1981

529 Columbus Avenue #16 Boston, MA 02118

Another really terrific thing about this job is that you get mail. Scads of it, all the time—most of it from people just like you. Why, Hallidie Grant's letter alone contains enough new weddings, babies, and lawyers to keep this column going through April without even mentioning Al Greenstein (unless, of course, I feel like it).

So it was that I found myself dozing off, again, in the mailbox. It was cold, so I was huddled up in the back and incurred no bodily harm when Pam Banholzer Lalmond's weighty missive came hurtling through the slot. Pam had written to, um, clarify a point of information in one of my early reportorial efforts. Well, yes, I made a mistake, okay? Never mind that the information was supplied me by a previous, unnamed class secretary. Anyway, Pam made me promise not to make her sound like a nerd, and I won't. She and husband Mike live in Williamsburg, Mass., not Amherst. She's teaching (what? who?) kindergarten there, and is an assistant coach for the Smith College tennis team.

Of course, Pam couldn't have known that the very next day I would receive a note from Sharon Washington. Sharon is finishing her third and last year at the Yale School of Drama. That would be wonderful enough in itself, but she's also been cast in August Wilson's new play, The Piano Lesson, which will run at Boston's Huntington Theater through most of January.

Then I got a letter from Chris Toll. If you ignored the Times and chose instead to depend on Chris's letters alone for news, you would think that everyone in the world was married and a lawyer. Chris is married and a lawyer, with Holland & Hart in Denver. His wife, Erin, is married and a lawyer, too, with Ireland, Stapleton, Pryor and Pascoe. Tom Waterman, according to Chris, was a lawyer but not married until July 18. Now he is both, having wed Maria Mikalakis in Davenport, lowa. Tom, it seems, had been lawyering at Lane & Waterman in Davenport since graduating from the University of lowa law school in 1984. Maria clerked at L & W in 1986 and "despite explicit orders from his brother (a partner in the firm) to keep his hands off the summer clerks, Tom conducted a clandestine romance with Maria for the whole summer without anyone catching on." Tom being a brother and all, he wasn't canned for this gaffe, and so was married soon after, and Pancho Ryan,Dave Plough, Charlie Craig, Tim Phillips,Fred Sherman, Pete Caron, and Kent and Cathy Lewis Whittaker all were tossed summarily into the pool. Cathy's new daughter, I assume, was not, although Chris is vague on this point.

Finally, I got an impressive-looking press release, headlined "Holly Dustin joins Albert, Pastore & Ward." This arrived with a nice picture, suitable for publication. The upshot is that Al, Patsy, and Ward are attorneys, and Holly is now an associate in their litigation department—this after getting her degree from Vermont Law School and then working as assistant town attorney for Greenwich, Conn., which she defended from over-zealous young balance-beam enthusiasts. Holly lives in Greenwich.

More next month. All best.