsville for the month of August. My sister Kaky Gilbert Lidz ’55 has the house next to mine, and we had the joy of watching our grandchildren playing on the lawn between, as we had watched our own children a generation earlier. At home, apart from continuing part-time work in archaeology, I enjoy reading, music (string group and choir), and family, and am still doing my best to keep up with a large house and garden.
Hilary Smith writes: I remain well despite the odd ‘senior moment,’ busy with mending and covering books for local libraries, knitting afghans for local hospitals, and watching my girls thrive. It was nice to hear from Mary Hill Harris (a dedicated reader if there ever was one) and Jay this year. My fingers are crossed for us all, for the country, and for the world in 2018.
1954
JOHN WHEELER
P.O. BOX 169
CHOCORUA, NH 03817
jwheeler61@roadrunner.com
Unfortunately, some of our classmates died this year: Liz Borland Nix passed away on August 13, 2017 after a battle with breast cancer. From her obituary: “She fought a long battle with breast cancer. Liz was a bookkeeper for the Women’s Health Center of Charleston. She was also a co-owner of Roderick’s Painting and Wallpaper Company. She attended Shady
Hill School and graduated as valedictorian of her class at Belmont High School. She attended Radcliffe and received her degree in social work. Liz had many interests and hobbies including woodworking, collecting, and travelling the world. She visited all the continents on the globe and enjoyed adventure.” Rolly Hoffman died on April 1, 2017, and David Wilson on April 29, 2017.
Trina Hanson Avery writes: I’m alive! I do some volunteer work here and there, most notably in the archives of a nearby house museum (family letters, diaries, theater programs—these people kept everything!). I do Pilates but little else by way of exercise—maybe come spring. I had a nice Smithsonian trip to Athens/ Poros last year, otherwise not much travel: a goal for this year.
Debbie Ellis Bigelow writes from Alexandria, VA: Though I have little news I write in to say I still exist and do various things to stay alert and active—walking, reading, yoga, teaching, and painting. I enjoyed responding to the SHS survey, as it really underscored how SHS permeates my life, avocations, and vocation.
Jim Bowditch writes: As we approach 80, Felicity and I are traveling a lot while we can. Last year we went to the Galapagos, and I went to Little Gidding, near Cambridge, UK for a week. Our kids are doing very well; Matt and Andrew are busy with Visiblebody.com, which makes apps for healthcare. They were featured in the Boston Globe in September. Sarah helps to run irelaunch.com, an organization that helps people re-enter the workforce after taking time out for their family. She is their database manager and event planner.
Peggy Barker Christie wrote from Chestertown, MD: John and I are well, if you do not count our feelings about the state of our democracy. This little town boasts Washington College, which provides more lectures, classes, and concerts than we can manage to attend. The arts district is humming, the natural world right outside the door. A local chorale keeps me practicing and my native gardens keep expanding regardless of my intentions to cut them back. Yoga and books take my mind off the daily onslaught of news as well as off the dilemma of how long we should stay in our beloved house. We hate to think of giving it up, as do several of our
children—the very ones, naturally, who live or hanker to live and work abroad! We must nudge these decisions along, somehow, before too many moons go by. Meanwhile we are enjoying every day.
Lee Kennedy Laugesen writes from Denver: Two trips this year—both in the fall. Brother Nat and I took a cruise on American Cruise Lines to the San Juan Islands north of Seattle. It was a fantastic time seeing the islands and whales. In October, I took a trip to Annisquam with daughters Karen and Amy. Family from Connecticut, Schenectady, and Maine joined us! Dick retired in August and I continue tennis and bowling. We have Karen, Amy, and Kris with Morgan (14), Isabella (8) plus husbands all within 20 minutes of us.
Carl Pickhardt writes from Austin: Thinking of John Wheeler in Chocorua reminds me of the beautiful family gathering place we have where one of the four kids lives—Whitefish, MT and Glacier Park country. We have a fourth grandchild now, and the oldest has just graduated from U. of Texas. All four kids and partners are leading loving and satisfying and interesting lives. I don’t do much counseling anymore and give fewer talks. Most of my work time is spent on writing. I have another book about parenting adolescents coming out in November. The weekly blog I write for Psychology Today, ‘Surviving (your child’s) Adolescence,’ is getting close to 7 million reads, so it has been satisfying writing in the internet age. Irene is still in harness, coordinating science education for the state, and we continue to enjoy outdoor activities in a city that keeps growing beyond our recognition.
Tom Weisskopf writes from Ann Arbor: Susan (now also fully retired) and I continue to enjoy life in the city recently named the best one in the country to live in. Among travel highlights this past year were trips to London, Norway (following in John’s footsteps), and a gite [per Wikipedia: a holiday home available for rent] in the Jura mountains. Our reasonably good health and benign environment make it possible to weather the incredibly noxious state of contemporary politics, and to hold out some hope that there will be light at the end of the tunnel.
John Wheeler writes: Gail and I went for a week of contra dancing in Ely, England in April with a few days in
London. We have found contra dancers a great group of people and the dance weeks in foreign parts a good way to explore other parts of the world. I have fond memories of Smitty’s dances at SHS. Every MLK weekend I have been going to the Ralph Page Memorial Dance Weekend in Durham, NH. I can still dance every dance starting Friday night and continuing all say Saturday and ending Sunday evening—I consider it my annual physical exam. We also spent about a month driving down to her family’s home (now owned by her and her brother) in Rogers, AR, and working on the house. I am involved with many local non-profits and town government, but I am hoping to step down from some before too long. I wonder how the country is going to survive with the current political situation. Make sure you get out and vote!
1955
MAISIE HOUGHTON
180 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MA 02116 maisiehoughton@gmail.com
Anzie Clifford Absher writes: I don’t have anything earth-shattering to report except that life-long learning hasn’t stopped thanks to Shady Hill. I’m presently working and learning with the local police here in Maine within the opioid addiction community. It’s fascinating and heart rending. In the spring I’m headed for Vietnam where my son and his family are spending a semester so their 10-year-old adopted Vietnamese daughter can enjoy her heritage. On the down side: I hate growing old!
Ross Hall writes: Bonnie and I did a two week rail tour of Peru last fall, riding narrow-gauge lines 15,000 feet high in the Andes and bringing back treasured memories of the adventure. This had been a bucket list item for years, and fortunately we were in shape to do it. Thinking back on the School, I was very impressed with the recent mailing outlining the Central Subjects covered by the classes. A latecomer myself, I hadn’t realized what a strong aggregate they can make over the years in preparing students for a mature and responsible adulthood. I’m glad that our teachers and Checkoutalotl were there for me!
Alexander Hawthorne writes: Five years ago, I took the momentous decision
to marry, having found a Cantabrigian (Buckingham, not Shady Hill) who, like me, has been living in Europe for the last 40 years or so. This is an even bigger decision at our age than at the traditional point in life. After major administrative hurdles, she joined me in Switzerland in 2015, where we have acquired an old village house outside Geneva. We are now working on its restoration, likewise an administrative obstacle course where a historic structure is involved. In addition to learning about architecture, insulation, and regulations I continue my involvement with the municipal council’s advisory board for senior citizens (of whom I am a qualified representative). We spend a proportion of our time in my wife’s house in rural western France, a two-day drive from Geneva. We continue to enjoy the proximity to the mountains and I have just returned from 10 days of skiing, perfectly timed to profit from the unusually heavy snowfalls of January. I am not sure how long this pleasant existence can continue. Life outside the USA is complicated for US citizens, and recent legislation has made things notably worse. We are doing our best to enjoy the present.
Maisie Houghton writes: As the 1955 class agent, I especially thank past agents, Anne Luther von Rosenberg, Betsy Green Fogarty, and most recently Ross Hall. As for myself, I have now lived in Boston with my husband for ten years, a chunk of time that has passed amazingly quickly. I enjoy keeping in touch with SHS, even as two granddaughters have graduated. I run into Mimi Kellogg Truslow in Cambridge and John Jeppson on his visits to Boston. Last summer I had the treat of a cozy visit with Kitten Cushman Fischer (we classmates are allowed to call her so!) in her sun-filled New Hampshire house. John Jeppson reports: We set off on two trips to Provence this June and October; the first, a birthday, and the second, a walking tour for 10 days! I hadn’t set foot in France for 30 years, but it’s time to brush up SHS skills. And you’ve given me a great start. Wendy has a career as an ocean activist and is asked to speak around the world, this year in Singapore and Milan. We package trips around each engagement: Vietnam and Provence. I sold my house in Chile this year to a nice British couple, who continue to let me use it when convenient. So my Shangri-La
is a place I can still go. I’ve had a love affair with Latin America since the Peace Corps in Peru in 1962. I visit at least once a year. I play tennis two or three times a week year round, especially at Martha’s Vineyard where a beautiful clay court comes with our longtime rental. I also do regular yoga and weightlifting. We belong to the group of meditators out there in class of ’55. Not the heavy-duty monastic mindfulness, but a practice called Ziva. We look forward to our 20 minutes twice a day. We are both involved in specific House races to overturn red congressional seats—a critical activity that I hope involves every member of the class! We march with the women, adore Rachel Maddow, and hope that the backlash against Republican policies will be long lasting. I think often of members of our class who left early on: Jeremy Shapiro, Jenifer Land, Eliot Roth, Brit Chance—to name a few—and how magical a place Cambridge was after WWII. And of course the early deaths of Bernt, Phil and Randy—all Coolidge Hill mates. Who would have known that Rachel Ingalls’ ‘Mrs. Caliban’ would be rejiggered for the screen and garner 13 Academy Award nominations. What a great place we all shared in such formative years. All Hail SHS!
Nancy Riddick Jordan writes: I hope I’m not writing too much, but I’ve been out of contact since graduation. After Shady Hill, I attended Cambridge High and Latin School and graduated in two years. I then attended Wellesley College and graduated in 1961 as a math major. I worked for Allied Research Associates in Boston for two years where I learned to program computers and began my career in information technology. I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for IBM at Goddard Space Flight Center. I was therefore a ‘Hidden Figure’ working on manned space flight projects Mercury and Gemini. Next, I worked for Computer Sciences Corporation. I worked for them in Maryland, the Netherlands, and finally in New York City to help develop NYC’s first off track betting system. In New York, I met and married George Jordan, a dermatologist who retired in 2011. I spent the rest of my career at J.P. Morgan Chase becoming their first African American female VP. After doing some consulting work, George and I are now
both happily retired and living full time in Sarasota. George gardens and I play bridge and entertain.
Anstiss Hammond Krueck writes: Hello from frigid Chicago. I used to read older classes’ class notes and wonder why all entries were about grandchildren—well, welcome to the senior years, Anstiss! I have six, five of whom live in Chicago. The beloved baby, age two, lives in Oakland, CA. But it is hard to believe that the eldest is a junior in college and that three of my four children are in their fifties—which is what I think I am. Education is a major topic in my family, and Ron and I are very involved and supportive of all their choices. The youngest goes to a Montessori school, the eldest to UConn. Two teenagers are in or headed to an eastern boarding school. I keep in very close contact with Maisie Houghton and commend her for taking on the roll of secretary, and I thank Ross for his years of service to our class! Ross, you will be so glad not to have to ask anymore for donations, though Shady Hill is worth it and is the only educational institution I give to (Farmington and Radcliffe were great, but it is SHS that inspired every speck of love of learning that I have).
Ellen Zetzel Lambert writes: My big news is that, as of January, I have finally retired from my teaching life at Dalton, where I’ve been for over 25 years. I’m finding that though I miss the daily classroom experience and the myriad day-to-day encounters with my adolescent students, there’s so much about that life I don’t miss at all: the hour-long commute on train and subway and the endless grading—not simply the labor of performing it, but dealing with all the anxiety on the other end. And I don’t miss all that goes with being beholden to an institution. The freedom to choose what I do (more or less) each day is wonderful! Granted, there’s still a lot over which one has no control—and sometimes it seems like half my time is spent in dealing with medical issues of one sort or another. Yet this too is a choice: one could just let it all go—but who would want to do that? And the obligations to family that also take up much of my time are also a choice, and mostly a joyous one. I can, in a sense, continue my teaching life because I’ve chosen to write a book about it: Slow Reading, the book I’ve been working on
ALUMNI SURVEY RESPONSES: WE ASKED … In what area(s) do/did you specialize in your professional career?
for many years, is almost finished. I am also choosing to lead an adult reading group at my local White Plains library. And will, I hope, be choosing to offer some kind of writing support to local kids whose families don’t have the financial resources to give them the kind of education that all students deserve—the kind we got at Shady Hill. So, life is good.
Lucy Mcneece writes: I lived in Beirut for two and a half years, teaching and studying, but now I am back in Paris hoping to finish the second year of a Masters degree in modern Arabic literature, but also studying Persian, in which I am far less advanced, and teaching part-time.
I admit I am aghast at Trump’s catastrophic policies with respect to Iran and Palestine, as well as his ‘friendship’ with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not to mention his war on science, and can only pray his reign will end as soon as possible! My son, Chris, comes to visit often from California because he now works occasionally in Italy, and I return to my house in Castine, ME during July and August where I spend time with my son,Tim, and see my sister, Roz. I cannot believe I am 77 years old, except that my aches and pains remind me daily that it is true! I used to run, but now enjoy walking in a lovely park near my apartment, which is currently under 4 inches of snow and absolutely beautiful, but the roads and sidewalks of Paris are left unplowed and un-sanded, which makes moving about hazardous! I welcome anyone from our class who plans to come to France, and I would also love to hear from any of our classmates.
Heddy Reid writes: I am retired from writing and editing—mainly now writing and reading poetry, happily involved in
several poetry groups. I publish some. Still in Washington, D.C. (not a particularly politically compatible time to live here). Trip and I moved to a wonderful condo overlooking a national park. We have the good fortune to have two sons in the area, and two grandsons, 9 and 11. Our eleven-year-old, Leland, plays the bagpipes. We’re about to go to Florida for two weeks. I never understood why oldsters went to Florida—now I understand. Amazing how often a get-together with old friends can segue into, as they say, ‘an organ recital.’
Clarke Slater reports: It’s a long time since I have contributed anything—so here goes. Helen and I are both well and active. We continue to live in the same old stone house in Ebchester that we have been in since 1975 (you can find Ebchester on Google—it seems to be the only one in the world. Our house is the one with the green tennis court at the ‘bottom of the garden’ and the red telephone box in front). At the behest of a group of local neurologists, I have recently gone back to work part-time on a research project at Newcastle University where I worked for years. The work will be similar in principle to the work I did before I retired, but it is exciting to have the chance of taking advantage of the enormous advances in technology that have occurred over the last 10 years. Hopefully we will gain some new insights into the process by which nerves activate muscle contraction, and how this process sometimes goes wrong. The work will involve a combination of ‘pure’ research and studies of tissues from patients with various forms of fatigable weakness. The real aim of the work is to develop better ways of treating them. I continue to play the cello in an
orchestra that meets to give a concert 2-3 times a year, and in regular chamber music sessions in which Helen, who plays viola, often joins in. Our children both live in the US. Ben leads a bachelor life as a broadcast engineer for Wyoming public radio, based in Laramie, and does freelance sound recording on the side. Jessica has a PhD in neuroscience (I wonder where she got that idea) and is currently studying brain attention mechanisms in wide-awake patients undergoing surgical removal of brain tumors. She and her husband, Adam Trefonides, live in Oak Park, IL outside of Chicago. No grandchildren on the scene as yet—but who knows what the future might hold?
Anne von Rosenberg reports: The von Rosenbergs are well and still in Belmont. Thanks to Ross for all his years being secretary and to Maisie for taking on the job. I have nothing outstanding to report. We had a lovely trip to England last June. This included the Chelsea Flower Show, which has been on my bucket list for ages. Also caught up with a cousin of Chaz’s who lives in London, and his former mentor and thesis adviser who has retired to Cambridge. The weather was glorious, gardens unbelievable; Sissinghurst and Great Dixter were favorites. We both continue our volunteer activities and enjoy condo life.
Gus Webster writes: I’m still holed up in sunny (ha!) Seattle and enjoying retirement after my final job with the U.S. Department of Labor (pension investigator). I retired way back in 2007—how time flies. My daughter Sarah is nearby with her husband Paul and rambunctious toddler Oscar. Sarah is a senior engineer (PhD) working on guidance of deep-underwater unmanned vehicles to explore the 97% of the ocean floors that are hitherto unexplored. She works in the Applied Physics Lab at the U. of Washington. Paul is getting his doctorate in brain physiology and also working at the U. of Washington. My son Seth has moved from Lincoln Labs, doing something with computer network security that I couldn’t understand, to a private company doing something else with computers that I couldn’t understand. He and his wonderful wife Millie continue to chase after my three other very active grandsons. I am now involved as a volunteer with the firearms control movement
here in Washington state, lobbying the state legislature in a blaze-orange T-shirt (Don’t shoot! We’re not deer, or bears, or coons, or terrorists, just people.) We’re making headway against the gun lobby. My very best to all my fascinating former classmates.”
1956
DEBBY GOLDBERG STINNETT
720 S. LATCHES LANE MERION STATION, PA 19066 Dstinnett1@gmail.com
Betsy Barker Abbott writes from Andover: For the last 19 years I have been creating art quilts, which in my case are primarily pictorial landscapes created as art works to hang on the wall. Inspiration for many of my quilts comes from our annual vacations on Monhegan Island in Maine, though more recently I have also created quilts inspired by some of the birding trips we have taken in South America, Namibia, Africa, and most recently in the canyon lands of Arizona and Utah. At the moment I am preparing patterns for two potential quilts depicting Antelope Canyon in the Navaho Nation lands in Arizona. I hope to work on these in February when I will have the gift of time during a month long artist’s residency in Johnson, VT at the Vermont Studio Center. This is a very exciting opportunity for me, where I will be in the company of 50 writers and artists working in many different mediums, each with our own studio, with time to truly focus, but also to share and learn from the other artists around me. Feel free to look at my web site, www.betsyabbottquiltart.com to learn more about my quilts, and the fine art giclée prints and cards that are available for sale if anyone would like to contact me. Discovering late in my life that I am indeed an artist has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Lucile Bump writes: I am trying to retire. I still teach Centered Riding and have a barn in Guilford, VT. I start traveling and teaching clinics again in February. I will be teaching in Scotland again this year. I enjoy sightseeing whenever I travel. We just survived a very cold spell here in Vermont and I am happy to say all the horses are fine and enjoying the sun.
Fred Churchill writes from the Cape: Margot and I are enjoying life in Bass
River. The past few weeks have been great. River was frozen and filled with ice. Birds all concentrated on the few open spots. College-age grandson visited with girlfriend. Today we sat and watched a snowy owl from 200 feet away as he sat on an overturned osprey nest surveying his domain.
Benny Day in Plymouth reports good health news: My PSA is down to 35 from 540 six months ago. The chemo is working! I start the three blood cleansings mid January (immunotherapy). I start leukapheresus (blood letting and infusion) soon and then two more times over the next six weeks. Cancer, you picked the wrong fight! Hope to be able to continue coaching tennis at Plymouth North High School. The day after Thanksgiving, Sancha (born Sept. 15, 2017) joined us and has been a constant source of overwhelming cuteness and laughter.
Tom Edsall writes: I have been to a couple of interesting conferences this year at Oberlin, the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley, and at U. California at Riverside. Trump clearly has Washington reeling. Reunion in Peterborough was great this summer. We enjoyed Christmas with our grandchildren in Philadelphia.
Susan Counihan Fratus writes from Keene, NH: I’ve loved the connections I’ve made with Shady Hill classmates since our 50th reunion in June 2006—all fun, interesting and meaningful to me. I
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
hope we can keep gathering. I have several books to recommend: the novel Stoner by John Williams, The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz, On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, and Draft #4: On The Writing Process by John McPhee.
