P.A. 1964
Tom Seligson
15 Bradley Street
Westport, CT 06880
December, 1998

With our 35th reunion now only weeks away (June 11-13) you should all be making final plans for what promises to be a memorable week-end. Paul Gallagher and yours truly have been busy rallying the troops, and we expect classmates to be flocking back to campus from all parts of the country. Randy Roden, who'll be coming up from Chapel Hill, reminded me that he hasn't missed a reunion yet - that may be a record - and that he's not about to start now. Randy is still enjoying being a lawyer, which some may consider yet another distinction. "I'm very fortunate because of the kind of firm I'm with," Randy explained, referring to Chapel Hill's Tharrington Smith, where he's a partner. "We have only 20-25 lawyers, and we've deliberately kept ourself small." As a litigator, concentrating on education law, Randy represents school boards who get sued. "Almost any social issue you can think of - drugs, teenage sex, dress codes - finds its way into schools, so the work remains fascinating." Randy will enjoy swapping stories with Pete Schandorff, who's chalking up his 25th (or is it 30th) year teaching high school in St. Louis. Pete will definitely be with us. We expect a big contingent from the Midwest, although unfortunately Bob Marshall and Siri will have to remain home in Minneapolis. Their daughter's high school graduation is that week-end. Bob e-mailed his regrets, along with the following news. "Accompanying our daughter on a New England college tour gave me the opportunity to drop in on Bill Stowe, dignified English professor at Wesleyan University," Bob writes. "We both looked and seemed just as we did 35 years ago, to our mutual relief. Bill has broadened his field of expertise from Henry James and friends to drama and environmental writing, and I would love to be taking one of his classes. We both discussed how much fun it would be to get some classmates together for one of the exotic Yale alumni trips with Dean Dick Brodhead as our traveling instructor."

Talking about traveling classmates, I spoke to John Kidde about our west coast contingent showing up for the reunion. John reports that he and "Vermin" Don Vermeil are planning a tour of golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, and the trip might fall right around reunion time, in which case they may join us en route. When they're not on the links, John and Don are busy celebrating fellow classmates. They were scheduled to join George Bush at his inauguration as Governor. Accompanying them was former Vermont Congressman Pete Smith. As you know, Pete gave up politics for education. He's now the founding President of Cal. State University at Monterey Bay. And the busy school leader still finds time for classmates. A.C. Johnston met with Pete, when his daughter was deciding about going to Middlebury. A.C., who's a patent litigator with the Palo Alto firm of Morrison Foerster, also stays in touch with both Mike and Pat Cathcart, Bob Kelley, who runs a community based theater company in Mountain View, and prolific tv producer Dick Wolf, who's apparently moved from L.A. to Santa Barbara, and hopes eventually to return to New York. By the way, Pete will definitely be making the reunion, and A.C. hopes to as well.

Whether our favorite Governor George, and his Appointments Secretary Clay Johnson will make it back is uncertain. But the Lone Star state will be well represented by L.E. Sawyer and Peter Pfeifle. This will be Pete's first return to Andover since graduation, and he's looking forward to visiting Benner House (if it's still there) and other treasured campus sites. Randy Elkins will be coming up from Alexandria. He says he's hoping to see his former roommate Bob Cottle - hear that Bob? Though he's now a big honcho lawyer with Time-Life Books, Randy promises he'll be the same uninhibited party animal you may remember from our 30th. Also jetting up from the D.C. area will be Nat Semple. Nat unfortunately missed both our 25th and 30th because of his lingering battle with liver disease. As most of you know, Nat suffered two failed liver transplants before a third transplant finally took. He's since used his own experience, on top of his Washington insider's know-how to lobby on behalf of other patients in need of transplants. Along with brother Bill, Nat runs The Observatory Group, a consulting and public relations company. Bill also runs a technology firm, The Civix Corporation. Fellow wheeler-dealer Jim Lockhart has hung up his investment banking suit to become the CFO of NetRisk, a firm providing consulting and software for risk management decision making in the financial, banking, and insurance industries. Juice no longer has to commute to New York. His Greenwich office is five minutes from Jim and Cricket's magnificent home. Yes, Jim will be at the reunion. Also expected are Randy Hobler, Fran Crowley, Frank Holland, Toby Thacher, Doug Cowan, Dave Gang, and Tory Peterson, just to name a few.

Tory passed on the unhappy news that Joe Freeman died on November 1, 1998. The official cause of death was pneumonia, but Tory said that Joe had been in precarious health for three years, and was on a list for a liver transplant. Tory spoke to him two days before he died. Joe was a lawyer in Elkin, North Carolina. He leaves his wife, Leigh, and two children from a previous marriage. I will always remember Joe as the star Torque, belting out On Broadway with his distinctive country boy style. And it was Joe, standing outside Foxcroft South, who broke the horrifying news of November 22, 1963. These are the kind of memories we all share with one another. Come celebrate them, and make new memories at our 35th.