1978

Christine Hughes and Steve Thompson never paid much attention to one another at Dartmouth or at UVA Law School. But when they returned for their tenth-year reunion at Virginia, something was different. "We fell for each other," says Chris, who was then working in the general counsel's office at Harvard. Steve, who was lawyering in Seattle, moved east for a while. Then Chris got a job in the general counsel's office at the University of Washington, and Steve turned away from law altogether and became an algebra and calculus teacher at the Overlake School in Redmond, Wash. Last August Steve and Christine were married, with a healthy crew of '78s on hand. ChrisSimpson Brent, who grew up in Mercer Island, took the opportunity to return to her hometown from the Bay Area. Duane Peterson came from Sacramento. Anne Bagamery who flew over with her daughter Caitlin from Paris, thought she might be"the farthest-traveled guest. But Anne was disappointed to learn that Steve Murphy also flew over from France, and Paul Kuhn came from Turkey.

For six and a half years Paul lived in Turkey and worked as a geological consultant for a German-South African-Turkish mining firm. Before Paul's contract expired at the end of 1994, he was engaged to Berrin Guzel, a Turkish University art and restoration student. They were married on May 27 near the ruins of Assos on the Aegean coast ofTurkey. "It was a typical Turkish wedding, with dancing and carousing well into the night, followed by more dancing and carousing till the early morning." Steve Maynard made it from Albuquerque, Gary Clohan '77 from Canada, and Elise Erler '76 and Paul's sister Janice 86 from Washington, D.C.

Paul is now looking for gold and copper in Krygyzstan one of the central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. His home base is in Bishkek, the capital of Krygyzstan. "It is a sprawling city of wide, tree-lined streets at the edge of the northern foothills of the Central Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains). Many peaks in this part of the range exceed 15,000 feet in elevation. The higher mountains in the range are at 25,000 feet. 'Spectacular' does not adequately describe first views of these mountains. My work is to start up an exploration program for a gold and copper mining venture between a small American mining company and a Canadian exploration company. Believe me, it is an adventure in the making."

In Concord, N.H., orthopedic surgeon Jim Vailas and his attorney, Ann McLaneKuster, were seen recently in the Statehouse lobbying Senator Bruce Keough on behalf of the Lahey Hitchcock Clinic and the Bedford Ambulatory Surgical Center. They were urging Bruce to support a bill allowing ambulatory surgical centers to accommodate patients overnight for up to 24 hours of care. On the other side of the issue, Gina Mackus Balkus '79 represents the New Hampshire Hospital Association in its effort to retain the prohibition on overnight stays in ambulatory-care clinics. Concord lawyer (and former congressional candidate) Jim Bassett testified during this session on several medical tortreform measures.

At 39 Nick Lowery is now the third oldest active player in the NFL (behind Jackie Slater and Warren Moon). In the record books, Nick is still the most accurate kicker of all time, with a success rate of 80.4 percent. His 349 career field goals put him just 25 field goals away from overtaking Jan Stenerud as the most prolific field-goal kicker as well. It will be interesting to see whether Nick can make a run at George Blanda's career-scoring mark of 2,002 points. With 1,559 points so far, Nick would have to average 100 points for four more seasons. Considering that Blanda kicked until he was 48, it should be no problem for Nick to kick until he's 44.

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