Alan Galbraith writes: On retirement from Washington, D.C., Sarah and I purchased a home in Saint Helena, CA. I quickly became involved in public service, and am now well into my second term as the city’s mayor. My focus has been on economic sustainability—which in our case means addressing long-term neglect of basic infrastructure, as well as affordable housing (a huge problem generally in the Bay Area). This requires substantially more tax and fee revenue. It is not a message that brings cheer to many of our residents. Our three children are currently a foreign-service officer in Myanmar, a journalist (San Francisco Chronicle editor), and a law professor at the U. of Pennsylvania. We would enjoy a visit from any classmates! Our home is just blocks from Main Street.
Marianna Hartsong writes: I’ve been playing viola—in one orchestra, also improvising for the Dances of Universal Peace, which is my new great joy—to be free of black dots on a page and just listen to how the music comes through my heart and spirit. I’m a highly skilled Awareness Educator, and a low-tech kind of gal, computer-wise. I just created a new website, basically all on my own. It was
Quilt by Betsy Abbott ’56
Benny Day ’56 with Sancha the cat
Tom Edsall ’56 with granddaughter, Lydia, (left) and grandson Tommy (right)
Miles Jaffe ’56
pure fun. I hope you’ll enjoy your visit there as well: www.hartsong.net. I live in Sedona, AZ, am happily married, and have two lovely grown daughters and five grandkids, the first two of which started university in Canada in 2017, and the next two will start there this fall. I’m so proud of all of them.
Miles Jaffe writes: We have taken a ‘holiday’ from life in New Zealand and are away to visit monkeys in Bali, sheltered from the sun by my new hat. I’m off next week to watch Roger in Australia. I don’t mean to complain but the temperatures are in the nineties, thus the hat.
Martha Rochlin Kapos writes from London: I’m editing the summer issue of Poetry London and have already got some poems from Alice Notley, the prize-winning American poet, about which I’m thrilled. I’m also trying to figure out how to get the next book of my own poems published—having sadly lost the publisher who had supported me from the beginning, but has decided to cut his poetry list. It’s a little like being back inside square one. Recreation has involved trips to Italy, most recently to Verona, Vicenza, and Padua, and planning trips to Mantua and Sabbioneta (as the website has it ‘Po Valley: fog, river, art, lake, and nature’). On the family side: three flourishing grandchildren, the oldest is about to be twelve.
Rob Pittaway writes from Stonington, CT: All is well here by the sea. This time of year boils down to telling stories (lies?) while drinking Guinness at the Harp and Hound. I’m past the age of experiencing boats and the weather even for an afternoon.
Marcia Heinemann Saunders writes: It was such fun to attend our mini-reunion at Mary’s in NH last summer, and to see other old SHS friends elsewhere in New England and UK. I love London, where I’ve lived for most of my adult life, and am proud to be European as well as British and American, and despair about Brexit. It does seem to me that both the US and UK are in the throes of similar anti-democratic forces exploiting weaknesses in our constitutional arrangements. Here, for example, May’s government is foisting upon the public and a mostly supine opposition an interpretation of an advisory referendum that threatens our economy, social fabric, and crucial alliance for peace as ‘the will of the
people,’ supported by a right wing press that makes Fox news look just a wee bit brash. I’m still working for the NHS, now part-time with regulatory bodies.
As for me, Debby Goldberg Stinnett: I am still in suburban Philadelphia, absolutely loving retirement and enjoying renewed SHS class friendships. I have been travelling quite a bit, painting amateurishly, and, for no reason I can come up with, have started a short course in Chinese. Also working a bit to counter heinous PA gerrymandering. Children and grandchildren are all perfect.
Kate Webster writes: I have lived a number of different places since returning from my almost two decades in California from 1962–79. I trained as a nurse in California, and was lucky to do that through the public education system. It was wonderful! More recently I spent ten years in the Woods Hole area— much going on environmentally in that locale—but I wasn’t a scientist. About a year-and-a-half ago I chose to move to Arlington, to a brick building condo on Spy Pond, returning close to where I came from. Being on the bike path, which is a short walk to Arlington center, keeps me at least a little tiny bit active! I find myself turning to the strength of the vital environmental movement swirling around us now (amid all the other things to be bought and sold). Watching what has happened over time as we have is a privilege of an elder’s view. I find this a searing pull. Isn’t our need to act usefully a force in our aging years?
Corkey Isaacs White writes: I have been smiling ever since our late summer reunion. How, asked Gus, can you all be so nice? Well, we are, very nice and loving. I’m impressed. Writing—this time about Japanese food workers, industrial, artisanal and domestic, and their tools and food—is having to fall by the wayside a bit because I’ve taken on curatorial duties mounting an exhibition about Japanese food tools—beautiful knives, bamboo sieves, ceramic grinding bowls and more—for the Fuller Craft Museum, opening in June 2018. I had no idea how much work this is. And teaching falls a bit behind too, but those kids just keep showing up so I must too. Maybe this year will be my lesson in why people retire. My daughter Jen Callaghan ’79 works as a lawyer and lives in London with her husband and my perfect granddaughter
Meghan, who turned seven on Valentine’s Day. She’s surpassingly clever and athletic and very much fun. My son Ben is finishing his fourth book—this one an investigation into ideas about the future through an ethnographic case study of the laboratories creating ‘meat’ in interesting parts of the world. As a food anthropologist myself, I’m clearly interested. Gus continues to make the world’s best ice creams at a new second facility—both in Cambridge, so come.
Mary Morison Winby, hostess of last summer’s reunion, writes: 2017 was a great year for our class. With the wonderful help from Corky Isaacs and Susan Counihan, we were able to pull off a weekend house party in Peterboro, NH at my family homestead. A third of our class and their spouses attended flying in from Europe, the west coast, or driving from nearby states. Corky was our caterer for the grand dinner Friday night. Alden Harken and Laurie invited us to a picnic at his family’s summer place in nearby Harrisville, NH. As Corky, Susan, and I debriefed the weekend, we remarked that everyone who attended was vibrant, active, engaged in life, and so appreciative of our education and their Shady Hill experience many years ago. It was a very special event that still holds strong memories and appreciation of our time together as young kids at Shady Hill.”
1957
JUDY NATHANSON
310 LLANDRILLO RD. BALA CYNWYD, PA 19004 jznathonson@gmail.com
Millard Alexander writes: I was invited to a conference in southern Poland last summer. I used this opportunity to visit the small town near Krakow where my mother’s great grandfather was born and spent much time using the enormous resources available on the internet to learn more about my origins. This was fascinating, and in the process I discovered several distant cousins both in this country and in Europe, who miraculously escaped the Nazi brutes. My daughter and I visited one cousin in September and will visit two others this coming April in London. I am still working but probably not much longer. My health is still good, for which I am most grateful.
Charlie Bradford writes: Sue and I continue to take care of our family place in Marshfield. Sue has a lovely mare that enjoys our back pasture. I’m working with a great choral group, Pilgrim Festival Chorus, as a board member thanks in part to Miss Abbott many years back. As relatively new grandparents, we are entranced by our young grandson Jakob Bradford Cramer, who is almost two but seems to be going on ten. Our eldest daughter Amanda will complete a four-year assignment in Abu Dhabi on the faculty of Zayed University. We extend an invite to any classmate any time to visit us here, and all best to everyone.
Tracy Keppel Drury writes: All is well in my life in spite of our national and global concerns. My children and their families spark joy. Ray and I continue to settle happily into the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts and although a bit slower we are still chugging along.
Two days ago I found the LP of our concert at the Gardner Museum in 1956! Although it shows the signs of being played often and on an ancient record player, it still is remarkable. I’d be happy to transfer it to a CD and send to interested classmates. I must say I was impressed. Miss Abbot worked wonders with our 7th, 8th, and 9th grade voices where no classmates were excluded.
Dan Grace reports: 2017 was busy. In March I travelled to Buenos Aires for a tour of ‘the bottom of the earth’. My
brother Nick Grace ’53 and his friend Mary Murray and her sister had invited me to join them. Was a grand time: seeing Buenos Aires and traveling to El Calafate on the east side of the Andes. Crossing into Chile, we boarded a ship to explore the fjords of Patagonia on the way to Ushuaia and Cape Horn. The first time south of the equator, I was captivated by the appearance of the moon from ‘the other side.’ Back in Wyoming I was part of a group that formed for a Pussy March celebrating the importance of women; 750 marched. The summer brought a Pride picnic, drag show and all around fun time to this tiny town of Casper, WY. This was all filmed by MTV which was documenting rural America and its handling of LGBTQ issues. What a long way we have come. I am out of the closet at the young age of 75. I hosted five men in my home for the August solar eclipse, which was fun.
Nan Kindall Holmes writes: My husband and I have now been in California for a year and a half and are really glad we made the move. Our only daughter lives nearby so we get to see her once a week. We have reconnected with Missy Pusey Hopkins and her husband several times. I have not done as well reconnecting with Sue Ryerson Moon but she is on my list for the summer. We sold a very small house in the Florida Keys in February 2017 and in September it was totally destroyed by hurricane Irma. We must be doing something right.
Missy Pusey Hopkins writes from the open waters: I am writing to you from a ship on our way to Antarctica. I feel blessed—David and I have been married since 1965. We have 4 children and 11 grandchildren. We both enjoyed our careers and now we are enjoying traveling, family, and friends. I recently reconnected with Nan Kindall Holmes, a special friend since 6th grade, and now she lives in California too! Life has been very good despite some challenges, of course, and listening to the news is usually disturbing!
Sue Ryerson Moon writes: I’ve lived in my old house in Berkeley for 45 years with a changing cast of characters including my children, of course, without ever doing much of anything to the house. Now I am doing major remodeling in preparation for my sister Francie Shaw ’61 and her husband Bob Perelman (and their little dog) to move in with me (and my little cat). I’m excited about going
into my dotage with them. I enjoyed seeing the eclipse of the sun with Roz and Judy in Wyoming, and I’m glad to be in sporadic contact with Duncan Kennedy I’m still teaching and writing about Zen Buddhism and visiting faraway granddaughters in LA and Austin.
David Tartakoff wrote sharing sad news with us: My wife of 28 years, Cheryl, died in September of complications from radiation she received for Hodgkin’s disease decades ago. We had planned to move east from Chicago but for the moment all of that is on hold. I will certainly be on Cape Cod during the summer as usual and I would love to see any and all of you.
Nick White writes: We’ve been in Nice since December. Alas, only four more weeks to go, then back to Cologne. Hope to figure out a way of coming back to Nice.
Soo Whiting writes: Husband Flip Harrington and I split our time between Martha’s Vineyard and bird watching in points far and wide. We did not go foreign last year but did participate in the Biggest Week which is a birding festival in Northwest Ohio near Lake Erie in early May. I continue to lead bird walks from the Chilmark Community Center on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer months but have retired from writing a weekly Bird News column for the Vineyard Gazette after 30 plus years. Flip and I lead bird watching trips for both Venice and Sarasota Audubons in the winter months. Hale and hearty I am with two new hips and will continue to travel and bird as long as we are able.
Roz Stone Zander updates us on her year of living dangerously: This was a year of ups and downs, as it was for almost everyone. My particular version of the down part was a concussion on black ice in January, then, when I was much improved but not quite in perfect health, swimming in the sea in Costa Rica and being dashed to the hard sea floor by a rogue wave and breaking my neck. One ‘up’ is obvious, I’m here and not totally paralyzed. But others include participating in the relocation of elephants in Malawi, enjoying the summer on Vinalhaven with my partner Hansjorg Wyss, and my daughter and her family, and meeting Judy Nathanson and Sue Ryerson Moon in Wyoming for the total eclipse of the sun. The three of us then traveled to northern Montana to spend a few days together despite the
Dan Grace ’57 on his way to the Women’s March in 2016
Dan Grace ’57, Nick Grace ’53, and friend Mary Murray in Patagonia
smoke from forest fires. Another ‘up’ was a trip with Hansjorg through Peru and the Amazon to visit a climate scientist, and then through Argentina and Chile assessing national parks. Finally we went to Disneyland to welcome in the new year with a group of 30 people, half of them kids and others who wanted to be. The book I published last year, Pathways to Possibility, was given the Nautilus Award for literature this year. Now that the book is out, I have been missing a project to focus on. But I have one now: I am projecting that I will have a painting exhibition in two years, and tomorrow I go to New Zealand with Hansjorg, solely to paint for a month.
Class correspondent Judy Zetzel Nathanson concludes: I am glad to read all your entries and in that way spend a few minutes with you. Most of us share good things and good tidings, but I am very aware that at our age that is not always the case. I’m sure I speak for all in sending condolences to David. For me, ‘highlights’ often seem to come in the form of repetition and deepening of what has been in my life for some time: Visits with Sue and Roz to witness the eclipse in Wyoming, which we did NOT know is home to Dan and where we didn’t happen to run into him; and other sitings of these two incredible friends of mine. I’m enjoying the four little boys in my life and all that they contribute and bring alive for me, along with other family; continuing and even expanding my psychotherapy practice which continues to teach me interesting things; some additional travel, usually to visit friends at some distance. Feeling healthy, being able to do pretty much anything I want—with enough mental capacity not to mess up too badly —I’m certainly grateful for all that, and more. Good wishes to all of you!
1958
DAVID ROSS
27 S. SPRING STREET CONCORD, NH 03301 davidross2243@gmail.com
Susan Brooks writes: We are still living on the blueberry farm we bought in Waldoboro, ME in 1970. I am the farmer, John an architect. I am trying to get him to retire, so we can get more trails cut in our 200+ acres of woods. I drive the
tractor, but I will not touch a chainsaw. We sell 200-330 pounds of organic wild blueberries a day in season. Come and get some! For years my off-farm efforts have been on land protection, working with our local Medomak Valley Land Trust, which I started in 1991, and with Maine Farmland Trust. Shady Hill changed my life. I hated school, was bored into being bad, and was going to quit. I changed my mind the day I started Shady Hill in 7th grade. My most fun discovery in the last 60 years: If you blow soap bubbles on a chair lift on a very cold day they will freeze and roll down the slope.
Eleanor Earle Ferguson writes: We are still living in Chapel Hill where Jim continues (his twentieth year) teaching the honors undergraduate seminar in food and culture at UNC. A significant and required part of each semester is dinner at our house—so we have twenty usually for dinner every Tuesday. The students are smart, enthusiastic, and come from many different disciplines, so it is a yeasty and community-building experience. I do think of Shady Hill often, especially now that our youngest granddaughter is attending a Montessori school in Durham. The similarities are striking. John Dewey certainly knew what he was doing in education. I am looking forward to our annual ski trip to Deer Valley, UT. Our daughter and I go every year. Jim doesn’t ski. Perhaps I can get to our reunion. I would surely enjoy being in Cambridge again and visiting the school.
Jill Harken Hall writes: This has been a year of active resistance. It started with the Women’s March a year ago. Two of our granddaughters and their mother marched with us. A year later, this past weekend, we went to a rally on the Capitol grounds for DACA and the next day was the anniversary march. It didn’t seem like this year’s march got much publicity but maybe it’s just that I am definitely out of social media loops. Happily the march was (I would say ‘huge’ but that word has been corrupted) big, and much bigger than I expected. The charge to get out the vote is great and I hope next November will have many victories to counteract the direction of the current leadership. Despite living in the swamp and events in the swamp, on a family level we had lots of fun. Our big trip was to take our oldest grandchild, our 14-year-old grandson, to Cuba for 10
days. It was a fabulous trip—so interesting for each us—and great to be alone with a teenage grandchild for an extended time. I definitely recommend doing it— whether it be to a far fun place or somewhere closer to home.
Tom Hartt reports: No earthshaking news here, which is a good thing when you live in southern California. I’m happily retired. Karen and I have been living spring and fall in North Carolina, near our daughter and her family. Hope to see y’all at reunion.
Frank Purcell writes: Elka and I, plus two cats and dog, are well and trying to stay warm through another winter. The chorus we sing with is rehearsing our spring concert, so there’s hope; the main piece is a beautiful requiem by Cherubini, not performed much but well worth hearing if you get a chance. We spend some time with math, Elka tutoring at a local charter school and I playing around on the computer, and we make good use of the public library, one of the city services that Chicago does well. Another service is transit, which, having no car, we now rely on for all trips around this troubled but interesting and lively city. My best to the class of ’58.
David Ross writes: Still living in New Hampshire and enjoying its remarkable four-season climate, though today not so much, with a quarter-inch of ice followed by an inch of rain. Anne and I continue to travel, hike, cycle, and volunteer here and there. Best wishes to all of my classmates!
Kit Sawyer Stover writes: My family moved to New Haven, CT after I completed fourth grade at Shady Hill, but the yearly class notes have enabled me to hear about my former classmates for all these years. After college, I was part of the Shady Hill teacher apprentice program in 1966-67 going on to teach in the Newton public schools. Since 1976, I have lived in Newton raising a family while being an active participant in the schools and library. During this time, my husband, Charlie, worked on short term overseas health projects funded by USAID in developing countries while I held down the fort (3 daughters), except for two years when we lived in the Philippines. Now that we are both retired, we are enjoying our family, grandkids, and travel. Summers find us on the Cape and in Maine. I look forward to getting reacquainted with my classmates.
Walter Vincent writes: As time passes I think back often to our time at Shady Hill, filled with gratitude for the rich foundation we were given. How lucky we are to have had such a fine education! I feel badly that every child can’t have the same experience. Warm wishes to my classmates and the rest of the Shady Hill family.
1959
CHARLIE WYZANSKI
75 FRANCIS AVENUE
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 wyzanski@gmail.com
Nate Bowditch writes: These are tough times for progressives. To keep my sanity, I decided I needed real plans for 2017. So, last year I asked Santa for the New York Times best sellers, and he delivered. I reduced my TV and radio news time and increased my reading time. Great strategy. I took a first-time trip to Zambia in July to inspect the extraordinary youth public health program being implemented by a new non-profit that I helped create was deeply moving (check it out at Healthy Kids/Brighter Future.org). Lobster fishing on the Maine coast continued to be a hoot, and a year-end bucket-list fly-fishing trip to the Patagonia region of Argentina was simply wonderful. So Donald, you’re trying everything. But you can’t bring me down. I will resist.
Michal Goldman writes: This has been a year unlike any other for me, a discontinuous year. Several people who are important to me have been very sick; one has died. I may have made my last film. The political landscape has jolted me non-stop. On the other hand, I’ve got a new roof on my house, had it painted sky blue, made a lovely patio surrounded by lilac and privet for my downstairs tenants, and restored my old barn in Prince Edward Island. I consider those projects as place markers and ways to spend a shocking amount of $$ until the next project takes hold.
Richard Horvitz writes: I am continuing to enjoy retired life, and have no problem keeping myself busy. I still read, take courses at a local college, and work out fairly regularly. Anne had a knee replacement in early July, and I have had to be her primary caretaker after that. I have been keeping up with my variety of
interests, including medicine. Although I am no longer actively involved in the field, I still find it intellectually interesting. Anne continues to be involved in her literature teaching in the emeritus college program. She has given courses on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Mark Twain, and is working on upcoming courses on Sinclair Lewis and Edith Wharton. She gets really involved in this, and has quite a bit of fun with her classes. We took our big trip of the year in April. We traveled by Amtrak trains to Washington, D.C., and then on to Miami. From Miami we traveled to Key West, where we visited the Ernest Hemingway house and Harry Truman’s summer White House. We then traveled to Fort Lauderdale, where we took a 10-day cruise to the southern Caribbean. We visited Aruba, Cartagena, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica, and Jamaica. After the cruise we traveled back to Washington, D.C., where we visited the new Trump Tower Hotel, the Newseum, and the International Spy Museum. We spent a delightful day with a niece of Anne’s, a long time IRS employee who lives in Alexandria, VA, and then returned home. We took a few other trips over the rest of the year. In June we took another trip on Amtrak to St. Paul, where Anne attended an international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society conference. In July we traveled again to Oak Park, IL, where we had attended the Hemingway conference last year, to show this area to my cousins who visit us every year. In October we attended a Samoyed national dog show in Ohio. Over Thanksgiving we traveled east to visit family in MA, CT, and NYC. Katy, our nearly 16-year-old Samoyed, passed away early last year. In August, we got a puppy and named her Julie, in part after Amtrak’s automated voice assistant. Her full name is ‘Solid Gold Jewel of the
Ring’, the ‘ring’ referring both to what one wears upon one’s finger and where one shows dogs. We plan to start showing her this spring, once she is old enough. Our other pets are mostly all doing well. Life goes on for our animals and us and we are looking forward to a happy and healthy 2018.
