1965

In, The Two Gentlemen ofVerona, William Shake- speare told of friends who ventured forth from a city in northern Italy. When the class of 1965 speaks of our own "two gentlemen of Verona," we probably have in mind classmates who came to Dartmouth from the small New Jersey town of the same name.

Mark Straus graduated from Verona High School in 1961 after extensive involvement in the school's musical program as a pianist and drummer. At Dartmouth, he was in the College band and, after some consideration of mathematics, selected history as his major. During summers in New Jersey, Mark worked for the Prudential Insurance Company in nearby Newark. Following graduation, he accepted a fulltime position in the company's underwriting department. Three years later, he transferred to a Los Angeles office and shifted his career toward employee-benefit consulting. In 1975, he left Prudential and joined Alexander & Alexander, a leading insurance broker. That same year, he found a rewarding way to use his life-long interest in music by appearing on the television show "Name that Tune" and winning the grand prize. Recently, Mark became a consultant for the Wyatt Company and is now working with major corporate clients in areas such as health care cost containment and executive compensation. He and his wife, Cherri, live in Sherman Oaks, Calif., have been married 24 years, and are the parents of two sons, 16-year-old Eric and 14-year-old Darren.

Rick Bogel also had an interest in music and mathematics, and, like Mark, was a member of the Verona High School "Hillbilly" marching band. At Dartmouth, the two decided not to be roommates, but did select the same dormitory freshman year and spent much time together. Rick was an excellent trombone player and die leader of both the Barbary Coast Orchestra and the Sultans jazz group. Discovering academic strength in the literary field, Rick selected English as his major. In 1969, he joined the faculty of Connecticut College and subsequently received a Ph.D. in English from Yale. In 1982, he accepted a position at Cornell University, and was given responsibility for the freshman writing seminar. On sabbatical in London in 1987, Rick studied the writings of Samuel Johnson and wrote a soon-to-be-published book, The Dream ofMy Brother: An Essay on Johnson's Authority. He also revived his interest in jazz by playing trombone in several English clubs and now performs regularly with a quintet in the Ithaca area. Rick and his wife, Lynda, met when they were participants in a French exchange program in 1964. She presently is a teacher of literature and film criticism at Cornell. They have two children, Alexander, a 16-year-old Cornell freshman, and Elizabeth, an 11- year-old Rick describes as both an alto sax player and frustrated New York Yankee fan.

Our two Verona classmates seem to have fared quite well since leaving the comfortable home of their youth. These hardworking friends have reached out and accepted the advice of one of Shakespeare's gentlemen who suggests it is better:

"To see the wonders of the world abroad Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."

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