Class Notes

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Find your class

• 1940-1949
• 1950-1959
• 1960-1969
• 1970-1979
• 1980-1989
• 1990-1999
• 2000-2009
• 2010-2019
• 2020-2024
• Losses

  1940-1949

• Katherine Hotchkiss’46 of Rockford, Illinois, celebrated her 100th birthday in April.

  1960-1969

Left to right: The Boys of Summer: Jerry Gustafson’63, Brian Morello’85, Garry Griesser’63, Gerrit Kuechle’63, Eric Boynton, Bob Adams’63, John Buckland’62, Rod Paolini’62, Perry Sells’63, John Ryerson’63, and Dave Flagler’63.

Donald “Mac” Willson’65 with Mike Boorstein’68 and Sue Boorstein’68

• Grab a tasty beverage and pull up a chair for some science-y stuff, because that’s what the blog of Rich Olcott’61, Hard Science Ain’t Hard (hardscienceainthard.com), is mostly about. Every Monday morning, he adds a post, usually a 700-word story about some topic in physics, astronomy, or such.
• The Boys of Summer, a group of TKE brothers, invited President Eric Boynton to join them at their annual meeting in Oak Brook, Illinois. In attendance were John Buckland’62, Rod Paolini’62, Jerry Gustafson’63, Garry Griesser’63, Gerrit Kuechle’63, Bob Adams’63, Perry Sells’63, John Ryerson’63, Dave Flagler’63, and Brian Morello’85.
• The artwork of Barbara Manger’65 was included in the exhibit “Viewpoints on Artservancy,” at Milwaukee’s Institute of Art and Design’s Brook Stevens Gallery this fall.
• Donald “Mac” Willson’65 and his wife Midge of Hales Corners, Wisconsin, chanced to meet Sue and Mike Boorstein’68 of Longboat Key, Florida while on an Alaska cruise in June.
• The book Art and History in the Ohio Judicial Center: A Visual Tour by Richard W. Burry’68 was selected by the Columbus Book Festival for a Featured Author session in July. In an hour-long talk, he told stories about the process of doing research and writing the book.

  1970-1979

Left to right: Mary Wollenberg Mays’77, Kathryn Madden’77, David Keehn’77, Clare Kunny’76, Peggy Gleason’77, Betsy Murray’77 (seated), John Butler’77, Nicole Gotthelf’76, Becca Mudge’77, and Professor Alonso Benavides.

Standing: Jim Long’72 and Zak Gordon’73. Seated: (clockwise) Wendy Gordon’76; Jim Petersen’70; Seymour Miles’72; Michael Kearsey’71; Sara Proctor’72; Nina Ashby’72.

David Klein’74

• Marty Weigle Jewell’72 has moved to Medford, Oregon, to be closer to grandkids and their parents. She tried retirement, but is still working. She owns her own business — Balloons, Magic and More — and hopes to find magic organizations in southern Oregon.
• Zak Gordon’73 and Wendy Gordon’76 hosted a reunion in Portland, Oregon in August. Also from Portland, Jim Long’72, Jim Petersen’70, and Michael Kearsey’71. Seymour Miles’72 came from Hudson, New York, Sara Proctor’72 from Seattle, and Nina Ashby’72 from London, U.K.
• David Klein’74 has settled down to a retirement lifestyle with his spouse, Yolanda, in the Berkshire Mountains after a fulfilling career in academic and pharmaceutical endocrinology, and wonderful family life.
• Michael Kramer’74 of New York City has been elected to the Board of Advisors of the New York Historic Districts Council.
• Rob Miller’74, the head girls’ tennis coach at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, led his 2024 team to a Division 1 state title. The team was 23-1, and Rob was named Division 1 Coach of the Year by The Boston Globe.
• Andrew B. Persily’76 retired after 42 years working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in February, where he did research on energy use, airflow, and indoor air pollution in buildings and various basic structures. He wrote a bunch of boring articles on those subjects that some people pretend to care about. He did a little management, a little mis-management, and a lot of wandering the halls looking busy like a federal employee is supposed to. He didn’t smuggle Len Pagliaro’76 onto campus in his trunk when he didn’t have authorization to bring in visitors on the weekend; that would have been irresponsible and immature. He recently relocated to Denver to do retirement stuff and babysit his grandson Emmett (or is it Elmo?).
• John Butler’77, Peggy Gleason’77, David Keehn’77, Kathryn Madden’77, Mary Wollenburg Mays’77, Becca Mudge’77, Betsy Murray’77, Nicole Gotthelf’76, and Clare Kunny’76 met in August in Santa Barbara for the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Peru Seminar that changed their lives and created lifelong friendships. Their seminar leader, Professor Alonso Benavides, now 95, hosted them at his home, which was festooned with desert flowers that recalled the flora of Arequipa. The group enjoyed a spectacular dinner and live guitar music. Beneath tropical vines, with sangria flowing, they told stories of their four months in Peru, sometimes corrected by Professor Benavides. They also visited with seminar co-leader, Professor Benavides’ ex-wife, Norma Wilder Benavides’64 in Santa Barbara, and connected online with the other members of “El Grupo Wis,” as they were known in Arequipa.
• Ken Oguss’77 is a retired librarian, storyteller, and filmmaker in Indianapolis. He has one daughter who works in Madison and another who is a married public school teacher with two children. He facilitates a flash fiction writing group called PWR Writing™ and several virtual storytelling groups.
• Jon Munroe’79, Elaine Munroe’79, Rich Sheinberg’80, and Sally Buell Sheinberg’81, got together this past summer on the Central Coast of California.