Steve Saltonstall writes: I continue to work as a truck driver and board member for humaneborders.org, helping to maintain our 49 water stations in the Sonoran Desert. Our goal is to save the lives of undocumented immigrants crossing into southern Arizona on foot. These desperate people risk everything trying to get to Freedomland. Too often they die of dehydration and hypothermia. They need help. I love Tucson and my job is very fulfilling.
David Smith writes: I’m purposefully slowing down a bit—for example, it has already taken me nearly 2 years to get anywhere near completion on my next manuscript. I’m still enjoying the times I travel to run student or faculty workshops or make presentations, but rarely on the road for anything else. Vancouver is a wonderful place to live—hardly ever anything to shovel in the winter, and never too hot in the summer. Be in touch if you are headed this way, perhaps for a cruise on the inside passage, or a train trip on the Rocky Mountaineer. Life is good.
Charlie Wyzanski writes: Writing my class note last year, I hardly thought of our 4th grade recitation of the poem Ithaka. Yet, thanks to an unsolicited offer to rent our house, Nilgün and I set out for an unhurried journey, one full of adventure and full of discovery. The road was, indeed, a long one: some three months and 4107 miles in the Dordogne, Provence, and finally in Paris, where, at the end of November, we met up with our daughters. Can I take a retest Monsieur Vincent?
Charlie Wyzanski ’59 with his family in Paris
Steve Saltonstall ’59
ANDY OLDMAN
31 KILBURN ROAD
BELMONT, MA 02478 aqopbketch@aol.com
Kim Batteau writes: I have been retired from the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands since 2011. My wife Margreet and I moved from near the beach (Scheveningen) in The Hague (the political capital), where we lived for almost ten years, enjoying our bustling congregation (mainly young people, surprisingly), the culture and beauty of The Hague, and the vacation-like atmosphere of where we lived, a five-minute walk from the ocean. I’m still active preaching (in Dutch of course), leading church services on Sunday in all directions within a ¾-hour’s drive from where we live, near Utrecht, in the old, quaint city of IJsselstein. I’m also working on a doctoral dissertation at a slow pace (something they allow you to do here). Our four children, Jesseka (married to Dos Engelaar), Suzy, Lukas (married to Ravinia Thwaites), and Saskia are well. Only Saskia lives outside the Netherlands, in Brooklyn, where she’s lived for five years. We have four grandsons, Niek (13) and Kris (10) (Jesseka and Dos’s kids), and Noah (7) and Nathan (2) (Lukas and Ravinia’s boys), and Ravinia is expecting (a girl!) in June. We enjoy being “Opa” and “Oma” (Dutch for Grandpa and Grandma), and babysit regularly.
Phil Cowan writes: Life continues to be pleasant, in spite of the odd bump or two. I continue to enjoy life in Cambridge. I love the work at McLean’s—both working with patients and teaching the kids who come to work there. Both of these offer me ways to keep using my brain, and trying to get better at it. I still travel and take photos whenever I can. My son, Noah, is now engaged, to my delight. As I’ve said before, if he’s happy, it’s easy for me to be happy. He’s now a sous-chef at a restaurant in Portland, OR. I’ve always loved cooking, and like to think I’m pretty good at it, but when I see him doing it, there’s no doubt that being a pro in the kitchen is a whole different thing. As they’d say in the restaurant world, he’s a beast in the kitchen. So, what it adds up to is that the ‘stills’ are all there: still working, still traveling, still taking pictures, still enjoying my son, and my life, generally.
Elizabeth Hammond Lewellyn writes: London is still a lovely place to live although most of us are as bemused by the Brexit vote as friends at home are by the President. We still live in the same place (since 1981), go to a lot of concerts, and take jaunts to Europe.
Andy Oldman writes: I had a good year only seriously marred by a complex busted ankle last February while sauntering back to my Maine cabin on a warm winter night. Leaving off the usual heavy boots resulted in the most slippery combination of wet snow over black ice and down I went with my foot at an impossible angle. All good now, although it may be time to admit I am living up to my last name. I remember my father took me out to lunch one day just after he had reached my current age. He said very directly: ‘getting old sucks.’ I’ll never forget that, as he both rarely used any kind of four letter words and hardly ever gave unsolicited advice. I have spent the last year renovating an old farmhouse adjacent to the aforementioned cabin. Hopefully many long winter nights can be enjoyed there in view of snow covered moonlit fields and the harbor beyond. I love cutting and splitting (with an ancient home made power splitter) the firewood for the little fireplace and wood stove. Finally giving into age and practicality, there is real oil-fired heat. Yet nothing beats the aura of a homemade fireplace made from large pieces of discarded granite curbing, trimmed and set by the clever hands of a French-born stonemason. I have no real plans to retire as I can manage most of my business with the iPhone and a little quality time in the Cambridge area. I’m still immersed in rare old cars, and by a couple strokes of good luck I was able to pick up a near perfect 1910 Pope Hartford touring car. We will take it on a weeklong tour in Hudson River Valley this spring. This year I’m planning to take the little ketch up to Nova Scotia and other familiar waters way Down East. I am headed off to France for a few weeks to once again visit my SHS seventh grade penpal and his extended family, and then on to Mt. St Michel and the Loire Valley.
This year we have heard from some who have not written in for years, so that is rewarding for all and validates this annual task.
Lee Roscoe writes: Two plays of mine praised by Shakespeare Theater Company
in DC as ‘powerful and important theater’ still seek productions. A radio play for teens based on a Cape Cod legend will be done on WOMRFM. I acted in A Woman’s Heart to excellent reviews. I’m still writing for newspapers, magazines on Cape Cod, and Harwich Conservation Trust. I had a seminal, long piece on Wampanoags in Cape Cod Genealogical Society’s publication. I love our new kitty, knitting, and baking yummy bread. I miss ice fishing and long for a camping getaway. My chapter in the newly released book, The Cinema of Norman Mailer got rave review from the British Film Institute.
Fred Ross reports: We are still enjoying our five acres of view property in the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon, gardening and hiking as much as ever. This past year saw an awful spate of fires in the mountains of Oregon and Washington—not as big as those in California but producing troublesome smoke throughout western portions of the state. Hopefully in 2018 we will have a more normal summer and fall. Our son Ben is finishing his time as a post-doc in molecular biology and genetics at U. of Washington and applying for tenure track teaching jobs—the first interview is at U. of Oregon, which would make his parents happy should he get it. Granddaughter Norah is now three. Our daughter Amy has obtained a license as a massage therapist and continues to be a lead dancer in a contemporary dance troupe in Seattle. We are lucky to have them close enough for us to visit every few months.
Susie Saarinen writes: Except for a few aches and pains, I am feeling remarkably recovered from my accident last year which broke 19 bones 36 times! This last year has been one of simplifying my life so as not to leave huge messes for my kids if anything else happens to me. This year I’ll be finishing that up, working on my memoir (family stuff), and getting stronger. My sons Erik and Mark and daughter Kate are all fine and thriving in their various ways. In June I went to Finland to celebrate Finnish Independence with my Finnish family and this year I am traveling to Spain and France for visits with friends.
James Zetzel writes: I figure that every fifty years or so, I ought to send in some alumni news. This June I will retire from teaching at Columbia, where I have been
Professor of Latin for 32 years. That won’t change my life much, except that I will have no more grading, committee meetings, or salary, and I will switch from being faculty to being a faculty spouse. My remarriage in 2013 (after being widowed in 2011) to a wonderful friend and fellow-Latinist has been a bigger and much nicer change, with lots of concerts, opera, and travel, including giving his-and-hers lectures in places like Pisa and Edinburgh. Among other things, Katharina has introduced me to her family, friends, and her native (and my ancestral) Germany. We spent 2016-17 in Berlin where she had a fellowship, and in addition to exploring an amazing city, whose history, good and bad, is visible on almost every street, I learned a great deal about a part of my family that was all but unmentioned when I was growing up. We found my grandparents’ grave, and we had my grandfather’s name added to my grandmother’s gravestone—nearly 75 years after he had chosen suicide over Auschwitz. I celebrated my 70th birthday in Berlin, and received my most significant present the next day, when the German government restored to me the citizenship taken from my father in 1941. These days it can’t hurt to have a passport from a liberal democracy. So I’ve gone back and forth across the Atlantic more times in the last five years than in the previous 20 or more, and have been to countries (Germany, Austria, Spain) where I had never been, and seen familiar places (England, Italy) in different ways. I’m taking a conversational German class, I have a book on the history of Roman scholarship coming out in April, and I’m starting to think about a new one on Cicero. Retirement looks better every day.
1962
BRUCE WILCOX
191 LINCOLN AVENUE
AMHERST, MA 01002
bgw5854@gmail.com
Robin Batteau reports: I recently played what are likely my last concerts, though you never know. Passim, the wonderful successor to the Club 47, is having ‘Buskin & Batteau,’ my longtime off and on band with New York’s David Buskin, one last time, with a portion of the
proceeds going to cancer research. We’re calling it the ‘Up Yours, Cancer’ shows, since I was found to have colon cancer on September 12, 2016, while in the hospital for my heart attack of September 10, 2016. Stent in, tumor out, chemo in, and I’m doing fine, apart from foot-and-hand numbness neuropathy, a side effect of chemo, that means my guitar and violin playing are worse than ever (plus my arthritis doesn’t help). Actually, it’s gotta be the world’s luckiest heart attack, since it likely saved my life by hastening discovery of a symptomless cancer tumor. Isn’t ‘likely’ a cool word, being both adjective and adverb? So I’m thinking of running for office (again—I ran for mayor of Cambridge in 1969, I think), maybe for Governor of Connecticut, on a platform of no income tax for women, since they get paid so much less for doing the same job, so we’ll call that difference the Women’s Work Tax and call it even. Hey, when our class next gets together, can we call it the Becky’s Graduation Afterparty, since so many of us missed the first one? Let’s vote. I vote yes.
Sandra Woodard Cathey writes: We are just puttering along in Vermont, taking advantage of the sunny cold days we have here. The dog is as much of a sissy as I am—not wanting to go out when it’s as cold as it has been off and on. I take her for walks with her jacket, and once she gets going, she’s fine, trotting along and stopping occasionally to sniff some invisible newspaper article. I am still enjoying teaching Kindermusik to the little ones and teach a few private students in the afternoons. The most fun is having our grandchildren, my daughter and her husband and three little boys living with us in the little apartment on our lower level of the house. There is nothing like the gleeful arrival of one or two of them in the evening or as baby-sitting charges. Up the stairs they come to show us a special found rock, a book to be read or a picture they have drawn. The littlest is still a baby; a happy, quiet child so far! I am still playing the oboe and performing in one of the local orchestras here in Montpelier. The clarinet and recorder are on the sidelines, played only during lessons with students of all ages. Not much more happening here except for yearly trips to the Maine coast to walk on the beach where the sounds of the life at sea fill and refresh our
souls for another long winter in Vermont. Oh yes, and lobster for dinner and trips to the antique stores in Wiscasset! Dana Ferry reports: I’m writing from Myrtle Beach, where I still spend part of my winter, especially to be near old friends who are drawn to the Meher Spiritual Center here, as I have been for the last 47 years. Becky Higier Kent lives here too so, luckily for me, we see each other often. For the same reason I still go to work in India for the Avatar Meher Baba Trust once a year for a few months, which is a tremendous privilege. The remainder of the year I live on the family farm in Rhode Island which always needs its own work: pipes, roads, walls, fences, etc., as well as family doings. I have two nieces in the Boston area, one who is a school psychologist and one who owns and manages a music business, Atlantic Strings (they gig out for weddings, memorials, etc.—string players and they are good!). Still have deeply fond memories of teachers and classmates from Shady Hill. I always have felt it was a great good fortune to have been sent to school where all the teachers seemed to believe we were valuable humans with creative spirits that just needed to be encouraged. One wishes that all children would experience that kind of support.
Collot Guerard writes: It was good to be back at SHS for our class reunion this spring. Jane Bruner Mullane and I and her brother, Whit, spent hours reminiscing and visiting buildings that were the same and others that were new. Jane confirmed my recollection that in Miss Raoul’s class, we spied a raccoon in a tree as we were gathered below the tree (still there but much larger) to read outside on a warm day. And she remembered Ms. McDougal’s bridal shower at Thad Beal’s house in third grade. I still dip into my heavily annotated John Brown’s Body, which we read in 8th grade. And it turns out that one of my Dad’s students, author Alice Hoffman, bought our house on Hilliard Street, so I got to revisit the house where I lived through 8th grade. I am still at the FTC as a litigator, going after scam artists who cheat consumers. I love what I do, still ride my horse, and am an avid reader (literary fiction). I’m now a widow—Bill my husband died in July 2016—quite an adjustment. My 41-year-old son (orthopedic surgeon in
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
Chicago) was married for the first time in Chicago in February. Very pleased that he has finally settled down. Have extra bedrooms in my house in DC and in Bill’s house in Galesville, about 10 miles south of Annapolis. Let me know if you are in the area.
Dick Henry writes: I continue to work on trying to do something to ameliorate climate change. I’m currently working on advising school districts in New Hampshire on how to retrofit their 30- to 70-year-old buildings to make them more comfortable and reduce their use of fossil fuels as much as possible. Through a combination of improving the building shell, correcting egregious heating ventilation and cooling problems, increasing natural lighting and the use of LEDs, improving indoor air quality, and installing renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, and in some cases biomass we can significantly improve the learning environment and extend the lives of these buildings for another 30 to 50 years. These renovated schools not only significantly reduce operating costs but serve as a wonderful example for students, faculty, staff, parents and the whole community. The schools are also using the real time display of how the solar panels are operating in a variety of their courses from elementary school through high school. Nothing like having a prominent example of an energy-efficient structure in town that is also helping to stabilize property tax rates in a state with neither a sales nor income tax. I remain optimistic that all roads will eventually lead to a carbon free Rome. I fear we have already passed the point of no return and the planet our children and grandchildren are and will experience will be nothing like the one we were all privileged to grow up in. The water shortages, drought, fires, mudslides, hurricanes, etc. that are already happening with ever increasing frequency not to mention the extraordinary sea level rise we are seeing in the Gulf of Maine makes it clear that we are already deep into this transition. On a separate front, I’ve been working on implementing district heating and cooling systems for cities which has the potential to reduce a city’s carbon footprint by more than 50%. Patience and persistence are essential, I seem to have more of the latter than the former which some of you may remember from
our time together at SHS. I am blessed with a wonderful marriage, great kids, extraordinary grandchildren and good health. I find the work I’m doing creative and rewarding which makes every day a new adventure. I’ve been sculling for the past 12 years which I indulge in both here in NH and in Nova Scotia. Mark Dunn and I see each other from time to time and reminisce about SHS as we both work here in Concord. I welcome a visit from any of you who find yourselves at the intersection of Route 93 and 89 so drop by and I’ll treat you to lunch.”
Eunice Howe writes: Thanks to Bruce for inspiring us to contemplate. What were important moments in the past? Mistakes? What might we have done differently? What might we do in the future? It’s a daunting endeavor and not without pain. My husband, Ralph Amey, died three years ago. It was devastating and yet I’ve been fortunate in other ways. My eleven years at Shady Hill rank high on my list. I have dear friends, a home that I love (although I must downsize), a loyal dog, a fulfilling career of 38 years and (too) many plans for the future.
Tonu Kalam writes: I’m still going strong in my 30th year on the faculty of UNC-Chapel Hill, conducting the orchestra, teaching conducting, and coaching chamber music. I have lots of good students and fine colleagues, along with a great academic, cultural and scenic environment. After 25 years of conducting the Longview Symphony Orchestra in Texas, that chapter of my life is now closed, making my schedule much less hectic. My wife Karyn is very busy in her job with a public relations firm, but we have had a number of opportunities to take short vacations together. In just the
last five months we’ve been to Colorado, Maine, South Carolina, San Francisco and Southwest Florida, with Dallas-Fort Worth coming up. Still lots of good music I’d like to conduct, so no imminent retirement plans!
Stephen Kaufman (Uncle River) writes: Here in Pie Town, NM, winter has been opposite to Boston area: rather warm and extremely dry. One two-inch and one three-inch snow the only moisture in over four months—quite the contrast to last year’s snow every few days melting to a sea of mud. Congenial community, magnificent night skies, root veggies under mulch in the garden, and squash in boxes in the cabin at least some counterbalance to news of the larger world.
Nina Green Stutz writes: Nothing new here. I’m still working with the National Inclusion Project (inclusionproject.org), still horrified that inclusion is a buzz word but not a practice. School sports are a big thing here—I drive a Chapel Hill Blue car but if I drive 10 miles down the road Duke dark blue steps right up. Rolf loved UNC-CH and I live in Chapel Hill so I never have had to choose. Waving hello to my unseen neighbor, Tonu Kalam. It’s really nice here: weather, people, living expenses. The politics are different, but Massachusetts is far, far away in many ways. I have several Yankee friends to laugh with (sorry, Ms. Caudill, I know my grammar is terrible) at things like school canceled for an inch of snow. I love Shady Hill more all the time. I have several of you on Facebook and I love the ephemeral contact. Collot Guerard and Robin Engel Finnegan seem to have entered the time freeze machine. Love everybody’s pictures. Off to NYC shortly—I have friends in Dear Evan Hansen and Come From Away
Bruce Wilcox ’62 playing in the Mayor’s Gold Cup soccer tournament in Hawaii
I saw Bette Midler in Hello Dolly last year so now I’ll get to see Bernadette Peters. I’m a Broadway junkie, which may not surprise anybody who remembers me staging assorted scripts of mine long ago. Bruce Wilcox reports: While visiting Hawaii in January to play in the Mayor’s Gold Cup soccer tournament, I received the now-famous emergency text alert: ‘Ballistic missile threat inbound to hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.’ Within 40 minutes we learned it was a false alarm, but not before a lot of adrenaline had been expended! Soon thereafter, my team played a team from Tokyo on a beautiful field adjacent to Pearl Harbor. Amazing to reflect on the fact that 76 years earlier our parents— American and Japanese—had been thrust into a war that began at that very place.
1963
ALICE R. CODA
400 GOULD HILL ROAD HOPKINTON, NH 03229 alicec1@comcast.net
As a group we continue to try to get together once or twice a year. Various classmates show up at various times, but it’s a grand legacy from Lenore Gessner Travis ’63. Let us keep it up, especially as this year is our 55th Reunion!
Robert Alexander writes from Madison, WI: The big news for me last year was the publication of my book on the Northwest Ordinance, which was passed by the so-called old Congress in New York in July, 1787—at the very same time that the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia. Title: The Northwest Ordinance: Constitutional Politics and the Theft of Native Land. I also had a chapbook of poetry published: Richmond Burning, which is not, as the title may suggest, about the Civil War. My wife and I continue to spend summer and early fall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in a small town right next to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and winters in Madison, WI though at times we look longingly at different sections of the weather map in January and February. My current research is focused on the Chicago Literary Renaissance (c. 1912-1917), which was closely connected with progressivism and the anti-war movement that
preceded the U.S. involvement in WWI. Any Shady Hillers venturing into flyover country are welcome to call and visit.
