1978

"The launch is scheduled for . . . the launch is.scheduled for . . . the launch is scheduled for. . . ."If you had called Jim Newman's answering machine in late August, you would have heard the message above, reflecting the fact that Jim (and the rest of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery) had endured the frustration of having their launch postponed four times—in one instance it was just three seconds prior to liftoff. Jim's phone message concluded by saying the launch was set for sometime between the third and the tenth of September. It actually happened on the 12th.

Speaking of space travel, Dave Speer is one guy about whom you can't say, "He's no rocket scientist." Because, of course, he is. I have a report that Dave has moved from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Cape Canaveral back to the one in Pasadena, where he used to work a few years back. (I have a hunch that the Mars probe might be buried in the back of Dave's car.)

When some journalists asked Bill Clinton what books he was reading lately, the one piece of fiction on his bedside table at that particular moment was Good Night, Irene, a mystery by Jan Burke, spouse of our own TimBurke. The Burkes live in Long Beach, Calif., where Tim teaches English to Japanese people through his company, English Advantage. Tim also plays guitar and sings with the Visitors, a ten-piece R&B band that also features Bart Gawboy on saxophone. Bart is the manager of development in the digital-media group of Information International Inc. His wife, Jody, is a behavior analyst with the Work Training Program. Their daughter, Sarah Hailey, is 15 months old. Bart also reports that he regularly plays basketball with Steve Peterson, who is involved with teaching computer literacy in Los Angeles.

In the summer roundup of '78s in the sports world, I neglected to mention that Doug"Goop" Bradley coaches the Star Lausanne Hockey Club in Lausanne, Switzerland, and that Diane Boyer-Irwin is president of Skea Ltd., a high-fashion ski clothing manufacturer and distributor in Vail, Colo. She and her husband, Dudley Irwin, a broker for Smith Barney, have one daughter, Jocelyn, who's two and a half.

Mary-Ellyn Lennon Tarzy is teaching three-year-olds at the Carmel Mountain Preschool in Poway, Calif. Her husband, Neil Tarzy '76, is finishing his residency as a family doctor. They have two kids Jill 4 and Alex 7. Joe Duncan teaches Spanish and French at Gilman School in Baltimore, where he's been ever since he got out of Dartmouth. "I thought I'd do it for about two years, then go to law school," says Joe, "but I discovered that I love teaching. " Joe also coaches cross-country and track, takes students on trips to Spain, is active in Teachers of Color in Private and Independent Schools, and recently got his master's degree in Spanish Literary Criticism at Johns Hopkins.

If you want to know whether to buy Amgen or sell Biotec, give Barbara Dau Hoffman a call. Back in June Barb left her job as director of business development at Synergen Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Boulder, Colo., for a spot as managing director and senior analyst of biotech and medical-device firms in the Denver office of Piper J affray Inc.

Barb has a Peter Lynch-like track record in picking high-tech health stocks: As an analyst for Boettcher & Co., her picks returned 27.5 percent in 1990. As the portfolio manager for Invesco Trust's Global Health Sciences Fund, she increased the fund's assets from $300 million in May 1991 to more than $1 billion by.january 1992. Barb's husband, Steve Hoffman, is a doctor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and a founder of Somatogen, a firm that is trying to produce and market artificial plasma.

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