YAM Notes: September/October 2026
First off, your scribe owes an apology to John Stewart for incorrectly stating his Whiff name in the last issue. His Whiff nickname is Dirty Bas. Probably confirms the legitimacy of my wife’s request that I get tested for hearing aids, which by the time you read this I will have had done.
In the May/June YAM David Hummel noted that the communications team were interested in classmates involved in philanthropy. He responded, “Cindy and I have lived in Billings, Montana, since the mid-1960s and have supported a variety of charitable causes. In a small community, it does not take many dollars to make a difference. . . . I spent many years on the board of the Billings Symphony, including a couple of years as board chair and ten years as treasurer. We have sponsored concerts and guest artists. We also support our Boys and Girls Club where I served on their foundation board for many years. I have served several terms on the board of the Yellowstone Art Museum. I am presently serving on advisory boards for three different regional art museums, the best known being the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.
“Although not philanthropic, I have served in a number of unpaid positions on boards for our city and state. I chaired the licensing board for engineers and surveyors for the state of Montana. In Billings I have been on the airport, zoning, and public works boards. In the mid-1970s I was elected to the Billings Government Study Commission that created a city manager form of government.
“I believe in supporting our growing community in any way possible.”
Thank you for starting the ball rolling, Dave! And very apropos of our July Coffee Hour, where one of the themes of discussion was finding ways to purposefully use skills and talents developed in our working lives to productively support community and family in our “retirements.”
A short note from Gary Richardson stated, “Rud Platt is sounding the alert—again. This time in a June 16, 2026, guest-op for the Hampshire Gazette entitled: ‘FEMA may be helpless as the country faces “natural” disasters made more frequent and worse by our warming climate.’” Gary noted that “Rud studied the politics of extreme disasters in his 1999 Disasters and Democracy. His landmark Land Use and Society: Geography, Law, and Public Policy is in its third edition. The Hampshire Gazette newspaper is based in Northampton, Massachusetts, covering all of Hampshire County and the Pioneer Valley six days a week!”
On the positive side, John Stewart has been leading a small and informal committee of classmates to begin planning for our 65th reunion next May or early June. He visited the reunion for the Class of ’61 this spring to see how the 65th reunions run, and to glean some ideas we may choose to employ at ours next year. Some 633 classmates were known to be with us in mid-May of this year, about two-thirds of those who graduated 65 years ago. If you are interested in joining the committee (so far it’s Tappy Wilder, Bill Nye, Dan Koenigsberg, and Phil Moriarty) and/or have suggestions as to what you’d like to be looking forward to doing or hearing about at the reunion, do let John know. It’s not too late to make a difference. We will know the dates of our reunion this fall, and will share that information with you, so you can plan.
And just a reminder that as an alumnus you can receive live assistance with queries regarding Yale and Yale archives, plus a large and broad number of current and past periodicals, through the Yale library website. On the righthand side, there’s a rectangle marked “Chat With Us,” and if you click on that during normal business hours, you’ll be connected to a Yale librarian who can assist you with your questions.
Sadly, we must report the following new deaths of our classmates: Jim Killelea, Michael Bristol, Rob Flint, and Tom Ligon. Classmate-written obituaries for all four of them will be posted as soon as we have them.