Craig Barger checked in: After 41 years working in the Massachusetts Juvenile Correction System, the last 34 years as a regional manager for the Department of Youth Services, I retired in April 2014. My wife, Elaine, had previously retired from the insurance industry. Our daughter Heather lives in an RV traveling between jobs in Elephant Butte, NM and national parks in the Dakotas. Her son Elliot lives and works in Boston and her daughter Wren lives with us and is a senior at Bridgewater State. Wren is a photographer whose work has been on display in several galleries and sites in our town of Easton. Our son Seth and his wife, Kalliope, live in an 1815 farmhouse in Warwick, MA with their son Romaire (4) and daughter Artemis (6 months). I was fortunate to be elected to the Board of Selectmen in Easton. I enjoy serving the people of our town and have helped to change the culture of the board, as we govern with a more positive tenor and a more inclusive process. I have tried very hard to maintain a non-partisan approach to the work of being a Selectman, despite the head winds from the far right. I am also the Chairperson of the Easton Democratic Town Committee where I am able to voice my more partisan opinions. Over the past several years Steve Buchbinder, Jim Pickel and I have arranged to meet for dinner periodically to catch up and share memories.
Alice Ross Coda reports: I continue to live in Hopkinton, NH, feeding the birds, doing less gardening and generally trying to stay ahead of aging joints. My husband and I put a down payment on a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Manchester, but will not likely go for 3+ years, if indeed at all. It’s hard to think of leaving this property after all we have put into it. I’m doing a little knitting and lots of reading, and continue to volunteer at the library once a week. My son Dan bought a house in Durham, NC with his girlfriend and are remodeling a bit and painting a lot. We visited with them over Christmas. My stepson Matt is in California. I was sorry to have missed the last gathering of classmates when Debbie Clark Robbins was there. We’ll catch up sometime!
Spencer Cowan writes: Joy and I are enjoying semi-retirement in Chapel Hill and spending a lot of time in California with our two daughters.
Sarah Creighton writes: I have escaped winter in Northampton and am enjoying life on a bicycle in Key West. Planning a short hiking trip to a few of Cuba’s national parks from here in February and continuing to make prints on the kitchen table as best I can.
Lizzie de Rham writes: I am fine, disgusted with Trump and the Republican Party performance, but hoping 2018 turns the tide, and that Democrats make a cogent argument for why they make more humane (and economic) sense. Although I am very discouraged about the deregulation and the gutting of the EPA, Massachusetts has refiled our bills to use Hepa filter vacuums in schools in an effort to reduce student asthma, and one to establish a division of Indoor Air Quality within the Department of Public Health. So, I guess the best hope is perseverance, and I intend to follow that path. Thanks to Dr. Nathan I have continued to enjoy excellent care, and continue to be free of disease. I hope our class continues to meet, and although I was unforgivably late last time, these meetings are special, with an inimitable sense of familiarity even more important as the years fly by.
Paul Gifford checks in from San Francisco: My big news is that I’ve ‘unretired’. After 3.5 years of retirement and trying to figure out what Carla and I most want to do, a headhunter with a seemingly perfect job contacted me. My position is called Senior Project Estimator. I’m working for Swinerton (an excellent SF-based company that has been around for over 130 years), and I’m working on the largest commercial project in the United States, known as Oceanwide Center San Francisco. It is right downtown; I get a parking place; and the project will last 5-6 years. Two
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
Debbie Clark ’63 and Sarah Creighton ’63
high-rise buildings, one 54-stories, the other 62-stories, and designed by Foster & Partners, a famous London-based firm. I wish I’d gone to SHS when they were teaching Mandarin, as the client is Chinese. The job is going reasonably well though it’s a shock to get up early to walk the dogs again. The other important parts of our lives are the kids and grandkids, who just turned 9! They came here from LA for a 4-day visit just before Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful. They remain the best-looking, smartest, strongest, fastest, and most-talented grandchildren on the planet, of course. My brother Ralph Gifford ’66 has just become a grandfather for the first time— his youngest daughter, Helen, had a baby boy, Ian, in October. All are doing well. The new job means I’ve stopped teaching meditation at Psychic Horizons, but I still recommend the school above all others. They now offer long-distance classes by Zoom videoconferencing.
Pam Fairbanks Kirkpatrick writes from south of Boston: The big news in our lives is the arrival of our first grandchild— Rosalie Bliss Hammel on Valentine’s Day 2017. Such an event may be old hat for many, but for us it has brought endless joy, especially since she lives only 5 minutes away. Being a grandparent is delicious!
David Lettvin writes: I continue trying to squeeze in some writing time on both a novel and a history, while simultaneously finishing a wood carving and caring for three grandchildren. My health is good despite recently being informed that my left arm remains broken 20 years after the motorcycle accident. I can work around just about anything.
Brina Peck writes from California that she is well, busy and will be at the reunion!
Jim Pickel writes from his home in Plymouth that he is loving retirement and enjoying occasional subbing at Thayer Academy. He visited Florida for two weeks in March.
Elizabeth Hawthorne O’Beirne Ranelagh writes from England: I’m still working with farmers on conservation and soil and water protection, though I’m beginning to think it’s time to retire! I enjoy the job enormously, but the bureaucracy keeps increasing and there’s a lot of driving involved. I also have my own farm with
sheep and organic wheat production, which is increasingly hard to make a profit from. My husband John is meant to be retired but is always trying to get television projects off the ground and getting involved in organizing them, so although I do see a lot more of him (he travels less), he doesn’t have much free time. I’m now playing in the newly formed British National Fretted Orchestra as well as our local mandolin orchestra, and in a couple of ceilidh bands, so music is a bigger and bigger part of my life. With dogs, cats, horses—things are busy! I enjoy reading all the emails about the various get togethers!
Debbie Clark Robbins states that she is mad about missing our upcoming reunion in June.
Cynthia Shelmerdine tells us: I’m happy in midcoast Maine (despite losing power for a week during the October storm). Busy working for the Democrats, serving on the board of a project-based-learning school that reminds me of Shady Hill, and training my young dog to do agility and rally obedience. Watching the national news with horror has become exhausting.
Brooksie Stanton writes from Vermont: I am too quickly going through my winter firewood in Vermont’s 2017-2018 deep freeze as I write. But I had a southern California escape last May. I visited Brina and enjoyed a reading lesson she did at a local school as well as a tour of Jet Propulsion Laboratories with her husband Gaj. I shared a Mother’s Day adventure with my son and his girlfriend (who live in LA) when our car broke down in the Morongo reservation desert. I love our class gatherings and look forward to the next!
Dan Wallace writes in that his second grandchild arrived October 23, 2017: Mark’s daughter, Blair. His weekly nannying days continue!
NICK DEUTSCH
43 LINNAEAN STREET, #42A CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 deutsch.eubanks@gmail.com
Holly Cheever writes: Hello, dears—my thanks again to Nicholas for spearheading our class notes drive. I think I am two years from my retirement from practicing veterinary medicine (maximum) and my health is hanging together decently, with one hip and one knee replacement this past year, and my Parkinson’s disease staying pretty quiet, to my relief. The last two years has brought the joy of three grandchildren—delightful, though two-thirds are too far away. It is interesting to watch my daughters’ developing maternal skills and to see how I apparently influenced them. My attorney spouse Dean also plans to close up shop in two years. Stay tuned to see if two workaholics actually do as planned. My good wishes to all of you and your families of all kinds.
Susan Mahony writes: My husband and I continue to live in our owner-built house in Monkton, VT with fields, forest, and wetlands all around. Winter tracking walks are great fun for me. Last time I saw coyote, bobcat, and otter tracks on my way to the active beaver dam on our marsh. In the warm season, I do lots with gardening, putting up food, trying new crops—northern variety sweet potatoes grow well here! I have signed up to be a Citizen Scientist for Seed Savers Exchange to test varieties of crops in our Zone 4 climate. I also continue to teach violin, both privately and in groups in after-school programs. It is such a kick to perform for the parents or schools after just eight weeks of study! They sound and look like real violinists! I also play in community orchestras in my area. Love my musical outlets! My younger daughter moved back to Vermont with her longtime boyfriend, and they were married in our lower field in August! We grew the flowers, and they organized everything else. The weather gave us sun at the ceremony and rain when we were under the tent for dinner! The young couple is living in a yurt on our land and saving money from their new jobs in hopes of buying land for their own home nearby. Sounds a bit like the path my husband and I chose some 39 years ago! Here’s to Reunion 2019!
Brooksie Stanton ’63 and Debbie Clark
Stephanie Selden sends: Greetings from Stony Lane Farm in Petersham where the past year has seen family and friends from all over and activities of many kinds. Highlights were hikes, walks, overnight camping and Apple Pressing Day in October when we pressed 27 gallons of cider. The woods and fields and streams are home to deer, moose, bears, beavers, fishers, bobcats, birds and more. I’ve engaged in town issues and land protection projects and am involved in activities geared towards changing our national political direction by 2020. This is critical to the health of our environment and to the sustainability of our life on planet Earth. Friends on other continents write to ask what’s gone wrong here and what are we going to do about it? It’s our responsibility to urge more positive directions. I am committed to try. Best to you all.
John Woolsey reports: A good deal of time was spent over the past year collaborating with Stephanie Selden once again. Stephanie led the charge against an unfortunate handicap ramp into Petersham’s handsome town hall, Petersham being the small Massachusetts town where she lives and where I go for relief when Providence, RI becomes simply overwhelming. This ramp was about to be built, but we all created so much of a ruckus that a small committee was formed to come up with a better solution. I volunteered to be one of five on the committee. Before I knew it, I had been chosen as chair, with Stephanie as secretary. It was a cheery little group.
We labored mightily for four months and came up with an inconspicuous solution to the problem of providing wheelchair access to the two principal levels of the town hall—a lift installed out of the way in a corner. As I write, we are awaiting word about our state construction grant application. I have enjoyed maintaining a strong SHS front in small but important town matters such as this. God is in the details, among other places. Retirement expands to fill the time available; I wonder where the days go. Our daughter Clare got lucky with her early decision college application, so we can stop worrying about that, and Charlie is slogging upward with his colonial history/political science major. We live in parlous times; SHS memories are always a happy anchor.
1965
FRED WANG
118 HUNTINGTON AVE., APT 601 BOSTON, MA 02116
FredWang65@gmail.com
Kin Dubois writes from Denver: In January, we celebrated the birth of our third granddaughter, Olive Simone Loucas. Since we now have two granddaughters with our daughter Megan’s family in Weston, CT (and one here in Denver with daughter Dana), that gives us yet another reason to make frequent trips to New England. So we are sure to get up to Boston and Cambridge with some regularity. I continue to consult as
an architect expert, and I’ve just finished six years on the American Institute of Architects’ National Ethics Council. This winter in Denver has been so mild that Sandy and I would appreciate some nasty East Coast winter storms now and then. Your Class Correspondent Fred Wang writes from Boston: Now that my daughter Andrea Wang ’03, TTC ’16 (Andi as she prefers to be called by all but her parents—and her class, who call her Ms. Wang) is happily ensconced as a Grade II Gradehead, I have had the opportunity to visit the campus on occasion. I briefly visited and observed a math lesson she was teaching to six of her students. Unlike my recollection of us sitting ‘quietly’ at a table and filling out exercise sheets, she was there having a group discussion on a word problem with each child eagerly trying to add their insights to the solution. The children were animated, involved and excited to contribute! It was good to see that the school continues to push the envelope on the best ways to educate the students and develop in them their love of learning. I continue to be active as a Trustee Emeritus at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and sit on several committees and co-chair the Medical Education Committee. I have also stayed involved with the YMCA of Greater Boston on their Financial Development Committee. To justify the amount of food and drink I still consume, I play outdoor soccer weekly when the fields are rain and snow free and indoor futsal when the winter arrives with my group of aging former Newton girls soccer coaches and now some of our kids who have graduated from college. All the best to the class and let me know if you are ever in the area!
1966
MARGARET BULLITT-JONAS 109 OLANDER DRIVE NORTHAMPTON, MA 01060 margaretbj@aol.com
Robin Alden finds herself “at an inflection point” in her life: In January, I retired from Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, the nonprofit I co-founded 14 years ago. Happily, a wonderful friend and colleague is taking over, so I can leave with confidence that the mission will carry on well with new skills and energy. I am in the first few weeks of transition to a new
Back row: Stephanie Nolin Selden ’64, Oscar Bush ’18, Anna Bush ’17, Andrew Moskow. Front row: Christina Selden Moskow ’88, Lucas Bush ’15, Nicola Bush ’11, Charlie Moskow, Nick Moskow, Will Moskow, Izzy Bush ’13, Sarah Selden Bush
stage. This past year, I have been given a chance to reflect in various ways on the last 45 years and reconnect with people I have worked with. Now I am nesting, clearing out personal piles that have been neglected in the frenzy of work, and being able to be spontaneous—I am writing this en route to Boston to visit our son, Will. I don’t plan to make any work decisions until next September, after I have cleared my head and reconnected with myself. Thoughts are a-brewing but all of it will be within bounds for Ted and me. Come visit in Stonington, ME. We have room in the house or, if you prefer, The Roost, an Airbnb next door.
Meleth (Lark) Batteau writes: In 2017, with heart, wisdom, courage, and brilliant friends, I’ve been able to stay active spiritually, artistically, and politically. I participated in January in the LA Women’s March with 500,000 courageous and determined women. I stayed active politically because the power of the people is greater than the people in power and our country is in need of decency.I continued my healing practice by teaching yoga, giving massages, care-taking elders and providing Buddhist counsel. I will be teaching a daylong retreat called Yoga for Pure Joy, Tibetan Buddhism & Tea in January at La Casa de Maria. I sing all over town all the time this year, including at the Santa Barbara French Festival with my French cabaret ‘Bohemian Dreams’. People’s Quotes: ‘You took me away somewhere.’ ‘You changed the molecules in the atmosphere.’ ‘Your voices are like a honey balm.’ I put on a Faerie Festival with me as Queen, of course, for my friend Wendy’s numerous tiny granddaughters. I hosted The Fête de Blanche for perhaps the 15th time. I created a new and unexpectedly mystical, magical Moroccan party. I’ve been writing in a memoirs class, like participating in The Moth week after week. After over 50 years, I re-connected with my long lost half-sister Judith, who, as it turns out, also happens to be a Tibetan Buddhist— go figure? I have a marvelous man named John in my life who lights me up and doesn’t want me to hold back or be quiet or demure! With the Thomas Fire still raging in the Santa Barbara hills, smoke obscuring the mountains, evacuees in my house, and tears of grief for friends who have lost their homes and more, I feel grateful for everything and everyone,
knowing it could be gone in a minute. My heart is full of love. Clearly, we all rise together.
Your class correspondent had the great pleasure of seeing Letty Belin several times. On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, Letty completed her job with the Obama administration as senior counselor to the Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department. Before she left DC, she hosted family and friends for a gathering linked to the Women’s March. She now lives in the East Bay area of her beloved California. She will be a Fellow at Stanford, and is studying water issues. Her son Miles works for NRDC in Brooklyn, and his wife is about to have a baby (Letty’s first grandchild); daughter Miranda lives in Denver, is in med school, and is considering palliative care as a specialty.
Kitty Brazelton checked in: It is so inspiring to hear everyone’s news. Still teaching. Still composing opera. Still hoping to go back on stage and sing. Rosie is 25, affianced and independent. Dad is coming up on 100 in 2018.
Kitty also mentioned last spring’s premiere at the Library of Congress of a song cycle commissioned by Opera America to celebrate the first congresswoman, Jeanette Rankin of Montana.
Margaret (Peggy) Bullitt-Jonas continues to work as Missioner for Creation Care for the Episcopal Diocese of
Kitty Brazelton ’66 and Robin Alden ’66
Kitty Brazelton ’66, and daughter Rosie Mandel, June 2016, for Rosie’s 25th birthday
Western Mass. and the Mass. Conference, United Church of Christ: I travel in Massachusetts and beyond, speaking, preaching, writing, and leading retreats about spiritual resilience and resistance in a time of climate crisis. I joined the People’s Climate March in DC and co-wrote an ecumenical statement protesting the President’s announced intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. I led clergy retreats in British Columbia and Connecticut, preached in two cathedrals, and presented the Steward of God’s Creation award to Chief Arvol Looking Horse of Standing Rock, on behalf of the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care. (I was happy to see John Sheldon at this event!) In November, with a group of clergy and other climate activists, I carried out non-violent civil disobedience inside the Boston State House, in an effort to push Governor Baker to take leadership on climate. (Visit RevivingCreation.org for sermons, blog posts) My husband and I moved into the new house that we built in a ‘New Urbanism’ village in Northampton, and we hope that the house will soon be
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas ’66 and Robert Jonas
Lark Batteau ’66, performing Bohemian Dreams at Santa Barbara French Festival
Lark Batteau ’66 with long lost sister Judith
certified LEED Platinum. Jonas leads contemplative Christian and interfaith groups in our home sanctuary, The Empty Bell, and elsewhere, and he has returned to a big writing project. Our son Sam Jonas ’04 completed his Masters in Liberal Studies at Georgetown University and is in his second year of teaching second grade at Beauvoir School in DC. He is exploring new job possibilities.
Stephen Bundy writes: In the common theme department, the big news is the arrival of a first grandchild, Owen Grossman, already a mensch, and, like Ralph Gifford’s grandchild, too far away. Both my children seem to be doing well: one is deeply involved with running a camp in furthest rural northern California, the other promoting hip hop music concerts and doing journalism in Oakland. Another event whose importance many will appreciate is that Letty Belin has moved to Oakland. She is now closer than when we lived on Berkeley and Fayerweather Streets more than sixty years ago.
Mellen Candage observed: Life here in rural France continues to be both challenging and infinitely rewarding. Nary a day goes by that I don’t silently thank Monsieur Vincent (and my dad) for instilling in me a profound love for the French language and a desire to learn many others. It’s been a busy year for us, with the nonstop efforts to restore this old house and grounds, tempered with travels to Milan, Bergamo, Lago Maggiore, Venice, Budapest, Bratislava, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Toulouse, Cornwall, and more. One of the joys of living here is the ease and affordability of roaming all around Europe. It nicely breaks up the monotony of refinishing medieval ceiling beams and ancient stonewalls. We have begun a tradition here of having a classic Thanksgiving feast every year. It is wildly popular with our French friends
and neighbors, which is a bit of a chuckle because roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and stuffing seems like an affront to the local gastronomy. My husband passes around French translations of the story of Squanto, and everyone is rapt. My husband and I work as writers and editors for a few U.S. clients, so I suppose we fit into the semi-retired category. It gives us a chance to work in our native language and brings in enough sous to enjoy the local foie gras and Pecharmant. We had a nice visit with Ralph Gifford and his wife earlier this year. He had conveniently forgotten how he used to yank my braids in 2nd grade, but is forgiven for that. I always knew that being a part of the Shady Hill community was a special privilege. Reading these updates from fellow classmates confirms that we were all conferred a very lucky place in life, with a host of skills to guide us to fascinating places and experiences.
Zanna (Susan Hull) Feitler reported on two big events: I completed construction and at the end of April moved into a house in a special development dedicated to ‘green’ buildings, called Lake O’Springs Village, in Canton, OH. I am about 5 minutes south of the Akron-Canton airport, and I invite anyone traveling through there to get in touch. My house is a certified Maharishi Vastu home, built according to ancient Vedic principles, and has a pending LEED rating of either Gold or Platinum (LEED stands for Leadership through Energy Efficiency Design). I am still settling in, still finding homes for some items left by my late husband, and sorting through boxes of things. After three moves in three years, I am hoping this will be my ‘forever home.’ The other great event was the wedding of my eldest son Isaac (“Ike”) Feitler to Paula Marie Countouris. It was a ‘blueberry wedding’ held in front of the house my parents built in Sorrento, ME, with a view of Bar Harbor. A large number of Paula’s Greek-American family attended, my
whole extended family, and friends from all over. Thanks to Connie and Marianne Taylor, I was able to acquit myself well in the traditional Greek wedding line dance. Ike and Paula are both MIT alumni; he is doing research for a 3D printing company in Cambridge, and Paula is in her final semester of her Masters in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She will be returning to work at Lincoln Labs when she graduates. My younger son, Jacob Feitler, is working in beverage service for the Detroit Optimist Society, near where his partner Sarah is in residency as an orthopedic surgeon. I continue to teach the Transcendental Meditation technique, commuting to the east side of Cleveland a couple of times a month, also teaching in Columbus and from my home. The latest research on the reduction of anxiety and physical symptoms, relief from PTSD, and growing number of celebrity meditators from all walks of life are bringing in an ever-increasing number of students, and it is always fulfilling to see people start to thrive in a relatively short period of time. My other great joy these days is swing dancing, plus some ballroom. I belong to Ohio’s North Coast Jittterbug Connection and I will be going on a dance cruise sponsored by the American Bop Association, sailing out of Fort Lauderdale to the southern Caribbean in February. Every Wednesday night is dance night, and I am enjoying taking lessons to improve my skills.
