Class Notes - January 2025
We lead this issue with the sad news that Jim Hearty’s wife Doris has died. Here is his lovely testament to her: “My beloved wife of 49 years, Doris Blodgett Hearty, passed away peacefully at our home in New Hampshire on September 25, 2024. I was with her at the end as were our three sons and their wives. Doris had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on September 5, 2023. For the next 12 months she endured numerous chemotherapy treatments with grace and courage. In spite of the side effects of her treatments, she continued to hike in the White Mountains ski, play golf, travel, and tend to her beautiful gardens, all while making innumerable quilts for friends. She never complained, not once. I believe those of us lucky enough to get to heaven will find her there.”
Dave Butts writes: “After successfully retiring and moving to Beverly, MA in Boston’s North Shore, Sue and I experienced an active and wonderful 2023, including our terrific 50th Reunion. However, 2024 took quite a detour. She had open heart mitral valve repair surgery at Mass General in Boston on July 29th. I can only echo what Mike Stevens said in his September post: we too are very grateful for a talented and engaging surgeon and cardiac surgery nursing team. She is now well into a cardiac rehab program and making great progress, so we were able to enjoy beautiful late fall weather at Cliff House in Cape Neddick, ME. We are grateful to have family nearby. David ’06 is a principal in the quantitative investment strategy team at Harbour Vest in Boston, and Kristen lives 18 minutes up the road in North Shore with our two grandsons (4 and 2). Spending time with them and watching their development is great therapy for Sue as she recovers.
Prior to Sue’s surgery they were able to visit WIlliamstown. In June they joined Roger and Ann Kriete, Larry Shoer and Emily Rose and Dick Tavelli for a mini reunion -- great conversations, memories of their time at Williams, and shared family adventures. Dick regaled them with anecdotes about various Tyler House staff members over the years. Sue and he returned to the Berkshires to hear James Taylor at Tanglewood on July 3, his 50th performance there and arguably one of his best concerts. They stayed at Field Farm, a Trustees property on Sloan Road.
Connie (Grayson) Rudnick gathered more than 20 women classmates to address class updates, reunion memories, and possible future events. Zooming in from the farthest point was Catherine Burton in Hawaii, with Caroline Hall from Colorado maybe the second farthest. Connie is planning a Class Conversation in April or May with Paula Butturini about her experience as a foreign correspondence for UPI and The Chicago Tribune in London, Madrid, Rome, Warsaw and Paris from 1982 onward. (Read her bio in our 50th Reunion Book – it’s a stunner.) Marta Rudolph described an exhibit at the New York Historical Museum of 200 years of what ordinary women wore, from the Smith College Museum collection, with the exhibit containing some of Marta’s clothes from her time at Williams. There seemed to be interest in assembling a trip to NYC next April to see the exhibit and to explore the city. Dede Gotthelf, being her usual gracious self, offered to host a cocktail party. Any women classmates interested in joining the adventure should contact Connie.
Emlen and Liz Drayton had two momentous events: their daughter had her first child and therefore their first grandson – and they had a life-changing experience in Africa. They went to three different conservancies in Kenya: seeing hippos walking by their tents, elephants trumpeting at their Land Rover from a stone’s throw away, lions killing a wildebeest, cheetahs scanning the savannah from ant mounds, rhinos dancing, and leopards with kills hoisted up a tree. Their main guide was also a bird enthusiast so they saw amazing specimens, from ostriches to huge vultures (fighting hyenas over a carcass) to hummingbirds. A great time.
Bill Cunningham, his new wife Barbara (they married May 19), and Alan McDermott joined 28 Ephs from the classes of 1961-85 and friends of Ephs on a wonderful Kenyan Safari Travel Study Program. Professor Hank Art (Environmental Studies and Biology) and his wife Pam were their splendid hosts. Their travels ranged across the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Lake Nakuru National Park and the Maasai Mara National Reserve, during which they saw thousands of animals from the 95 species of mammals, amphibians and reptiles there as well as 400 bird species that populate the savanna of the Serengeti ecosystem. Their comfortable accommodations included the historic Fairmont the Norfolk (Nairobi), the Sweetwaters Serena Camp, the Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge, and the Mara Engai Wilderness Lodge. While they saw Karen Blixen’s “Out of Africa” house and floated close to the earth in a balloon over the magnificent landscape and herds of animals, the highlight was Alan’s birthday celebration. During this event Maasai warriors who performed native dances in their colorful garb feted him – and made him a member of their tribe. Perhaps at our 55th reunion Maasai Warrior Alan can be part of the weekend entertainment!
