Classes of 1976–1980

walsh1000@gwi.net

 

1977
Diane Kolligian Shannon

dshannon925@gmail.com

 

Thank you to those who sent news. For many, this is a time of change, and I hope all of you are doing well. As you enjoy reading about classmates, please remember you too may reply to my email and share your news! Joe Cogguillo, Rick Trowbrige and Charlie Glassman attended a memorial service for Gus Okwu’s mother, Beatrice, who passed away in January of 2024. “While this was a sad occasion, following the memorial service there was a full Nigerian party and dinner in her honor. It was terrific and also great to get together with friends whom I met in eighth grade at Hopkins,” wrote Joe. He continued with news of his retirement in March 2023 and went on to report, “I spent much of the winter in Florida and will be in New Hampshire this summer. I’m enjoying time with my family and our three dogs, one of whom is a beagle puppy who brings a lot of life and energy into the family, although he can be exhausting to have around! Hope everyone is well and look forward to seeing you all here and there.” Jim Riley retired from his career at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in May 2024. “I’m going to consult for them one day a week and I'm looking forward to kiteboarding, mountain biking, and skiing!” David Monde had an eventful and memorable year. “I am working for the year in my firm's London office and loving every minute of it. Such a walkable and friendly city, packed with history and culture and some of the best restaurants. I’m in the Kensington Gardens area, and would love to get together for a drink or dinner with any classmates who find their way over here. I celebrated my 65th birthday in March by climbing to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro with my college roommate. A life-changing experience made all the more special by meeting so many warm-hearted, dedicated, and encouraging Tanzanians who helped us get to the top (and more important, back to the bottom in one piece!). A beautiful country and culture.” Lascelles Brown shared, “Hi everyone, if you are reading this... Congratulations, you’re alive. That is something to smile about, lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more. Enjoy the little things. A walk on the beach at sunset, a night out to your favorite restaurant. These are some of the things that make me smile nowadays.” Holly Clifford Grossman wrote, “Both of my daughters had baby girls, joining my 2½-year-old grandson. I retired from underwriting at Citizens Bank and last year my husband and I took a trip to the Solomon Islands, Australia, and New Zealand.”

 

jeff@jeffreyaronsmd.com

 