Peter Galbraith writes: I have been involved with the Iraqi Kurds for exactly half my life, and I was in Iraqi Kurdistan in September for the referendum on independence. It was a very emotional day for the Kurds (and for me) who brought their children to the polls—all dressed in colorful Kurdish clothes—to participate in creating a new country. I then took the last plane out of Erbil as the Iraqi government closed Kurdistan’s airspace in retaliation for a vote where 93% voted to leave Iraq. In January, I took my daughter Liv to Kurdistan, where she participated in the meetings with the President and top leaders that decided on going ahead with the referendum. She is in her third year at St. Andrews studying Arabic and comparative literature, and this was her first trip to an Arab country, albeit to a place that doesn’t want to be in an Arab country and doesn’t speak Arabic. My younger son, Erik, accompanied me on
Mellen Candage ’66
Susan Hull Feitler ’66 (right), with her younger sisters, Sabra, Jenny, Lucy
a mediation mission to the Kurdish parts of Syria in March. This counted toward his senior project at the Commonwealth School, from which he graduated in June. He is now studying international relations and history at Kings College, London.In other news, my second grandchild Alice arrived in April. She joins four-year-old brother Eamon, and they live with my oldest son, Andrew, and his wife, Julie, in St. Anselmo, CA. I have resumed writing for the New York Review of Books and have a gig giving lectures for Harvard Alumni Association trips. This year, I lectured on a cruise around India and Sri Lanka and on a safari to South Africa. Next year, it will be Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal, if anyone is interested (no Harvard connection required). I made a second trip to India in November to speak at the Bombay literary festival, and went to Burma to see my nephew and his wife, who are both foreign-service officers there. I retired from the US government 14 years ago, and this has given me great freedom ever since. I have done what I wanted (not all of it successful), had fun, and have yet to slow down.
Ralph Gifford says: The past year has been relatively uneventful, politics and health issues aside. A friend says going to the doctor has become like taking his 20-year-old Volvo to the mechanic: a struggle between fear and the irrational hope that in the diplomacy biz we call ‘cautious optimism.’ It has not
been an easy year for good news outside the family, but inside the family we have been blessed with the arrival of my first grandchild, born in October to my younger daughter, Helen. A complicating factor for smitten grandparents is that daughter, her husband, and grandson Ian live in Albuquerque—near Letty Belin’s old haunts—where they moved in search of a warmer climate and cheaper housing. Grandson Ian is, of course, perfect and beautiful as far as Linda and I are concerned, and we spent Christmas week practicing what another friend calls ‘Reverse Shinto: traveling to faraway places to worship ones offspring.’ I am still teaching our new agricultural foreign-service officers; fortunately USDA has not, or not yet, faced the same challenges as the State Department. Many fingers are crossed. Otherwise Linda and I enjoy our leafy neighborhood and the museums in Washington, and travel when we can. Next summer’s proposal is to go see the new Viking digs in southwestern Newfoundland. Recent superhero movies remind me that we only did a partial year of Vikings for Central Subject in 3rd grade with Mrs. Cvijanovic.
Caty (Kessler) Greene felt inspired, as many of us did, by the stories we shared with each other. She writes: I, too, have just entered retirement, but only from a library job I had for the last 9 years, as the librarian of the town library in Apalachicola, FL (Panhandle on the coast between Tallahassee and Panama City). This town and county are enchanting as ‘Old Florida.’ It is almost unbelievable that there can be a stretch of the coast of Florida that has no tall buildings, low density, gorgeous beaches on the barrier islands, and a history dating back to the 1820s. The Apalachicola Bay is famous for its oysters, but sadly we are in a crisis situation. I make jewelry with local oyster shells. I retired so I could expand my business. I am also the newly elected VP of the local historical society. My sons, George and Sam, continue to be doing well out there in what I call ‘the first world.’ I have my first grandchild, Liam, who thankfully is within driving distance in Atlanta.
Josh Kay shared: My wife Judith and I are slowly transitioning to retirement. Mostly, we’re quite content with it. For us, the most difficult aspect of retirement is that, as opposed to our working years (mine as an electrical engineer in
the electric power sector; Judith’s, as a professor of ethics at U. of Puget Sound), we are now managing all kinds of projects and activities, as opposed to one big one, usually thought of as ‘a working career’! Although what we now undertake is by choice, I’ve found it quite stressful. The more we commit to various endeavors, the more we have to avoid what I have come to call ‘collisions’ between commitments we’ve made to others. Judith chides me (good naturally) and reminds me that most women have learned how to multi-task, particularly if we’ve had children. We spent about two months in Israel, mostly in Jerusalem, but also visited friends in Tel Aviv and the Galilee region. I’m continuing Hebrew lessons via Skype with the west coast, and manage the 10-hour time difference pretty well! Our son Jeremy lives with his girlfriend/ partner in Chicago. He makes his living in a music-related programming application and also plays electric base in blues bands concerts around the city. His girlfriend works in sales in an art gallery. We spent last Thanksgiving with them and with her immediate family in San Francisco, where she spent a large part of her youth.
Paul Kirchner sent your class correspondent a replica of the stunning cover of a new, revised edition of College Algebra, by Rosenbach and Whitman, for which Paul wrote a new introduction and created the new cover illustration. He writes that he brought about the republication of this “famous and widely used textbook on classical college algebra. Since the 1960s, the formerly rigorous and detailed content of standard courses on classical algebra as well as Euclidean geometry and calculus has been declining, giving rise to what I considered the necessity, starting back in the 1980s, to revive many of the older, highly rigorous, eloquent and comprehensive classics in mathematics and science. I have succeeded in bringing back a number of these titles, including the models for all of the great American books on classical algebra since 1904: College Algebra by Henry Burchard Fine, of 1905, and Morris Kline’s Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach, of 1967.
Harris Loeser writes: Jane and I live in our original house of 30 years in Noe Valley and continue to love being here watching San Francisco evolve—though we can barely afford a cup of coffee. Our
(Top) Peter Galbraith ’66, with daughter Liv and the Kurdish peshmerga; (below) Liv, with Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani
block has multimillionaires and families that have been here since their longshoreman grandfathers bought houses in the 1930s. I seem to have a knack for getting along with most everyone and am the unofficial ‘mayor’ of the block. Jane continues to work as the school cook at the SHS-like pre-K–8 school where all three of our kids went, The San Francisco School. On my children: Aidan is teaching science in the NYC public schools (Teach for America success story); Jono is working on getting into psychology grad programs and is very interested in any and all professional introductions as he is making a career transition. Sam, the youngest, is a freshman at UC-Davis in mechanical engineering. I am pretty much retired and still do some sub teaching (including at SF French-American School—thanks, Monsieur Vincent) and soccer refereeing. I am a news junky, and depressed. I also ride my bike a lot, have a beehive in our backyard, tinker with old cars and do lots of work on our 100-year-old house. We do get back to Massachusetts for a couple of weeks on Martha’s Vineyard every July. I ditched Browne & Nichols my senior year and went to Rennes, France for the academic year on a program called School Boys Abroad (now School Year Abroad). We have a 50th reunion coming up in June and will be biking for a week in Brittany in June.
Victor Rodwin observed: Life is short, we realize, at our age. Yet, in reading many of these testimonials, it seems that many of us have had relatively long and fulfilling lives, full of accomplishments and adventures and children and more. We are fortunate compared to most of humanity. I am still teaching at NYU, where I started in 1985 after studying in Madison, WI and Berkeley. I finally feel almost old enough to teach. The early years were terrifying, especially when students were older than I was. That doesn’t happen anymore! I teach about health policy and management, and how different countries deal with the problems of balancing limited resources with the demands of patients, many who suffer and most of who seek longevity and enhanced quality of life. I focus on the differences among our own patchwork systems across 50 states and other models ranging from national health services (UK) to national health insurance (France) and some of the
most important rapidly growing nations, like India and China. I’ve had the privilege of travelling around the world conducting research and lecturing. I’ve also had several wives and finally found one with whom I hope to remain for the rest of my life, Nadell Fishman, a poet. You can find her books on Amazon. We spend most of the summers in Vermont off the grid (with solar power and the internet) at the edge of a lake. In NY we have a co-op apartment overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River across from Columbia. It makes the city a great place to live— just 20 minutes from Lincoln Center and a park across the street with grass and woods. My daughter lives in Paris and earned a PhD in sociology. She studied IB schools around the world and admires Pierre Bourdieu, one of her mentors. My son is completing his second year of a Masters program in social work at NYU. He has worked with the homeless in the South Bronx and interned in a public psychiatric ER there. He is developing what he calls Hip Hop therapy, which he finds more effective than ‘anger management groups’ for the populations with whom he works. He went to Israel on a so-called ‘birthright’ voyage, and I met him in Paris to ski for 5 days before I gave a seminar in Lausanne at the Institute of Public Health. I fear for the future of our country and worry for our children, but I do what I can to make students read and think and avoid the fads in language and facile solutions to wicked problems.
Tim Segar wrotes: 34 years of teaching art to college students, (mostly sculpture, but also drawing and architecture) is coming to a close this May for both my wife Cathy and me. Both of us spent the past 20 years at Marlboro College in Vermont, a truly wonderful and odd place that in some ways resembles in its values the early days of SHS. We look forward to more time in the studio, and most importantly, the freedom of mind that will allow us to take good advantage of that time. The thing that most connects me back to SHS is my ongoing practice of poetry, which I’ve done (mostly for myself) ever since. This last semester gives me a chance to teach a few of my favorite courses and take one more international study trip with students, this one to Cambodia, a place I have come to love in spite of—or maybe even because of—its
ongoing woes. Next year I will continue helping with the Collegiate High School in Brattleboro, and doing work for the Wyndham-Windsor Housing Trust. We have two daughters, one a physician in Chicago and one a high-school teacher in Hudson, NY, one grandchild, and indications of another coming soon-ish.
John Sheldon sent a picture of himself at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016. “I will be returning there this summer to do more performances of ‘Red Guitar,’ a solo piece I wrote. We were well received there, with a five-star review and full houses every night. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, because I, like all of you, am getting old. Or perhaps I should speak for myself. A soon-to-be sixty-seven-year-old, embarking on another career of sorts! In this uncertain time, I am in good health. Let’s hope we all make it at least another year!”
Eric (Ricky) Wilcox writes from Florida: I bought a 2-bedroom “New Philadelphia Villa” in On Top of The World Friendship Village, a retirement community with 3 golf courses, 2 gyms, 2 swimming pools, and ‘Master the Possibilities’ continuing education courses. I found my retirement community! I am a pro-active single with an upbeat positive lifestyle. I have attended Celebrate Recovery meetings for nine years, and had 32 years of sobriety on February 8, 2018.” I work out regularly and attend Joy Evangelical Lutheran Church, where he singing bass at Sunday morning services and sometimes join with percussion. I am deeply appreciative of my best friend David Reiser and his wife Liz for their constant encouragement throughout this past year. We have stayed in touch! I have an extra bedroom for any visitors.
Anne (Denio) Wiley sends greetings from Sydney, Australia: We are about to start our bucket list trip to New Zealand. It
John Sheldon ’66
has been a mournful year as Bob lost both his parents around Easter, after I had lost my mom, and I just lost my father John P. Denio, always known as Jock. Although we moved to Michigan after 4th grade, which meant that none of you had him as a SHS teacher, maybe some of your older sisters or brothers had him for 6th grade. He lived past 95, always with grace and curiosity. After losing 7 parents and stepparents with various elder care challenges, we are still adjusting to being orphans and to no more Mother’s Day or Father’s Day gatherings! We have been extremely blessed and are grateful for the interesting lives lived since I left carpooling with Mary Ellen and our class with Miss Prescott, at age 9.
1967
Marilyn Paul writes: I live in Berkeley, CA with my husband David and our 13 year old, Jonathan. We really miss our deep connections in Boston but we are slowly adjusting to this wonderful area. I have recently published my second book with Rodale Press, An Oasis in Time: How a Day of Rest Can Save Your Life. It offers ways to unplug, slow down, and tune into a more receptive and playful frame of mind. I hope that you will have a look. I’m very grateful to be hearing from people that reading the book helps them make desired changes in their lives.
Rob Tagiuri writes: My daughter Ana and I are living on Sparks Street in Cambridge. She is going to high school at Chapel Hill–Chauncy Hall. I am keeping busy with a number of different projects. Lately that has involved a number of
repairs to heating systems and appliances in the building I manage. Ana and I spent Christmas in Seville, Spain. The old city is very nice; for the most part, cars are banned. The Spaniards seemed to enjoy my poor Spanish.
1968
TESI KOHLENBERG
93 GARFIELD STREET
WATERTOWN, MA 02472
tesik@rcn.com
Peter Agoos writes: My mom moved back to Cambridge in April after more than 30 years in northern California and found a number of old SHS connections still in town. She celebrates 90 in January. Zoe is finishing her residency in family medicine in Philly and is planning to move closer to Boston for her next gig. She is getting married in September. Ian is a mechanical engineer working on compressable flow dynamics in jet engine development in Connecticut. Diane has been painting giant watercolors of polar bears that have been deployed and photographed in water and landscapes in the Arctic by a collaborator. And I design and produce a variety of projects, including a centennial for MIT’s move to Cambridge and parts of 2019 commemoration events in Virginia, and the occasional piece of installation art.
Sara Bullitt reports: I am living in a small coastal village in Maine where I am immersed in beauty. I design my life by filling it with my love for spirituality, the arts, and the vast expanses of wild nature that the ocean and forest provide. A beautiful time of my life for self-expression, integrating my past, and exploration of new things. May all be well for each of you, as it is for me.
Gary Cowan writes: I’m newly semi-retired from Porter Square Books, and sauntering around in a state of low-level bliss, enjoying this window between health/vigor and eventually going ga-ga and/or losing springs and sprockets. I’ll tell you what else I’m up to at the reunion!
Roger Kay reports: This fall saw our nest empty out. For a week, we were just shocked by the quiet and lack of unpredictable flurry. Then our new routine started picking up. We miss them being around, but there is something nice about
doing things when we want. We hope to explore this new-found freedom more thoroughly over the next months and years.
Tesi Kohlenberg reports: I’m living in Watertown, working four part-time jobs as a child psychiatrist, while parenting and advocating for our younger child, who turns out to have a complicated rare genetic syndrome, and supporting and admiring our older child as she grows into her identity as a woman at a time of increased hostility towards trans people. She is pursuing her graduate degree at Yale. I’m fighting against the incredibly rapid and scary swing towards fascism in our country. I knit to still my mind. I’m grateful for the presence in my life of my steady twinkly kind absent-minded professor husband Tom, my fine upstanding brother Andrew, and our poet Buddhist teaching mother, who lives nearby at Brookhaven, as well as for a few treasured friends.
Alice Chase Robeson has been active around defending women’s rights, the integrity of science, racial justice, DACA/ Dreamers, and support for wounded vets. She writes: I have two children, three step-children, and eight grandchildren. All are beautiful and interesting and compassionate.
Rebecca Warner reports: I live in Newton with my husband, Steve Asher. I’m mostly retired from my career as a geriatric psychiatrist, now working one day a week as Protective Services psychiatrist at Somerville Cambridge Elder Services. I’m trying something new, thinking of myself as a community educator around sustainable gardening, and trying to market my book, The Sustainable-Enough Garden (available on Amazon). In this role, I travel around Massachusetts talking to garden clubs about such topics as compost, mulch, and why native insects are good. We’re very grateful that Steve has come through a complicated cancer treatment, is feeling good, and has passed three years cancer-free. Our son, Dan, and daughter, Eve, both live in Brooklyn, where we visit them frequently.
Niel Wright writes: I’m retired, doing what I want when I want, sleeping when I’m tired and getting up when I feel like it. I’m planning some travel: maybe Vietnam, maybe Cuba. And I hope to see everybody at the reunion in June.
Marilyn Paul ’67 published her second book, An Oasis in Time: How a Day of Rest Can Save Your Life
1970
Linda Nathan is the Executive Director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship, overseeing key programs including the Perrone-Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership in partnership with the UMass-Boston. She works closely with the leadership of Conservatory Lab Charter School to support its development as a national model of project based learning and arts immersed education, and was the founding Headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, Boston Public School’s first school for visual and performing arts. As an experienced leader in education, Linda mentors teachers and principals, and consults nationally and internationally on issues of educational reform, leadership, and teaching with a commitment to equity and the critical role of arts and creativity in schools. She also facilitates workshops and conversations about issues of race, equity, and culturally relevant pedagogy for school leaders, teachers, parents, and students across the nation. She is the author of two books: Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test and When Grit Isn’t Enough (October 2017, Beacon Press). In When Grit Isn’t Enough, she investigates five assumptions that dominate our thinking about education today, revealing how these beliefs mask systemic inequity. Exploring the rift between these false promises and the lived experiences of her students at Boston Arts Academy (BAA), she argues that it is time for educators to face these uncomfortable issues head-on and examines how educators can better serve all students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income. Drawing the voices of BAA alumni whose stories provide a window through which to view urban education today. When Grit Isn’t Enough helps imagine greater purposes for schooling.
1971
EMMY HOWE
482 NEWHALL ROAD CONWAY, MA 01341
ehowe@wellesley.edu
Julie Agoos writes: I’ve spent a lot of time in Cambridge this past year after my siblings and I moved our mother back east from northern California in April, to Youville House, an assisted living community on Cambridge Street between Sanders Theatre and Inman Square. Alice Hejanian TTC ’53 moved in the same week, and we ran into Marea Wexler and her siblings on Mum’s first night, and several weeks later Mum went to an art opening of Alexandra Sheldon’s where she also saw Benny Kay. My daughter Ella is in her third year at Northeastern studying sociology. I feel very grateful for these multiple arcs of continuity between the past and the present. Other high points of the year for me and Jeremy were becoming great aunt and uncle to Mila, in Melbourne, Australia, and grandparents to Levi, who lives with his parents, Isaac and Megan in Washington, D.C., where we travel to share in the pure magic as much as we can, as well as to Princeton, NJ where my other stepson, Henri, is a graduate student. I have visited with Peter Fisher at his wonderful house in Orford, NH, and at our family house in East Andover, NH. In January, it was so much fun to celebrate the imminent birth of Mars’ granddaughter, Thea, at a baby shower in Brooklyn—one of the many moments when I think of you all. I am looking forward to our 50th reunion in June 2021, hoping that we’ll also be celebrating the country emerging and the world moving forward onto a different path.
Mars Child writes: I am the proud grandmother of two grandchildren: Thea, born to my daughter Lizzie in January, and Grover, my son Cotton’s boy, who
will be one in March. I wish they lived in Boston and could go to Shady Hill!
Cindy Forbes wrote that she is busy caring for her parents. She is based in Cambridge and teaches and performs in the metropolitan area. She remembers SHS years and classmates vividly and hopes that we are all engaged in saving the world, one note at a time, so to speak.
Fred Harkness writes: Crazy busy as always. After nearly forty years in construction, I am finally getting back to where I was in high school and starting a new company called INroof.Solar. Check our website if you like: www.inroof.solar/ the-difference/.
Emmy Howe writes: My daughter Kavita gave birth to Julian Francis Smith in April 2017. It was my first experience near birth and it is an amazing gift. Young life is a powerful thing. I am lucky to be with Julian every Friday in Cambridge. I love sharing tea and the joy with others— come by Magazine Street on a Friday!
