1981

I got a new job, and it's odd to go into an office after 27 years not doing that. Yup, commute into D.C. with Lolly, up an elevator, into a 12-by-12 space, computer on, coat on a hook on the back of the door and coffee made in a badly lit little kitchen. Many of you know the routine; I did not, but I got used to it pretty quickly, my colleagues and the work are pretty cool, and the kitchen may be badly lit but the coffees darn good.

Classmate Tim Seeley has been going to an office, and it looks like he'll get a bigger one, maybe with a view. For seven years Tim's been the head of the upper school at North Cross School in Roanoke, Virginia, after stints at Lawrenceville and Northfield Mt. Hermon, and he just got promoted to that school's headmaster, effective at the school year's end.

It's a much smaller place than Lawrenceville or NMH; with 520 kids from pre-K to 12th grade, Tim gets to know "personally every single student, as well as their parents." This school is the only true independent school west of Charlottesville and Tim, his wife, Susan, and family live on campus in a drafty old house that predates the Civil War. Their oldest, Jeremy, is at Wake Forest, daughter Demi is at the local community college and Molly boards at Episcopal High School, up here in the D.C. area.

Had a great chat with Bobby Davenport; he, wife Liz and their three cherubs live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Bob is the president and owner of Ten Foot Properties, a property management firm with a focus on commercial, agricultural and forested land.

He and I had a long talk about the nine years of work he did for the Chattanooga office of the Trust for Public Land, expanding that office and acquiring and conveying more than 8,000 acres in the Chattanooga metro area with a market value of more than $30 million bucks. Shy and retiring type that Bob is, he did not mention the award that he received from the Friends of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, the 2007 Drew Haskins Award of Merit. Bob was honored for his work as an advisor to the park and the friends group in identifying and advocating for the preservation of historic lands adjacent to Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

And Bob and Liz's three kids? Bess is a sophomore at the University of Georgia, Brads a junior at McCallie and Charlies in the sixth grade there—the same school that Bob and cousin Gordon Davenport terrorized 30 years ago.

Brian Hitchcock and I got Linkedln, and then he e-mailed that he and his wife, Karen, are empty-nesters. His oldest, Matt, is a first-year med student at UVA and daughter Corey is a junior at Indiana's Anderson University Karen's been teaching English for a home school consortium, and Brian's moved into the nonprofit world. "I was a partner and CFO for a Cincinnati-based manufacturing firm until October 2005," he wrote. I left that to take over Self Sustaining Enterprises Inc. as executive director. We just finished the start-up of a water well drilling business in Nigeria. We have seven Nigerians working the business and just commissioned our first well."

And on an enormously sad note: classmate Judy Gambrill Brewer died on December 27,2 007. She's survived by her husband, Tom, and children Simon and Jeremy. You can honor Judy with donations in her name to the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital, Norwalk, Connecticut.

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