1961

3025 Lock Drive Winston-Salem, NC 27106

You'll see a new home address above. Those of you who read my piece in Reflections won't be very surprised that I have left the Charlotte Observer after almost 25 years.

I made the switch in September to the Bowman Gray School, of Medicine of Wake Forest University, where I am now writing about science and medicine. I have faculty status, which means I may get some opportunity to teach. (The Medical Center also includes the N.C. Baptist Hospital.)

There is a difference: I'm now basically in public relations, although I'm doing many of the same things as I've enjoyed doing at the Observer. Examples of the public relations aspect of the job: the hospital helicopter crashed the second day I was here, so I was pressed into service helping with media calls. And then, three days later, two school buses were in a chain-reaction wreck.

Life has its twists and turns as we learned again in our Passages sessions during reunion, when we reinforced each other so well. I am now experimenting with a major twist. I'll keep you posted on how it works out.

Actually, switching cities and jobs adds up to four major stress components on those stress charts: new job, new employer, new house, and the need to find new friends. Many of you have switched jobs, but stayed with the same employer, or switched towns while still working for the same company, or switched jobs and employers but remained in the same city. Add to that my bachelor status, which means no one to help plan a move, etc. So I'm feeling somewhat discombobulated. I couldn't even get my computer to transmit my November column which I've been doing for two years and was already so late that sending by mail wouldn't have worked. So bear with me.

Much of the news I had planned for this month is still packed away somewhere. I left the Observer on September 18 and started work here on September 22, so I've been mostly moving and unpacking on evenings and weekends. Among the reports that did surface from the rubble:

Charlie Chapman is the new president and chief operating officer of Nabisco Brands Inc., a unit of RJR Nabisco. He succeeds James O. Welch Jr., who was named vice chairman of the unit. Congratulations and now we know who to call on for crackers.

And Dick Wright, who has been at McGill University in Montreal, has been named the first Helen Simpson Jackson professor of international management at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., beginning in January. Dick currently is professor of international business and finance at McGill. There, according to the press release, "Wright was the founder and principal organizer of the International Business Area, now generally recognized as Canada's foremost program of international business studies." The Jackson Chair was created by donations of $1,000,000 from members of the Jackson family and is intended to be the nucleus of a program in international business and management.

Dan Reith has had spectacular success recently in his law practice. He won a $891,557 verdict for a Canadian constable in a personal injury lawsuit which is believed to be the largest ever in Monterey County, Calif., according to August 13 stories in both the Salinas Californian and the Herald. Dan cautions that the verdict might not stand up but right now he appears likely to reap a pretty hefty fee himself. According to the stories, the Superior Court jury took just 20 minutes to return the verdict in favor of Denis Vachon, 40, of Montreal. Vachon had been racing to the airport to catch a flight to see his dying mother when he was stopped by the California Highway Patrol for speeding. He got out of his car and was heading back to the patrol vehicle when he was struck by a car driven by a California woman. He was in a cast for almost one and a half years. The case turned on measurements made by the patrol that showed the woman had crossed onto the shoulder of the highway. (Massachusetts drivers beware!) Permanent aspects of the injury cost Vachon his job as a constable. (And his mother in fact did die shortly after he was struck.) Congratulations, Dan, on winning the case. Opportunities like that do not come often.

The Dartmouth Alumni Club of the Silicon Valley near where the San Francisco 49ers play football have formed a Jeff Kemp (class of '81) fan club to back the team's quarterback. So club member Jim Adams '43 lined up each member of the club to pose with a supporting poster. Our distinguished Michael Kirst agreed to pose for the picture, which I presume he understood was being submitted for publication. Anyway, here it is.