Our 45th reunion is fast approaching (see dates above), and reunion chair Jon VanAmringe Jon.VanAmringe.PC.70@aya.yale.edu sends this update: “Our reunion planning is focused on making this event all about you. We are planning an interesting schedule of class-specific events and panels on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday afternoons. Plus, Yale will offer faculty presentations on topical and scholarly subjects for Friday and Saturday mornings, and the evenings will be filled with music, entertainment, and most excellent good conversation. Go to www.aya.yale.edu/reunions to sign up.
“In addition to the mailing you should already have received,” Jon continues, “we will be sending further updates via e-mail. Please check there to make sure your e-mail address is current. Food and drink will be plentiful, the enjoyment of which will only be exceeded by interactions with classmates and friends. So if you have comments, thoughts, or might like to share some of your time to make the reunion fun and successful, contact. Rumor has it that blanket immunity has been issued for all past stuff, and: What happens in New Haven, stays in New Haven.”
As part of the activities Jon and the reunion team are planning, I’ve agreed to honcho an afternoon session for classmates and spouses similar to the Passages-inspired panel I gathered last time. The idea is to let people talk about what’s happening in their lives—problems of health, aging parents, and kids who won’t grow up; the trauma of new careers and no careers; burying old partners or marrying new ones; wrestling with what to leave behind and what you can’t let go of; and the challenge of learning and thriving, etc. I need 4-5 panelists, the rest of the talk will come from our classsmates. If you want to take part, email me and tell me what unique perspective or experience you’d bring.
From Bill Boyd billwboyd@aol.com in Montgomery, Ala., comes this: “My wife Beverly and I travelled to Boston this past November and went to The Game with our oldest daughter Elizabeth Haney and her husband Rob Haney. Elizabeth is a senior research officer at the Wyss Institute at Harvard, and Rob is doing a postdoctoral fellowship in biology at U. Mass., Lowell. Beverly and I got together for dinners with two fellow Trumbull ’70 classmates and their wives, Mark Cohan and his wife Linda, who live in Glastonbury, Conn., and Larry Markowitz and his wife Flo, who live in Braintree, Mass. Among the highlights of our weekend were visits to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Art Museum and the Renzo Piano addition to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. A final happy note: our youngest daughter Jessamyn Rock and her husband, who live in Texas, are expecting our first grandchild, a grandson, in April.”
Steven Wagenseil (steve@ccd21.org) writes from Washington, D.C., that he has been named acting president of the Council for a Community of Democracies, a D.C.-based NGO. “Since the Community of Democracies (CD) was created at the Warsaw Ministerial Conference in June 2000 by 106 democratic and democratizing governments,” Steve writes, “the founders and supporters of CCD have worked with nongovernmental and civil society organizations around the world to ensure that their energy and ideas on democracy promotion are incorporated into CD policies and programs.” For more go to the CCD’s website, www.ccd21.org.
The latest book by Philip Howard (phoward@cov.com), The Rule of Nobody, has been named one of the “most thought-provoking books” of 2014 by Inc. magazine. Said the Inc. reviewer: “This book explains that government regulation is not inherently counterproductive but is made that way by the constant creation of endless legalistic details.”
Robert Schechter (rschecht@me.com) writes from LA: “Kaiser Permanente medical group kicks you out, pardon me, retires you at a certain age. (I’m an ophthalmologist [retina] there.) I have reached that age and will be a man of leisure at 5 p.m. on Dec. 31. We live in Los Angeles with a small condo in Palm Springs near a pool. Not sure exactly what I will be doing, but I guess I’ll have a lot more time to do it….”
From Bellingham, Wash., veterinarian Frederick Sharninghausen (vethausen@gmail.com) sends word that his son Liam is a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s chemistry department…. Frederick Edelman (frederickedelman@gmail.com) writes from Madison, Wis., that his wife Ivy and he continue to practice medicine, she as a neuro-ophthalmologist and he as an associate professor of neurology at the University of Wisconsin. Son Joshua is a Ph.D. in theater working in London, and daughter Deborah (Saybrook ’02) is a psychiatry resident in Augusta, Ga…. Daniel Fink (djfink01@aol.com) is semi-retired and works part-time as medical director of Wellpoint Blue Cross in Woodland Hills, Calif.
More next time.