'69 Turns 69: Virtual Birthday Party! (2016)

Joseph Petteruti

Here's a simple solution for birthday cakes which require 69 candles. Start over. Avoid unnecessary calls to the local fire department.

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Maria Isabel Lopes Garcia

I will be 70 years old in July. I am still working two jobs as a Librarian at Southern Methodist Church and my Parish of All Saints Catholic Church, but I will be retiring from SMU on February 1, 2017. I started the Library at the Church in 1979 and will continue to direct close to 30 volunteers for as long as I can.

For the last few years I have conducted quite a few interviews of student candidates to give input to Brown’s Admissions Office. I love it!

I am Vice-President of the National Board of the Church & Synagogue Library Association and coordinator of our local Chapter in North Texas. We have a National Conference at Kent State University from July 24th to the 29th. I co-chaired last year’s Conference here in Texas and I am also on the Planning Committee for this one.

Every summer I spend the month of June in Portugal (where I was born) and Spain, visiting with friends and relatives and enjoying the beautiful country and beaches. I have two apartments on the south coast of Portugal and many reasons to celebrate my roots. Portugal just won the Euro2016 soccer championship yesterday!

If you visit my personal website you get more details about me: https:garciamariaisabell.wordpress.com

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David Kertzer

I attach a recent photo taken at my study in our house on a tidal cove in Harpswell Maine, where my wife, Susan Dana Kertzer '70 and I spend our summers.

I stepped down as Brown provost in 2011 but remain a full-time member of the Brown faculty, in both the department of anthropology and the Italian Studies department. Our daughter Molly '95 lives with her husband and three sons in Seattle, where she works in strategic planning at the Starbucks headquarters. Our son Seth '98 lives with his wife and daughter in San Francisco. He works as an intellectual property lawyer for Apple.

If anyone is interested in what I have been up to in recent years, they might take a look at my web site: www.davidkertzer.com.

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Diane Boone Scaritt

I am still working 1 day per week as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in San Francisco, CA I love my work, currently with children whose mothers are participating in a residential recovery program or were connected with the program in the past.

Volunteer work abounds: docent at the East Bay Regional Park District Botanic Garden in Tilden (focus on California native plants), reading tutor in an underserved school in East Oakland (Faith Network), eco-education volunteer with Golden Gate Audubon. Additionally, I hike with a local hiking club and attend yoga classes twice weekly. I continue to study Spanish in an effort to become bilingual.

I am in contact with my ex-husband, Alan, Brown '67, who is making art in Beacon, New York and looking for collectors (scarrittsight@yahoo.com)

I loved watching the recent Brown commencement on You Tube. Our class had a reputation for being "disruptive," but it is obvious this amazing tradition continues in ways I could not have imagined.

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Rich Krafchin

Barbara and Rich Krafchin left NYC after about a million years and moved to Pleasanton, CA about 45 miles east of San Francisco. Besides being tired of living in the city, we needed to be near our granddaughter. After four months in California, we are loving our new life in every way. We feel a sense of freedom that eluded us in NYC. The planning and logistics were traumatic, but we survived and avoided a lot of bad decisions.

Recently we went to see Jude Ciccolella play in his own rock band in Burbank. I always used to think that the coolest guys played guitar and sang. And I was amazed at how good they sounded playing Black Magic Woman (Santana) and House of Cards (Mary Chapin Carpenter).

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Ken Ribet

I am a (not yet retired!) math professor at UC Berkeley. I will begin a two-year term as President of the

American Mathematical Society on February 1, 2017. The AMS President needs to travel a fair amount. Fortunately, a good chunk of the travel is to the AMS headquarters building, which is on Charles Street in Providence. (The AMS was founded in 1888 in New York but moved to Providence in 1951.) During my visits to the AMS, I get to hang out with my Brown daughter. I am pleased to report that there is now lots of hipster action in the old city. For example, I can recommend Dave's Coffee on South Main Street and a restaurant called North on Federal Hill. For those who imprisoned by their nostalgia, the Ratty is still available.

Attached is a photo that I took with my family on Christmas Day, 2015. From left to right:

Stephanie Ribet, our older daughter;

Lisa Goldberg, my wife;

Caroline Ribet, our younger daughter -- a member of the Brown class of 2019

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John Kelsey

The picture is the lull just before the storm of our annual 4th of July multigenerational party. Each family member has responsibilities as we entertain 150 of our closest friends.

A friend asked me the other day (while we were in a tight match-play golf event) why we hadn’t established a residence in a state with lower taxes like many of our friends have. Leave Princeton? Pam and I have lived in this vibrant, diverse town since 1973. So I simply said that we have raised our children in this community because the cultural, educational and spiritual activities are second to none outside of a major urban area. We love it here.

