By Bill Sargent
T. Truxtun Hare III died October 16, 2017. After serving in the US Army, he received a master’s degree in English from the University of Chicago. An instructor in English literature, he served as acting headmaster of the Chicago Latin School and headmaster of Friends Select School in Philadelphia for many years. He also taught at the Dalton School in New York. He later entered University of Pennsylvania Law School and graduated as editor of the Law Review. He was then affiliated with Sullivan and Cromwell in New York and Sprague & Sprague in Philadelphia.
Dean Pappas died November 4, 2017. He was an antiwar and civil rights activist and teacher who assisted in the planning for the 1968 Catonsville Nine draft board raid. After Yale he moved to Baltimore, where he obtained a master’s degree in physics. He then abandoned the pursuit of physics to focus full-time on the civil rights movement, fair-housing issues, and working against the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. Later he taught physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the Park School, and part-time at Coppin State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, before joining the Friends School faculty in 1988.
Bob Budnitz says, “A short note to let you know that I was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in October, recognizing my work in nuclear engineering on the safety of nuclear power plants. At age 77 I’m still working about two-thirds’ time as a consulting engineer, after retirement from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, but it is all fun, not ‘work’ in any real sense. Barbara and I are still both in reasonable health, ‘age adjusted,’ and so life is good.”
Jared Lobdell sent word, “Over the years of teaching, editing, writing, and occasional think-tanking, I’ve accumulated a number of typescripts (to use an old-fashioned word, if not positively antediluvian) that I have thought ought to see the published light of day. While searching for a publisher for my wife Janie’s book My Bipolar Life (Bent Twig Books, Tyrone, Pennsylvania), it occurred to me to send some of these typescripts to Amazon’s Createspace. So far mostly history: A Hudson Valley Officer in Missouri and The West: Letters and Journal of John V. Du Bois, 1861–1864; Bravest of the Brave: The Heroic Age on the Upper Ohio; [Dissertation] Tax Revision By Commission in Pennsylvania, 1889–1949; [booklet 74pp.] Simon Lobdell and the Judges in The Cave, a piece of New Haven history. I’ll never make money from them, but I have copies and there will be a few others around, if anyone wants to read them. Books for which I can see a little more demand will come out from more regular [?] publishers, though one kept my recent C. S. Lewis book on their shelf for ten years before publication (Eight Children in Narnia). Oh, well.”
Bill Sargent writes, “In six and one-half years of compiling the class notes, classmates have invariably submitted more material than your class notes editor could possibly use. But this time there were just two submissions, leaving much allocated, but not needed, space. To date I have always tried to be an invisible editor, picking words and thoughts from others in hopes of providing something of interest. This time I am taking the opportunity to submit something myself.
“As a member of the class of 1960 originally, I turn 80 in January, and my body rarely lets me forget my age. I continue to fight aging by running, swimming, and skiing and trying to eat what I should eat. Has a relatively disciplined life been worth it? I think so. I’d like to continue enjoying an active life when I am in my 90s. My children and grandchildren make me feel that they really want me with them for the next two decades. Good chance that I may not make it to 100, but the truth is that I could leave this life tomorrow with the feeling that I have had a very good life.
“I have recently traveled to Italy, Iceland, Argentina, and Antarctica. I run and swim a lot, even though much more slowly than in years gone by. And I will spend about 50 days skiing in Utah this year. There are trips to Cuba, Scandinavia, and England on the horizon, and most trips involve a lot of photography, which I love.
“Life is good, but there is a dark side. Bette, my wife of almost 53 years, was diagnosed seven years ago with Alzheimer’s. Today she is more a memory than a reality, a faint shadow of what she once was. I visit her every day that I am in town, and regret that I did not always show her the tenderness that comes so easily today. I am confident that I will find joy with others, but will always wish that she and I had been able to live out our old age together.”