1963

Most of us have reached 65 and, if we haven't retired, are giving it lots of thought. At least I am.

Rob Stephenson, a Harvard-trained city planner, was part of that first wave of early retirees. Around the time he started running the Boston- Fenway Program in the late 1970s Rob bought a 19th-century house in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, an historic village in the southwest corner near Massachusetts (Willa Cather is buried behind the meetinghouse that opened the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill). He finished renovating in time for the Jaffrey centennial last year. He also wrote and produced a 147-page village history and a 115-page commemorative centennial keepsake, both crammed with photos and maps. Rob's other passion is Antarctica, instilled by Herb West and fulfilled in part by Robs Web site, antarcticcircle.org, a non-commercial resource on Antarctica and the South Polar region.

Dave Halsted, ambassador to Chad from 1996 to 1999, retired after more than 30 years with the State Department in 2001. He too lives in a 19th- century New Hampshire house (in Bradford, south of New London and about five miles from the southern tip of Lake Sunapee), a lot different from N'Djamena, formerly Fort Lamy, the capital of Chad. Dave and Michele spend a lot of time fixing up their 1814 house, including pumping water out of the dirt basement in the spring. Dave earned his masters in international affairs at George Washington and was a Foreign Service officer in Washington with stops in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. He has four children: Charles, a freshman at Kenyon; Sarah; and sons Edward and David, who run a video game manufacturing business in Wisconsin.

Dan Bracken is winding down a fascinating nearly 30-year-old business in electrical consulting in Portland, Oregon. A physics major, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford, started as an assistant professor of physics at Reed College and moved on to Bonneville Power Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, to work on environmental issues related to electrical power distribution and high voltage transmission lines. In 1981 Dan started his own consulting firm serving utilities around the country, either directly or through Electric Power Research International, an assessment center funded by the utilities. In 1980 he performed an environmental study and monitoring program on a new high voltage line for New England Electric with Jim Hornig, an environmental sciences professor, and the late John Walsh, a physics professor, both from Dartmouth. Son David is a reporter for the Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer, Hillary '92 is a women's health researcher in New York and Jennifer works in the Portland office for the prominent national Web site design firm, Avenue A Razor Fish. Wife Jeanne is retired from managing nonprofits. Dan and Jeanne love their summer home on the Oregon coast, 90 miles west of Portland.

I regret to report the deaths of Scott Little and Peter Rosier. Details will follow in this column or the obituary section.

60 Madison Ave., Suite 910, NewYork, NY 10010; (212) 447-9292,; harry@zlokower.com