Aug 2003

Hello, classmates. Just think, if we were a year older we could have visited the White House this May. Maybe next year Mark Dayton andLamar Smith will co-host a cookout in the Capitol.

Anyway, as I mentioned last time, several of your colleagues (I am no longer claiming them) carried out a 25-year-old threat and came to the Kentucky Derby. While we could not surpass consumption records set back in the 1960s, we gave it our best effort. Those contributing to the local economy were James Schweitzer, Quentin Lawson (with wife Ellen), Larry Franks (also with wife Ellen), Ralph Sando(with wife Joyce), David Stretch, and Don Galligan. All of us bet on Lone Star Sky, trained by the brother of classmate Jim Amoss, and probably appearing in a Yale cafeteria very soon. Actually, we had a great time and never required legal assistance.

Speaking of horse — — , it is my honor to forward the annual Pacific Rim report from our Asian correspondent, your former class mouthpiece, William Bogaty.

“Well, maybe it’s time for another report from Tokyo. Last time I wrote you I described the bizarre scenes at the baptism of my small children at an Anglican church in Tokyo. Well, about a year ago I was at the same place for the semi-annual pilgrimage designed to ensure marital bliss, and who did I run into but Dick Williams, who was there with his daughter? Now if I had gone to Ladbroke’s to place a bet on my running into a classmate at St. Alban’s Church in Tokyo, I probably would have gotten very long odds. Anyway, Dick, who lives in North Carolina, has had an on-and-off connection with Japan for many years, and it turns out comes here on a fairly regular basis. On one of his more recent trips, we got together for dinner and had a nice time lining out the last 30 years or so.

”About two months ago my family prevailed upon me to go on a ski trip in the Japan Alps, in defiance of my lifelong conviction that if the Good Lord had wanted us to ski He would not have invented central heating. Naturally, I promptly broke my right arm, to the amusement of several alleged friends. The rural hospital up in the mountains helpfully diagnosed the fracture with a knowing “oh, yes, this type is common among older people.” I took my custom elsewhere, down the mountains at a Tokyo hospital. This episode has given me the opportunity to supplement my 40-year study of the Japanese language with a lot of Japanese medical terms, the key one of which seems to be ‘cashier’.

“In the early stages, I was unable to dress, bathe, shave, etc., without help, and in that period of assisted living and shaving a new standard of fear in the conjugal relationship was defined: having my long-suffering wife standing before me holding a razor, with what I judged to be a strange, but amused, look on her face. In the future, I will stay closer to my competency zone, which is mostly drinking sake.

”My wife has taken up ikebana (Japanese flower arranging), so our apartment tends to be festooned with odd members of the vegetable family leaping from expensive yet charming vases at what appears to be rakish and randomly-assigned angles. I understand this to be part of the aesthetic. Otherwise, we continue to travel avidly and extensively, and at great cost, around Japan, and manage to enjoy life, so things are fine in the Far East.“

One of our class Whiffs, F. Jared Sprole, wrote the following refrain: ”Whiffenpoofs of 1969 headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June for the first-ever ‘out of the east’ reunion. Hosted by Ken Knight, who arranged four local concerts. Dave Raish, Bob Wheeler, John Lehr, Bob Brush, Bill Mackoff, Wayne Henderson, Charlie Buck, Ken, and me. Not bad.“ He added, ”Brush promises new arrangement for next reunion in New Haven.“

On the literary front, John Mauck reported from Evanston, Illinois, that his book, Paul on Trial, was a finalist for book-of-the-year in the Bible studies category of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

And for the season finale, Terry Benson reported from New York with the following update: ”An engineer son is almost done with MIT, but my daughter (I thought women should be at Yale since Co-ed Day 1969) is now Saybrook ’06 and drinking deep of Yale. [Here Terry listed her schedule, which I cannot reproduce without violating her privacy rights.] I’m still in public television, but my wife Kathy is now teaching English as a second language. Trips en famille continue (Peru and the Amazon this year) but soon Kathy and I will gallivant about on our own. New York City — despite or because of its trauma — is better than ever. We look forward to visiting and being visited.“

That’s it until the fall. Thanks for all of your cards and letters. Have a great summer!