Class of 1969 Notes – August 2018
The Reunion committee chaired by Art Clark is going great guns. We have personal information and biographical essays on almost 250 classmates. Since my last edition in June, I have received news from some classmates. By now, everyone should have received a link to the video about on class gift campaign featuring Woody Swain. It is short, informative, and long after you thought you had had your last Colgate test, includes a Core 21-based quiz.
Bob Haberer and Bill Miles helped Read McNamara reconnect with his roommate, friend, and groomsman, Bob Moncrief. Read reports that Bob is alive and well in the Thousand Oaks area of CA. They had a long, wonderful telephone talk and have reconnected. Bob has had a long career in public housing in NYC and now California. He has submitted a bio and is anxious to rekindle the many friendships he made at Colgate. Judge Ray Eliot exchanged emails on our shared semester in DC with the Washington Study Group. Check out his impressive bio.
After six months of no deaths to report, I now have two. Gary E. Combs died in New York City on February 10, 2017 after a long illness. Gary was a history major at Colgate, a Dana Scholar, and Phi Beta Kappa. After Colgate, Gary worked for the B. Altman Department Store in New York City, and following Altman's demise, he started his own business, which focused on special autographs and manuscripts. At a memorial service in New York, a friend and colleague said, “Gary will be remembered as a premier level autograph dealer in New York City, a 'dealer's dealer' who had a deep and extensive knowledge of history, science and the arts that characterizes only the top dealers." Tom Dickerson died suddenly on July 26, 2018. Tom left Colgate in 1963 to serve in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret paratrooper and saw combat during the Vietnam War. After returning and graduating with our class, he earned both a law degree and an M.B.A. at Cornell. He practiced law in New York City from 1975 through 1993, specializing in litigation, class actions, and consumer and travel law. He served as a Justice on the Yonkers (NY) City Court; then the Westchester (NY) County Court; then New York State Supreme Court; and, ultimately, as Associate Justice, Appellate Division, Second Department. He was the author of numerous legal books, treatises, and articles. A eulogy written by Tom's son, Bill, can be found at http://williamdickersonfilmmaker.com/the-eulogy-of-justice-thomas-a-dickerson/
The remainder of these notes is extracted from bios posted on the class website.
After Colgate, Jim Andrews did not stop running, though he never left Hamilton, NY, where he taught upper level math students, while coaching track and cross country. A ruptured Achilles tendon changed his successful masters running career and turned him into an Ironman triathlete. He made it to the World Championships in Kona, HI, four times, securing second place in the world in the 45-year-old age group. He retired after 33 years of teaching to Hickory, NC, in 2009 to be close to his grandchildren. Not totally retired, he supports a mission school in Mexico and teaches math at a Teen Challenge residential facility for boys, ages 13--18. Another educator is Michael Bracy, who left Colgate intending to join the Navy but failed the visual exam. He earned a PhD and ended up in the elementary/secondary education field for the next 34 years as a school psychologist, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools, finishing his career in Corning, NY. Since retiring in 2004, he has lived in Florida where he plays golf and pickleball, bikes, walks, and reads. He spends summers with his wife, Karen, at their cottage on a family lake. Yet another educator is Ed Morris, whose career in education began with his first Philosophy & Religion exam with Dr. Hartshorne, in which he received his only Colgate “F”. After Colgate, he headed back home to Seattle to teach junior high school mathematics for a year, then went to University of Washington to get an MA mathematics. After graduation he began a 43-year teaching career at Highline Community College. A USAID grant enabled him to exchange ideas and pedagogy with the faculty at institutions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Windhoek, Namibia. Ed has been married to Gloria for 48 years, has two children and serves on the board of directors for the James and Janie Washington Foundation and as a Deacon at his church.
Peter Cook ’s post-Colgate career took him from a paper mill, to junior high science teacher, to an insurance underwriting, to grad school, to baking at Dunkin' Donuts, to working at a nursing home and finally to Guadalajara medical school. For the last 20 years, he has been working at a clinic in the Lansing, MI, area, providing health care for a primarily Hispanic population, Medicaid patients, and uninsured patients. He wrote ““I am grateful that, after all these trials and errors, I now feel like I have come to where I should be in life. I am sorry that I wasted the education that Colgate tried to give me. I value the interesting and good people I met there, and I am in awe of the accomplishments of so many who took advantage of the opportunities they were given.”
