1963

I reached Renion Chair John Lehman just as he was about to get out his calipers and charts to try to figure out who was coming the farthest for our reunion, which takes place June 18-20. Was it Pete Stevenson, who had sent in his reservation from Bahrain, a small island nation in the Persian Gulf where Pete represents the interests of Chase Manhattan Bank? Or was it Steve Mueller, who would be flying in from Rio, where he is with Xerox de Brasil. Or would there be some new contender from some even farther-flung outpost?

Perhaps. At presstime, John was expecting more than 500 people to be on hand in Hanover. That will be a record for our class, although there's room for more, and it would take a really big late surge to catch the class of '61, with whom we are co-convening, and which seems about to set a College record for a 20th reunion.

John did want it known that if anyone couldn't make it for the full reunion, but wanted to be there for just the class dinner on Saturday evening (June 19), he could probably work out the arrangements. You can write him at 10 Old Wagon Road, Old Greenwich, Conn. 06870, or give him a call (203/637-4226).

In other news, Olin Corporation has made Tom Berardino vice president for planning and corporate development, with responsibility for the company's acquisition program. Tom had previously been manager of distribution and engineering for Exxon. Olin is headquartered in Stamford, and Tom will be moving to New Canaan, Conn., which is just a town away from Norwalk, where both he and his wife Charlene grew up.

Paul Binder and his Big Apple Circus were featured in Time magazine earlier this year. The circus, which normally performs under its own 40-foot-high blue tent in Damrosch Park in New York (next to the Metropolitan Opera House). had just finished a successful four-week run at Lincoln Center. The Big Apple Circus, reported, hasn't grown much over the years. "It has only one ring, two clowns, 14 acrobats and aerialists, one horse, one pony, one elephant and no dogs or lions at all." And Binder says that he thinks that's the right size for a circus, that he's trying to bring back the sense of intimacy and immediacy that went along with the circuses of bygone days.

What the Big Apple does have is evidently first-rate. Its trapeze artists, Time says, "force oohs and ahs out of the most jaded spectators." And the elephant plays the harmonica. Paul told Time his "dream is to tour six or seven months a year, and then perform in the winter in our own indoor facility in New York, in a building called 'The Circus.'

Jim Irvin reports the birth of a baby daughter last December, and we have a couple of marriages. Steve Pennypacker will be a bridegroom this September, thus beginning what will be marriage number three for him ("I'll get it right one of these times," he reports); and Hank Rogers was married to the former Maureen Cummings in Waitsfield, Vt., last April. Steve is still in the florist business in Phoenixville, Pa., and Hank has a printing business in Springfield, Mass.

This is my last column before our reunion (and my penultimate one as secretary), and I had originally intended to say something pro- found. Or at least try to. It has been a source of gratification (albeit vicarious) to chronicle the way the members of the class have taken hold in the world over the past five years. Yet, at the same time, there are questions I thought I would get some answers to, and didn't.

It all has to do with my theory that there was something special about the timing of our class. We were in the last echelon to pass through our formative years (or at least through college) before the shocks of the Kennedy assasination, Vietnam, Watergate . . . and so on.

What I want to know is whether we are perhaps the opposite of Paul Simon. Are we possibly still sane after all these years?

Happy Days THE TWENTIETH • JUNE 18-20

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