1977

John Symer and his wife, Coco Wiedmer, are both professional oboists. They live in Haddon Township, N.J., outside Philadelphia, and both are currently in the Bay-Atlantic Symphony. John also repairs oboes at his shop in Collingwood. Coco teaches oboe as an adjunct professor at the College of New Jersey and is a substitute player for both the Philadelphia and New Jersey symphonies. They also freelance, playing frequently in concerts.

In high school, John intended to play the bassoon. But he mixed up the names of the instruments and received an oboe, and the rest is history. "The oboe is smaller than the bassoon, and it turned out to be better—easier to carry around." After receiving his master's degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, John worked for an oboe maker in Baltimore. In the early 1980s he was wooed to the Philadelphia area by the oboe players there. "Philly is sort of a mecca for oboe. The Philadelphia Orchestra is really wonderful and those are the kind of players [an oboe craftsman] really likes to work for." John Mayfield wrote to compare notes after reading my account of our trip to Paris last July. "I am disappointed that no one flashed me along the Seine when I was there a couple of years ago. Haven't been flashed since an intro math class back in 1974." That bit of nostalgia from the heyday of streaking caused me to recall yet another event from our recent trip to Paris. During a midnight boatride on the Seine, Joyce and I were mooned from the Left Bank just upstream from Notre Dame. I forgot to ask Evy Chan if that too was a genuinely Parisian experience or if I just attract this stuff. Anyway, John reports that, except for living in Hawaii, there is nothing too dramatic in his life: "Children (Christy, 7, and Kimberly, 9), work at Bank of Hawaii and more community activities than I have time for."

Wendy Bowser Arnett, my pal from the language study program in Goslar, Germany, checked in to find some missing classmates. "Meine Menza ist kaput! I have been out of touch for quite some time. Unfortunately, I don't use the German, but two of my kids are taking it and my daughter went to Rostock, Germany, on an exchange last summer. She loved it and wants to go back. Who wouldn't? Do you ever keep in touch with the other Goslar people—Dave Rettig '75 and Jim Van Duys?"

David Torrey and family are busy on all fronts in Cambridge, Mass. "The big new shingle-style barn I designed as partner at Claude Menders Architects Inc. is being built in Weston as its multi-generational community center. My wife, Elizabeth, enjoys her speech pathology and feeding work with preschoolers at the Perkins School for the Blind. We like our neighborhood in Cambridgeport (between MIT and Harvard), and have been slowly renovating our two-family home there since 1988. I am leading (on drums) my parent/teacher/student and Parental Guidance at my children's school. I'll be singing and dancing in the solstice at Sanders Theater with the "Christmas Revels," this year with an Italian Renaissance theme. My daughters (14 and 11) and I have been enjoying performing with "Revels" since 1996 in shows and on two recent CDs. Look us up!"

If you can't get to Cambridge for the show, I guess you can always buy the CD.

14102 Beckley Trace, Louisville, KY 40245; alan.macdonald.77@ alum.dartmouth.org or amacdonald@brown todd.com