Mead Over has been at the intersection of health care and economics for more than 30 years. And he credits two Dartmouth mentors for his career trajectory. John Rassias taught Mead French and “hijacked” him to Burkina Faso, where he served in the first Peace Corps program there building water wells and acquiring a lifelong passion for helping developing countries. Paul Shannon at Thayer gave Mead a summer job during which he learned computer programming, an essential for his subsequent academic pursuits.
Mead earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, spent 10 years teaching economics at Williams and Boston University and worked for the World Bank for 20 years. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. His most recent book, The Economics of Effective AIDS Treatment: Evaluating Policy Options for Thailand (2006), reflects his focus on the economics of health care interventions, especially AIDS.
Mead met his future wife, Elizabeth King, a labor economist, at the World Bank, where she is now director of the education department. Their daughters Alexandra, 18, and Veronica, 14, attend Sidwell Friends school in Washington, D.C., and are still excited about their new schoolmate, fifth-grader Malia Obama.
Still practicing No. 1: Dr. Jim Keating, a radiologist, is back at work in Diamondhead, Mississippi, on the hurricane-hit Gulf Coast. Dr. Jim Cinberg takes “care of people with balance problems as a doc (physician and surgeon)” and teaches the subject at a doctorate program in New Jersey. After 35 years Dr. Walt Harrison sold his solo pediatric practice in Massachusetts and has joined a large pediatric group in Nashville, Tennessee, seeking milder weather and to be near one of his daughters.
Still practicing No. 2: Dr. Bill Ramos owns a large gynecology practice in Las Vegas and is “very aggressive in supplying and prescribing contraception.” Bill, together with his second wife, has seven children and five grandchildren. Dr. Bob MacCarty is a professor of radiology at the Mayo Clinic where his research involves gastrointestinal tract imaging and colonography.
Don Reis is spending the first six months of 2009 teaching middle school science at the Mercedes-Benz International School in Pune, India.
After 25 years at the HallStar Co., a leading manufacturer of performance chemical additives for a wide variety of plastic polymers and sun care products, 20 of those years as CEO, Jay Vincent is retiring, sort of. He will remain chairman and continue serving on various boards in the chemicals and materials industry.
When Pete Barber is inducted into the Wearers of the Green in May he will join classmates Brian Beattie, Tom Clarke, Ed Long and Bruce McKissock in what is, in effect, Dartmouth’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
There’s still time to hit the trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the class mini-reunion and birthday party on May 22-25 that Jim Lus- tenader and others have masterminded. Great events, great activities, a great place to stay and, of course, great folks to be with. All the details can be found on the ’66 Web site at www.alum.dartmouth.org/classes/66
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