1982

We continue to turn 50 at a brisk pace. I should first correct some birthday information from my last column. The award for the day with the most classmate birthdays goes to January 16 (not January 10) with nine birthdays. And I overlooked February 16, which ties for second place with September 3 with eight birthdays, although February 16 holds the record for the most ’82 birthdays in the same year. That means the American Association of Retired Persons gained eight new members on February

Edie “Ita” Weinshienk Olesker has lived in Israel for the past 27 years. She is an editor and proofreader at Targum Press, a Judaica publisher in Jerusalem. “I have a large family—I won’t write exactly how many kids I have for fear of shocking those with weak hearts.” Two of her kids are married and she became a grandmother at the beginning of last year. If anyone can beat Ita as the first ’82 grandparent, please let me know.

Joanne McMullen has been busy setting up a mini-wolfdog rescue. The idea began when she found a white wolfdog at the local dog shelter that was about to be put to sleep. She had to build a chainlink enclosure for him and is now working on his aggression issues. She has also rescued several other dogs in addition to her own dogs, a corgi mix and a chow/elkhound mix. Joanne’s father lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, so she can get back to Hanover regularly. She recently bought a beautiful wood sculpture by Brian Tomkins.

Mark “Zoner” Soane writes, “Denver is a wonderful place to live. Lively, growing city that borders one of the best grownup playgrounds in the country.” He enjoys playing platform tennis, also known as paddle tennis, a popular alternative to tennis in the winter. At Dartmouth Mark was a Tucker intern, where he worked as a teacher in a first-grade class in a parochial school in Jersey City.

Mark Krantz lives just outside Cleveland, Ohio, and is a partner in the law firm of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz. He met his wife in law school and they have three children and a yellow Lab named Lilly. Mark spent the year after Dartmouth working on a kibbutz in Israel right next to the Gaza Strip. He is a board member of the local port authority and is also involved with several local philanthropic foundations. Mark has forgotten all the German we learned together in Mainz. Schade! Another fellow Mainz LSA-er, Andy Westphal, who lives in Camas, Washington, did remember some of his German. “I was actually in Duesseldorf last year on business and ended up in a pharmacy needing to buy allergy tablets and ended up with a pharmacist who spoke virtually no English. Between my butchered German and a lot of hand signs I ended up with some pills (didn’t really help with my allergies, so I’m not sure what they were).”

Peter Fitzgerald has returned to his banking roots and started Chain Bridge Bank in McLean, Virginia. “It’s much better being a banker than a senator!”

Dan Lopresti has been promoted to full professor and chair of the computer science department at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 2003. Dan is married to Debbie Lee Wesselmann ’81 and he is a high school classmate of my cousin Yvette!

Gene Co has been living in New York City the past 15 years and working on Wall Street. He was first with the Blackstone Group and now is with an international mergers and acquisitions advisory boutique called Compass Advisers.

Happy spring!

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