I worked for three large companies (J&J, AT&T, Dow Jones) and started a successful business at 40 in this vibrant town and now our children and their kids live here. Pam and I have been and are extremely active in the non-profit organizations both in Mercer County and beyond. We were fortunate to work together, and we sold The Kelsey Group at just the right time—October of 2008, and I have worked on and off as an advisor to the new owner since then. But mostly, I work with people in recovery where I can apply my experience, strength and hope to make a difference in peoples’ lives.

Pam and I are blessed in many other ways from a 46-year marriage to a healthy family to great friends. Westminster Choir College, Lawrenceville School, Nassau Presbyterian Church and a few clubs round out a wonderful journey.

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Winn Major

I retired at the end of March from my position as General Counsel of Honeywell Safety Products.

Since then I’ve been working with a couple of non-profit organizations, Central Congregational Church in Providence and the Education Foundation in Pittsburgh.

My wife Susan Starkweather is an artist and she is still working hard, but we enjoy seeing our two grandchildren, who live in Walpole, MA and we are doing some occasional trips, having just returned from 10 days in Ireland. Trying to play a little more golf and getting in a more regular exercise regimen.

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David Parker

On my 69th birthday (November 16), Ronnie and I will be in Rotorua, New Zealand, on our Brown alumni tour of Australia and New Zealand. I am still practicing law at the Manhattan law firm, Kleinberg Kaplan, but taking more courses, volunteering more and traveling more. I just completed my term as board president of Brown RISD Hillel and am starting as the Brown alumni interviewing school chair for Horace Mann in Riverdale. Since we leave for Australia in late October, we are voting this year by absentee ballot. Depending upon the result of the election, we may stay in Australia or New Zealand.

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John Seater

I retired from university teaching in 2013, and Susan and I promptly moved from North Carolina to Massachusetts so that we could (1) be in New England and (2) be near our two children, who live in the Boston area and who each have two children of their own. Being near them all is a delight. We spend a lot of time with them.

Although I retired, I continue to do economic research. The Economics Department at Boston College was kind enough to give me office space, and I go there twice a week during the school year. My latest publication is a chapter in the book Milton Friedman: Contributions to Economics and Public Policy, published by Oxford University Press a couple months ago. My chapter is on Friedman's theory of income and consumption, which was Friedman's most important contribution to economic theory and was one of the central pieces of work cited by the Nobel Prize committee in giving Friedman the Prize. It was an honor to be chosen to write that chapter! I am doing other work on technical progress, economic growth, and foreign trade.

Besides playing with grandchildren and doing economics, I am trying to re-launch my woodworking hobby, but the need to do a lot of work on our house here in Walpole has gotten in the way. That is woodworking, too, but not as much fun as making toys and furniture.

Susan and I celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary last June.

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Rauer Meyer

Still living in LA, came here straight from law school promising to stay just a couple years before returning to Washington to be serious once again. It’s been 43 years in California by now. So true, you can check out but you can’t leave, even though I say I want to. It’s getting more pricey, stressed and crowded, all around less fun, as it and I both age and I dream of more tranquil places when the day comes that I can pull it off – Santa Fe? Santa Barbara? Belvedere? Maine? Why not all of them as long as I’m dreaming.

I did spend 11 wonderful years in Southern Marin County in the Bay Area, raising my twin daughters in a safe and vibrant environment and yes I miss it a lot.

Still working because I’m still spending. At my 4th law firm in downtown LA, Reed Smith, a Big Law global firm and luckily it’s my favorite of them all. As the senior IP deal dude I get all the coolest tech and outsourcing work in the firm and can mostly have juniors do the tedious stuff, so it stays interesting enough. The plan is to keep it positive with minimum stress for as long as possible before I sign off for good. Hard to walk away from the money and the status into being just another retired guy, although that does get increasingly appealing as time goes on.

The girls are entering their junior years at UCLA and Pitzer so I have no lack of things to spend the money on. One of them could have gone to Brown and Dad would have been in heaven reliving his college life, but she wanted to stay local. Oh well. They have done much acting and want careers in PR, marketing or advertising. It’s a different world that I could not succeed in but they will. They’re teaching me more than I’m teaching them.

Separated now from wife #3. Am I that unlike my generation? Don’t think so. Even that institution isn’t what it used to be. I guess we rootless cosmopolitans are just too picky and intolerant of unfulfilling situations. We were raised to want more, all of it.

I stay in good touch with Eric Natwig, David Wollenberg and Peter Allgeier of ’69, and good friend Bruce Allison ’71.