Dec 2001
Greetings. As of this writing, I have not received word of any classmates who were September 11 victims, but the odds are that some of you were directly touched by those events. On behalf of all members of the Class of ’69, I extend our deepest sympathies to those of you who suffered the loss of family or friends.
Fortunately, most of the news I have received since last writing is happier. For example,Doug Groome and wife Zita wrote from Meriden, Connecticut, to report that daughter Bethany was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and left for a year in Nepal on September 8.
And writing from Knoxville, where he is a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, Carl Pierce related that his daughter Emily was married to Thompson Emoh in Battell Chapel on September 8. Emily is a third-year law student at Yale. Carl’s wife Peggy teaches at the UT College of Nursing.
Tom Walsh filed the following from Memphis: “As reported earlier, my wife Jean and I have two daughters, Courtney and Meredith, both Smith grads. Courtney is in her third and final year at the Yale School of Nursing to become a nurse midwife. She is married to Peter Marsh, and (in the ultimate for a midwife’s master’s thesis) is expecting our first grandchild in December. Jean and I are planning a trip to Connecticut for the Blessed Event, about which we are incredibly excited; we feel that the alleged stigma of age that accompanies grandparenthood is a price worth paying.
”Meredith serves in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, working with school children and their teachers. Her two-year term ends in September 2002. Jean and I visited Meredith in late spring, lived with her in her bamboo hut, and hiked with her for several miles through jungles and mountains to see the spectacular rice terraces of north central Luzon — a challenge for a couple of soft, American couch potatoes! We also met some of Meredith’s Filipino teaching colleagues, along with Peace Corps volunteers in other parts of Luzon, all of which was a truly inspiring experience. In recent years the Philippines have been a target of terrorist attacks supported by Osama bin Laden, and in the wake of all that has happened, it appears that the U.S. will supply additional support to the Philippines in that government’s ongoing efforts to combat terrorism. The terrorist activity has been concentrated in the southern part of the country, far from Meredith’s site, so she is hoping that any stepped-up activity will not cause the Peace Corps to evacuate her. We would love to see her back home, of course, but she wants to complete her mission and we admire her for it.“
On a sadder note, Max Derbe III wrote from Covington, Louisiana, to report the passing of classmate John Volk, who succumbed to leukemia in Boston in July. ”He had fought a victorious battle with lymphoma two years ago, but the chemotherapy made him susceptible to other forms of cancer,“ according to Derbe. An accompanying newspaper obit related that Volk was a lawyer for both the state of Connecticut and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He had received Boston’s Manuscript Club’s award for nonfiction, for his series of letters to children dealing with issues of mortality.
The alumni office has forwarded a list of those classmates with children currently at Yale. There is a long list, so this month I will report about half, and save the others for the next installment. In alphabetical order with classmate first, they are: John Adams,Elizabeth Ann ’04; Frank Ashburn, Emma Katherine ’03; Ira Berkower, Risa Anne ’02;William Beslow, Jonathan Doan ’02; James Broach, Matthew ’05; Peter Choy, James Peter ’02; George Chu, Matthew Christopher ’03; David Glick, Adam Elliott ’05; Earl ”Duke“ Collier, Emily Frances ’02; Kenneth Davis, Jordanna Morrison ’03; William Dickman, Sarah Elizabeth ’04; Robert Haas, Vanessa Danielle ’04; Claude Harrington,Averill Hall ’03; Paul Henry, Alexander Evergate ’02; David Ketner, Elizabeth Pitkin ’03;Lawrence Kreider, Anika Blanche ’03; and Carl Lazarus, Michael Block ’04.
Happy holidays to all. Let’s count our blessings.