’52 Class Notes compiled by J. R. Allen:
Armand Cincotta retired on December 20, 2012, so he now has more time to do things. His daughters bought him a Samsung Tablet and set everything up for him so that he can now have his own computer to fiddle with in his retirement. He plays tennis two or three times a week and takes a one-on-one exercise class weekly.
Armand and Joan celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2010, and on November 16, 2012, Le Moyne College (Syracuse) awarded them its highest honor, the Simon Le Moyne Award at a beautiful dinner dance. Nearly 750 people attended.
Conrad Fischer was delighted to get back to the reunion. “Many of the returnees were with me in my first year in Davenport. The more we change, the more we are the same. The reunion reminded me of the wonderful years we had at Deerfield.”
The Grummans and the Palmedos had a mini-reunion in Chicago a year and a half ago, inspired by a radio talk show. Dave describes what happened.
“Car Talk is a humorous radio program about cars, car re-pair, and related subjects hosted by two Bos-ton-area car-mechanic brothers who called themselves ‘Click and Clack, the tappet brothers.’ The NPR show used to be on in the Chicago area on Saturday mornings from nine to ten. It was always a nice accompaniment to a leisurely breakfast and the morning paper. The program took calls from folks with car issues from all over, with the brothers dispensing light-hearted and often irreverent advice in their thick Boston accents — and there would usually be a puzzler, with the answer given the following week.
“Toward the end of one show in the late spring of 2011, the last caller was a woman from St. James, NY, and her voice had a familiar ring. Her car issue was that she and her husband were planning to drive an old but venerable car of theirs to the West Coast to give to their son. Was that a good idea?
“I followed up on my suspicions and called classmate Phil Palmedo. Sure enough, the caller was Betsy, and they indeed were going to make that coast to coast trip. Moreover, one of their stopover points was Chicago. I suggested that Mary Ann and I get together with them, and so we did during their stopover for a memorable dinner at a restaurant near their hotel.
“So even though the Palmedos did not make our sixtieth (and they were missed), the four of us had our own mini-reunion a year earlier!”
Bill Hinshaw, Judy [McAllister, Bill’s lifelong partner], and their large poodle/Maltese named Spirit spent a weekend in Carmel with 450 other poodles of varying degrees of poodledom. Spirit entered its “Poodle Parade,” open to all types of poodles and poodle mixes. Afterwards they had a mass romp on the beach, a free dog wash, and a sunset cocktail party for entrants and their owners. There, a raucous pack of dogs body slammed Bill and gave him a sprung left foot and knee. The owner was more interested in his phone than his dogs.
Bill Hubbell: “I have been unusually busy these the past three or four weeks. A historical society in New Hampshire contacted me to give a similar talk to the one I had given there some five years ago on New England stone walls. ‘No sweat’ I thought. It is in the slide trays just where I left it, but I forgot that I had removed some pictures and altered sequencing over the passage of time. Within a bit over a week, I had to rescript and organize the more than a hundred slides so that they would synchronize in sequence between two projectors in proper order. Jeannie was in the audience and says she counted at least ninety people. I finally got it done, and others said that it was a big success.”
Dave Johnston: “I just returned from six days in Montreal and Quebec City with my Heritage Chorale (I sing First Tenor) where we did four concerts in one church and three concert halls. The audiences were enthusiastic.”
Bob McCabe’s book of color photographs, The Ramble in Central Park (Abbeville Press, 2011) won the ForeWord Magazine First Prize (Gold) 2012 Book of the Year Award in the Nature category.
Ry Smith has now become an artist in addition to his many other talents, but he adds “I’m glad I have other retirement sources.”