Class of 1969
Class Chair:
Sandra Jenkins Johnson 508/385-4591; Email 
Class Notes:
William C. Austin
Following a 25-year career with Save the Children, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and Shriners Hospitals for Children, I am thriving as an independent, philanthropy consultant. My wife Lisa and I are inspired by our 11-year old son, Riley, and by the beauty and arts offerings of our beloved hometown, Sarasota. Our 40th East Europe Study Tour Reunion in DC last year with Landrum and Earlham friends was a delightful, lifetime experience!
(Posted November 06, 2009)
Francine Wright Bellson
Francine Wright Bellson suffered the loss of her drummer-composer husband, Louie Bellson who passed away in February. Having served as his manager and CD producer, she will especially miss presenting their joint career talk. The Physicist & the Percussionist. In October, she accepted his posthumous Congressional honor through the office of U.S. Representative Diane Watson of Los Angeles. For info/contact, visit the website: http://www.louiebellson.com.
(Posted November 05, 2009)
Robert Stafford Bridges
Bob Bridges edited a book entitled "Neurobiology of the Parental Brain" published by Academic Press in 2008. This book was an outgrowth of the 2007 Parental Brain Conference held in Boston, MA. Bob presently is head of the Section of Reproductive Biology and Neuroscience at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary medicine. In addition to his work, he enjoys playing in the EMass senior softball league. His son Mark who is a Master's student at Eastman School of Music recently earned a seat as a cellist for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
(Posted October 13, 2009)
Meribeth Wallio Smith
I am happy to report that Earlham has continued to shape my thinking throughout these forty years, yet I totally deny it could be that long. But since my son is thirty and my granddaughter is two, I have to accept my age. I have renewed my career by becoming a therapist at a small residential facility for women with substance abuse diagnoses. It is a joy to help people recover sobriety and a sorrow to know another sort of pain in this world.
(Posted June 19, 2009)
Thomas Yocom
I'm not sure that I'm looking forward to comparing out-of-warranty body parts with classmates at the upcoming 40th reunion, but I plan to be there nonetheless. Still in the same house in San Francisco where we've lived nearly 25 years. Daughter Alicia enters veterinary school at UC Davis in September, when son David will be a high school sophomore, majoring in soccer. My wife, Roberta, is a manager in EPA's Superfund program, and I am consulting part-time after retiring from EPA in early 2005. I'm looking forward to taking the Amtrak Zephyr from San Francisco to Chicago on my way to the reunion.
(Posted May 21, 2009)
Gary Cox
Golly, has it been 40 years? Time sure flies when you're having fun! Come to think of it, it flies when you're having a rotten time too, but mostly it's fun here. I gave up Russian teaching when the Cold War's end deflated that field. Floundered around in Denver for a decade -- great town, no decent job for the likes of me. In 2006 I came to Europe to lead tours for Tauck World Discovery (CT), and at the end of my 2nd season moved to Bratislava, Slovakia, a delightful mid-sized city just an hour from bustling Vienna. And they speak a Slavic language! Now I'm starting my own tourist business in the "twin cities" (some of the Slovaks really call it that, while the Viennese have trouble remembering we're here). I do a bit of singing and a bit of teaching, and a lot of tour-guiding. Come visit when you're in the area (the Rex from Suedbahnhof -- just 1 hour, really).
(Posted February 10, 2009)
Submitted by: Dave Eaton '70
1968 Eastern European Foreign Study Reunion –Classes of 1969 and 1970
On the morning of August 20th, 2008 NPR broadcast a report on the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. This report prompted a flurry of phone calls and e-mails among 14 Earlham alumni who had participated in the Eastern European foreign study during the summer of 1968.
Forty years afterwards, the experience of the Eastern European foreign study group is still very much alive. Eleven of the fourteen group members recently gathered to reminisce and share how their lives have been influenced by the exposure to other cultures in a time of great international turmoil, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Will Austin ’69, Roger Blaine ‘70, Dave Eaton ’70, Jane Gruenebaum ’70, Cathy Heiden Stewart ’69, Ed Hinkley ’69, Jane Hutton ’69, Jane Isley Thesing ’69, Allen Kratz ’70, Judy Morgan ’69, and Jean Sharf ’70, gathered in Washington, DC to share memories, photos, and travel diaries (edited of course). The gathering became even more remarkable with the presence of Landrum Bolling, Earlham College president, 1958-1973, who personally accompanied the group during our stay in Prague.
In 1968 this group participated in meetings with “professors, journalists, government officials, students…” but most memorably with Landrum. Forty years later we were again treated to Landrum’s vast store of experiences, clarity of thought, and prescient ideas. Forty years earlier Landrum had summed up our experience in the Summer 1968 publication of The Earlhamite:
“Those of us who shared those days will never forget them, nor the courageous and open spirited Czechs, nor the shadow of Soviet repression which, like the unseasonable cool, wet air mass, hung over the country. We all got away before the mood changed and the Soviet tanks rolled in—but not before something had happened to us.” This experience was “an intense immersion in another culture—in a time of tension and crisis—it was the kind of experience, broadening and humanizing, that is at the heart of liberal arts education.”
As a group, forty years later, we agreed.
(Posted January 07, 2009)
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