Nick Jordan writes: I’m looking forward to being in Watertown for a remembrance of my mother, who died 20 years ago, on March 31. My older daughter, Jillian, is hopeful of defending her dissertation the day before.
Tom Loeser writes: I have a solo exhibition up until May 20 at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design that includes over 20 pieces and a lot of new 2-dimensional prints. Here’s a link to more info: www.sfmcd.org/loeser/. I would invite any San Francisco based SHS folks to go check it out.
Ann Moncreiff de Arrarte shared sad news: I have been teaching at Shady Hill periodically. I have taken some time off though over the last few months. My husband Carlos, who really was my soul mate for 40 years, was killed in a bus accident outside of Cusco in mid October. He was heading to a meeting as part of
Grandchildren of Mars Child ’71, Thea (left) and Grover (right) Julian, grandson of Emmy Howe ’71
Anne Moncreiff de Arrarte ’71 and her family In Tuscany
a nonprofit project he was leading, and died instantly. It has shaken us all deeply, but we are trying to stay focused on the joy we shared and, as if to underline the point, I am in London hanging out with my oldest daughter Lisi who is about to have her first child. The baby will join my other two granddaughters as the latest member of the new generation. This fall, I hope to return to teaching at SHS. It really does always feel like home.
Marea Wexler writes: Recently in my work for Smith College, where I fund raise, I’ve been working as part of a team raising funds for a new library. This project conjures very warm memories of Agnes Smith and being in that special building where I could completely immerse in the pleasures of a good book. I loved going to the library to curl up in the big brown leather chair if I was lucky enough to get there in time to land it. I remember the feeling of holding orange-cover bound books while sitting in the sun and every now and then glancing out onto the playing field. I remember her beautifully aged face, her warm smile and twinkling eyes, and the blue-jean skirt she seemed to wear every day. To this day, when I sit down with a good book I find myself thinking of her with gratitude.
1972
GEORGE PERKINS
11 YERXA ROAD
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02140 georgehperkins@hotmail.com
Helen Bouscaren writes: We took a great trip to Cuba where we biked with the men’s masters Cuban cycling team, hiked, and learned a lot about life in a communist country. The second photo shows Travis and me getting into the local spirit. Travis is a junior at Brown, studying biochemistry and playing water polo. Lindsay is a freshman at Wheaton, studying early education (we think) and playing soccer. Mom (88) and Dad (91) are doing well although they have moved out of their longtime home on Coolidge Hill. They are at The Commons in Lincoln so we continue to see them a lot. Another wonderful Shady Hill family bought our home so all is good.
Rich Read writes: In my latest reporting endeavor, I dug into phony organic food, finding dirt in Central America
are stable here in Cambridge. One change is that our son William Perkins ’09 graduated from NYU in May and is enjoying NYC. My career in architecture continues to challenge and engage. Most unexpectedly, I find myself on stage in amateur theatricals, which is fun. We had an excellent birthday trip with family and pals to the UK in June, staying in a house designed by the master Sir Edwin Lutyens—what a thrill!
1973
PATTY SPENCE
38 BROCKVIEW STREET
DORCHESTER, MA 02124 othneil625@netzero.net
that showed the USDA does a lousy job ensuring that produce we pay for dearly at the grocery store is free of forbidden chemicals. Jessica, a former Miss Costa Rica, and I ended up in a bouncing SUV piloted deep into fields near Nicaragua by a pineapple boss accused of fraud. When he plucked a pineapple for us to sample, and unsheathed his gleaming machete, Miss CR and I exchanged glances. But we returned to tell the tale. Which is here: www.nerdwallet.com/blog/organic
As for me, your Class Correspondent, George Perkins, I can report that things
Beth Brown writes: My son Frederick Madsen ’16 is boarding at Lawrence Academy. Henry is in 7th grade at SHS. I am at BB&N and recently presented at the People of Color Conference in Anaheim on talking to white kids about race and identity. Brian is at Mathworks and we are still happily married after 21 years.
Carol Bundy writes: Not much from me—my boys are transitioning from college to life. My mother, at 93, is alive and well and living nearby. I’m enjoying too many things to bother recounting, so life is good. Katie Pratt has a gorgeous book out called France is a Feast, a portrait of Julia and Paul Childs through his many wonderful photographs. I briefly glimpsed
Helen Bouscaren ’72 with her family in Cuba (top) and with her son, Travis (below)
1972 classmates George Perkins, Rich Read, and Alison Field-Juma at reunion
Children of George Perkins ’72, William Perkins ’09 and Lucy Perkins ’11, at William’s graduation
Beth Brown ’73 and her new puppy
Patty Spence ’73 and son Alex at the Ride for Food event in September 2017
Martha Dykema on the Cambridge Common at the January 20 rally. Patty Spence writes: It has been an exciting few years in the world of the urban farming of Boston. I have enjoyed working with a group of amazing urban farmers teaching urban farm entrepreneurship, hosting ‘how to grow’ workshops, welcoming dedicated farm volunteers, and creating a community land trust to protect urban farmland. Mom is 88 and is movin’ and shakin.’ My younger son is almost out of college while my older son is exploring all things holistic and vegan. I would love to host our reunion off-site at the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm (a restored 1826 barn and restored 1786 farm residence) right in the middle of Mattapan. Let me know if you can make it!
1974
ORLANDO A. WILLIAMS
52 PINE AVENUE RANDOLPH, MA 02368 orlandoawilliams@live.com
Isabel Constable writes: I’m still based in Albuquerque getting outside as much as possible to camp and defend our public lands. New Mexico adopted the Next Generation Science Standards last October which requires a radical shift in pedagogy from lecturing, memorizing and cookbook labs to SHS-style student-driven inquiry and discovery; yeah! I’m helping launch a network of virtual learning communities to facilitate teachers around the state working their way through this change with peers (Interested? check out Project ECHO online; goal is to expand ECHO beyond healthcare into K–12 education.) Would love to share camping and education ideas (Isabel.constable@gmail.com). Best wishes all around!
Daphne de Marneffe writes: Still happy and healthy in Mill Valley, CA. Still happily married to my husband of 26 years, and feeling lucky to have all three kids nearby, for now: Nick (19) and Alex (21) at Stanford, and Sophie (25) involved in the arts in Oakland. The big event this year is the publication of my second book, The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together (Scribner). It’s about thriving as an individual and as a couple in long-term relationships, based on my clinical practice as a therapist (and maybe just a bit on my own experience).
If any of you reads it or listens to it (the audiobook is read by former SHS thespian—me!), I would love to hear what you think. You can reach me at www. daphnedemarneffe.com.
Sarah Kahn writes: I have been teaching art to young adults with developmental disabilities, and womens’ shelters at the New Art Center in Newton. Starting this community art program has been very rewarding. I also use art with clients in my psychotherapy practice. I recently started teaching a mixed media, collage art class at SHS. I teach 7th and 8th graders, and am enjoying being at SHS. I work in my studio on my off-time, continuing to create collage pieces.
Amy Paegel writes: I’m feeling like 60 is breathing down my neck, even though I’m really only about 17, or at least 33. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Our son is 16 and doing well, especially with all things musical!
Jethro Pettit writes: Last year Olivia and I retired from our research and teaching jobs in the UK. We have been fixing up our farmhouse in Tuscany and live there full time. We are also grandparents! Otis Gray Pettit was born in June 2017, and so far is a Londoner right down to the accent. I haven’t stopped working or writing, but have traded admin and management for splitting wood and feeding chickens. We host travellers in exchange for farm work (via www.workaway. info), love having visitors, and offer a sweet vacation rental next door (www. larocchina.wordpress.com) so there is no excuse not to come visit!
Elijah Wald has moved to Philadelphia, and loves it—playing a lot of music, and posting videos of it on his website, www. elijahwald.com.
1975
JENNY PAYETTE
28 PRENTISS STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02140
petersonpayette@gmail.com
Ted Laskaris writes: I still live in Waitsfield, VT with my wife, Susan. I continue to work at Champlain College in Burlington where I am responsible for all aspects of the technology. Our kids have all flown the coop and one has graduated from college and is back living with us for a brief stint, which we love. Our two
younger kids are at BU and Northeastern and enjoying Boston for the great college town that it is. We are sliding into the next phase of our lives, which is filled with as much outdoor activity as we can get away with 12 months a year. I hope all in our class are thriving wherever they may be!
1976
TOM BATOR 12 CONCORD AVENUE, APT. 3 CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 tebator@comcast.net
Among the unsolved great mysteries plaguing our class: Where is our time capsule? Luckily other mysteries were solved by your reports.
Yule Anderson writes from Georgia: Still married going on 14 years, moved from Florida to Conyers, GA. We have a small property. Thinking about retirement and fishing. No children and no pets, so we are flexible.
Tom Bator reports: Pam and I went through the downsizing pain last year and moved back to Cambridge, a stone’s throw from my old house. I am reconnecting to old places (Armando’s anyone?), am still playing soccer, and follow my children’s exploits with awe.
Doug Forbes is crazy busy finishing up several documentaries.
Pam Gleason is still living in South Carolina with many horses, dogs, and cats. She is the editor and publisher of The Aiken Horse, a bimonthly horse newspaper, and The Dog & Hound, a quarterly dog newspaper, which has been named the best canine newspaper in the country by the Dog Writers Association of America. She writes: “I volunteer for various dog rescues, especially Pointer Rescue Organization. I am on the board of directors of the Albrecht SPCA Center for Animal Welfare and am an artist member of HeARTs Speak, an organization that supports photographers who take pictures of shelter animals to promote adoption. I am still playing polo and am on the board of directors of the Aiken Polo Club. I get back to Cambridge to visit my mother a couple of times a year, and go to Maine to canoe and kayak and take pictures of loons in the summer or to ski cross country and take pictures of ice in the winter.
Katie Koeze reports: All is well in our corner of the midwest. I am still working
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
for a small software company, serving on various boards, and quilting whenever I can.
Melinda Margetson is working in the healthcare industry not too far from SHS: “My daughter is a junior in high school, going through the fun task of visiting colleges and preparing for the SAT. I also sit on the Alumni Board at SHS.
Doug Sun arrived in Nassau, Bahamas, last June, where he is the chief of the embassy’s combined Political/Economic Section: We live on a marina about eight miles from downtown where the embassy is located My daily commute takes me past some amazing ocean views. Work is also pretty fascinating—for a small embassy in a small country that is generally unproblematic for U.S. interests, there’s a lot going on. We’re here till 2020, so if anyone cruises in or otherwise comes down this way, do let me know!
1977
Fred Eliot writes: I am now working for Consigli Construction in the building with the new General Electric on Fort Point Channel. My youngest son, Liam, is at Middlesex on a baseball scholarship and Isabella (15) is at Concord-Carlisle. Living the dream as a construction ‘schmo’!
Tim Mapel: I am still living in New Zealand and enjoying the beauty and simplicity that life offers. My work as a counselor is very satisfying and I feel surrounded by many blessings in my life. Would love contact with former Shady Hillers!
1978
RICK JARVIS 12 STANDISH ROAD WATERTOWN, MA 02472 rick@quinngroupins.com
Jane Cutter writes: I am still living in the Seattle area with my husband, Andrew Freeman. After 14 years, I have left University Prep and have launched an educational consulting business and am devoting more of my time to organizing for social justice. Andy and I have a mini-poodle (Pierre) and visit regularly with our daughter, Rachel, who lives in the same county. About a year ago, we moved out of Shoreline to SeaTac (home
ALUMNI SURVEY RESPONSES: WE ASKED … Which Shady Hill experience(s) influenced the direction of your life?
of the airport and of the $15 minimum wage) where we live in a double-wide manufactured home in a 55+ retirement community.
Rick Jarvis looks forward to the 40th reunion in June and hosting a gathering on Saturday evening at his house.
Ann Mackey writes: Life in the NYC suburbs continues without too much drama. My oldest, Ethan, is enjoying life as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa and my daughter Sara is navigating 9th grade at our local high school. I’m told she looks remarkably like me—only taller, and with some self-possession and style. My mother continues to do remarkably well at the age of (almost) 98, and our old house on Coolidge Hill Road is now inhabited by another SHS family. In the past few years we weathered a renovation, job changes, and some medical adventures, in addition to acquiring two cats; the first was rewarding, the second two, manageable, and the cats are photogenic, so we count ourselves fortunate overall. I enjoy getting a peek of some SHS people’s lives on Facebook, and, sometimes, when I’m very lucky, in person.
Bill Rodriguez writes: Rebecca and I moved to Botswana in 2015 for her work, and are very happily settled in with our young daughter, Jude. Botswana is quiet, peaceful, and beautiful and feels like a refuge from some of the day-to-day craziness back in the States. I am in Boston and San Francisco frequently for work (venture philanthropy) and still doing some volunteer doctoring at a clinic in Botswana. Come visit if you’re planning your first safari! Not sure if I’ll be in Boston during the June reunion, but I have been able to talk with Rick frequently this year, and hope everyone else is doing well.
1979
PORTER GIFFORD
15 COOLIDGE HILL ROAD
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138
porter@portergifford.com
From the green hills of Vermont, Jake Brown reports that all is good up in Montpelier for his family, which includes his wife Milly and his son Nelson: Nelson is headed to college next year and we are deep in application mode. I have found a new buzz (sorry) in the electricity world, doing communications work for a 32,000-member rural electric co-op serving northern Vermont. I think about Shady Hill often. What an education.
I, your faithful scribe, Porter Gifford, still live in Cambridge with my wife and children—the oldest is now a sophomore in college, the younger one about to graduate from CRLS. When not taking pictures, I can be found walking our new puppy, or playing hockey somewhere— usually with Alex Moot
Hal Movius chimes in from points south: Charlottesville, as many of you know, was beset in 2017; then again, so was the country. I’m grateful that our family is healthy and happy. Luke (13) and Anya (11) play travel soccer; Luke also plays a mean tenor sax, and Anya is a budding singer-songwriter. I’m in the sixth year of running a small, prosperous global negotiations consultancy. My wife, Kate Bennis, is coaching leaders and writing a book on public speaking. And since Porter asked about hopes and dreams: once through this gauntlet of work/kids, I hope to make music again—and we think about maybe living in other parts of the world, depending on how things play out! Jennifer White-Callaghan reports: We are still in London but not for long—if my husband gets his green card! We’re
moving to Washington, DC in the spring. I’ll continue to work for Allen & Overy, doing regulatory and public law work, Richard will (we hope) find an interesting NGO role, and Meg (6) will go to Horace Mann School where, somewhat unbelievably, the principal is Liz Whisnant, former SHS teacher. If anyone is in DC, we’d love to see you and we’ll probably get to Cambridge more frequently too.
1980
Jessica Aguilera-Steinert writes: Despite the crazy political climate we are in, I and my family continue to thrive. My son Diego (14) is a freshman in high school and my daughter Camila (11) is in 6th grade. Our family still lives in Jamaica Plain. I am a program director at Boston Medical Center working with folks with numerous complex medical and social challenges. I stay in close touch with Margaret (Muffy King) O’Day, Andrea (Bond) Wilson, and Margaret (Churchill) Lyne and admire many others from a distance.
From Polly Hubbard: I am living happily in Roslindale with my family of Lily (9th grade) and husband Duncan (not 9th grade) and seeing my nearby stepson Colton for dinners. He is a chef in Boston so we only see him at work! I am in my fifth year at Harvard directing the education departments of two anthropology museums. The front steps need painting, summer plans for music camps are coming together, and I am once again starting and finishing my bookclub book the night before the meeting. But busy is good!
Abraham (Nick) Morse writes: It is hard to believe 18 months have passed since we moved to Guangzhou. I have had a crash course in the Chinese health care system
working in a public hospital and my medical mandarin is slowly improving. Eli and Isaac attend an international school and Loren, my wife, keeps us all (including two adopted dogs) going every day.
1981
JOHN WILSON
139
STAFFORD ROAD
MONSON, MA 01057
wilson@dbit.com
Yvette Anderson writes: I don’t have any exciting news to report. My Zoey has a canine disease called degenerative myelopathy. She is a senior dog so, of course, she gets extra love and care.
Lisa Brown writes: After a 2016 with a breast cancer diagnosis, I’m glad to be cancer-free in 2017. I’m back up to running half-marathons—not as fast as I used to, but I’m glad to regain strength and endurance. I started learning to play the drums during chemo in order to be able to hit something but have it be productive. Sometimes I feel it’s the instrument I should have been playing my whole life (and I no longer have to envy Adam Simha). In August my college roommates blessed me with a cancer-free celebration trip to see Hamilton in Chicago! If you have the opportunity, go see that show! The music is SO GOOD.
Nathaniel Cutter writes: I enjoyed relaxing with family over the holidays. Professionally, I will be graduating a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program from Lesley shortly, which is good. I enjoy the counseling work, and am grateful to be able to change careers at this point in my life.
Poonam Dayal (Claire Hastings) writes: For the last 4 years I have enjoyed being connected on Facebook with the small group of Shady Hillers who have joined our class page. Shady Hill gave me a safe haven for many years. I spent 8th thru 10th grades in London and then two years at BB&N. My young adult years were murky and confusing. I was never professionally ambitious; I just wanted Truth (as if that is not ambitious). I gave up trying to find it after a religion class but I was lucky to ‘bump into it’ a decade later. Of course it’s not a static discovery, it’s a constant discovery. Just as physical science is revealed one drop at a time, so is our knowledge of subtle energy.
I cannot emphasize enough how real subtle energy is, it’s just as real as gravity. The trick is to find a human being sensitive enough to pinpoint subtle forces. Once in a blue moon, a seeker can find such a soul. It changes the paradigm. Back in 1991, I turned my pet name, Poonam, into my real name. My great accomplishment was negotiating 25 years of cross-cultural marriage, which included a lovely live-in father-in-law for 17 years. My greatest success in all these years was to raise a child who became my best friend. She graduates from Wellesley with a degree in neuroscience and a minor in public health. With a passion for making the world a better place, she won an Albright Institute Fellowship and became a Rhodes finalist. Most importantly, she’s a joy to be with. My husband, Atma, and I faced epic challenges and overcame them together. Our marriage would make an excellent adventure, mystery, romance, comedy movie with an uplifting message. It’s been a blessing. Atma is of Indian heritage and over the years I’ve traveled to India more than 25 times, often for a month at a time. As I write I am sitting in India once again, drawn by the love of the people here and the hope of making it a better place. The Bay Area in California has been my home the last 27 years. For those who knew my family, my sister and brother both thrive, my mother passed in 2010 of melanoma, and my father, with a new love by his side, writes quality poetry and sustains his community in the hill towns in many ways. I continue to learn from all of them. Though I’m a west-coast girl now, the Webb family and other family ties keep me anchored in the east. I hope other classmates will say hello. I love seeing who in our class has become an avid knitter, photographer, philosopher, outdoorswoman, craft beer maker, bicyclist, cartoonist, knife craftsman or top tier investment banker, venture capitalist, athlete, professor, professional violinist, event organizer, full time mum and home-schooler, who survives cancer, etc. It’s such a wonder how each life is so special and yet completely different than the next. Our SHS class Facebook page is very supportive. It’s understood that each of us is completely different than the others. Om Shanti.
Harold Engstrom lives in Lincoln with his wife, Lynda. He has sons in college
Abraham (Nick) Morse ’80 with his family in China.
and a daughter in high school: I am loving work and family and dog. Hope all my classmates are doing well!
Lydia Forbes reports: I’m in Maine with my three sons, ages 15, 12, and 8, playing in the DaPonte String Quartet, teaching, skiing, biking, paddling. If anyone knows how to make a fantastic dinner from leftover baked salmon, I’d love to hear it!
Adrienne Loh writes: I continue to live in Wisconsin with my family. This year I am starting a new position as Interim Associate Dean of the School of Education at UW-La Crosse. I’m enjoying the work and am staying connected to my students through research. My daughter Madeline is finishing 6th grade, growing like a weed and digesting books like crazy. All three of us are headed back to France this summer, both for my research and for some sanity. Hi to all!