  1980-1989

Left to right: Rich Sheinberg’80, Sally Buell Sheinberg’81, Jon Munroe’79, and Elaine Munroe.

Joanna Esty’82

Susan Turner Vogt’83 and Spike

Left to right: Jere M. Bauer, Jr.’84, Grant Jenkins’83, Rachel Jenkins Manley’87, Ellen Rubenstein Bauer’84, Jere Bauer III’18, and Steve Delfeld’83.

• Christopher Bailey’82 retired and was granted emeritus status when Wells College, where he had been a professor of chemistry for the past 37 years, closed unexpectedly at the end of the spring 2024 semester. In an unplanned full-circle moment, the last thing he completed with his students was an organometallic chemistry lab experiment that he and Professor George Lisensky developed and published when he was an undergraduate at Beloit.
• Joanna Esty’82 was appointed in March as Vice President and Director of Alumni Relations for the Inter-American Defense College (IADC) Foundation, based in Washington, D.C. Part of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IADC grants a master of science degree in Inter-American Defense and Security. It is unique in the Western Hemisphere in that faculty, staff, and the student body are international, with graduates returning to their countries to assume senior strategic-level positions within their governments. While attending her own IADC class reunion in Guatemala in late July, Joanna briefed the Guatemalan Escuela Politécnica (Military Academy) about the IADC.
• Karla Parsons Hubbard’83 recently retired after 25 years teaching geology and paleontology at Oberlin College.
• Susan Turner Vogt’83, after a career in technical recruitment, sold her company, Expo Experts, LLC, and went to the dogs … wolfdogs, that is! She founded a wolfdog sanctuary, called the Red Riding Hood Rescue Project. “The Red” in Middletown, Ohio, is home to 23 animals rescued from all over the country. The animals come from Animal Control, U.S. Humane Societies, and from investigative confiscations. Last September, Tia Torres, of the Animal Planet TV series, “Pitbulls and Parolees,” brought a wolfdog to the sanctuary that had been running loose in the swamps near New Orleans. “The Red” aims to be a cooperative care trained facility, giving the animals choice in their care which reduces stress. The sanctuary has worked with Princeton University and Colgate University on research studies on wolves and dogs.
• Jere M. Bauer, Jr.’84, Ellen Rubenstein Bauer’84, Grant Jenkins’83, Rachel Jenkins Manley’87, Jere Bauer III’18, and Steve Delfeld’83 gathered for a summer reunion in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.
• Eric Klusman’85 recently relocated from Los Angeles to Petaluma, California in order to be near Amanda Cummings. He continues to work remotely as part of the Underwriting Innovation team of First American Title Co.

  1990-1999

Left to right: Jeff Hamilton, Kirstin Short’96, Marc Cohen’96, Tessa Cohen, Kelly Schierenbeck Cohen’96, Kathy Schierenbeck Powers’22, Andrea Addams Daugherty’97, and Ben Daugherty’97.

Josh Penning and Dea Fowler’90

Margaret Ronda’98 and Tobias Menely’98

Left to right: Lance Randall’94, Erik Quamme’96, Gary Grocholski’93, and Mark Sobczak’93.

