These notes are shorter than usual, owing partly to a paucity of news and partly to competition from other classes celebrating reunions (as we did last year) in May and June.
In 1998, Ted Greensfelder, then barely 60, died of pancreatic cancer. His roommates, an exceptionally tight-knit bunch in Davenport, established a scholarship in his name. Of that crew, Mike Schumann, Dave Driscoll, Bill Ruddy, and Tad Foote have passed on; Jim Pender and Alki Scopelitis survive. From Jim and Ed Greenbergcomes a letter written by Jessica Sanchez, this year’s Greensfelder scholar, which addresses what the scholarship meant to her; not so much what it meant in academic terms—she did very well as a student of architecture and urban studies—but what it meant socially and psychologically. Jessica was an only child from Texas who had never left home and who spent the whole first semester at Yale bone-tired from her studies and floundering in homesickness. But in time she grew to love the place and her friends. For this she thanks not only the fact that the scholarship made Yale affordable, but also—and no less important—its provenance and the sentiment behind it: “I have met some of the most beautiful, bright souls at this university thanks to the Greensfelder scholarship,” she writes. “I cannot help but believe that the same sense of camaraderie and support that Mr. Greensfelder and his six friends shared 66 years ago has subconsciously guided my own experience today.” Jessica’s full letter is on our website.
The deadline for these notes occurs well before the latest iteration, in May, at the Norma Terris Theater in Chester, Connecticut, of Dave Shire and Dick Maltby’s About Time, first unveiled at our 65th reunion last year. Dick Lightfoot, who lives nearby, has promised a report, which I will pass on to you in the next issue.
Three recent departures, as well as a fourth some time ago which we have only recently learned about—that of Mike Freedman, who earned a law degree at the University of Florida and practiced law in Tampa for almost 50 years. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Sandy, and three children. John Roger Hogg, a lifelong Virginian, died there in October. An Air Force vet and later a prominent pediatrician in Newport News, he leaves his wife, Dr. Carol Campbell Hogg, and two sons. Peter Townsend passed away in Dallas in January 2024. Peter attended St. Paul’s, where he captained the ice hockey team, earned an MA at Chicago, and promptly went to work for Standard Oil, later Exxon Mobil. He spent the next 39 years in management positions in India, New York, the UK (where he oversaw North Sea exploration), and ultimately Dallas, where in retirement he devoted his energies to the city’s cultural life, chiefly the Dallas Opera and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He is survived by Joanna, his wife of 60 years, a son, and a daughter.
Though all of these proofs of life’s mortality are sad, it is with a particularly heavy heart that I report the passing of Doug Banker, my roommate for four years, godfather of one of my sons, and lifelong friend, who died in April in Cold Spring, New York, from complications of pneumonia. Born in Rye, New York—I think it was the late Tommy Williams, also a Rye resident, who brought us together—Doug grew up in Greenwich, prepped at Exeter, and lived his adult years mainly in New York City and up along the Hudson River. Doug will live in my memory as irrepressibly cheerful and optimistic, with a radiant smile and a million ideas, some of which actually worked out. Though he did time in the day-to-day trenches of Wall Street, big ideas were his thing. Of these, the one I remember best was an audacious scheme to buy and privatize the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Canada—which, if he had pulled it off, would have kept the Banker family and probably Exeter and Yale in tollbooth receipts forever. He had two great passions, in addition to his wife Sarah and three children, Alexander, Jean, and Abigail. One was conservation. An avid gardener, he was a founder of the Hudson Valley Land Trust, which protected sensitive lands along and above the river from development. The second and probably greater passion was music. He was a Whiff at Yale, a marvelous baritone, and over the course of his life created and performed in a series of musical evenings at various venues, in New York and further afield, built around a central theme or composer—World War I music, for instance, or the songs of Rodgers and Hart. My last sighting of him was at our 65th reunion one year ago. Suffering from progressive memory loss, he arrived, with Sarah’s help, in a wheelchair. Mostly he sat in his chair, but when the Whiffs beckoned, he rose up, took his place in the group, and joined in a medley of old favorites. He remembered every word.