Class Notes – Jul/Aug 2020

Three more times the bell has tolled:  Dick MacKay, Jim Steffenburg, and Terry Miller are gone. Howard Newman reported Dick’s death on March 26: “Dr. Richard MacKay died today after a life of service to others and a cruelly unfair illness.” Howard and others are working on a full memorial of Dick’s life which will appear in my next column and, much sooner, on the class website.

Jim Steffenburg died peacefully on February 27 at Yale-New Haven Hospital, after an extensive hospitalization. Jim graduated from Antioch High School, where he excelled both academically and athletically, competitive on both the cross-country track and golf teams.

Originally intending to study oceanography, he became an art history major after taking a class with Vince Scully his sophomore year. In senior year he met his wife Gloria Anne Pregano, a theater and visual arts major at Albertus Magnus College. They were engaged at graduation, and married a year later. They enjoyed 40 loving, joyful and amazing years together, before Gloria’s untimely passing in 2010.

After Yale, Jim worked for 10 years in the commercial construction industry with Corbetta and Co., while Gloria pursued a successful career as a dancer, dance teacher, model, and repertory theater actress. Jim entered Yale’s School of Organization and Management in 1979, earning a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management. He was then recruited by the consulting division of Coopers and Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) where he worked until his retirement in 2012. Jim’s honesty, integrity, hard work, and outstanding ability to translate complex management issues into actionable client solutions saw him rise rapidly from consultant, to Manager, to Director, and finally Managing Director, one of a handful of employees ever to reach that level.

Jim and Gloria were very devoted and committed to the ministries of St. Mary’s Church. Gloria was both a member of the Parish Council and Director of the Lectors Ministry for 25 years, while Jim served on both the Parish and Finance Councils for 35 years. He also served St. Mary’s as a Trustee from 2014 until the merger of St. Mary’s with Saint Joseph’s in 2018.

Jim was an active folk and bluegrass musician, performing extensively in two bluegrass ensembles, The Guilford Ramblers and The Elm City Ramblers, with internationally renowned composer, performer and recording artist Phil Rosenthal  Jim was also an aficionado and avid collector of Martin folk and bluegrass instruments, hosting several Exhibitions and Open Jams featuring his extensive collection. (This is an abbreviated version of Jim’s memorial. The full report, with pictures, is available on the Class website.)

Terry Miller died Feb 22 from complications due to Parkinson’s  disease, which he had had since 1993. After graduation in 1969, he married, went to Navy OCS, and luckily spent his three years behind a desk at the NSA (doing secret stuff) rather than on a gunboat in Vietnam. In 1972 he returned to Yale, where he got his M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. in computer science.

From 1977-1979 he was an assistant professor in computer Science at the University of California San Diego. Starting in 1979, he left academia and worked in the tech industry, first with Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto.  Following 22 years at Sun Microsystems, he later worked at Yahoo and SAIC/Cloudshield.

Terry and his present wife. Denise Sullivan, married in 1977, moved to Menlo Park, CA in 1979.  Denise will remain active on Yale1969.org (using Terry’s account). Terry was a man of few words and dry humor.  An Engineering and Applied Science major, his entire 25th Reunion Essay demonstrates both his brevity and his wit: “In 1969 I got married and graduated from Yale. In 1977 I got married again and finished another Yale degree (Ph.D.). (I’m not coming back to school to find out if we have a real pattern here.) Both second career (computer science) and second marriage are still doing well. Much else has changed: location: Connecticut to California; religion: Episcopal to pagan.”

Dick Senechal remembers: “Terry and his first wife, Jayne, were married senior year at the St. Thomas More chapel. I was in their wedding party and shortly after graduation painted a wedding portrait of them. Rumor had it that when they broke up, they cut the portrait I’d painted in half so they could each keep their own likeness.”

Charlie McCormack remembers: “Terry and I got to be friends early on through the dorm and through Christ (Episcopal) Church, which required attendance back then!  I think we initially chose that one because it was right behind the dorm, and you could roll out of the sack and be at the early service in about 5 minutes. But it stuck, and we both decided to get confirmed there, and we were in the same confirmation class. Freshman year at Yale he gave me a Book of Common Prayer that I still have.

While at Exeter, Terry spent a summer in the Outward Bound program in Maine. I remember him describing his final survival test, being dropped off on a deserted island along the Maine coast with little more than matches, a knife, some fishing line and hooks, water and a sleeping bag, and being told he would be picked up in three days if he was still around. I asked him what he ate, and his response – typical Terry – was “Not much!”

Although Parkinson’s, which Terry had for over 20 years, was taking a serious toll on him, it certainly did not affect his wonderful mind and memory. Unfortunately, right after the 50^th reunion, Terry and Denise were visiting friends and family in New Hampshire and Terry had a fall that resulted in a broken hip. That was the onset of a serious and more rapid decline in his physical abilities, which finally caught up with him.” (This is an abbreviated version of Terry’s memorial. The full report, with pictures, is available on the Class website.)

“People forget years and remember moments.” -Ann Beattie