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Ralph Schmitt retired for a second time last summer after three years with Kustom Signals as VP of Product Marketing & Engineering. Kustom is a leading provider of radar, lasers, and video systems for law enforcement. His daughter, an Army neurosurgeon, has returned from a six-month tour of duty in Iraq with a new appreciation for the quality of our lives in the US. Although Alan Newhall retired from serving churches as a United Methodist pastor a year ago, he still fills in for vacationing pastors. He is working on plans for his 11th work trip to the West Bank of Palestine and another back to the Isle of Roatan in the Caribbean where he led two volunteer groups 30 years ago. Alan plays in the Peoria Area Senior Citizens Band, performing in about 30 concerts each summer. He helps with several different church camps and spends time with his granddaughters, who live about 40 miles away, while their father (Alan Jr.) is leading a rifle squad in Kabul. Another performer, Alan Hirsch spent a week in Boulder, Colorado last May singing in the chorus performing the Symphony #8 by Gustav Mahler at MahlerFest 2009. Aaron Snyder also participated by video recording the second stage rehearsal and the two performances. Alan and Aaron had a good time catching up. Judy Perolle went llamatreking in western North Carolina with her youngest grandson, Patrick, age 12, and to Spain for two weeks with her older grandson, Peter, age 15. Harry Davitian has spent 30 years working in the independent power industry through his company, Entek Power Services. This year, a 350 MW natural gas-fired combined-cycle power project that he initiated ten years ago, and has been working on since, will go into commercial operation on Long Island where he lives. It will generate about 10% of the power consumed on Long Island. He is also working on a photovoltaic power project located in the Mojave Desert. Both his sons work in the tech-sector in the Bay area. Since his first grandchild is there, Harry and his wife, Carlene, have been spending a lot of time on the West Coast. He enjoys kayaking in the local waters and has recently returned to biking.Eleanore Klepser, secretaryIn 2004 Fred Hotchkiss helped found the Marine and Paleobiological Research Institute, a non-profit organization in Vineyard Haven, MA. The mission is education, research, public participation and getting young people interested these sciences. Last summer, for example, he met with high school students from Italy who were doing an English immersion course on Martha’s Vineyard and introduced them to topics about starfish and the horseshoe crab. The Institute website is www.MPRInstitute.org. Fred conducts the operations of the Institute and does research on fossils, evolutionary biology and marine sciences through the auspices of the Institute. He served as an Engineering Duty Officer in the US Navy’s Deep Submergence Systems Project, and did graduate study in evolutionary biology and paleontology at Yale University, earning a PhD in 1974. He worked for twenty-four years in the design and manufacture of ultrasonic transducers for nondestructive testing. In 2002 he received the Mary Anning Award of the Palaeontological Association [UK] for significant contributions to paleontology. Fred is a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Matt Fichtenbaum had been working for a small electronic test and measurement startup that was acquired in 2006 by one of the major companies in the field. In late 2007 the decision was made to discontinue the operation as a separate entity and to move the products to another division. Eventually the company was down to two people, and Matt and his last remaining colleague spent October of 2008 in Böblingen, Germany transferring their knowledge and technology. Matt is now doing something new, part time, for Klein Associates in Salem NH, writing software for sonar systems for underwater search and surveying. Daughter Rachel moved back to Massachusetts to pursue a master's degree in public policy at Brandeis University this fall. Paula Jacobs has accepted a new full-time position at the National Cancer Institute, as a Deputy Associate Director in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, in the Cancer Imaging Program. This program primarily awards and manages a grant portfolio in all aspects of medical imaging as it is relevant to cancer, but also has some internal scientific and policy activities. The program identifies, and coordinates the clinical development, evaluation and implementation of diverse, high impact imaging technologies and methodologies that can be leveraged across the entire cancer armamentarium to improve patient treatment. Paula and her husband, Mike Brooks, have two grandchildren now, with more on the way. Mike is semi-retired and spends some of his time on paragliding expeditions to places like Chile and Mexico, with one piloting expedition planed for the fall in Turkey. Edwin Meyer had moved from the Boston area last year to return to his childhood home in Chicago to be better able to manage his 95-year old mother's care, and he reports that both he and his mother are still around. He has a contract to work out of his home doing web site development as part of a dispersed team using Ruby on Rails, a recently acquired skill.
tel:716-839-3525(h)
e-mail: eklepser@alum.mit.edu
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