Jared Mazlish has moved his family (three kids: 7, 5, and 2) and his business (Fat-ypus skis) to Burlington, VT one year ago and life is jolly!
Dominic Montagu writes: All is well in Berkeley, CA. My son is in college in Vermont and enjoying it. My daughter will go to college in Chicago next year, so everyone I know will be tougher than me when it comes to winter. No idea what my wife and I will do with no kids
to worry about. Adopt dogs and grow hothouse orchids and solve murders, I presume. I had a brush with cancer a year ago but all is OK now. I’m still at UCSF, still traveling too much for research projects on quality of care in Asia and Africa. Hoping we all get to connect again sometime soon.
Harold Pratt wrote in for what may be the first time ever: I have just gotten married to a wonderful woman. We are doing the ‘blended family’ thing and all is excellent. Took all of the kids to NOLA for a New Year’s celebration. On the professional front, I am just finishing my 28th year of teaching at Milton Academy. I teach honors geometry, honors algebra two, and calculus this year. The students are diverse, smart, mostly motivated, and keep me on my toes. One of my new advisees just moved from SHS to Milton. I am a cabinet maker when not in the classroom and am setting up my new shop in our new home in Dedham.
John Wilson writes: I met up with Caoilfhionn Sweeney and Adam Simha in Harvard Square last summer, which was a blast. As you can imagine they’re exactly the same. Not such a great year otherwise (my mom died), but at least there were some fun projects. I put a rebuilt motor in my car, built a mini-fume hood (and matching table) for soldering safely, and found many excuses to do bad MIG welding. I still play Renaissance music with friends at least four times a week. Would anyone else like to be the one to collect/edit the class notes for our class? I don’t mind the job, and love hearing from classmates, but this makes 10 years that I’ve been doing it and it feels like it’s time
to turn over the job to someone else. The pay is lousy but the hours are great!
Sarah Wyman says Lisa Brown came to visit this summer: We had a wonderful time celebrating her recovery from breast cancer and remembering her mother, Marjory. I still teach literature and theory at SUNY-New Paltz and am now the Director of the Faculty Development Center. My girls are well, and we are ever more grateful for good health and relative peace in these troubled times. Please visit us in the Hudson Valley!
1982
CHAD GIFFORD
325 CENTRAL PARK WEST, APT. 7N NEW YORK, NY 10025 chg7@columbia.edu
KATE MOVIUS
1116 LE GRAY AVENUE LOS ANGELES, CA 90042 katemovius@gmail.com
Christopher Barnes moved ashore from a family sailing sabbatical and is now the Head of School at the Midland School in Los Olivos, CA.
Stephen Buttenwieser is in his 17th year as a primary care doctor in Lawrence. He lives in Cambridge with his partner Rachel and their two kids, Maya (12) and Simon (6). Brad Feldman and Kenny McLaughlin helped him celebrate his 50th in September.
Samantha Corte is living in Carrboro, NC with her husband Tom and their daughter Melissa (16). She writes children’s fiction and since last year, has also been writing a blog, “Ravens and Pears” (ravensandpears.blogspot.com).
Elizabeth Ferry and her family are traveling around the world as she teaches on the spring 2018 voyage of Semester at Sea. Elizabeth is blogging at aroundthe worldferrywoods.wordpress.com.
JJ Gonson writes: I’m still spending most of my time thinking about local food and catering all local dinner parties and meals with my now 13-year-old catering company, Cuisine en Locale. There’s also this rock club thing I’ve somehow become responsible for, called ONCE Somerville. That’s good times. My family is well. Claudia Gonson ’83 is rocking in Brooklyn, the folks are still in Cambridge and both of my kids are at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which has become a
Lydia Forbes ’81 canoeing with her family
Shady Hill friends gather to celebrate Brad Feldman's 50th birthday in New York, May 2017. Brad (left), Susan Buttenwieser '80, and Alison Demos ’82
pretty great school. Life in Camberville goes on.
Charlie King writes from Bainbridge Island, WA: Our lovely island community continues to serve us well. I really feel that the recent study on longevity being rooted in a person’s connection to community is true. I volunteer more now in my community than ever before, and seem to reap endless rewards from it. Both kids are athletes (Isabella a rower, Harrison a water polo player), and it’s inspired me to volunteer with their teams as a way to meet their friends, stay connected to other families and a super-simple way to contribute. Sometimes it’s as easy as carpooling a couple of kids from the water polo team to a local tournament; other times, I find myself organizing and leading a co-ed group of 100 rowers to a regatta in Canada. My days are filled with as many laughs as tears. Aging into my 5th decade has been a monument. I’ve found a renewed need (nay, urgency) to find more gratitude in my life, because parenting, aging, entering 22 years of marriage, and watching family get older isn’t for sissies! Letting go of unhealthy coping mechanisms has laid bare what life looks like 100% awake all the time. Whew! Here’s to all my SHSers: love to connect with any and all this year. My hopes for the best for you all!
Kate Movius continues to conduct trainings on communication and de-escalation tactics for the LA Sheriff’s Department. Last February, she was asked to represent the autism community in the Bringing Our Loved Ones Home Task Force, created by the LA County Board of Supervisors. Their mission is to manage the safety of children and adults at greater risk for wandering and/or becoming lost in LA County. Pamela Auerbach recently
joined Kate for a long weekend of eating, drinking, hair-braiding and “mature skin” product mockery.
Lucienne (Spalding) Schroepfer reports: Otto (18) is finishing high school at St. Paul College (grabbing as many free college credits as possible, care of the public school system) and the twins are headed to Sweden with my husband next summer to play in an international soccer tournament. Parenting my teens has made me an expert at throwing together dinner for huge numbers each weekend, wading through dirty clothes stashed on every floor and learning new texting etiquette, hourly. When not working, I’m still quilting up a storm and focusing on my textile visual art (www.lucequilts.com). Having never thought I could give up sugar, I’ve joined the no-carb/organic only train—and it’s surprisingly good. Oh, and it’s super cold in MN! I’m still wondering how my husband Bill convinced me to settle here.
1983
Jill Forney writes: Still living on Coolidge Hill. I have a kid at SHS, Beckett, who this year has the privilege of being in the 4th grade and experiencing the still incredible Ancient Greece curriculum. My oldest, Jackson Gates ’10, is a college junior, Colby Gates ’13 and Clio Gates ’13 are enjoying their respective gap years, and Fisher Gates ’13 is a college freshman. I continue to practice as a psychotherapist—my office is right next to the Cambridge Skating Club!—and as a quasi-urban farmer with a dog, 2 bunnies, quickly reproducing zebra finches, and a dumpy Australian tree frog named Toby, as well as the best co-conspirator in all of this richly messy life, Mike (a husband, not a pet). Lucky for me, Annie Brewster
’83 is still a neighbor on Coolidge Hill, just here the other night for snow-clone festivities. A random and joyful recent discovery has been West African dance, live drumming and pure fun, a part of an effort to get moving in as many different ways as possible. Happy 2018 to all!
1984
J. EIGERMAN 83 HIGH STREET NEWBURYPORT, MA 01950 jeigerman@gmail.com
Jessica Zander writes: I am still living in Winchester with my husband and two daughters in high school. I work at YWCA Boston, which has the coolest mission of any that I have worked for: Eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, and freedom for all. This feels like a great place to be right now and the organization does fantastic work to address gender and racial equity issues in the greater Boston area (ywboston.org).
1986
NELL BREYER
474A 16TH STREET BROOKLYN, NY 11215 nellbreyer@gmail.com
Janet Buttenwieser has written her debut memoir, GUTS, published by Vine Leaves Press in February 2018. Please check out her website: www.janetbuttenwieser.com to find out about an event, learn more about her amazing story, join her mailing list, and follow her blog.
Kate Hannify shares: My husband John, my third-grade son, and I have moved to Kennebunkport. It’s a walk to the beach albeit a cold one lately. We are a stones
Friends from the class of 1984: Christina Kiely, Lara Shapiro, and Maria Striar
Children of Lara Shapiro ’84: Finn, Cleo, and Willa
Pammy Auerbach ’82 and Kate Movius ’82
throw from my parents’ summer house. I split my work life between office internal medicine practice and teaching at University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. My lovely stepsons are either through or midway through college. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has passed. What a gift our teachers were at SHS.
Your class secretary, Nell Breyer, has had the pleasure of seeing classmate David Brewster back on Shady Hill’s campus, classmate Keith Henderson on the BB&N ice rink, and classmate Sarah Selden in the SHS parking lot—all of whom, I can report, have full heads of hair, exuberance and warmth as ever, and several of their own children (between kindergarten and college ages) to keep them ever wiser, stronger and more technologically adept.
Please share your news and photos at any time! Please don’t wait for the spring magazine to reach out if you’d like to be in touch with any of our SHS classmates. Wishing you all a wonder-filled 2018.
1987
EMILY LLOYD SHAW
28 KIRK STREET
P.O. BOX 264
HOUSATONIC, MA 01236 elloydshaw@gmail.com
We had a terrific 30th reunion in May 2017. The highlight was an evening hosted by Katie Salter and Lauren Holleran at their house. Attendees included Eliza Geer, Sara Simmons, Valerie Hamilton, Susan Antebi (from Canada!), Erica Bouchard Rabins, Lila Javan (from California!), Olivia Dyer, Melanie Temin Mendez, and representing the guys (where were the rest of you?!): Zweli Miller from California with his lovely wife and
adorable daughter! It was a night of catching up, reconnecting, of course reminiscing, and even singing SHS favorites. If you are on Facebook, join our class page to stay in touch with us all!
Maia Carson writes: We had a wonderful ski weekend recently with Olivia Dyer Reyelt, who is my son Liam’s godmother (or as he calls her, great grandmother!). Jessica Dello Russo writes: I was sorry to miss the reunion and sing-along at Katie’s! As a current SHS parent, I was class mothering Ezio’s 5th grade and was caught up in the end-of-year preparations and my mother, Paula Dello Russo’s, retirement celebration after many decades at Shady Hill as parent, tutor, and teacher. While missing the fun, I get news of classmates from local sources—like my mother, who ran into Rachel Pries’ mother while shopping in Cambridge. Ezio’s in 6th grade at SHS, confusingly, in what was my 7th-grade classroom. It really brings me back to see him dash around campus, spreading winter gear as he goes which I collect at various lost-and-founds. On the professional front, I am starting my third year as executive director of the International Catacomb Society (www.catacombsociety.com), based in Boston, but focusing on the Ancient Mediterranean. It has close Shady Hill ties (former SHS parent and Coolidge Hill neighbor Cornelius Verneule was a society co-founder, and current board advisor John Herrmann is also a former SHS parent)! The Shady Hill school of life. Best to all.
Lara Heimert writes: 2017 was an eventful year. I got married and had a baby, though not in that order. On June 16, Maximilian Boaz Rosen Heimert arrived on what was supposed to be my wedding day. Since he was obviously so keen to join the party, we delayed the
wedding and he got a front row seat when I married Gary Rosen on November 10. Other than that, it’s been a pretty chill year. I went to Oman when Max was still in utero, but otherwise he’s brought my adventures to a temporary halt. That will all change when he’s fully vaccinated—we have big plans for the little man. Sending love to all!
Lila Javan writes: I am training for my next Climb 2 Cure adventure which is to Everest base camp this October. Climb 2 Cure is the new climbing campaign that I helped to start for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I had a dream to raise $1 million for cancer research and as of last November we met that. We had over 75 people summit Kilimanjaro and we have groups set for Kilimanjaro and Everest base camp throughout 2018 and 2019. I am trying to raise $29,029, the height of Mt. Everest! If people want to donate my fundraising page is http://pages.teamintraining.org/calso/ mtklmjr18/LJavan.
Emily Lloyd Shaw writes: I continue to live in Great Barrington in the Berkshires with my husband and two daughters, and a puppy. I have a local private psychotherapy practice. As it is ski season, most of our weekends are spent on the slopes as our daughters are on a local race team. Is that what I say every year? Life is busy and hectic at times, but overall good. However my poor husband has to deal with my constant comparisons of our daughters’ school to SHS—alas, hard when the bar was set so high! Hoping this finds everyone well!
1988
Penny Harris Rosenzweig writes: Time is sure passing faster than I can keep up—life is rich and full. I am living in Marlborough with my husband Joel. We
Friends Maia Carson ’87 and Olivia Dyer ’87 with their kids, one teething!
Lara Heimert ’87 with husband Gary and son Maximilian on their wedding day
Emily Shaw ’87’s daughters and puppy
find ourselves being initiated into the adventure of parenting teenagers, Noah (17), Jessica (13), and Maya (11). I am lucky to have my sister Samantha Harris ’93 nearby with her three young kids for plenty of cousin time. I’m having great fun with an eclectic mix of creative and meaningful work. I have a private practice in holistic counseling, I teach mindfulness and meditation for corporate wellness programs, and I create and lead transformational workshops and retreats for women who want to lead more authentic and soulful lives.
1989
TK BALTIMORE
3 PAULMIER PLACE JERSEY CITY, NJ 07302 tk@tktv.net
LISA HAMILTON 18 HAZEL AVENUE SAN ANSELMO, CA 94960 lmh@lisamhamilton.com
TK Baltimore is still happily ensconced in Jersey City with her husband, Jay, and her daughter, Tesla (3). They are, however, plotting a move back to the Cambridge area for later in 2018.
Antonia Blyth is keeping up with her two kids, including Ramsay (7) who is working on becoming a ninja warrior.
In the Bay Area, Lisa Hamilton is a journalist working on her second book. She is delighted to have her sister, Valerie Hamilton ’87, in Santa Monica. Lisa is still singing all those songs that Ms. Seegar taught the class, and loved teaching her own child “Pick-a Pick-a Pumpkin” and “The Cat Came Back.”
Out on the coast is Betsey (Geller) Keely, who lives in Manhattan Beach with her husband and two sons, Owen (12)
and Will (10). She keeps busy working with the PTA at her boys’ public schools and playing volleyball. Now that she is a full-time mom of middle-schoolers she says she appreciates her mother’s patience with her when she was fourteen and gave her attitude “about pretty much everything!” But other things haven’t changed: “I like to think I still have the same exact giggle and love candy just as much as in those days.”
Miranda Pearce reports: I am still living in Cambridge with my husband, Matt, and two sons, Leo (8) and Oscar (7). I play four square occasionally with my sons, but there are more fancy variations than I can keep up with. I work at Isobar, a digital agency in Boston. I see Amy Bracken around when i can.
Huge congratulations go out to Melanie (Robinson) Rae, who came out victorious in a yearlong battle with stage-3 breast cancer. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1998, she has found success with Guided Business Plans, her model that has helped thousands of people write their own blueprints for success. “How I have changed since the H building?” she writes. “I have taught more than 1,100 technical training classes. Definitely not as shy.”
Emily (Hart) Reith lives in Sudbury with her husband, two teens, and “a ten year old who thinks she’s a teen.” She directs business development efforts at Lendlease, a construction management practice for commercial developments.
Todd Rodgers still lives in NYC with his wife, two daughters, and frequent visits from family and friends, all crammed into a one-bedroom apartment. He escapes his overcrowded apartment during the day to be the CTO of Haven Life, a startup that is transforming the life insurance industry.
Jean (Beinart) Stern lives in Waban and has 3 girls who keep her busy, energized, and exhausted all at once. (She manages to do graphic design work on the side,
too.) Jean hangs out with Emily and Sarah (Hinkle) Slubowski often and keeps up with Mason Smith. “I bore my children with old SHS tales,” she writes. “Their current favorite is that Mr. Maple was my woodworking teacher and Melody Tarbox our music teacher.”
Elise Van Winkle has two kids (6 and 10) and lives in Washington, D.C. She works for the Department of Defense as Director of Force Resiliency, where she serves as the Secretary’s principal advisor on the department’s policies and programs for sexual assault, harassment, discrimination, suicide prevention, and drug demand reduction. She reports, “I don’t play four-square, but have always believed the Pentagon courtyard needed more games. I’ll see what I can do.”
1990
KATHRYN BAILIS PHILLIPS
322 WEST 72ND STREET, #12C NEW YORK, NY 10023
kathryn.phillips75@gmail.com
The Class of 1990 really wants to hear how everyone is! Please email me updates at kathryn.phillips75@gmail.com. It can be just a few sentences, but we want to hear!
Amie Margolis writes: I am still working in the development office at BB&N, and occasionally have the pleasure of running into classmate Jesse Sarzana, Rory Morton (former faculty), Althea Cranston (former faculty), and Christina Dello Russo ’97, TTC ’05. I also run into Annie Brewster ’83 once in a while either at Shady Hill, BB&N, or on Beacon Hill while visiting our parents, who are still neighbors. It is always wonderful to see classmates from SHS. The special bond that we all share from growing up together in that unique environment is something I am always grateful for.
All is well for Kathryn Bailis Phillips: We continue to live in New York City and I am still teaching. I spend the rest of my time trying to keep up with our daughter, Savannah (11), and all of her soccer, ice hockey, dance and school commitments. She keeps us very busy and very happy!
Becca (Straus) Ravenel wrote: We just had our third child, Charles DuFort Straus Ravenel—named after [husband] Ramsay’s dad who passed away last spring. Katie (Whitters) Vaughn shared: Same story here—raising three kids. Maggie
Melanie Rae ’89 through her three-year battle with stage-3 breast cancer
Penny Harris Rosenzweig ’88 with Joel, Maya, Noah and Jessica
will be off to high school next year! I’m working for my family’s company with my brother (Alkalol Company) and am unsure of where all the time goes? Too fast for sure!
1991
ALEKSANDAR “SAŠA” MILOSAVLJEVIC-COOK
59 HARDY ROAD
FALMOUTH, ME 04105 scook@schoodiccapital.com
Aleksandar “Saša” Cook along with his wife Renee and two daughters, Sofia and Vivienne, moved to the Netherlands in 2016 and reports: It was time to change things up and take a unique family journey of exploration and foreign immersion. We now live in a cute village just north of Den Haag and not too far from the beach. Our time here has been a very positive eye opening experience and has provided us with opportunities to explore locally and regionally. The Netherlands is rich in history, culture, social engineering, and BIKES! It has been a joy learning the language and understanding what it means to be a member of Dutch society. In June I was lucky enough to host Jeff Kurzon ’91 at our home and give him a flavor for life in the Netherlands. In May, during a wild
cross country dash, I visited with Jen Cook and her family in Lexington, VA.
1992
JANINE ROBINSON
1912 MATHEWS AVENUE, #1 REDONDO BEACH, CA 90278 janinekrobinson@hotmail.com
Emily (Martin) Boland reports: I work as a nurse in the Weymouth public schools. I enjoy it so much. I credit SHS with instilling the belief in me that school should be a natural and joyful place for children. My son, Ryan, is a first-grader, we adopted a rambunctious dog over the summer (Caroline), and I became an aunt in January to Junot Martin-Craig (born to Amanda Martin ’98 and her wife Brittany Craig). It has been an exciting year!
Will Crissman writes: I’m living in Wellesley with my wife, Michele, and our three girls, Eloise, Maisie, and Charlotte. This fall I was named the next Head of School at Tenacre in Wellesley starting this summer. We are all looking forward to the opportunity. Other than teaching and raising kids, I am an avid cyclist and a Kabir Sen groupie.
Alexander Dunn writes: 2018 finds me recently returned to Cambridge after a year in the San Juan Islands: writing a book, biking down to see the eclipse in Oregon, and generally awash in oysters and coffee. But, it’s good to be home!
Leila (Simon) Hayes writes: I’m still living in Jamaica Plain with my husband, Tommy, and kids, Adina (7) and Ezra (4). Adina is a thoughtful, funny kiddo who loves graphic novels and math. Ezra loves to draw and imagine he has eccentric super powers. Tommy teaches high school environmental science at Charlestown High School. I work for myself in my graphic design business, Leila Simon
Design. I also play drums, sing, and write songs in my band ‘Sensitive Subject.’
Olive Isaacs is working with a firm specializing in nonprofit fundraising strategies and events and is living in Maplewood, NJ. She and her husband, Randall, welcomed their first daughter, Ella Francesca Rodakowski, on Christmas morning!
