1948

A card from Dick Bredenberg states that our quietly retired philosopher/teacher and wife Huldah still have that restless wanderlust that pushes them around the globe from their base in St. Pete. The card from the Ocean Reef Club's Buccaneer Island paradise in the Florida Keys where Dick has just completed his tenth week-long Leadership Development Program. By the time you read this the couple will be in Thailand where Dick will for six months be a distinguished (he writes "extinguished") professor at Payap University under a Rotary International grant. While in Bangkok we hope he will see Dave and Penny Karukin, who have made Thailand their home for so many years. Bred will be a few years too late for Dick and Kelly Repko, who also resided in Bangkok when Rep represented Caltex there. (It was Rep who discovered years ago that the easiest way to rid one's Thai garden of poisonous snakes, in the face of the locals' religious aversion to doing so, was to offer the local equivalent of one cent for each snake head brought in. This solution, recalls Dick, overcame otherwise fervid scruples and quickly cleared what must have been several square miles. (We offer this on the off chance the Bredenbergs will somehow need such knowledge in Thailand.)

Old friends of '48 class prophet DirkKuzmier, though mourning his death in his own small plane in a Vermont air crash in November 1987, will be glad to know the National Transportation Safety Board has preliminarily concluded that the crash was not the fault of pilot Dirk. No one is wholly sure of the chain of events which led to the crash, but failure of the plane's single engine was definitely involved. Dirk, heading north above the Vermont hills along Route 7 for Rutland, apparently suddenly reversed course 180 degrees a few miles north of Manchester Center and not more than 20 miles from his destination. Probably dropping rapidly due to his failing engine, the fatter heard by hunters on the ground below, he failed in a certainly desperate attempt by no more than 40 feet (!) to clear the southeast ridge of Mt. Danby at 2,000 feet elevation.

Every jazz aficionado is familiar with the world-famous New Black Eagle Jazz Band of the Boston area. Likewise, he is familiar with our own psychologist and pianist, BobPillsbury, who plays the 88 ivories for this noted aggregation at home in Hopkinton and on its extensive travels. It will please his old friends to note that this former Barbary Coaster in our campus days was recently termed by Boston Business as "maybe the best jazz piano player in the country." Great to see our good natured friend finally get this kind of well deserved attention!

Chuck Witherspoon of Savannah, the erstwhile sports team manager during our campus days, reports that he more or less reluctantly retired in 1987 and is now busy in town criering and barbershopping. In 1983 he was appointed Savannah's Town Crier on the 250 th birthday of the city and has remained so since, officially greeting conventions and other functions. He has also competed in international town crier competitions in England twice and Nova Scotia three times. He is also editor and publisher of the Rebelrouser, the barbershop monthly of the 2,000 members of the Dixie District of the national society. Chuck is also in an active quartet himself, and will give his church's annual tithing speech next month. Sorry you can't find anything to do, Chuck.

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