YAM Notes: July/August 2026
Greetings!
It’s a challenge to put out class notes when the deadline for submitting material is so soon after receiving the last YAM issue. My gratitude goes out to classmates who don’t need to be reminded for their input. For the rest of you, please submit items that keep your classmates informed as events are planned and or have happened. Thanks.
Vignettes that you send in are particularly useful for encouraging participation in our 65th reunion, which is now a year off, and which will be reported in the July/August YAM issue a year from now. As has recently been said, our next reunion will be a chance to engage with those you knew then or those classmates you didn’t know before but which, having met them at the reunion, you’ll wish you’d known for longer. For general planning, recent 60th and higher reunions have taken place during the first of the two Yale reunion weekends, normally mid to late May. See you there!
Every three months, the ’62 Whiffs have a Zoom call. John “DBas” Stewart shares this report of the most recent. “Kudos to Peter ‘Alarm’ Clark for organizing the most recent one, Monday April 27. It’s a little like herding cats: everyone has a different relationship to technology and Tom ‘Coastguard’ Cutler, even after a tutorial from Charlie ‘Sonuva’ Michener, was not able to join us. Everyone else was there, and Tom managed to join by phone. We were especially happy to see Michael ‘Popocotapetl’ Moore and his wonderful wife Ann, our senior members. The format really works—each Whiff and wife gives a short catch-up of their lives and general conversation follows. Even among Whiff groups, we are extraordinarily lucky in the profundity and durability of our friendships.
“P.S.: Tom Cutler will spend the entire month of September co-rowing a boat around the British Isles with his partner. That will postpone the next Whiffs’ meeting. The outing is to honor his Whiff nickname ‘Coastguard.’
“P.P.S.: Peter ‘Poo’ Sipple will be leading the ’61 Whiffs at their upcoming reunion!”
Your scribe just spent a long weekend in New York City for the purpose of visiting cemeteries. Unusual, yes, but ancestors are or were buried there, and my mother had a shelf reserved for her in one by her grandfather. Green-Wood, in Brooklyn, covers 478 acres and was established as a public cemetery in 1838 on the land of George Washington’s first battle with the British. It sports lovely views and we found it an interesting tour. The next day was a big contrast, because the New York Marble Cemetery in lower Manhattan, built in 1830, is comprised of all burials in family crypts ten feet below the surface, so the above-ground space is a lovely garden. My maternal ancestors have a crypt, which make me one of a number of owners, but most of the ancestors placed therein were transferred to family mausoleums in Green-Wood. On the modern-day-life side of the trip, we stayed with one granddaughter and her partner, and visited another at her place. Our hosts made sure we had some very filling and wonderful dinners in Upper West Side restaurants.
If you haven’t checked our website recently, then you’ve missed some wonderful recordings of recent Coffee Hours with Professors David Blight and Joanne Freeman, and much more, such as new paintings and sketches by classmate Fred Appell. And in June, we will host classmate Fred Starr, who will discuss his new memoir, Blue Skies: My Life in Many Worlds. By the time you read this, the recording of Fred’s talk will be posted, too. Come visit Yale62.org and see what you’ve missed!
Sadly, we report one new classmate death of which we had not previously been aware, that of Skip Dechert. His obituary will be on our website in due course.