P.A. 1964
Tom Seligson
15 Bradley Street
Westport, CT 06880
October, 2000

By the time you receive this, the next President of the United States will have been elected. George Bush will be heading for the White House, or at least have waged an extraordinary campaign. Regardless of your politics, and whether or not you voted for him, I think we all agree that his achievement has made our class proud. In the media's efforts to investigate George's roots, and of course look for gossip, it has focused on all of us. Many of us have been interviewed, not only about our esteemed classmate, but about the Andover experience generally and how it contributed to the making of a prospective president. For your class secretary and often first target of the media assault, the experience has only helped to reinforce just how special we all are: in terms of the education we shared, the camaraderie that continues to grow richer over time, and the diversely talented men we've become. We are indeed "Quite the Class."

Classmates have been organizing their own mini-reunions all over the country. Nat Semple attended the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, and took time away from George's party to dine with Frank Holland, Mac Thompson, and Sean Kennedy at what he refers to in a class listserver posting as "Sean's castle, complete with royal gardens." He reports that "Sean is the proud owner of two of the most exquisite vintage Rolls Royce's I have ever seen." Nat also ran into Sam Allis, who was covering the convention for the Boston Globe, where he writes a weekly column. One of Sam's recent columns was about the total hip replacement he had earlier this year. Sam reports that his operation was a complete success, although the titanium pin in his hip now sets off metal detectors all over the world, and he no longer tackles the expert slopes when skiing, or plays singles rather than doubles.

On the west coast, a 36 hole golf marathon, organized via our class listserver was said to be attracting regular twosome John Kidde, and Don Vermeil, along with L. E. Sawyer and Pete Pfeifle who were said to be flying in from Texas for the event. In New York, John Axelrod's annual visit for one of his art buying missions was rallying bridge players Larry Darby, Didi Pei, and other Ryley room veterans. And in Boston, a visit by Rob Auld was the cause for a gathering that included John McCullough, Don Grinberg, and Tony Sapienza. I called Tony for details, only to discover that I had my dates wrong and was a month early. However I was able to catch up on Tony's latest news. He is still one of the principals of Riverside Manufacturing, which turns out more than 6000 suits a week, including suits and coats for Joseph Abboud, Calvin Klein and Mani (which means he's probably responsible for half my wardrobe). The business is a wholly owned subsidiary of GFT Net, an Italian company, which gives Tony the opportunity to speak the Italian he learned from his grandparents. Tony's daughter now lives in Italy, and his son, who's still a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, is hoping to become an actor.

After numerous attempts, I finally got in touch with Dana Waterman, who I've never managed to include in this column. Dana is now a lawyer in Davenport, Iowa, having attended Dartmouth, then Iowa City Law School after Andover. He's a firm believer in tradition, seeing that his father, grandfather, and several uncles were all lawyers, and Dana now lives in a house built by grandfather, which is five minutes from the firm, where's worked for almost thirty years. "We're a small firm by big city standards - 45 lawyers - but we do the same kinds of work," he said. Dana specializes in corporate security work and mergers and acquisitions. He also serves as the Secretary and General Counsel of a media company, Lee Enterprises, which owns papers throughout the country, primarily in college towns. Dana has been married for close to thirty years, and has three kids: a son who's a CPA in Chicago, a daughter who's with a consulting firm in Boston, and a son who's studying film making at NYU. The former varsity football and track star now stays in shape by bicycling, logging between 50 and 100 miles a week. He hasn't kept in touch with other classmates, although he made a point of seeing George, during the Iowa caucuses. He said, he handed George the old copy of Time Magazine about Andover, that had John Kemper on the cover. Evidently, there was a picture of George, Dana, and Toby Thacher taken in Toby's room in Johnson South. According to Dana, George is staring at the Playboy pinup on the wall. Dana didn't say whether or not George was pleased. Someone remember to ask that at the Inaugural.