By Tommy Bourgeois
Many thanks to Robert Cole, who has agreed to serve a three-year term as our at-large delegate to the YAA. It isn’t only the Class of ’75 that owes Rob a debt of gratitude. As past president of the DC Yale Club and a longtime fund volunteer, he has a distinguished record of alumni service. I also want to recognize our classmates who have held the at-large delegate post during my secretarial terms: Amalia Meza, who filled the last year of my at-large term in 2010; the late Julia Vance Carter (2011–13), Elisa Spungen Bildner (2014–16), Russell Leavitt (2017–19), and especially Cheryl Lewis Green, whose 2020–22 term saw only one in-person YAA Assembly and Fund Convocation, and, of course, countless Zoom sessions along the way.
Speaking of assembly, this year’s will immediately precede The Game, hosted at the Bowl on November 18. Nancy Young and I hope to see as many of you as can fit around our class table at Alumni Village.
Peter Bubriski checked in this summer with exciting news: “On April 24, in a small ceremony in front of the hearth at Riverbend Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Rick Spalding ’76 and I made it legal. I know most of you who know us are probably thinking, ‘God, weren’t you already hitched?!’ We figured after 50 years together (meeting in the Baker’s Dozen), we probably could take the official plunge. We’d had a ‘20th anniversary of our meeting’ party in ’93, but ’twasn’t legal. So we gathered a few of our closest friends and a minister we’d known for 30 years, the Reverend Enid Watson, and made our solemn vows. We were both surprised how moving it was. Still madly overboard for each other half a century later!
“At the end of July Rick finished his 14 months as interim senior minister at Boston’s historic Old South Church on Copley Square. It’s been quite a year with some inspired preaching and amazing services, including one attended by thousands the day before the Boston Marathon. Old South is literally at the finish line and hosts a blessing of the athletes which is quite moving. Meanwhile, my clients, mostly architecture firms, won’t let me quit coaching quite yet.”
Another update from Peter arrived in early September, a few days before the deadline to file this column: “Greetings from Amsterdam where Rick and I are just about to heave anchor on a Viking river cruise to Budapest, and then via coach for several days to Prague. I guess this could count as a celebratory trip since Rick ‘says’ he’s officially retired (and I’m more or less so, accepting jobs only when I feel like it). Or we could call it, perhaps, a honeymoon.” Well, if you can wait 50 years to tie the knot, what’s a few months’ more to launch a proper honeymoon? Congratulations to the happy couple!
Welcome to Richard “Paco” Dworin, a first-time contributor to class notes: “In the July/August magazine I read with great sadness of the passing last fall of my old roommate Rob Barker. Perhaps a few additional remarks are not out of order here. On the page opposite Russ Lyman’s marvelous remembrance, ’74 class secretary Alec Haverstick recalls Kingman Brewster’s prophecy of ‘grim professionalism’ among students of our time. But there was nothing grim about Rob. As Russ’s account suggests, Rob hurled himself completely into any activity he undertook, evincing an extraordinary, profanity-laced delight at every turn.
“When I first knew him, Rob longed to be a novelist. Mornings during at least one semester consisted of an early rise and a long run along the beach near our East Haven cottage. This he followed by downing several cups of coffee, then furiously tapping out the pages-long fiction he’d signed himself up for in some writing course, all the while fighting and cursing his reluctant Smith-Corona. (Author’s note to more recently vinted alumni: before laptops and tablets, students in the mid-’70s—and long afterward—composed papers on devices known as typewriters; as legendary New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel was fond of saying, ‘You could look it up.’) The rest of us were just struggling to get out of bed as he roared off to campus in his battered pickup.
“His family background combined the best of old New York society with the hardy industriousness of the Midwest, but Rob seemed to embrace everyone he met (including this East Texas rube) as if he’d just discovered a fascinating new continent. In another age he might well have, since he’d spent his rural Cape Cod youth sailing old boats up and down the Atlantic coasts of the US and Canada.
“Before he met Marla, his greatest love was a 1930s-era wooden fishing craft that demanded constant maintenance. When its time finally came after a season (or two) too many in drydock, Rob was determined to salvage any metal parts he could reuse. I’d offered to help. He was already hard at work when I got to the shore, and tarnished shapes of all sizes were already strewn over the ground, each still bolted to a piece of wood. Rob was hunched over the deck, gripping a power saw in one hand and wiping tears away with the other. Every fixture, every brass hook was a vital organ extracted from a loved one. It took him days to recover.
“Rob’s profession turned out to be biology, but he was much more than a professional. After graduation the Peabody sent him to the Egyptian coast to take blood samples of birds he would catch and release. Long before genome sequencing, he was part of an attempt to regularize the biological classification system using DNA and other chromosomal characteristics. If the rest of Rob’s endeavors are any indication, his eventual PhD and the infectious disease research that followed were attacked with everything he had in him. Those diseases never had a chance, as he surely would have thrown his heart into the effort. And Rob was all heart.”
Thanks, Paco, for your contribution to preserving and celebrating Rob’s memory. Though I never met him, I’m grateful to Russ and you for making me feel as if I knew him.
Just before the time came to turn in these notes, I learned that William G. Davis and Marguerite “Marguey” Yates had passed away, on August 17 and September 9, respectively. My next notes will include their remembrances.
As always, I encourage you to send news of your exploits, milestones, visits with classmates, and whatever else may move you to write. Oh, and BEAT HARVARD!