Class Notes

April 2002

by Tony Lee

40 classmates, spouses, children and friends attended the February annual hockey game and dinner, which was combined with a Class Council meeting and a wonderful report by our first Summer Fellow, Leah Zimmerman. Leah engaged our minds and touched our hearts with her stories about her trip to Lake Baikal in Siberia. Her written report and photographs are on our Web site.

Jot down some key dates: annual golf outing at the Yale course on Friday, June 21; Santa Fe Mini Reunion, September 27-29, 2002; and London Mini, June 11-15, 2003. We have started planning for our 40th Reunion in 2004. Chris Getman volunteered to chair the event again this year.

Jim Klint wrote that he and Kris had a great time at the Mini Reunion in Washington. They're enjoying their 2 grandchildren, ages 4 and 1. He has been the team doctor for the San Francisco 49er football team for 23 years. (I watch 49er football games just to see Jim on the sidelines.)

National Public Radio ran a program about the Burma Shave signs that used to decorate our nation's highways, and featured an interview with George "Hamley" Odell. Hamley's grandfather was the founder and inspiration behind the Burma Shave signs. Hams spent a summer working in a sign crew that traveled from Minneapolis west through South Dakota and almost to Seattle, then turned around and came home. The NPR interview covered the company's relationships with the farmers who were paid to put the signs in their pastures. A periodical called Burma Shavings was sent to the farmers, keeping them current on tidbits of general farm information, and was a model for maintaining excellent customer relations. Burma Shave was sold to Philip Morris in 1963.

Hams emailed: "I continue work as an archaeologist in eastern Oklahoma. A book of mine, La Harpe's Post, will be appearing this summer. It chronicles the first recorded encounter between Native Americans (Wichita-affiliated) and Europeans (French) in this region in the year 1719. A fellow named La Harpe journeyed northward to a large Tawakoni village not far from Tulsa and stayed for 10 days. My wife teaches French and German primarily at the University of Tulsa. The only other excitement around our house is Too Slim, a raccoon that occasionally comes in through the cat door and makes himself at home."

Another author is Bob Kaiser. His new book, The News About The News, American Journalism in Peril, is on the stand and available via Amazon. Co-authored with Leonard Downie, Jr., the book gives an inside view and explains why we get the news we get via TV, internet and newspapers. See our web site for more. Bob also co-authored an excellent three-part series for the Washington Post on US-Saudi relations, which is also cross-linked on our web site.

Paul Manchester is fighting Colonel Sanders to keep fast food out of Four Corners, Virginia. There's an excellent article on our web site.

Sandy Mack sends news: "I am currently Professor of English and Director of University Honors at Maryland. This fall I won the campus-wide Kirwan award for contributions to undergraduate education. I became a grandfather last May, sadly just two months too late for my father of Yale to become a great grandfather for the first time. Like so many of our generation, I am deeply involved in trying to take care of aged parent(s) who, through the wonders of modern medicine, seem often to survive illnesses only to die of something truly degrading later on! Ain't science — and a society that won't talk deeply about death and quality of life — grand!"

Michael Posner emailed: "Like most of us, my plans are to slowly extricate myself from the high work-output state I have lived in for the past 38 years. Without question I have enjoyed pediatrics, both emotionally and intellectually, but I hope to cut back to half-time or so and concentrate on school related and behavioral difficulties, which I find fascinating and gratifying. My wife is now working on her PhD thesis in social work and sociology, and with luck I will be able to be a faculty husband in the near future. I have become interested in environmental affairs, in particular preservation of endangered New England plants and habitats. I spend much time in native plant gardening and landscaping. I am a supporter of the campaign of Rev. David Lee for a position on the Yale Corporation. A lot of our old institutions need some healthy stirring up from time to time, and some internal monitoring of Yale's posture toward union activities is badly needed."

Jim Rogers is back in New York and emailed: "I have just recently returned from a 3-year drive through 116 countries covering 150,000 miles so I am a bit out of it. Actually as I say it, I realize I am often out of it. In any case, I got my first Alumni Magazine since 1998 and noticed the web site so I went over. Wow! You all have done an amazing job. I've spent a long time already and am going back. I just read the necrology and found myself crying as I went up and down. I do hope to do another book about the current trip. I still have not decided what to do next. We are just barely back. We are delighted and a bit surprised to be home alive since there has never been a trip like this in history. Serious postpartum depression as we go through 3 years of accumulated boxes, etc. and it seems never ending."

The Financial Times Weekend Section ran a front-page article about Jim's trip which is posted on our web site. You can also read about the trip and Jim's personal account and opinions on various international issues on his own web site at www.jimrogers.com.

Butch Hetherington's son Alex has been accepted for the Yale class of 2006, thereby giving Butch another reason for honing his skills on the Yale golf course.

I received a sad note from Trevor Cushman's sister, Joan Shaw: "Trevor has been in and out of Jewish Hospital in Louisville, KY since June '01 since undergoing chemotherapy for a brain tumor. His short-term memory has been impaired by the tumor necessitating full-time care. His intellect is as sharp as ever and his spirits are good."