January 2006 Letter

To the Great Class of 1969:

Class News

Our e-mail distribution list continues to expand and, with that, the potential for more news. Please help me locate the remaining 30 unaccounted for classmates by sending any current e-mail addresses you may have to me at dwsquires@gmail.com.

Since I wrote last month, Rusty Young resurfaced after 36 years of self-imposed silence and sent a group photo from his benefit concert last June. Take a look at the photo by going to Blue Bay Inn and tell me if you can identify everyone. Rusty has scheduled a return engagement for The Fab Faux on Saturday, June 24th at The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ and would like to see an even larger turnout by the Class.

A number of classmates were quick to realize that the figure jumping into the Grand Canyon in my last e-mail could only have been Brogan Thomsen. Credit for identifying the body goes to Patrick Murphy, Charlie Hoffman and Hank Wetzel. (For news on Brogan’s latest exploits, see Albany Road Redux: Sleepless in Seattle with BT.) In other news since I last wrote, John Lacey became (unofficially) the third member of the Class to win the photo trivia contest on the Academy’s website by identifying Mr. McGlynn, for which he won a piece of crockery dating back to the Academy’s founding. I also wish to report that the General (John G. Mills III for those of you with failing memory) is making up for lost time and is in steady communication. John recently renovated a house he owns which Mark Twain once used as a writing haven in Elmira, NY, Mark Twain’s final resting spot. John’s many avocations include writing, and he has expressed an interest in using the house for future literary endeavors when he isn’t busy tending his nearby farm.

Marty Kaiser, who got his start as a member of the Press Club his last two years at Deerfield, is on a career trajectory to become the future president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. For the full scoop, see Albany Road Redux: Marty Kaiser Stars in The Front Page. Another classmate who has spent his career in the print media is Peter Bernstein, past Managing Editor of The Deerfield Scroll, whose most recent endeavor was as a contributing editor to Secrets of Angels & Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to the Bestselling Novel. On a day-to-day basis Peter is the founder of ASAP Media, a media development firm whose clients include Reader's Digest Association, US News & World Report, and The Boston Globe, as well as other companies and nonprofit organizations. Before founding ASAP in 2003 he served as an editor at US News & World Report and Fortune. He was also publisher of Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and, for many years, has been the editor and publisher of The Ernst & Young Tax Guide, the country's number one annual tax guide. He is also the co-author of The Practical Guide to Practically Everything and, with his wife Amy, edited Quotations from Speaker Newt: The Red, White and Blue Book of the Republican Revolution.

Not surprisingly, how we wish to be addressed today is not necessarily the same as how we once greeted each other. While many of you know that the larger than life King Carter is now known as “Jonathan” or that Tee Johnson is more often called “Taylor”, there are other examples as well. Recently, I have heard from Doug (now “Herschel”) Collins and Doug (now “Douglas”) Arnstein. As a consequence, I find myself the only former “Doug” in the Class who still goes by that moniker, although I seem to be called “Mr. Squires” increasingly, which may be conveying a not so welcome inference. (For a current shot of how I’ve weathered over time, see the Online Yearbook. Please add your photo to those of 39 other classmates by e-mailing a current picture to me at dwsquires@gmail.com for posting.)

In a recent oversight, I realized that I should have included Douglas Arnstein in my listing of Captains of Industry. Douglas is the President of Absolute Consulting in San Francisco which is engaged in the business of providing project management consulting. If any of you are free and can afford the registration fee, you can hear him speak on “Project Planning for Executives and Sponsors” and other issues at the Workshop Extravaganza hosted by the Manitoba Chapter of the Project Management Institute on April 24th.

Alumni Website

The Alumni Website has undergone a long anticipated upgrade which is the motivation for this month’s trivia contest:

1. Name the last Headmaster to occupy the Ephraim Williams House.

2. Name the two Masters of our era for whom the former Headmaster’s house served as a dorm.

If you’ve visited the alumni website recently, you will have noticed that you no longer can log in using your old ID and password. Instead, you will be prompted for your distinctive ID which begins with a “D” followed by eight digits. I am willing to wager a large sum that none of you knows that you have been reduced to eight numbers by Deerfield or, for that matter, what your number might be. Happily, I have the answer to that question because I am in possession of the number for each of you. If you can’t wait for the letter from the Academy informing you of your ID, please e-mail me at dwsquires@gmail.com. What you will discover when you visit the Alumni Website is that it has much more information than the previous site and includes, among other things, the facility to provide you with a lifetime e-mail forwarding address so that each time you change your preferred e-mail address, all you need to do is to change it on the Academy’s alumni website and all future e-mails sent to you with a deerfieldalumni.org URL will arrive in your inbox.

Annual Support

Last month’s appeal met with success, and we closed the calendar year with 18 gifts (including two pledges) on the books. This compares with a year ago when we had 13 gifts. The honor roll of 18 includes 16 repeat donors and two new donors. To put this in further context, we currently rank fourth in terms of financial generosity and seventh in terms of participation among classes of the ‘60’s. We still have much work between now and June 30th to match last year, and I am counting on the generosity of all of you on our solicitation list who haven’t yet participated to help us reach our goal of 60 donors. You may express your commitment to Deerfield most simply by going to Giving to Deerfield and making an online gift or pledge.

Final Thoughts

In closing, I thought you might be curious to learn more about the new Head of School. For those of you who would like to see Dr. Curtis, please go to Albany Road Redux: Deerfield's New Head of School and look at some material cribbed from the Andover website.

I wish each of you the very best for 2006.