Ed Tiffany
edtiffany@gmail.com
Rick Sperry
overcable@aol.com
Rob Claflin
robclaflin@comcast.net
Major James Baehr ’01, son of Ted Baehr ’64, with fiancée Jasmine Marani.
Andy Johnston reports that he and his wife, Christine, retired to Clio, Calif., and are celebrating more than 50 years of marriage, having met at SPS summer school back in 1970. They’re doing great and were looking forward to their second COVID vaccine shots at the end of March. Upcoming travels include a visit to Alaska for two weeks and then Andy’s family in Andover, Mass. His son, Alex, is working on projects for the U.S. Navy and Alex’s wife, Emily, is teaching at UC San Diego.
Tony Parker is almost fully recovered from his open-heart surgery last December (not an emergency, and rather more of a general tune-up). Still a concern to his wife, Claire, and his friends. Tony entertained roughly 25 formmates with a Zoom discussion on the history of the America’s Cup while the races were going on in New Zealand. Much of the material in his PowerPoint was new to most viewers, and Tony’s personal involvement included a near challenge by the “USA Yacht Club” (created by Tony and conveniently located at his Annapolis beach house).
Peter Humphrey is again a grandpa. John Sise Toomey was born in balmy Detroit on December 10, 2020. Peter is living in Florida.
Livy Miller is honing his golf game these days but “bored out of his mind.” After selling his electrolyte hydration company, Ultima Replenisher, he is back at it again. Livy is launching a new product with the intriguing name of BoozeDust. Launch date is June 1, in time for the heavy vodka-soda season.
The family of Thierry Aube ’64.
Ted Baehr writes that his son, Marine Corps Major James Baehr ’01, got engaged to Jasmine Marani at the White House Christmas Party on December 1, 2020, and will have a gala wedding in New Orleans on October 2, 2021. Ted’s wife, Lili, has been on chemo drugs and infusions for 25 years, but retains her zest for life. Lili is building out a cottage on their property (she is an architect) and they are enjoying their 14 grandchildren. Ted’s business, “Movieguide,” is doing great, and he is writing two books.
Thierry Aube shares: “Checking in from Paris. Because of the pandemic, my international consulting activities were halted in the course of 2020. My last mission was to Kyrgyzstan for the Asian Development Bank. A beautiful country, very endearing, and where I hope to return. On the bright side, I spend a lot more time with my family. All my six grandchildren progress well at University, school, and the conservatory (piano, drums, tuba, flute, and classical guitar). Oceane spent two months last year in Miami, invited by friends of mine. For her, it was an amazing experience. She studies commercial management at the Nanterre University. The eldest, Ivan, 23, studies art history at the Sorbonne, and the other ones, Thierry, Mathéo, Paul-Simon, and Sarah, perform well at school. My son, Cyrille, and my daughter-in-law, Elise, work in the hospital system. I continue to follow the activities of the Weicker Scholarship, and we will soon have a new Frenchie coming for a year at St. Paul’s School, like me more than 60 years ago.”
Hugh Clark
hclark@ursinus.edu
How can we get together to celebrate our 55th anniversary, when the School is not holding the traditional celebration on the grounds? The answer from Jim Phillips and myself has been a series of Pelican Talks (non-copyrighted, open to any and all to use), which are Zoom meetings arranged through the Advancement Office featuring two or more members of our form as panelists to give brief introductions to the topic, plus a moderator to discuss issues of interest and importance. The first discussion, held in December, featured Lincoln Cheng, a native of Hong Kong who now lives in Singapore, and myself, a longtime professor of history and East Asian studies at Ursinus College. It was titled “China: Then, Now, and Beyond” and was moderated by Bob Morrill. The second, “Myths and Realities of COVID-19,” was held in February and featured two physicians; Andy Roberts, who recently retired after a career as a neurovascular surgeon in Philadelphia, and Chris Hoy, who still maintains his family practice in Upstate New York after an early career in nephrology. It was moderated by Paul Perkins.
More than 20 members of our form signed up for each. Both events generated informed discussion with extensive audience participation, and we look forward to hosting probably two more through the remainder of our anniversary year. What was most important is that both events brought members of our form together for 90+ minutes in a shared experience. Although we will not gather in Millville in June as we might otherwise, these events have fostered the shared identity among the participants that is the central goal of anniversaries. The world we have gathered in has been virtual, but it has allowed us to share our experience and insights, to see each other (for better or worse after 55 years), and be a form together. We all hope that, in the years ahead, we will safely be able to gather together, but our Pelican Talks have been a great success.
Copey Coppedge writes: “I didn’t have much interface with Cliff ‘The Rock’ Gillespie, but my good friends at SPS who did consistently gave him great kudos.”
