Dick Cadigan, who lives in Texas nowadays, relates that he’s hoping to “trek to our 65th” and that it’ll be fun to “bounce around Amherst where he lived from elementary school through high school.” He had fun sneaking into the college gym and also football games. (It’s an art that we octogenarians might consider re-activating to keep us alert and mobile in our advancing years.) Dick didn’t want to be a “Townie” so he chose to attend Wesleyan. Dick mentioned that it was a “great town to grow up in” along with Pete Esty and Pete Clapp.
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Jim Scott and his wife, Nina, are planning to attend the Clambake Dinner at our Reunion in June and look forward to seeing our classmates there. Jim and Nina also live in Amherst, where he taught at the Regional High School there. They have lived in the Pioneer Valley since 1968 and “have never found a reason to live elsewhere.” Jim and Nina “have lived in the Pioneer Valley of Amherst/Deerfield/Northampton/South Hadley since 1968 when Nina and I began teaching at UMass and Amherst Regional High School, respectively. We have never found a reason to live elsewhere, even though seriously tempted by Maine and California. Fifty years of contacts in this community and comfort, and an intense fear of unpacking our house, have made staying right here in the same house most attractive. We are very involved with the local Five College Learning In Retirement program here which has a membership of 290 from the Valley area. It is a peer-Learning program in which participant offer seminars in which members give short presentation of topics under the general topic of the seminar. Participation is everything. The membership is broad in the communities but mainly from teaching and professional backgrounds. A very intellectual group. This semester I am participating in courses dealing with: 1) 2020 Primary Elections, 2) All about the Internet, and 3) The Solar System. It will be a challenging semester!” Needless to say, the Pioneer Valley with its five colleges, offers a mind-stimulating collegiate environment.” Jim ads that “We have three grown children: Catherine who lives 4 miles away in Granby, MA and provides us with 5 grandchildren scattered from Germany to Massachusetts; and Christopher who is a Down’s Syndrome man of 51 years who lives with a foster family for years in Pittsfield, MA; and Samuel and his family of two grandchildren, who live in the Bay Area of California where he works as a museum curator at the San Francisco Airport Museum. It is an exciting and varied family. We look forward to the mild and sunny days that are typical of the time of the June Deerfield Reunion. See you there.”
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Let’s all abide by Jim’s words: “See you there” at our gala 65th Reunion !
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Here are a couple of outstanding photos (in my opinion); I always admire looking at the inspiring expanse of Green on the Lower Level on my laptop.
P.S. I’ll be attending my 65th Reunion just to sit on the chair again and contemplate on the setting and my Deerfield Days.
Tom L’Esperance
1955
