Abridged Fall / Winter class notes. For unabridged version please go to my website.
Fred Byron (editor of The Phillipian): I have no recollection of the event you describe [standing at the top of the stairs facing the student body as it filed into Cochran Chapel. Reminding me of Mark Antony striking a pose from the steps of the Temple] but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it didn’t happen. Your description makes it sound like an event I should remember. Mark it down as a mystery along with the great Route 28 detour caper!
Dil Cannon: I am now 89 years old, and have been retired from orthopedic and sports medicine practice for 12 years. But to my total surprise, approximately 4 months ago, I received an email stating that my name will be used for a new society at UCSF called the “Cannon Society”. Our first meeting will be on September 9, and I will be giving a short talk.
Ben Cheney’s career as a manufacturing executive and consultant took him to chilly Rochester, Minnesota for 22 years. Then, 13 years ago, he and Mary Ann headed south to the warmth of retirement in Irmo, South Carolina, volunteering at the state museum in Columbia, and family. Now living with his daughter, Laura, and in touch with sons in Florida and Minnesota. Grandfather to grandchildren in New England, Minnesota, and Seattle and now great-grandfather to a great-granddaughter. He lost Mary Ann last year after 64 ½ years of marriage.
Duncan Cox ended his career at a business he founded, DBC Communications, where he could refocus on GPS-type technology that he “enjoyed immensely.” He’s focused since on family: second wife Kristin Mellen, his sons Duncan III and Edward who live nearby in Beverly and Salem, and a grandchild. Plus Kristin’s children, one of whom promotes clean water by swimming in the Hudson River. Originally from Long Island, Duncan last enjoyed sailing in his sloop in Manchester and is now living in Marblehead, where it’s “a pleasure to walk.”
Steve Halsted: I look forward to participation [in Zoom reunions] when life is not so busy!! I am happily settled in a retirement community in Santa Barbara with Carole (in a second marriage of 29 years). Four children, 10 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandkids. Sticking close to home after extensive travels in Europe and Mexico. Happy to be alive!!!
Dobie Jenkins: I look forward to a future Zoom encounter, hoping it will attract more students of 1955. A teacher-coach I liked during my year at PA was [George “Red”] Sanborn [math & biology], who offered outings off campus and up to the southern White Mountains. As for housemates, I remember Thos. W. Alexander [d. 1979]; Sam Kennedy [d. 2012]; [Peter] Metcalf [d. 2001]; Dave something; and a fifth student I cannot recall. My friend, Tony Costello, a day student from Andover, I was saddened to read, is also deceased [1983].
The 13th Kohler to attend Andover, Bob Kohler started out in academics where he helped to found the history and sociology of science at Penn with Professor Thackray, then wound up in “serious art collecting.” Concurrent exhibitions last spring at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the Woodmere Art Museum — “Bodies and Souls: Robert and Frances Coulborn Kohler Collection.” Still residing in Philadelphia’s University City, Bob is buoyed by family: sons “who are good to me” – Jack, a glaciologist in Norway, and Willy, an artist in Chicago — plus three grandchildren. When he lost her, he and Frances had been married for 63 years. [See addendum to Bob’s class note on my website for more on his groundbreaking work at Penn and his and Frances’s art collection.]
After a career in banking, Fritz Okie volunteered for executive responsibility to help “modernize” Pittsburgh, as he put it. His home town, where he became president of the storied Regent Theatre at the request of East Liberty’s Presbyterian Church. Once an incubator for entertainment greats Dick Powell, Gene Kelly, and Billy Strayhorn, the Regent was transitioning into an arts theatre and incubator for musicians among the underprivileged. These days Fritz is still venturing off to the Bahamas every December with Cynthia Ingram, his girlfriend, and to the Caribbean every year for saltwater fishing with his stepsons.
“It’s a different world now” for Al Polk. Middle Eastern money put his occupation out of reach years ago — thoroughbred horse breeding in Lexington, Kentucky. Where “the best-looking stallion I’d ever seen” sired Temperance Hill, the mare who won the Belmont Stakes at 53-1 odds in 1980. He’s upset with politics but, as he put it, “there’s good and bad.” Happily retired with wife Mary by Burt Lake in northern Michigan where they’re visited by family in the summer. Four talented children and five grandchildren, most settled in California except for a grandchild in South Carolina. All doing well. Once an avid small boat sailor Al gave it up last year. Travel and even getting outdoors for walks cut back, but Burt Lake is still beautiful every fall and spring.
Mike West’s class note will have to wait for the Spring issue. One of the oldest tenured faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, he’s busy retiring. Done with a career that he enjoyed — teaching English — but now that Artificial Intelligence has become the default for many students the pleasure has gone out of it. Honest students disadvantaged by cheaters. A problem best left to professors more electronically gifted than a “hardcopy guy” like himself.