Newsmakers

amend the U.S. Constitution in the past 25 years, reported the Journal. Daniels' proposed amendment: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferrred upon unmarried couples or groups." He has spent hours discussing the legalities of marriage with top scholars—including former Judge Robert Bork, who helped Daniels craft the amendment language-and says his opposition to what he sees as social decay is rooted in "several In the last issue we reported on lead plan- tiff Hillary Smith Goodridge '78 and the case she brought to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which ruled that homo- sexual couples have the same right to marry as heterosexual couples. Now we report on an alum who's on the other side of the issue: Matt Daniels '85 made Page i of The Wall Street Journal on February 23. Daniels, who formed the Alliance for Marriage three years ago to promote conservative family-oriented issues, has been pushed into the center of a hot-button topic in the 2004 presidential campaign and one of the most serious efforts to decades of social science evidence, which strongly indicates children do best when raised by a mother and a father," he told the Journal. But while donations to the al- liance surged to $1.3 million after Daniels announced his proposal in 2001, the po- litical momentum surged only after Pres- ident Bush announced on February 24 that he would support an amendment banning gay marriage. Daniels says he is open to minor changes in the text as any proposal works its way through Congress this spring. "We are fully open to minor changes to the wording that make it clear, explicit and unambiguous," he told TheNew York Times....Tom Pasquini '00—no doubt influenced by his many chilly days on the Hill—was part of a team of re- searchers at MIT who cooled sodium gas to one-half-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the lowest temperature ever recorded, according to a fall issue of Science. It marked the first time a gas was cooled below 1 nanokelvin, which is "a lit- tlelike running a mile in less than four minutes for the first time," said Dr. Wolf- gang Ketterle, a Nobel laureate MIT physics professor who was co-leader of the research team funded by NASA. While we are unsure whether the big ther- mometer at our local bank is equipped to handle nanokelvins, the technology used to reach such ultracool temperatures could lead to improvements in precision measuring instruments. The chilling news also made it into the Guinness Bookof World Records....The riches-to-rags tale of Peter Jaquith '58 made both The TodayShow and TheNewYork Times last fall. Once a high-roller among high-rollers, working at Lazard Freres, Jaquith was right-hand man for legendary dealmaker Felix Rohatyn. By the late 1980s he had apartments and condos on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Palm Springs and on the beach in Santa Monica. He owned three Mercedes and a Bentley. He was rubbing elbows with some of the biggest of bigwigs. Then Jaquith discovered crack cocaine. Now he lives in a spartan apartment in Pasadena and struggles to make ends meet; according to the Times story, some of his more recent jobs have included deliveryman and toilet cleaner. Jaquith has been sober for five years: "I have faced my demons and come to peace with myself, he told The Times. "I have become a person my children can love." Desperate for money, according to The Times, he is still looking for work and is trying to write his memoirs....Sherri Oberg '82,Tu'86, double-dipped in Hanover; she went to Tuck School to receive her M.B.A. four years after graduating from the Col- lege. After a few years as a venture capital- ist she founded Acusphere Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company based in Water- town, Massachusetts, that develops drugs geared toward meeting clinical needs in cardiology, oncology and asthma. "I liked being a venture capitalist," Oberg told Mass High Tech, where she was profiled in the December "Movers and Innovators section. "But I found I liked being an en- trepreneur better and using my skills on the business side of medicine." Thanks to her previous line of work as a CEO of a venture-backed company focused on human tissue engineering, Oberg has generated close to $lOO million from venture backers. Her vision started small—"l started in the basement of my house and was the only full-time em- ployee; my husband put up a sign that identified it as worldwide headquar- ters"—but has developed into a compa- ny of 55 employees that was one of last years few initial public offerings in the life sciences sector....Here's another entrepreneurial tale that started in a basement: When Lucie Haswell Voves '86 was a Dartmouth student, she and future husband Joe Voves started a photography service that shot pictures of parties at night and sold them to the students the next day. Now they're focusing on other accomplishments, as owners of Church Hill Classics, a diploma and award framing business in Danbury, Connecticut, that reached No. 291 on Inc. magazine's 2003 list of the 500 fastestgrowing firms. The company—which started in Haswell's basement but now runs in an area covering nearly 15,000 square feet—sold nearly $2 million worth of products in 2002 and provides custom designs to about 600 schools. "People invest so much in college," Lucie said. "They want to remember it with something special."