There are always a few classmates who check in from foreign places and this month it's Larry Laster (Egypt) and Glen Kendall (France and Great Britain). Larry has been in Egypt for the last 2 1/2 years working as a senior financial officer for the largest steel group in Egypt. He's been to the usual places (Red Sea, Valley of the Kings, Sinai, Cairo) but he has also earned a PADI scuba diving certificate and has learned to speak Arabic. Glen and his Dutch wife, Ems, live part of the year in the south of France, near Aix-en-Provence, and the rest in London. Professionally, he's doing some writing, and is a volunteer teacher of English and computers at the local junior high school two days a week, which he finds rewarding and challenging, especially since he began learning French only a year ago.
I heard a vague and creatively inaccurate rumor that Sandy Wurmfeld was living on a boat. So I tracked him down and found out that he's been vacation sailing on his boat for many years, but he spends most of his time as an artist in NYC, where he has been a professor at Hunter College since 1967. Back in April when I heard from him, the boat was in Grenada W.I., where he left it after sailing down the island chain from St. John last summer. He'll sail back home in a leisurely fashion next year. He is currently working on a large painting for an exhibition in December at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany. The painting, 90 feet in circumference, is the first known non-representational 360-degree panorama painting or cyclorama. Check it out at www.keom.de .
The concept of retiring at our tender age still bothers some, but David deCalesta is embracing the completion of a research career with the Forest Service and will be relocating in 2001 to the Finger Lakes region of New York to consult and do some research and teaching at Syracuse. He'll be in Hanover for the November 11 commemoration for Bob Blackman.
On behalf of the class, I excuse Kim and John Fishel for missing the 35th reunion: Their daughter, Karina Charlene, was born on October 9, 1999. Congratulations are also offered to Roger Simon, who is writing a screenplay for Helen Hunt at Disney Studios. In January he will be directing his own screenplay The Gardener starring Andy Garcia.
PR Newswire reports that John Lane has been named chairman of the board of Medix Resources, which provides Internet-based healthcare communication, data integration and transaction software. John has been a consultant since retiring from being a managing director at J.P. Morgan in 1994.