1963

If you have any doubts about the coming cashless society, a recent cover story in Fortune dispels those doubts and suggests that two of our classmates will be leading the parade. Rick Braddock and Lou Gerstner have been sparring in the business world for several years as the card mavins for two respected banking institutions in the field: Citicorp and American Express. Now, according to Fortune, the game is getting serio us, with Citicorp pouring in nearly $200 million last year to catch Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Sears, the plastic leaders. Almost half of Citicorp's investment has gone into resuscitating Diners Club, owned by Citi and directed by Rick, labeled Citicorp's top card executive by Fortune. One of Citi's targets, the corporate market, will bring the bank head on against Lou, to whom the magazine gives most of the credit for American Express's success. Lou, Fortune says, kept American Express's card business growing by 25 percent a year by discovering new market segments like women, graduati ng college students, and retail stores, and also by promoting hard the gold and platinum cards. In competing for the corporate market, the financial card institutions are trying to convince corporations to buy their cards in bulk to issue to executives who must travel and entertain.

Big business has even reached our physician classmates, as evidenced by the press coverage of Dr. Jay Reibel in Forbes, and, most recently, in Financial World. Jay is chairm an of Preferred Health Care, a consulting firm to corporations and insurance companies on mental health benefits for employees. While Jay may be optimistic about corporate involvement in healthcare, another psychiatrist, Ned Harley, of Boulder, Colo., has had second thoughts after joint venturing ownership of Boulder Psychiatric Institute with Psychiatric Institutes of America, a large healthcare chain. After eight years of partnership there, Ned decided the formula was not for him because of questions of control between the local physician partner and the national chain. "There's no question," says Ned, "that corporate takeover of medicine is coming, and it is going to raise serious questions and bring about big changes in healthcare delivery." Ned is specializing at this time in eating disorders bulimia and anorexia and heads up that program at Boulder Memorial Hospital. He is also remarried, to Kay Grace, a psychiatrist, and the couple expects their first child, a daughter, soon. Ned's son by a previous marriage, Benjamin, 13, is a terrific skier, following in his father's footsteps. Ned, by the way, also has a M.A. in architecture and hopes to apply it to the medical field.

It's tax time all over, including South Bend, Ind., where Jim Bieneman, a Tuck graduate, is a partner with Crowe Chizek not the Big Eight, but probably among the top 25 in size, with three offices in Indiana and another in Grand Rapids, Mich. With the firm since 1970, Jim specializes in closely-held private manufacturing concerns. He and Carol, whom he dated in college, have three children: Charlie, 18, Jane, 16, and Kathy, eight. Active as ever, Jim won a windsurfing regatta last summer and in the winter skis and plays squash.

If you're into wine these days, check with Paul Kappel, who buys a lot of it, and beer and whiskey, too, for Florida Beverages Corporation, where he is assistant general manager. This occupation takes him all around, from California to France, including a trip last summer to Scotland to buy Glenfiddich. Paul learned the business with Heublein in Hartford, Conn., before taking his family wife Lloy, daughter Kim '88, and son Victor, 15 to sunny Jacksonville a few years ago, where there's plenty of fishing, tennis, and golf. Barrett Johnson is also in Florida Tallahassee where he practices administrative and governmental law, and hosts the Dartmouth track team for supper every spring when the team is in the state. New York Times reporter Dave Rosenbaum has moved back to the Washington bureau after a stint as an editor in New York. Elsewhere in the South, Bob Baker is in Houston with his wife, Gayle, son Adam, 14, and daughter Lara '88. Bob is vice president of sales and marketing for Texas United Corporation. Tom Perry also has a daughter, Chris, in the Dartmouth class of 'BB, and son Scott is a junior at Colby College in Maine. Tom and Barbara live in North Andover, Mass., their eighth home in 20 years, and Tom is a division manager with New England Telephone. "Trail-along son" Sean, seven, is in second grade at Pike School in Andover. "All is well with the Perrys," says Tom, "if we can survive the college tuition bills of two at the same time."

All seems well with the Charlie Partons, too, of Rumson, N.J. He and Trudy journeyed to Wellfleet, Mass., last summer with daughter Laurie, 16, and son Chris, 14, where on the beach they ran into Dick Streetman the first time since 1963 graduation. Streets is an architect in Boston and lives with two sons and wife Kim in Newton Highlands. Ah, the niches are being carved, and the intellectual curiosity is burning bright. But the good stuff kids' development, relationships, personal goals, values, discoveries are yet to come. Ah, spring.

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