By Tommy Bourgeois
Good news! With our 50th reunion only two years away as of this writing, Javade Chaudhri and Gunnar Knapp are set to be our cochairs. When the pandemic dashed our hopes for an in-person 45th, J. C. and Gunnar, ably joined by a host of classmates with producers extraordinaire Peter Bubriski, Brock Holmes, and Joan Spear (the troika also known as PB&J) at the forefront, wrangled several virtual events that drew us together for entertainment, enlightening topical discussion, and—as much as circumstances allowed—each other’s company. So, clear your calendars for late May / early June 2025, and let’s make our 50th a smash! Warning: objects viewed through temporal windshield are closer than they appear.
The late Arthur Greenwald, who famously enticed me into this august office, once told me that the class secretary is, among other things, a one-person nonprofit public relations firm. I’m always happy to oblige, but seldom do I get the chance to gather with two of my favorite “clients” at the same party. March 18 brought just such a rare opportunity, in the form of a book launch party at the West Los Angeles home of celebrated photojournalist and longtime presidential photographer David Hume Kennerly and his wife Rebecca. The book on the launching pad was Chris Whipple’s The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House (Scribner). Among the luminaries present were columnist Mike Barnicle, political analyst Ron Brownstein, Oscar winner Helen Hunt, Succession star Alan Ruck, former Los Angeles mayor and newly confirmed ambassador to India Eric Garcetti, and our own critically acclaimed novelist Aimee Liu, who will offer an Alpine writers’ retreat in Megeve, France, in September. It was a delight to see Chris and Cary, and to visit with Aimee and Mark Fink. Oh, and I finally have my own signed copy of Chris’s book, which is a terrific read.
In other literary news, professor, scholar, public intellectual, and poet Rob Watson has written an excellent piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books on Martin Puchner’s Culture: The Story of Us, from Cave Art to K-Pop. You can find it at the link above.
Russell Lyman writes with a heavy heart: “I report with great sadness the passing of Dr. Robert H. Barker Jr., of Canton, Massachusetts, who died of colon cancer on September 24, 2022, at the age of 69, leaving his wife, Marla Schay ’77, and two daughters, Amanda and Naomi. After receiving his BA in history, he switched to his passion in science, earning an MS at Northeastern University in ’79 and a PhD from Brown in ’84. Rob researched and developed treatments for rare and infectious diseases, starting at the Harvard School of Public Health and ending his professional career as a Distinguished Scientific Fellow at Sanofi Genzyme.
“Rob loved his local community, serving on the Canton school and finance committees for nearly two decades. Rob loved to sing—at Yale with the Alley Cats and the Glee Club, where he met Marla; and with Chorus pro Musica in Boston and locally with the Canton Choral Society. His enthusiastic rendition of ‘Ride the Chariot’ that we heard echoed through the rafters of Woolsey Hall was lively and ever changing.
“Rob had a seemingly endless set of skills, including carpentry, plumbing, wiring, sailing, boat electronics and mechanics, cooking, and gardening. Politically engaged and a voracious reader with a wealth of knowledge on any subject, he could argue a point with certainty and conviction, even, perhaps especially, if he was mistaken. He delighted in inventing inappropriate nicknames for everything from local stores to national politicians. He was a true Renaissance Man who filled his life with adventure, especially on the sea, recording in his captain’s logs a wealth of nautical voyages and mishaps from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia.
“As a nod to the astrological constellation and in defiance of the disease, Rob named his cancer ‘The Crab.’ Every day during his illness Rob wore crab t-shirts he had engaged loved ones in creating. He embraced all of us who loved him in fighting The Crab by providing in-depth medical descriptions of the progress of his disease and its many treatments, at least once researching a complex challenge and suggesting a new treatment to his doctors, who either loved him or hated him, but surely respected his scientific intellect and uncomplaining courage.
“I have lost my closest boyhood friend. We spent most of every summer in Rob’s beloved Wareham together, running barefoot, beachcombing along the rocky shores of Buzzards Bay, fishing the Cape Cod Canal, and sailing ‘Down East.’ As he would have said, for more than 60 years together we were ‘happier’n two ticks in a sow’s ear.’ His warmth, generosity, courage, humor, insatiable curiosity, colorful imagination, and articulate use of profanity will live on in all of us.”
Thanks, Russ, for this loving remembrance.
As always, I invite your news, especially of renewed (or sustained) connections with classmates.