• John Bird’90, who is in his 23rd year as an English teacher at Warren Township High School in Gurnee, Illinois, was awarded the Village of Gurnee’s Teacher of the Year for the 2023-24 school year.
• Dea Fowler’90 successfully completed the challenging round trip to Everest Base Camp Trek this spring with hiking companion Josh Penning. After weeks of trekking through stunning landscapes, hiking treacherous terrains, and experiencing the breathtaking beauty and culture of the Himalayas, they completed their adventure on a beautiful day, and wish to thank everyone who supported them on this journey.
• Roopen Majithia’92, professor of philosophy at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, recently published the monograph, The Highest Good in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Bhagavad Gita.
• Gary Grocholski’93, Mark Sobczak’93, Lance Randall’94, and Erik Quamme’96, all former Beloit men’s basketball players, participated in the Greg Gard Invitational in August at University Ridge Golf Course in Madison. The group gathered to support Randall who is in his first season as an assistant coach with the University of Wisconsin–Madison men’s basketball team.
• Lora Stevenson Obrohta’93 had two of her poems, “If Napoleon Had A Daughter” and “Bureaucracy & Boobs,” published in the Café Review’s Spring 2024 issue.
• With other Beloiters in attendance, Marc Cohen’96 and Kelly Schierenbeck Cohen’96 celebrated their daughter Tessa’s graduation from The Woodlands College Park High School in May in The Woodlands, Texas.
• Margaret Ronda’98 and Tobias Menely’98 won university-wide teaching awards last spring at the University of California, Davis, where they both teach in the English department.
• Michael Simon’98, alumnus and former professor of art, is among the photographers featured in the exhibition “American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacy” at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, Virginia. The exhibit features work and related ephemera from 33 Hungarian-born photographers, focusing on the impact of these artists on photography in the United States

  2000-2009

Left to right: Anna Williams’08, Alan Booth’08, Ronni Levine Barta’07, Carl Anderson’09, Jeff Schultz’07, Arthur Eith’09, Becky Ziemer, Katie Algrem Feldner’07, and Seth Feldner’07.
Credit: Emily Jean Photography

Risa Dye’03

Left to right: Anya Ventura’08, Carolyn Gennari’08, and Anne Rogers’08.

Back left to right: Dan Ojeda, Susanna Kellogg’08, Andrew Herrera, Laura Zeiger’08, and Caroline Ojeda. Front left to right: Laura Grube’08, Brandon Strawn’10, Pat Sjoberg’08, Laurie Ojeda’08, and Juan Macian Clemente.

• Risa Lenore Anderson Dye’03 received a 2024 Jim Henson Foundation Grant for her handmade theater show, “Agents of Change,” with her company, Possibly Puppets, this November in Berkeley, California.
• Jeff Schultz’07 married Becky Ziemer on April 20 in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, followed by a reception in Slinger.
• Daniel Murphy’08, after over a decade at the Morgridge Institute for Research, is attending graduate school in biotechnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Anne Rogers’08 married Matt Gallant on July 5 in Wakefield, Rhode Island. Beloiters attending were Anya Ventura’08 and Carolyn Gennari’08. Anne and Matt currently reside in Baltimore.
• Pat Sjoberg’08 stopped in Beloit on a cross country car trip to visit friends, including Susanna Kellogg’08, Laura Zeiger’08, Laura Grube’08, Brandon Strawn’10, and Laurie Ojeda’08.

  2010-2019

Left to right: Nora Sullivan’14, Hannah Haverkamp’14, Maria Heath’14, Jessica Sankhavaram-Peck’14, Kate Taylor’14, Saumya Sankhavaram-Peck, Nick Mischler’14, Jaya Chi Alexander’14, Heather MacIsaac’16, Hannah Brusewitz’14, Hadley Sibon’14, and Emily Starck’14.
Credit: Marissa Solini Photography

Nzingha Hall’14 and her great-aunt, Thelma.

Tyree Smith’19

• Nzingha Hall’14, MPH, recently celebrated her great-aunt Thelma’s 89th birthday with extended family in St. Louis. She lives in Atlanta and loves to travel. This fall, she visited Australia, her 22nd country and sixth continent. She is the human to her three-year-old poodle, Salvador Jabari Thompson-Hall.
• Jessica Sankhavaram-Peck’14 hosted an informal class of 2014 meet-up at her wedding after the Beloiter Days reunion was rescheduled for that weekend. She married Saumya Sankhavaram-Peck on Sept. 14 in Portland, Oregon, in a mixed Hindu and Quaker ceremony. Beloiters in attendance included Nora Sullivan’14, Hannah Haverkamp’14, Maria Heath’14, Kate Taylor’14, Nick Mischler’14, Jaya Chi Alexander’14, Hannah Brusewitz’14, Hadley Sibon’14, Emily Starck’14, and Heather MacIsaac’16.
• Tyree Smith’19 began a new position in November 2023 as sports anchor for KATU News in Portland, Oregon. Prior to his move to the Pacific Northwest, he was the weekend sports anchor for ESPN 106.3 on WPTV and FOX29 News in West Palm Beach, Florida. He played football and ran track at Beloit, and majored in media studies, minoring in journalism and anthropology. In his free time, Tyree loves to work out, watch anime, and explore the Portland area.

Losses

Recognizing members of the Beloit College community we have lost.