1978

"I love this planet," declared Admiral James Stockdale in the vice presidential debate. As it turns out, many '78s do too.

Dan "Harpo" Reicher, for one, is an international figure on the Green Scene. As senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Dan forces the Department of Energy to comply with environmental and safety laws at its nuclear facilities. For a few years he's also been assisting the Russians with their terrible environmental problems; he even helped their Parliament draft a law on nuclear waste management. Recently he was appointed to due National Academy of Sciences board on radioactive waste, a high honor. His wife, Carole Parker, is a legislative aide to Gerry Sikorski (R-Minnesota), one of the greenest Congressmen this side of Al Gore. (And, of course, Dan is the hottest saxophonist this side of Bill Clinton.)

The federal weapons complex wishes Melinda "Mindy" Kassen would just go away, but that's not going to happen. As a crusading litigator for the Environmental Defense Fund in Boulder, Colo., Mindy makes sure the federal government cleans up the radioactive waste at places like Colorado's Rocky Flats weapons plant, which made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. "The estimate for the cleanup is $150 billion," says Mindy "We are trying to open up the process and get a little more public input."

Thank Jeff Petrich For the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which protected more than a million acres of old-growth forest in southeast Alaska. As counsel to George Miller (D-California), chairman of the House Committee of Interior & Insular Affairs, Jeff wrote and pushed that bill through Congress, and in his day-to-day work he slugs it out over some of the toughest environmental questions around.

"These are issues in which there's no compromise, " says Jeff. "Either you cut parts of the forest or not, either you drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge [where Martha "Tako"Reynolds is a biologist] or you don't. One way or another, people are very unhappy."

Jeff occasionally runs across John Ambler, a federal government-affairs representative for Texaco in Washington.

Elsewhere in the Nation's Capital, DonFrankel handles Superfund cases in the Northeast as a trial attorney in the Environmental Enforcement section of the Justice Department; and Ellen Meyer's husband, Paul Shorb (Williams '78), a lawyer at Beveridge & Diamond, counsels companies on how to comply with hazardous-waste laws.

"A circuitous career path has led me to southern New Mexico," writes Kevin Bixby, "where I live with my wife, Lisa, and two dogs, surrounded by chili fields and pecan trees." Kevin directs the Southwest Environmental Center in Las Craces; Lisa runs Project del Rio, an environmental education program along the U.S./Mexico border.

In the private sector, Bob "Buck" Kelly runs his own recycling company, Kelly Green Environmental Services in Exeter, N.H. For two years Buck and Jeff Nadherny (whose day job is with Harvard Real Estate) have been trying to start a composting and recycling facility in the Greater Boston area.

In academia, Steve Pacala is a professor of theoretical ecology at Princeton; and CeliaChen is back at Dartmouth's biology department getting her Ph.D. in ecology. Already an expert on ocean environments—she's done work for the National Academy of Sciences Marine Board—Celia will soon be a freshwater expert as well.

Betsy Keefauver Lyons helped found Bethlehem Work on Waste, a citizen's group in Bethlehem, N.Y. "So far we've kicked out two garbage incinerators," says Betsy. "We've also started intensive recycling programs and do a lot of educational programs in the schools. We go in and play garbage games with kids." Husband Jim Lyons, an ob-gyn, is also a Work on Waste member, as are neighbors John '76 and Peggy McGrath Sherman. The Lyonses have two kids, Caroline 7 and Elizabeth 5.

Out there in the trenches, Nancy Luebbert is with the Alaska Fire Service in Fort Wainwright, Alaska; Grace Newell works for the U.S. Forest Service in Truckee, Calif., and EricSchulz practices the ecologically correct techniques of thinning and timberstand improvement in his four-person logging company, S&L Forest Products, in Johnson, Vt. Eric's wife, Amy, runs a totally organic wholesale and retail flower business, and when the Schulzes built their home they also created a pond and stocked it with largemouth bass. Eric and Amy have three kids: Lucas 6-1/2, Anna 5, and Alexander 2.

Inspired by these eco-heroes, I promise to have a better attitude about suffering through the video of "Fern Gully" with my daughter. Long live the spotted owls!

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