What a fantastic 45th reunion we shared at BAR and up on the Hill this past Reunion Weekend. It’s like we had all just seen each other yesterday. In attendance were Walter Huckaby, who came from North Carolina, Anthony Anscombe from Chicago, Illinois, Stefan Rosner, who technically traveled the farthest from Silicon Valley, California, followed closely by  Robert Reiter, from Los Angeles, California, where he is a professor of Urology at UCLA, and who had not been back to a reunion in 45 years. Francisco Palmieri flew in from Bogota, Colombia, which, for the record, is actually closer to New Haven than is Silicon Valley. Loren Ziff came in from Charleston, South Carolina. Sharon Livieri was there, as was Jane Sikand Edelstein, Jaime Fanning, Judy Smith, Ralph Livieri, Jay Angeletti, and Mark Healy. Scott Fisher, Tom Wellington, Geoff Harris, Ben Feola, Betsy Bradley Muskin, Martha Leshine, Stu Gordon, and Jeff Stier made it to the Friday night event. And I was able to make the 4.3-mile trek as well for both Friday and Saturday. We certainly are truly the best class that Hopkins has produced! Plans are in the works to get together again, at least for the local folks, before the—say it ain’t so—50th reunion. From Scott Fisher: “It was great to connect with classmates at our 45th Reunion gathering at BAR. Taking a moment to remember those no longer with us was meaningful as well: Billy DeGennaro, Jerry Blair, and Martha Wedersheim. A shout out to Jane Sikand Edelstein for coordinating the venue, and to Jeff Arons for being our faithful secretary over many years. Let’s start planning for the 50th! If any of you are in the Philly area, give me a call. I’ll buy you a cheesesteak!” And from Jane Sikand Edelstein: “Just want to say that our 45th Reunion was one of the best we’ve had, I think. It was wonderful to see all those who came to our Friday night party at BAR, as well as those who were together at Hopkins on Saturday night. I am still so happy to report that although we are a little older and a lot wiser, we picked up where we left off, as we always seem to do, as if no time has passed. We also acknowledged to each other that each of us had different experiences in our years at Hopkins, which meant that for some, it was a good experience, for others not so good, and for many it was a mix of experiences. And that’s okay because we’ve all learned and grown from it. I am looking forward to seeing many more of our classmates in 2029 at our 50th!” Retired and happy, Rachel Golder is traveling and making music: “Hi dear friends! I have written before that for me, retirement has meant a return to the French horn, and to the world of music-making generally. I play in several orchestras and bands, and with one of them I am preparing to play Mahler’s Fifth Symphony this summer—a grand piece for brass players. But a surprising and wonderful twist on this was hearing from Geoff Harris last summer: He was trying to organize a woodwind quintet, and needed a horn player! We spent several months rehearsing together with a great group of musicians, culminating in a chamber concert attended by our families in a gracious apartment on the upper West Side. It was terrific to play with Geoff, who was and is a fabulous oboe player. On a heavier note, I lost my parents within a day of each other last summer: Both had suffered from various ailments and progressing dementia, so it was (almost) a blessing when they both fell (him trying to help her up!), breaking bones that could not be mended. Suffice it to say, Hospice is a miraculous service, and my parents’ nearly 70-year romance continues in heaven. And I missed Reunion because a long-delayed trip that I had promised my son, Tom, is currently underway: two weeks in Italy, with Salerno the home base initially, and now Rome. It has been spectacular; we are blessed!  I’m looking forward to our 50th.” Dmitri Cook could not make it but sent the following: “I don’t suppose I can add much to a conversation. I’ve really enjoyed life as a meat cutter. It’s a two-store family supermarket southwest of Madison, Wisconsin. Nothing too big but not industrial and all hand-cut beef, pork, etc. And we grind our own burger so less waste. Interesting learning and watching the food chain. Gotta eat. I get to play golf every week and chase grandkids around while my body cries for mercy. I’m living the dream except for shoveling snow. Feels like the lot of the class has plenty to be grateful for.” Howard Etkind is about to retire and looking back: “It has been 37 years and change since I took my oath of office as a civil servant, on a hot July day, in a Texas heat wave. I took the oath with one hundred or so members of my intern class in a lecture hall, at the School of Engineering and Logistics, Texarkana, Texas, at a vast World War II–era weapons complex. I hope I have fully fulfilled that oath of duty I took so many years ago. I came in as a DARCOM engineering intern via the Army Logistics Management College. Since then, I have traveled around the country more times than I can count. My three children were born in three different states, while I worked for three different organizations. While I started as a Department of the Army civilian, I spent 13 years with the Department of Energy and another 20 with the Defense Contract Management Agency. I had the pleasure of working with the cutting edge of acquisition military technology.  I have worked with every process in the manufacture of explosives, from the chemical formulation of initiation explosives, to the final assembly and test of giant rocket motors. In the aerospace world, it was from the refining of titanium sponge to the roll out for the first flight of our latest and greatest aircraft. I had the pleasure of learning system safety at the graduate level at the engineering school that Neil Armstrong had a professorship. I had the opportunity of sharing a moment with Neil, long after his retirement, on a day outing with Neil and his grandchildren, and my parents and children, riding a vintage railroad, in the area where he and I both lived. I grew up on the adventure end of science fiction, featuring the square jawed, boy scout straight heroes of the golden age. There it was always an engineer who saved the world, married the female protagonist, and lived happily ever after. I am working on the happily ever after piece! My journey with federal service is just about complete. It is time for me to announce my retirement, with Jill, my lovely wife, and to live happily ever after in the Appalachian Mountains, on the Tennessee–North Carolina border. The Appalachian Trail, that I hiked in high school (New England sections mainly), runs a short walk through the Cherokee National Forest from my cabin in the woods. It has been quite the experience… I want to thank everyone who has been part of it, my wife, children, coworkers, and friends. And a pause to remember all those I have known over the years who did not have the opportunity to reach a happy retirement. Long weeks on the road are hard on both family life and sanity. Like in the end of The Lord of the Rings, there are still some blank pages at the end of the great book for me to fill in. My journey is not quite over yet, it is merely taking a new form.” Elissa Hoffmann Norton couldn’t attend, but reports on her retirement and sale of their Honda dealership in Pennsylvania in August 2023. “We are now Florida residents with homes in Bonita Springs and St. Pete Beach. No grandkids yet and we’re ready! Our oldest, Kasey, turns 30 this March and married last year. Our youngest, Emma, turns 27 this year and is engaged to be married next year. We are excited to embrace this next chapter of our lives with lots of travel, bike riding, and pickleball! Feeling very blessed!” For all who are interested, our Hopkins Class of 1979 Facebook page has received renewed interest, so post away. Also, at the Reunion, there were long discussions about the origins of our class banner—most intriguing. It’s clearly the best banner of all. However, after 45 years, we happened to notice that at the very bottom of the banner are the mysterious initials ‘J.T.’ We have asked around, but no one seems to know the meaning of these initials or to whom they belong. They do not belong to any of those who created the banner, so we are told, and they are at a loss to explain it. If anyone knows, please let us all know.” Hope everyone stays well and please plan to attend the 50th—it comes up fast. Be well.

 

1980 —45th Reunion

wridinger@optonline.net

 

Hello classmates. Warning: we are coming up on a big milestone this coming June. Mark your calendars! It seems like a long time ago that COVID derailed our ability to get together in 2020. I hope to catch up with many of you then… or before! This year’s reunion had beautiful weather, so Chris Cogguillo, Guy Iaccarino, and my husband, Tim, and I played in the Hopkins alumni tournament. Byron Brewer was on the injured reserve due to his recent shoulder surgery. In March, I saw Bianca Calabresi for the first time in almost 45 years. She was a guest lecturer at the first annual Italians in New Haven symposium at Yale this spring, coming into New Haven from that other Ivy, Columbia, where she is a professor of English and Comparative Literature. She didn’t recognize me at first, but we did have a chance to catch up at my home in Milford and it was just like old times. Great to see her! So even if you haven’t seen your classmates in a while, those memories will come flooding back. I did have a chance to see my old friend KC Mulligan Williams at the passing of my aunt, Sally DeGennaro. Many of the younger classes knew her as Mrs. D because she worked as an administrative assistant at Hopkins for many years after we graduated. Some of you remember her son, my cousin, Billy DeGennaro ’79. I still see Kate Higgins, who is still seeing Bruce Springsteen all over the world! I know she recently got back from a trip to Ireland and seems quite happy to be home at her place in Branford, Connecticut, with her husband, Bill, and her dogs once the Hopkins admissions season is over. Dave Feola is back and Linda Fenn spends about half the year here in Guilford, Connecticut; I hope to see them in August! And maybe Deb Stern at her place in Philly, when I go to the Mary Cassatt exhibit. Keep in touch!