The spotlight this month swings to the reunion classes, of which we are not one but will be a year from now, so we’ll keep these short. On that score, Ed, Sandy and their able compatriots are moving ahead with our own reunion planning — and on that score, too, I could use your advice.
Ed has asked me to put together a few panel discussions. We might reprise our popular foreign policy/ambassadors’ panel — we contributed greatly to our country’s diplomatic corps, both through career employees and political appointments– but I would like to entertain others.
Artists, classical and popular? We have several excellent musicians. Shire, Maltby, the C. brothers. Writers? Again, several, including Judge Posner and Dick Rhodes, a Pulitzer winner. There are more, but I don’t know them all. Entrepreneurs and/or Wall Street wizards?
Probably lots of them who are unknown to me. In any case, though I’ve served in this post for a long time, there’s a lot I don;t know about what people have been up to, and who among them might make an entertaining panel. So I’d like your thoughts — and soon!
Please use my email to send your ideas. Our Harvard ’58 counterparts this year are doing a journalism panel (we don’t have enough bodies for that) and a global warming panel, with scientists and futurists. They’re also doing a how-do-you-stay healthy panel at 70 panel, but Ed and I are not at all sure we want anything that suggests that life is shorter than it already is.
And don’t be bashful about suggesting yourself.
Austin Hoyt’s (now there’s a panelist!) “American Experience” series on “The Presidents” is up and running on PBS in time for this year’s election. The segments on Bush Senior, FDR and Truman will have aired by the time these notes appear, but LBJ is scheduled for Sept 15
and 22, Nixon for Sept. 29, Carter for Oct 6 and 13 and Reagan for Oct. 20 and 27. Further information can be found on pbs.org/presidents/2008.
One panel that will probably never be formed would consist of athletes who continue to get better with age. But if we did have one, it would have to include Art Hotchkiss, who took up racquetball some years ago, pursued the sport with relentless determination and, last
August, won the 70-plus division at the 2007 World Senior Racquetball Championships in Albuequerque , trouncing the first and second seeds. Unseeded, he saw himself as the stealth competitor… No more.
Lee Voorhees, a reliable contributor over the years, has retired from Foster pepper in Seattle, the law firm he joined 41 years ago. Over the years, Lee’s practice focused mainly on public finance, that is, municipal bonds and other public underwritings. He will retain an office at the firm but now has a lot more time to go skiing with his wife Joan, which he did in January, and enjoy his house on Mercer Island and twin grandsons who live nearby. He reports that Fridays
and long weekends have begun to lose their significance.