Jonathan “King” Carter is back from a sensational trip with his son Jared to the Torngat Mountains on the northern coast of Labrador. It required two days of airplane travel to reach the northernmost Inuit settlement, Nain, located 400 miles north of the closest roaded town, Goose Bay. From Nain they chartered an inflatable Zodiak to take them the next 200 miles up the coast to the Torngat Mountains, and another two days during which they saw hundreds of icebergs, numerous polar bears (which have developed a taste for human flesh as the reducing ice pack has forced them to hunt further inland), black bears, caribou, seals and sea ducks – with the most spectacular sight being a peregrine falcon diving on a golden eagle.
The travel was physically demanding as well as frightening, as they had only one outboard on the Zodiak in the Labrador Sea, whose large swells, 40 knot winds and low water temperature allowed five minutes of survival before muscles seized up. There were no boats within 200 miles, and rescue would take at least six hours. Fortunately, their Inuit skipper came through.
The stark beauty of the Torngat cannot be overstated. Some of the oldest rock was 3.9 billion years old. The folds, anticlines and synclines of metamorphic and igneous rock intrusions were exposed at highway cuts, but 20 times larger. Everywhere there were glacial features: moraines, kettle holes, cirques and aretes.
Their Inuit guides shared their strong sense of cultural heritage. They sampled eider eggs, caught and ate arctic char and ducks, and dined on caribou. The Inuit had been forced from their settlements in 1959, but when they relocated to more southern communities, they were unable to live sustainably off the land – so many became wards of the state. Only recently has the government apologized for the forced relocation and enabled native land claims to be established and the Inuit to have their own sovereign nation.
For images of his trip, go to https://photos.app.goo.gl/rLfz1QXxRvaFYK437.
Scott and Nancy Hopkins visited Frank and Amy Chapman in Cleveland Heights over Halloween. They handled the trick-or-treating duty so the Chapman kids could be out with the grandkids. Dinner the next night was salmon (two ways) with Bill and Chris Tarter and Greg and Mannie Groves. They discovered three of the four classmates had been married in 1982 and one in 1981. Scott also reports that Mary Baird is recovering from cancer surgery, Tom Crain from heart surgery, and Hutch Smith from a knee replacement. Finally, Steve Kimberley called to crow about the great find of NW mushrooms on which he is working his culinary magic while awaiting progress on a new house in the Portland area.
Peter Farwell writes that retirement is “going well.” He’s still cheering at cross-country and track meets and going with his wife to classical music concerts and Clark Art exhibits. They also traveled the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway to South Carolina, and then east and up the coast back home. As to the class prompt, he would have taken Existentialism or Religion.
Steve Harty inverted the prompt to say what he would least like to take again: his first four classes at college. “It was cruel to schedule Philosophy 101 at 9:00 on Saturday morning. I was thoroughly unprepared for French 201, despite the placement test. Clay Hunt and Dante demanded more than I was capable of, temperamentally or intellectually. And I fell asleep in the three-hour Bio 101 final, earning an F on the exam and a lucky D- for the course.” He wished he had tried Physics and Astronomy. English and History came more naturally to him, but those other fields interest him now and in today’s world seem more necessary. Some day he hopes to appreciate concepts like space-time continuum, curved space and the 11 possible dimensions.
Addenda
1) Arriving too late for posting in Williams People but valuable nonetheless (and so readable only here) – Bill Smith reports he is “alive and well” in San Francisco. He’s been retired about 10 years from a pension fund consulting firm. He’s partnered for 25 years with Doug, a retired medical sociologist at ICSF – and of course they have an Irish terrier named Chester. He sees Jim Weigand and Bruce Homer-Smithfairly often in the Bay Area. A group of them did a two-week birding trip last Spring in Costa Rica.
2) Alan Scott White died on November 20. A remembrance will be sent to classmates.