Gabe Johnson is married and currently living in San Francisco but will soon be moving to Los Angeles. He works in advertising and also enjoys doing improv. He sees Dara Kosberg ’93 in San Francisco pretty often, and adds, “Shady Hill is so awesome!”
Jeremy Magland writes: I live with my wife and three of our four children near Philadelphia. Our oldest recently started college at our alma mater, Brigham Young University. I love my job as a data scientist at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Would love to get together with anyone in either of those two cities!
Janine Robinson is coming up on year nine of living in mostly sunny Southern California and is holding it down with her siblings and parents. As marketing director at Shades of Color Inspirational Gifts, she enjoys being surrounded by beautiful art all day. “I have a passion for the arts that no doubt started at SHS, which helps fuel my motivation during product development, finding creative ways to portray our items on social media, and recently have been working on dabbling in my own painting projects.” She adds, “I am more and more impressed with the fundamental life skills Shady Hill infuses into its community—including how to be a more inclusive community—and am happy that my cousin is now attending as well to continue the tradition!”
Kabir Sen writes from good ol’ Coolidge Hill: My wife, Rebecca, and I became U.S. citizens a few weeks ago! We met as soccer coaches at Shady Hill on 9/11/01, and we quickly figured out that we were both originally from England, and that we had both moved to Boston in 1987. 30 years later, we became citizens together! I am still really enjoying my time as a music teacher at SHS. Hard to believe I am in my 19th year working here. I have also been teaching hip-hop music workshops at the Burbank and Chenery Schools as part of Belmont After School Enrichment Collaborative. I am
Amie Margolis ’90 and her son, Aidan, with Emily Dello Russo Horwitz ’90 at the 2017 Shady Hill Fair.
Amie Margolis ’90 and Lydia Ogden ’90 in December 2017 at Night Market in Harvard Square
Leila Simon ’92 with her children Adina and Ezra
still playing music in bands (although slowing down a bit). It feels like my children are growing up incredibly fast—Eva is 8, Julia is 6, and Ethan is 2½. Rebecca is an incredible mom—I am blessed! Sending love to the ‘92 crew!
Clare Trautvetter writes: I just got married last week in the BVI to Manny Parodi! I’ll be running the Boston Marathon in April for The Travis Roy Foundation and can’t wait to walk around SHS when I’m in town!
1993
Kaytea Petro joined City Arts Gallery in 2017 and has been showing regularly with the cooperative since then. In December, she got news that she received her first public commission—from the Robby Poblete Foundation—she will be making the sculpture during the Winter of 2018, to be revealed in May. In other news, life continues to be beautiful in the City by the Bay. She sees her extended family frequently, and everyone is happy and well. Colin Thompson writes: All is well on the west coast. I am still at Pixar (16 years!), currently working on The Incredibles 2, and looking forward to its
release this summer. Our family is expecting a second baby girl in March, and our daughter Grace is very excited to be a big sister! She is currently practicing her big sister skills on our two cats, Daisy and Donut, who joined us last November as post-election therapy kittens.
1994
JEITA PHILLIPS DENG
2660 HARVARD YARD MAIL CENTER
1 OXFORD STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138
jeita.phillips@gmail.com
It has been an exciting year for the Class of 1994. I’m always so impressed to hear about advancing careers, growing families, exciting travels, incredible performances
and much more. This is a great class and I’m pleased to share the following notes.
Josiah Bragdon writes: My wife Sugey and I are still living in Oakland with our two sweet girls. Our daughter, Ella (5), started kindergarten this year at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland. Little sister Charlotte (2) is growing up fast, and will be starting preschool in the fall. Liz Clemons lives in our apartment building, and is part of the family. We had the whole Benson/Clemons family over to our apartment for a Christmas dinner crab feed! We’ve also hung out with Erica Strang, Nicole Mason, and their husbands and baby boys. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Atty Bing, wife Emily, and their sweet baby girl in LA twice this winter! Most recently our family spent the morning in San Francisco with Zach Davis, his wife Annie, and their 3 boys. We’re really fortunate to still see so much of our Shady Hill family! [Jeita commentary: I saw a picture of Atty Bing’s baby and she is such a beauty!]
Kat (Dingman) Boger and her husband and two sons (3 and 6) have recently moved to Belmont. She works as a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital and has enjoyed bumping into fellow SHS’ers in the Boston area.
Colin Thompson ’93’s daughter, Grace, with their cat
Nicole Mason ’94, Josiah Bragdon ’94, and Erica Strang ’94 with their kids
1994: The Benson and Clemons families together for a Christmas Dinner crab feast
Josiah Bragdon ’94, Zach Davis ’94 and family together in San Francisco
Josiah Bragdon ’94 with his family in Disneyland
Sarah (Kirchner) Brown shared that she is still living outside of Orlando with her husband and 8-year-old son. She teaches middle school science and language arts at a local private school called The Lyman School. She concluded her note by saying: “I am enjoying all the sunshine!” All of us on the northeast in the winter are very jealous of Sarah’s enjoyment of sunshine in the winter!
Jeita (Phillips) Deng writes: I’m fortunate enough to be one of the SHS’ers that Kat Boger bumps into in the Boston area! Cambridge is my stomping ground; I live and work in Cambridge. My husband and I live at Harvard College with our nearly 2-year-old son and are three of us are enjoying dorm life. I just had my 5-year anniversary at the Kennedy School of Government and got a tote bag and a cool new job—I am now the CFO. I get to see Lindsay (Fauth) Smith about twice a year, which is fantastic, but not nearly enough. This fall I had two SHS encounters: I saw Leigh O’Neil briefly when she was visiting and I look forward to visiting her in D.C soon, and I went to see Ed Droste’s band, Grizzly Bear, at the House of Blues. He is such an amazing artist!
Andrew Keating writes: I have just completed my Masters in Architecture at Harvard and my firm, Stack + Co., is in its tenth year of creating interesting buildings throughout the Boston area including restaurants, retail, and modern homes. My wife Shannon, daughter Wren, and I finished renovations on a 1782 house in Roxbury and we are now on to our next project, a 1910 bungalow in Padanaram village on the South Coast. We recently visited Atty Bing, wife Emily, and their new baby girl in L.A. [Another Jeita commentary: I recently went to a restaurant that Stack + Co recoated and it’s a beautiful space. Andrew and his team do amazing work!]
Jesse Levinson writes from the furthest away from his new post in Morocco: It’s been a very busy year for our family. In May, my wife, Emanuelle Silva Levinson, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation. In August, we relocated from Brazil to Morocco for my work at the Embassy, and we welcomed a baby boy, Gabriel Tobias Levinson.
Erica Strang also made the journey from the east coast to visit SHS classmates in California. Erica had the opportunity
to get together with Josiah Bragdon and Nicole Mason and their children in San Francisco. The next generation of SHS pals! When not taking super cute family photos, Erica lives in Brooklyn and directs a program at a nonprofit that assists street homeless folks find housing. Her son is moving quickly through his second year and is starting to say his first words. ‘doggie’ is currently his favorite.
1996
Justin Colannino writes: I live in Cambridge with my wife Tiffany and our kids, Rory (3) and Pete (2). We have a third (a girl) on the way! I recently started a new job at Microsoft in Kendall Square as an attorney advising on open source and standards.
Jesse Karlsberg writes: My wife Lauren and I welcomed our sweet daughter, Lucey Rose, into the world on February 22, 2017. We live in Atlanta where I am senior digital scholarship strategist at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, managing a web-based journal called Atlanta Studies, and editing a series of digital critical editions of southern sacred music called Sounding Spirit.
Matt Meyersohn writes: I moved back into my childhood home with my wife Nina and we now have a six month old boy named Ravi. I work for a nonprofit called MENTOR and I do external affairs and marketing—basically trying to get more adults engaged in mentoring.
1998-9
KRISTEN CAHALANE
179 TRAPELO ROAD
BELMONT, MA 02478
kcahalane@gmail.com
Kristen Cahalane-Petchar writes: I am working as an associate director of admission at Wheaton College and living in Belmont with my wife. I am hoping to see many classmates at our upcoming reunion!
In true Shady Hill fashion, Jenny Fauth and her husband welcomed Caleb Alexander Wilson to the world on May Day.
Gabriela Gutowski is thrilled to announce her engagement to David Hammack. She and David met while attending the U. of Virginia and plan to
1998-9: Gabriela Gutkowski’s engagement photo
1998-9: Liz Nill’s twin boys, Alex and Charlie
marry this April in Charlottesville. Since 2016 Gabriela has been working as a historic preservation specialist for the Office of Planning in Washington, D.C.
Last July, Liz (Nill) Pearsons and her husband Andrew welcomed identical twin boys Alex and Charlie.
Zoe (Preston) Spring is living in western Massachusetts with her husband, Evan, and son, Perry. She works in graphic design and web development, and would love to see any friends who are passing through the Berkshires.
We also have exiting wedding news: Bleeker Wheeler is engaged and getting married over Labor Day weekend. Dana is the officiant and Slater is his best man.
1998
JESSE LAST
244 BRATTLE STREET, UNIT 12 CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 jesselast@gmail.com
BECK SLOMAN
606 DRIGGS AVENUE, #2 BROOKLYN, NY 11211 sloman.beck@gmail.com
Brad Belin is now a department chair at Fessenden School, where he is helping to build their project based learning capability. Until recently, he and his wife Sarah were dorm parents. They moved off-campus this year and are enjoying the extra peace and quiet that comes with not living with 10 school-aged boys!
Steve Brock is now based in Los Angeles, where he’s literally living the dream, driving a vintage mustang, and pursuing screenwriting.
Jesse Last and his wife Rosie returned to the US in August after a year living in Medellin, Colombia. She began business school at the U. of Michigan and bribed him to Ann Arbor with a puppy. On February 12th, they became an uncle and aunt when Jesse’s older brother Max Sederer ’90 and his wife Jenn welcomed Mia Nooy into the world. Jesse sends his best to the class.
Amanda Martin writes: My wife and I were so excited to welcome our first child, Junot Martin-Craig, on January 2. He is a delight! We live in Carrboro, NC where I am in the final year of a PhD in city and regional planning at UNC Chapel Hill. I’m also consulting part-time in my field.
Will Morgan writes: I completed a graduate degree in urban planning a few years ago. SInce then, I have been loving
my job in affordable housing finance at CEDAC, a quasi-public community development finance institution in Boston. After many years in Somerville, my wife and I recently bought our first house in Melrose. When we’re not at home, we’re usually hiking in the White Mountains or enjoying a beer with friends. We’ve been lucky enough to see several SHS classmates recently years and hope to keep up the streak.
Mike Shaw opened his second restaurant in December! Fat Baby is located in South Boston and serves up sushi and East Asian fare. To prepare for its opening he visited Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City, and came back inspired. The results speak for themselves: the food is amazing and the place has been packed since it opened in December. He also married his fiancé, Molly, on the Cape this July. The party was epic.
Beck Sloman is still living in Brooklyn and working in advertising at Foote, Cone and Belding. He spends most of his time working on trying to stop teens from smoking—his main client is the FDA.
Talya Wyzanski has been living in Washington, D.C. since she graduated with an MBA/MA in 2014. After 3 years in Accenture’s federal consulting practice, she recently transitioned into their international development team where she is focusing on their global health portfolio. Outside of work, Talya has been traveling quite a bit, going to France twice, Mexico, and Cuba within the last year. And
despite all of that travel, she managed to make it back to Boston last summer and have a wonderful dinner with several of her SHS classmates!
1999
ARIANA WATSON EVARTS
1200 FIFTH AVENUE, 8B NEW YORK, NY 10029 ariana.watson@gmail.com
Daniel Callahan gave his first artist workshop at the Museum of Fine Arts on March 1. The workshop was on his painting technique MassQing, which uses the human face as a canvas to create living works of art aimed to reveal, rather than conceal, one’s inner essence and/or state of being. In a form that is at once portraiture and performance, personal and participatory, MassQing requires interpersonal interaction and seeks to blur the line between artist, subject, and viewer and to connect people on a more holistic and human level. Daniel teamed up with the MFA’s Teel Curator of African and Oceanic Art, Kathryn Gunsch, to explore indigenous traditions of body decoration and ritual around the world and how they have influenced his practice. Participants also had the chance to engage in MassQing themselves and become walking works of art.
Jack Kotin writes: In January I started a new job as a business data analyst/ business strategist in the food delivery
Members of the class of 1998 at Alex Homans’ restaurant in Jamaica Plain, The Frogmore: Guiliana Di Mambro, Lindsay Gittens, Katherine Wheeler, Talya Wyzanski, John Lynch, and Will Morgan
Jesse Last ’98’s wife, Rosie, and their puppy, Gio
is still home however, and she had the good fortune of spending extra time in her hometown this past year in order to plan her wedding, which took place on June 3, 2017! The wedding ceremony was in the North End at the Sacred Heart Church in North Square, and was followed by a reception at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Seaport District (SHS classmate Amanda [Aldrich] Hastings was a bridesmaid, and fellow SHS-alum, Brooklyn resident, and sister Nadia Bartolucci ’97 was her Maid of Honor)! The couple honeymooned in Africa, which made many of Serena’s SHS middle-school dreams come true! Her husband, Nick Rubino—who she met in NYC 6 years ago through mutual friends—owns and operates a thriving catering business and boutique culinary education studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the neighborhood in which they live. If you’re looking for a job, cooking lessons, or just want to catch up in NYC, shoot her an email (serena.bartolucci@gmail. com). She would LOVE to reconnect! Ariana Watson Evarts is still living in Manhattan and recently moved to a new law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where she focuses on large white-collar criminal investigations and international disputes. Her pro bono work focuses on various international human rights issues, including war crimes and immigration. Ariana and her husband, William Evarts (whose younger sister Susanna attended beginners through third grade at SHS) welcomed a baby girl on March 25 and are completely smitten with her. Ariana enjoys catching up with SHS classmates and hopes to see more of you soon!
2000
operations division of Meituan Dianping in Beijing and am enjoying it so far! I plan to spend my Chinese New Year vacation in Tianjin and Hainan. I hope everyone in the Class of 1999 is doing well and I wish everyone a good Year of the Dog!
Serena Bartolucci Rubino is currently living in Brooklyn and this past year she celebrated her 10-year anniversary of living in NYC. Serena is the director of communications for the woman-owned staffing and recruiting agency, Clarity, located in midtown Manhattan. Boston
ABBY WRIGHT
36 ALPINE ROAD WAYLAND, MA 01778 abigailbwright@gmail.com
Abby Wright writes: In March 2017 my husband and I welcomed our first child, Kit. She is doing great and has had a great time so far meeting Julia Haines and Justine Shapiro-Kline. We hope to introduce her to our other SHS friends soon!
2001
JULIA CHAPMAN
95 MERCER STREET, APT. 2 JERSEY CITY, NJ 07302 juliacchapman@gmail.com
Cortland Mathers-Suter writes: It’s been 18 years since I walked around SHS and I’m so happy to see it’s still going strong. Today I run two drug rehabs in Colorado, but I continue to miss Massachusetts. Keep up the great educating, SHS! Tamara Wyzanski writes: I am approaching my seventh year in the South End neighborhood of Boston and my fifth year at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the Seaport. Outside of work I am training for the Big Sur International Marathon in April and co-directing Changemaker Chats, a women’s networking group in Boston. I also spend a lot of time traveling to New York City to visit my partner who is living in Brooklyn. My goal for 2018 is to spend less money on coffee, and more time outdoors.
2002
ISABEL BLACK BLUNT
108 MAIN STREET, APT. 3 CHARLESTOWN, MA 02129 isabel.e.blunt@gmail.com
Isabel (Black) Blunt is working at State Street Global Advisors and living in Charlestown with her husband. She serves as the Chair of the Alumni Board.
Rachel Cooke is teaching history at Lincoln-Sudbury High School, and living in Porter Square. She is a proud member of the Alumni Board.
Daniel Callahan ’99’s MassQing of his father, his mother, and of Gloria
Tamara Wyzanski ’01 ringing in the New Year
Kyra Ferber writes: I am living in the West Village and finishing up my last semester at NYU Law. Looking forward to starting at Cravath, Swaine & Moore this fall but taking advantage of the student schedule to do plenty of travel before that happens.
2006
ANJALI LAPPIN 15 CARLETON CIRCLE BELMONT, MA 02478 anjalilappin416@gmail.com
Anjali Lappin writes: I am currently in a full time internship at the Chenery Middle School in Belmont (a 30 second walk from my house, super convenient!). I am interning as a school adjustment counselor. It is so wonderful and I am learning so much already. I am also one year away from graduating from grad school, majoring in School Adjustment Counseling and Mental Health Counseling. I’m really excited to be winding down gradually. I miss everyone at Shady Hill very much!
Caroline Margolis-Borgeson recently moved to Philadelphia where she is a veterinary intern. She got married in New Orleans just before the New Year to her longtime boyfriend, Eric.
2007
Elliott Hamilton reports: I am currently a JD/MPH candidate at Boston College Law School and Tufts University School of Medicine, where I hope to take my interests in law and public health to make a difference in the criminal justice system.
2008
ELENA RODRIGUEZ-VILLA 9 STANTON STREET, APT. 2D NEW YORK, NY 10002 emrvilla@gmail.com
Abby Lindsay writes: I graduated from Georgetown University in May 2017 with a degree in psychology and linguistics and am currently living in Seattle, serving through Americorps and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest. I am working with adults with disabilities in a day activity center and living with 7 women
ALUMNI SURVEY RESPONSES: WE ASKED … In what ways have the arts you were introduced to at Shady Hill remained a part of your life?
who are also serving in JVC NW. I love the Pacific Northwest and am hoping to find a job that will keep me in Seattle next year.
2010
Annabel Margolis-Borgeson took some time off and is now finishing her studies in equine business management at Johnson & Wales.
2013
Alex Kim writes: I am currently taking a gap year before starting college at Harvard in the fall. I spent the first part of my year volunteering in Eastern Kentucky at the Pine Mountain Settlement School, and am now devoting my time to a deep pursuit of visual art, specifically ceramics. To see photos of my work please visit my website alexandrakim.org. I think of Shady Hill often and feel grateful for my wonderful ten years there!
2014
RUBY CARMEL
43 OLD SUDBURY ROAD LINCOLN, MA, 01773 Ruby2000carmel@yahoo.com
Ruby Carmel has spent much of the past year focused on theater. She writes: I just recently directed a one-act play at my high school, and I am currently working as a stage manager with Berklee College of Music. I hope to continue in my love of technical theater in college.
Abby Powers-Lowery writes: I got into Smith, class of 2022 early decision, and am excited to start school there in fall 2018. I still dance and love doing so.
To submit a class note, contact your Class Correspondent or visit www.shs.org/classnotes
I came out as bisexual and continue to dress really extra. Much love to the SHS community!
Will Thompson will be attending Middlebury College in the fall.
2015
MONTANNA RIGGS
43 WINTHROP STREET
ROXBURY, MA 02119
montanna.riggs00@gmail.com
Sam Gruber went to Cuba to fence for the US in the Pan-American games.
Audrey Lin reports: I’m currently running cross country and track and field at Concord Academy. I’m also about to join the mountain school for the spring 2018 semester.
Joia Putnoi writes: Hi SHS. I miss you deeply. I haven’t seen the Beehive in a year and a half. This past summer I hiked from Massachusetts to Canada, and my friend just bought a pig. You could say things are going swimmingly.
2016
Louisa Monahan: I’m on the crew team at CRLS, filling my time with training and friends.
Caroline Sunuwar writes: This sophomore year, I’m part of the LEAH Project, which is a program that trains BPS high school students STEM topics in order to teach elementary school children scientific and academic-related skills.
Solution to puzzle on page 11: The children’s ages are 9, 2, and 2 years old. For an explanation, enter “children’s ages logic puzzle” into an Internet search engine.
222 pages, 110 photos, most in color. Copies are $20.
To order: www.shs.org/shaw