1961

Dick Beattie's spacious office atop the Hubert Humphrey Building in Washington is symbolic of his new job as general counsel of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare — one of the agency's key jobs. Dick's been at H.E.W since February 1977, first as deputy general counsel, then as executive assistant to then- Secretary Joseph Califano. In June, he was nominated for general counsel, then confirmed by the Senate, and he's staying on under the new secretary, Patricia Harris. Dick found the confirmation hearings in July surprisingly easy and conceded he was "very disappointed." He added, "I was prepared for a challenging session."

When we talked to Dick, he had just returned from a two-week vacation, a rarity during the Califano years. "Working for Califano is not a job — it's a way of life," said Dick, who: described the hours as running from 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. to 10:00, 11:00, or 12:00 p.m., six days a week "and often on Sunday as well." The vacation had given Beattie a healthy, tanned look, one that he said Surgeon General Julius Richmond noticed immediately. Apparently, he had become so pale just before the vacation that even the nation's top doc was worried. But Dick wouldn't trade it for anything, calling his H.E.W. stint "the best two and a half years of my life."

And then there was the surprise birthday party last March — for the one we've all been facing — the big four-oh. More than 90 persons showed up, including classmates Charlie Chapman,Chuck Dayton, and Don O'Neill.

While in Washington, we talked with several other classmates as well, including BillCollishaw, who chaired the fraternity committee and was one of the key leaders in our unprecedented victory in the Green Derby competition of the Dartmouth Alumni Fund. Hartley Webster, our head agent, RonWybranowski, our participation chair, and Bruce Lacoss, our regional chair, all deserve a special vote of thanks. It's a rare chance for us as a class to win an award.

Anyway, Bill is a lawyer in the Washington offices of a Cleveland firm, in what he coyly calls government-related work. He's been in Washington since 1972. For fun, he skis in Vermont, takes summer vacations on a remote Delaware beach, and does some tennis-playing and running, besides. The Collishaws have two children, a boy and a girl; one is in junior high and the other is in high school.

Tom Hickey had just returned to Washington from Cape Cod when we caught up with him. He runs the John Hancock office for the Washington metropolitan area. He does "a fair amount of boating" — that was a key element of the Cape trip — and he gets out in Chesapeake Bay, partly for fishing, as well. Tom and Isabel have three kids — Ned, 16, Lisa, 14, and Jamie, seven.

Charlie Buffon handles antitrust cases, flying routinely across the country, although he's based in Washington. He had just flown in from Chicago when we spoke with him. He men- tioned the visit earlier this summer of the JakeGillespies and their two children from Holland, where Jake is in the foreign service. Charlie said Jake is still a sports fanatic, playing on a basketball team in a Dutch league and playing some tennis besides, as well as doing "a fair amount of traveling in and around Europe." Charlie and his wife also went to Tunisia to see our new ambassador there, Steve Bosworth, and his wife Sandy. They arrived shortly after Bosworth took his post, and were the first non-official guests in the mansion that serves as the ambassador's house. Charlie described the building as a "very elaborate" one overlooking the Bay of Tunis, with the president's house down the hill. He said Steve is spending a good bit of time traveling around the country, visiting places no American ambassador has gone before.

Rick Jasperson, a senior economist with the World Bank, spends a lot of his time traveling about for the bank, mostly to Latin American and the Caribbean. He said his wife Margie had just started an exciting new job as Washington corporate relations representative for Allstate, after several years in paralegal work. The job more commonly goes by the name of "lobbyist."

News notes: Frank Greenberg is a San Francisco lawyer for the firm of Herzstein and Maier. Frank does that four days a week, reports class president Gerry Kaminsky, "and the other day, he teaches a course in literature to third and fifth graders at the school his children attend." Gil Cass had an exhibit of his water-colors on display through June at the Barrid off Galleries in Maine. He's an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Art. John White is publishing another book, called Pole Shift, an assessment of the risk of another shift of the planet's crust, which changes the location of the poles. The book, to be published by Doubleday, looks at evidence that pole shifts have occurred in the past (coral in Alaska, reversals of the earth's magnetic field, glacial marks on equatorial rock), and the chances of recurrence. He's also written A PracticalGuide to Death and Dying, which he calls a self-help book for people afraid of dying.

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