When news arrived that Jim Hinkle had died of congestive heart failure on May 25, my memory flipped back 20-plus years to a landmark finding by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that gays and lesbians had a constitutional right to marry—a truly groundbreaking decision written by Margaret Marshall, the wife of my late Times colleague, Tony Lewis, that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Among the hundreds of couples that joyously flooded local courthouses in the days and weeks after the decision took effect on May 17, 2004, were Jim and his longtime partner, Roy Hammer. Roy was a member of the class of 1962, but the two did not meet until a chance encounter at Harvard in 1965. According to Roy, “Jim was reading a book, A Passage to India, and I said that I had read that at Yale. Whereupon he said ‘Yale?’ And that was it.” Jim and Roy worked as educators in Boston until 1986, when they moved to Cummaquid, on Cape Cod, where they opened the Cummaquid Fine Arts Gallery, a flourishing enterprise until their retirement in 2004. Jim was a delightful person, a fellow Newsie at Yale, a loyal classmate who regularly attended reunions, and a faithful correspondent who, among other accomplishments, organized an effort in 2017 to revive the moribund Yale Club of Cape Cod, extending its reach to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. He died five days short of what would have been his 20th wedding anniversary, leaving Roy and numerous nieces and nephews.
I remain impressed by the number of classmates who became teachers, at universities and at secondary schools as well. Three examples:
John Pierre Ameer, who also lived on Cape Cod, died there in July surrounded by his wife Margarita Perz and daughter Inger-Lise. Born in Yonkers, John attended Princeton Seminary, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard, where he received various advanced degrees in the history of education and from which he embarked on 54-year teaching career that landed him, among other stops, at secondary schools in California and Texas and at Simmons College, Clark University, and Worcester State, where he finally called it quits.
Gary Burgard, a Kansas City lad who died in June at his home in East Haven, began his career at Hamden High School, where he met and married Cathy, a French teacher, and where his passion for English literature—ignited as an undergraduate at Yale—made him a popular teacher and, in time, chair of the school’s English department. He then spent more than a decade as principal at Wethersfield High School near Hartford and finished his career as assistant superintendent of schools in New London. Gary and Cathy produced two sons, Tim and Matt, who survive him, along with Cathy.
John Hurd, who grew up in Massachusetts and whose roots stretched back to the Mayflower, came to Yale from Belmont Hill, then won a doctorate in South Asia regional studies at Penn, where he met his future wife, Judi Levine. John’s specialty was the economic history of India under British rule, a subject he taught along with other courses in economics at Oakland University, Eastern Michigan, Williams College, and Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, where he spent the last 32 years of his life before succumbing last January at Piper Shores retirement community in Scarborough from the effects of a spinal fracture. Judi and a son Nathaniel survive him. Jim Wilson, a classmate and good friend who alerted us to John’s death, and who himself spent 49 years as a teacher (retiring from Loomis Chafee in 2008), had this to add: “John had a great love for the outdoors. I had many days hiking with him in the Whites, skiing, canoeing. And most of all, it was never about himself, even in his final days, when his health was failing. Whenever I visited him, he wanted to know about my life. Very selfless, never wanted to toot his own horn.”
Mike Schumann was one of a remarkable bunch of strong personalities who came east to Yale from greater Cleveland in the fall of 1955 and added much to the life of the university and our class—the names West, Schneider, Michel, Sampliner, and Pender pop to mind, and I’m sure I have forgotten a couple more (Alki Scopelitis, our piano-playing point guard, was practically an honorary member of the group, though he was from Indianapolis). Mike was an incredibly talented athlete in multiple sports at the University School and as a star on Yale’s baseball team. A fulsome obit in the Cleveland Plain Dealer told me that three major league teams—the Indians (now the unfortunately named Guardians), Tigers, and Yankees—all showed interest in his services, but that he decided that returning to the family business in Ohio was greatly preferable to toiling in dusty minor league ballparks. That business was and is I. Schumann and Co., a scrap metal and alloy manufacturing company of which his son Scott is now chairman and CEO. Mike traveled widely, was a good and loyal friend, made many contributions to Cleveland’s civic life and to various Jewish organizations, and remained an energetic competitor in just about any sport that required a racquet. He is survived by wife of 20 years, Mindy Dee, and by Scott, son John, daughters Kelly, Lauren, and Jennifer, and stepdaughter Lyndy.
Summer has always been a fallow time for news. More anon, I hope.