...Rachel Dratch '88 may best be known on Saturday Night Live for her role as the Boston-area teenager Denise. It is a role she knows well, having grown up just outside Boston in Lexington before majoring in drama at Dartmouth. "Not a lot of funny people up there," she said dryly to The BostonGlobe in late January, though she admits one series of skits was inspired by a former professor s salacious use of the word "luv-uh."...New Hampshire is thrown into the national spotlight every four years, when politicans, their entourages and the attendant media descend for the first-in-the-country presidential primary. But this past January was a relatively quiet one for Republican Tom Rath '67. Nevertheless, his role as a political power broker in the Granite State cannot be underestimated, according to a story that ran in late January in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times. "I think the eight days between the lowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are the best eight days in American politics," Rath told The Times. "It is the Super Bowl of American politics, and the chance to be a part of that is something I think is a great privilege." Rath got his political start when he was at Dartmouth and volunteered to help New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller '30 in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. Today his list of clients reads like a Republican Who's Who—and he already has people bidding for his services in 2008. "There is always a presidential campaign going on here," he said. "It never stops. The campaign for 2008 will start the night of the election in 2004." Rath also has some memories that many of us can only imagine: "When Bob Dole comes up here, he'll say, 'Drive me for the day,' and we'll just talk, not as majority leader and driver but as friends," said Rath. 'And when we're in a crowd, and President Bush picks me out and asks, 'How are we doing?' and talks baseball with me, that's pretty special."...Pediatricians Angie Erdrich '87 and husband Sandeep Patel have launched a series of calendars featuring Native-American communities in order to promote heal thy living for children and families on the reservations. The most recent work is "The 2004 Turtle Mountain Chippewa Good Healthy Life Calendar, which was a big hit during the holidays. "My goal is to share positive health messages with a wider audience in a format that is catchy" Erdrich—herself a Turtle Mountain Chippewa—told The Minot Daily News in North Dakota. "As a bonus, I think the calendar helps promote community pride. A major message in the calendar is that we are our own best medicine.".. .Gerald Phillips '47 and his daughter, Stacy Phillips '80, work together at a law firm—in this case one with her name on it. The duo clearly has a great rapport, as the American Bar Association Journal reported last fall in an article titled "We Are Family." They have always enjoyed learning from each other: Gerald taught her how to spell with crossword puzzles and honed her math skills by playing blackjack;when Stacy started the firm her father worked in a corner of her office so he could learn family law. She's a good teacher: Gerald was named a "Top 50 Neutral" (mediator and arbitrator) last December by the California Daily Journal. But they aren't all business. Stacy still calls him "Dad" at the office, and "other people in the firm call me 'Law Dad,' " says Gerald, a former VP at United Artists Corp....Another alum who does not seem the retiring sort is Julius "Westy"Westheimer '38, whom mid-Atlantic Big Greeners know as the enthusiastic investment advisor ofWBAL-TV in Baltimore. Cynics may label him a showman as much as a salesman, but the fact is he's a fixture on the Baltimore scene and people trust Westy's word; over the summer, the biggest winner in the history of the Maryland lottery jackpot called him for advice before revealing herself to the public. "There must have been 200 brokers in Maryland waiting for a call like this," Westheimer told Kiplinger.com last fall. "The stars were aligned."

Tom Pasquini '00

Gerald Phillips '47 Stacy Phillips '80

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." —MATT DANIELS '85, PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, IN THE WALL STREET JO URNAL FEBRUARY 23

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "People don't laugh when [candidates] come up here and say, 'I want to run for president. We're like a laboratory. People can come up here, they can find their voices." —N.H. POLITICAL POWER BROKER TOM RATH '67, IN THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES JANUARY 26

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Sometimes I feel like I'm too much of a fan because I get excited at games and I want to stand up and cheer, but I have to just sit there and watch." -KATIE BLACKBURN '86, CINCINNATI BENGALS EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, IN THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE JANUARY 27