1974

Charles Donovan '43 was his class secretary for 10 years and, sympathizing with my plight of always needing copy for this column, he sent me news about his daughter and our classmate Mary Donovan. Judge Louis Sands, chief U.S. district court judge for the middle district of Georgia, appointed Mary to serve as chairperson of the board of directors for the new Federal Community Defender Organization, a nonprofit corporation that runs a federal community defender program serving indigent defendants. Mary graduated from Emory law school and practiced criminal defense law for 10 years before joining the school of law at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She is dean of students and teaches federal criminal law and dispute resolution. Mary's husband, John Cole, attended Harvard as an undergraduate, graduated from Mercer law school and is now the vice president of university admissions at Mercer. Maily and John have a son, Noah, 10 years old. Noah's close friend in Macon is his second cousin, Sam Donovan Jenkins, grandson of Jack Donovan '38, Mary's uncle and a great Dartmouth athlete.

In March Poisoned Pen Press published Rick Shefchik's first novel, Amen Corner, a thriller that takes place at Augusta National Golf Club during the Masters tournament. Rick plans this novel as the first in a series of sports-related thrillers featuring the same lead character, Sam Skarda an ex-Minneapolis police detective and Dartmouth alum who played on the varsity golf team as a student in Hanover. The idea struck Rick, an avid golfer, while he was watching a Masters practice round at Augusta in 2005. Rick left his career as a journalist in December to pursue his desire to write fiction, combining writing with his love of sports, especially golf For the past 25 years he had been a television critic, features reporter, syndicated columnist and sportswriter at the St Paul Pioneer Press. In Hanover Rick was an editor of The Dartmouth and a creative writing major. Rick and his wife, Barbara, live in Stillwater, Minnesota. Barbara is a volunteer coordinator for the Medical Reserve Corps in Stillwater. They have a daughter, Claire, who graduated in December from the University of Arizona, and a son, David, who is a senior this year at Stillwater high school.

Fred C. Church Insurance, one of the largest privately owned independent agencies in New England, recently appointed Herman Laturnau chief executive officer. Herman was a math major at Dartmouth. After teaching high school math for five years he earned an M. B.A. from the University of New Hampshire. Herman joined Fred C. Church in 1985 and holds CPCL and CLU professional designations. He lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire, with his wife, Mary, and their two daughters. Alison is 22 and a senior at UConn; Lindsey is 20 and a sophomore at Southern New Hampshire University.

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