George Lindsay shares: “I was in that first AP Chemistry class that Cliff Gillespie taught. He often lectured with his back to us while writing notes on the board. His spelling was, shall we say, erratic. In typical schoolboy fashion, a few of us started a game where we would guess how he might spell a word he had just said, jot it down, and flash the notes to each other before he got to writing the word on the board. I think he knew something was going on behind his back, but I don’t remember him ever actually figuring out what we were up to. By the end of that year, I remember gaining a lot more respect for ‘The Rock’ as a teacher and also beginning to appreciate him as a good person who actually did have some sense of humor.”
A message from Larry Mowell: “Seeing that ‘The Rock,’ Cliff Gillespie, has passed on brought back a flood of memories. His first class at St. Paul’s contained a roomful of ’66ers dealing with chemistry. He looked like a scowling drill sergeant, but later told me he was scared to try to teach us because he thought we were so smart that we could show him up. He was Interim Rector in my daughter’s Sixth Form year. She called on him to give permission for the girls crew to row at the Head of the Charles on Parents Weekend, and he agreed, to the amazement of the rowing coach. It meant a lot to my daughter and was actually fun for her parents, too. Good memories of The Rock.”
Gordon Grand writes: “Cec and I have been on Anguilla since December 2019. There is no COVID here, so we have led a completely normal life with no masks, no tests, going to restaurants, and to the gym, which we do at least three days a week, playing golf, and scuba diving. I also am on the the board of the Youth Sailing School and the Omololu International School, grades Pre-K through 8, which has kept me busy. They have no money, so I’m trying to get ex-pat villa owners to pitch in for both, which is not easy. We have to find a new head of Omololu. Guess who is doing the search? I actually found a great person, but closing the deal is a challenge I’m working on now. The fact that we have all this freedom is due to the fact that the government shut down the country for eight weeks in March 2020. We were allowed out of our house for 90 minutes a day with a 6 p.m. curfew. Luckily, we live on a two-mile beach so we would walk and swim every day and felt grateful to be able to be in 85-degree sunshine. Still, nobody was allowed to leave or come on to the island, and we felt a bit like we were prisoners.
John Landes ’67 (l.) at his wedding, “scolding” Peter Wheelwright ’67 for being suspended during their school days.
Right now, we have four grandchildren down here plus Cec’s sister staying at quarantine villas, and we can only see one of them because of the quarantine. Jake, Katie, and baby Owen (2.5) can stay more than two weeks and are now with us. It drives us crazy as we haven’t seen any of the others for 16 months, and they are leaving before getting out of quarantine. We got the AstraZeneca vaccine, the second dose on April 15 (Copey’s b-day!). After that, we are going to come home. Bottom line is that we are very thankful for being here, but are really ready to go back to North Salem. Can’t wait to spend time with our our grandkids and get back to the real world. Also can’t wait to play terrible golf with Bill Jackson and Jim Phillips.”
Eliot Larson
ewlarson@comcast.net
Stephen Post was around the medical center and clinics all past 12 months nonstop. He did have a chance to reflect a bit, and wrote a few articles with various others, including one with Dr. Sal Mangione, pulmonologist at Jefferson Med in Philadelphia, entitled The Moral Lessons of COVID-19: A Call for Renewal. According to Stephen, “The pulmonologists and respiratory therapists were so much in the thick of it.”
Greg Vail writes: “In November 2019, Lynn and I emigrated from Laguna Beach, Calif., to the bustling metropolis of Rupert, Vt., population 715. In our relentless zeal to downsize, we upsized to a 10-acre plot with a house amply sized for us and guests. Rupert is adjacent to the township that my fourth great-grandparents, Micah and Mary Vail, founded in 1765. A serendipitous and mildly impulsive decision that we now view as one of the best we’ve ever made. The splendid isolation of the Green Mountain State and the not-so-splendid isolation of COVID created the opportunity for me to complete the 370-page manuscript, now in its umpteenth and continually evolving versions of a forthcoming book, The Soft Mud of France. The book centers on the story of my father’s solo engagement with nine German aviators in the skies of eastern France on November 6, 1918, five days before the end of World War I. The narrative then traces an extraordinary life – one of improbable survival and resilience – for some 64 years thereafter, with tangential throwbacks spanning a thousand years before, across France, England, and America.
Although the focus of the narrative takes place in France, the journey runs straight through Millville over more than half a century, even though my father never set foot on the SPS campus until our graduation day. I was simply a passenger on the voyage. In putting the story together, I have uncovered SPS history that has been hiding in plain sight. It turns out that St. Paul’s alumni contributed more to the development of early military and civilian aviation than any other academicinstitution – contributions that transformed the world. Our geopolitical dot-connector, formmate Nicholas Dungan, who knew my father, has written a gracious and insightful foreword to the book, entitled ‘The Great War Outlasted The Life of a Man,’ giving insights far beyond the narrative itself. The literary effort of this neophyte author has been a journey of discovery that has opened possibilities for its continuation and growth in the years ahead.”