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Two classmates have made important life decisions and have chosen to share them through this column. I am honored and humbled to serve as a link between their feelings and their friends and colleagues.

Dr. William Ramos has had two, and now a third, medical career. He practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Reno, Nev., for eight years before studying pathology and working as a medical examiner in New York City. Since 1992 Bill has, in his own words, been "a fulltime abortion provider," first in New York and, since June 1996, in Nevada where he maintains abortion practices in Las Vegas and Reno.

"I had always kept fairly quiet about my activities because I did not want to risk losing friends or status within the community." Bill wrote me, "but the increasing militancy of the 'pro-life' movement has made me question that position. I now feel the need to stand up and say, 'I am an abortion provider, and I am a damned good one.' If this offends my friends, I am sorry. I hope my outspoken status will rally my old friends and perhaps win me some new ones." Bill can be reached at Box 263, 2550 East Desert Inn Road, Las Vegas, NV 89121.

As some of you know, I periodically send out requests for information for this column. One such note recently was sent to Jeff Winograd. This, in part, is the e-mail reply I received "Your letter asking for news...could not have arrived at a more appropriate time for me. I have been going through a tremendous personal transformation which I wish to share with my classmates...

"In the past year," the message continued, "I have quit my job as a radiologist, gotten divorced, and realized that I wanted to live the rest of my life as a woman. In October (of '96), I legally changed,my name to Jessica and began the process which will culminate next September with sex reassignment surgery."

Jessica invites correspondence at . And yes, JW is already thinking what you may be thinking. Here's the P.S. "I don't know if this makes me the first female graduate of Dartmouth, but if it does, so much the better!"

Robin Carpenter is president of Carpenter Analytical Services, a Hanoverbased investment analysis firm, and is, on occasion, quoted and referred to in The Wall Street Journal. But what prompted Robin to write was he recently (successfally) concluded Ledyard Canoe Club's "Paddle-T o-The-Sea.

That's the due-south voyage on the Connecticut from the Club's Hanover clubhouse, where Dick Birnie saw the group off, over cold and wet mountain water, across numerous portages (those darned dams), with nights under the stars (except one evening in the wrestling room at Loomis Chaffee School and encouragement from Chuck Vernon).

Robin loved it. Twenty-five undergrads and one other alumni, salty veteran Walker Weed '40, who was making his 11th pilgrimage. "He was the strongest paddler," Robin reports with reverence, "and the sawiest." They'll be saying that about Mr. Carpenter in a decade or so!

Two physician classmates have received recertification. Dr. Brian Beattie, a family practice doctor at the Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster and Groveton, N.H., since 1973, was recertified as a diplomat in the American Board of Family Practice. And over in Lewiston, Maine, Dr. Larry Hopperstead, director of trauma services at Central Maine Medical Center, has been recertified by the American Board of Surgery. Larry's also been elected an active member of the New England Surgical Society, an organization limited to 200 active members.

Pass along your news, your friends are waiting.

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