In the 1970’s, I often saw Al White when I was working at the NY PSC and he was representing large industrial consumers in electric rate cases. I left the PSC in 1980 and had to stalk Al to solicit his bio. I found him in Scottsdale AZ. He continued to be active in public utility law -- first with a large firm then with a firm he founded. In 2007, he retired, relocated to Scottsdale, and continues to run an energy consulting partnership with his wife, Barbara Brenner, who had been his partner in the Albany firm and whom he married in 1993. Together they have five daughters and a son -- all now married -- and 14 grandchildren. They live in a golf community and Al chaired the Course Set Up and Construction Committee at the Senior PGA Tour's Schwab Cup Championship when it was held at Desert Mountain. Also, he has provided Barbara with "muscle" in connection with her volunteer work at The Desert Foothills Library in Cave Creek, AZ.
Rocky Ober married Scarlett, his freshman Fall Party Weekend date, who survived a fall from a two-and-a-half story windowsill while dancing there during a post-Stone Ponies concert costume party in his room. Rocky was a Marine pilot based in Beaufort, SC, for three years and finished his five-year commitment as a Captain and jet flight instructor. After the Marine Corps, he got a job at Johnson & Johnson in NJ, beginning a 28-year career there, mostly in operations, and living in Hopewell, NJ, where he and Scarlett raised two boys. Rocky retired moved to Charlotte, VT, where his favorite activities are travel, skiing, golf, and woodworking. He volunteers mentoring middle school boys, working at a camp for children with incarcerated parents, and supporting a Sudanese family via a refugee resettlement program.
Bill Brennan spent the fall of his senior year abroad at Broxton College outside London where he met two documentary filmmakers who persuaded him to pursue a career in film, first at Columbia University Film School, then at various film projects in Manhattan, until he landed a job at NBC. He shared a loft in lower Manhattan with Rusty Drumm, who also attended Columbia. Bill moved to Boston as producer/director for the ABC network’s Medical Editor, then as executive producer for the local station. He married Susan and raised two sons, Spencer and Carson. Over the ensuing years, his work focused on informational and educational media projects, including serving as a producer for WGBH-TV and Harvard Business School, then Health Dialog, a health services start-up as senior vice president of the media group until it was acquired. In December 2017, he became officially retired and looks forward to time with his grandchildren, travel with Susan, some golf, skiing, and walks with his dogs.
Those freshman P&R courses caused riots in the Fall of 1965, but we have a number of classmates who are, or have served in, the clergy: John Abraham, Bill Beery, Phil Wickeri, Fred Huntington, Drew Nettinga, and Dan Salveson, to name a few, as well as Nick Carter. Nick married his wife, Deborah, at a service in 1971 in which John Hoagland participated. After the wedding, Nick and Deborah attended theology school and became ministers. They became active in the peace movement, which was to become a key part of their lives. Nick became national CEO of the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980’s and actually met with Soviet leader Gorbachev in the middle of the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva, Switzerland. He was also active with organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Rainbow Coalition. He left the pastorate and social activism to serve as president of Andover Newton Theological School in 2004. There he developed cutting-edge interfaith programs until he retired in 2014, as President Emeritus. He served for 15 months as the interim president of the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, CA. He is now fully retired in Chapel Hill, NC, where he likes to garden, read, and volunteer as a docent at the UNC Ackland Art Museum.
One month after graduation Mike Flanagan began OCS and flight training at Pensacola, FL, then had two tours aboard the aircraft carrier, “Constellation” and 140 exciting but harrowing combat missions over Vietnam. Upon discharge, Mike and his wife, Carrolle, settled on Whidbey Island, WA, where he learned enough about the building trades and residential construction to build a dream home. That got him started in the woodworking, cabinetry, and furniture-making business that continued for 42 years. His son, Colin, will soon take over. Working, parenting, fishing for salmon and halibut, gardening, and daily exercise were Mike’s life until 1990, when Carolle succumbed to ovarian cancer. After that, parenting two young kids became his full-time job. Mike writes, “Colgate taught me to be prepared for anything that life throws your way, the value of hard work (I had five jobs while at college) and how to move on after failure. I never would have considered being a businessman or artist, but now I have a lifetime of beautiful furniture/cabinetry in my portfolio. As Winston Churchill observed: ’Success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm’."
To send news: email Jim Milmoe at smilmoe@aol.com, call 910-262-3512, or write to PO Box 5622, Breckenridge, CO, 80424.
