1984

By the time you read this I hope to have tracked down our classmates in Hong Kong and Thailand. So the next class column will be about Dartmouth '84s in Asia. In the meantime I'll catch you up on the copious Xeroxed news clippings that the alumni office sends me. It's scary but somehow in this übiquitous network of ours, local paper news clippings on classmates make it all the way to Seattle, Wash., for me to see. The first comes from the Shore Line Times. "Navy Lt. Comdr. Albert E. Chaker recently received a letter of commendation while assigned aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. American." Al joined the navy in 1984 so he's probably the only classmate working for the same employer since the time we graduated. Next, hailing from Foster's Daily Democrat, JulieHoward has becom the Strafford County Superior Court's new clerk. Prior to this Julie was the assistant clerk, and before that she practiced law and worked for former state Attorney General John Arnold. Unfortunately the article doesn't tell me if she's gone on any interesting trips lately or how many kids or spouses she has. I received an article from the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader (can you believe how many newspapers there are out there?) about Diana Golden. I've written about Diana's career as a motivational speaker before, but I never read these articles without feeling amazed by the strength of her message. At the end of the article it mentioned that Diana is writing a children's book. Good luck, Diana, let me know when it's published so I can tell the class to look for it.

Okay, so here is the problem with old news clippings, Lisa Brody was the Republican challenger for the Lower Merion (Pa.) Ward One (council member, I assume) but I can't find the date on the article. Is she still a challenger? Was the article written before the last election? Either way it told me that Liz is practicing law, is married, and has a two-year-old daughter. (At least some papers give some personal information.) From The Boston Sunday Globe (finally, a paper I've heard of), Jonathan Cooke got engaged to Sarah Kay Volkman. I can only assume they are married by now. Last but not least, Stanley Sokul became Senator Judd Gregg's (R-N.H.) administrative assistant. Before that he was Gregg's chief counsel.

After running out of articles I called Peter Ellis (a secretarial ambush). It just so happens that the night before we talked he had been out with John Gilstrap, RoyForbes, and Kelly Freeman. I hope to track down "everyone at some point in the next month but this is what I was able to wrangle out of Peter that was fit to print. Peter and his wife, Heidi Vogel, are both in the film industry. Peter is an editor and Heidi is a producer. We started talking about what a hard-working business it is, at which point we figured out that Peter and Heidi have been working straight, no vacations, since July 1994. Wow. They've been in the Los Angeles area for almost five years. John Gilstrap, it turns out, is living in New York with his wife. She works for MCA Entertainment and John is the senior director of new business development for Phillips Media. Chris Bird is married and living down the street from Peter. Chris is a writer both for television and features. Rick Lowe is writing for the interactive medium up near me in Portland, Ore.

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