1956

Someone once asked Lon Dring, "What do you do?" "I do good," he quipped. For 25 years the Rev. Lincoln Selwyn Dring Jr., known simply as "Lon," has been the executive director of Community Ministry of Montgomery County, Md., a group of 103 congregations of various religions include Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist, that has put their faith into action.

Recently 250 people from business, government, religious, and nonprofit organizations and a host of volunteers were scheduled to gather at a breakfast in honor of Lon and Community Ministry for their quarter-century of service.

The event was conceived by three corporations—Marriott, Lockheed Martin, and Gazette Newspapers—under the banner "County Companies Caring," with a goal of raising considerable funds among local businesses.

Lon majored in philosophy and English at Dartmouth and went on to attend Union Theological Seminary where he wrote a thesis with a title that seems relevant to the rest of his life: "The Theology of Karl Barth as a Basis for Political Decision."

His journey has led him to other places, most notably five years as an associate pastor at the Church of the Good Neighbor in East Harlem, N.Y., and six years as a chaplain at Howard University.

In summarizing the work of Community Ministry in its annual report this year, Lon wrote succinctly, "The hungry were fed, the naked were clothed, the homeless were sheltered, and the friendless were loved. That, in and of itself, was no small accomplishment." [From the Montgomery Village Gazette, Rockville, Md.]

Rick Foster, who has worked as a banking lawyer and a consultant to banks for the better part of four decades, has called it quits. He and his wife, Gretchen, have retired and are now devoting themselves to "some things that we had to put off, such as writing, travel, and spending time with our grandchildren."

For years Rick and Gretchen were fixtures in Michigan's banking community. Rick spent 25 years as a lawyer in Lansing working with countless banks—large and small—in matters concerning commercial banking, branch banking, BHC formations, M&As, and all sorts of litigation. In 1986 he left Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, of Lansing, to form Banconsult Inc. His consulting firm handled a variety of tasks ranging from M&A work, to mystery shopping for bank clients, to serving as an expert witness.

Gretchen Foster is a woman of many accomplishments, too. She has a bachelor's degree from Smith College and an M.A. and Ph.D., both in English, from MSU. Gretchen, like her husband, is an author and consultant. And for 10 years she taught college English at MSU and other schools in Michigan. For 25 years the Fosters raised Lipizzan show horses on a 135-acre farm in Laingsburg, a rural community situated a few miles outside the Lansing urban area. At one time, the couple had 35 Lipizzans, handsome animals whose ancestry is traced to Austria and Romania.

These days, Rick and Gretchen no longer own the farm, and they are down to just one Lipizzan. "Twenty-five years of raising horses has convinced us chat just one horse is exactly the right number of horses to own," says Rick. [From the Michigan Banker. ]

P.O. Box 1031, Burlington, NC 27216; (336) 227-1153

Al one lime Rick Foster kept 35 Lipizzan horses, handsome animals whose ancestry is traced to Austria and Romania. TOM HARPER'56