On your mark, reunion! With style.

(Be sure and see a post below.  Walt Moxham sent the note Dennis Hunt, now-deceased, wrote about Notre Dame and friendship on graduation day, 1968.)

Likely reunion schedule: see the schedule in “People Coming to the Reunion”, which is one of the following articles or posts.  The calendar comes from a document sent to Fred Ferlic by a Notre Dame staff member helping Fred and his committee with plans.

Tiger Schaefer has been toning up for the reunion, with the aid of a manual Jim Chapman

left in their Howard Hall room at the end of a year.

     In June of 1968, as eager young grads, we departed from a campus life that could seem cloying and filled with regulations. Fifty years later, we return with well-developed habits of independence. Still, there are minor strictures on us. Take service animals, for example. Neil Rogers found that his ploy to attend as brother Rich Rogers’ companion will not work: Neil will have to pay, same as the rest of us. The stringent policy makes it unlikely that we will see Tom Culcasi’s honey badger or Jerry Murray’s comfort python. And cougars? Men, we are in our seventies. Cougars are out of the question.
Other than that, reunion time will be freewheeling. The bar service logjam affecting our class dinner five years ago will be solved with new staffing: a bartender for each 290 guests this time rather than 300. Spouses still need proof of age. So have fun. Compare handicaps. Boldy, go up to Roger Guerin and show him photos of grandchildren. Discuss Middlemarch with members of a new southwest Florida book group: Will Dunfey and Joan, Jeff Keyes and Meg, Bob Brady. Join Gene Cavanaugh, Tom Gibbs and Class President Tom Weyer in a gator pile. Watch Bill Cleary and Mark Lies resume a handball competition; Mark hopes someone will bring oxygen. Participate in the Depends raid Jim Hutchinson is organizing at St. Mary’s.
Presentations by John O’Connor (the Mark Felt Watergate history) and Rocky Bleier, plus a Friday morning performance of Ned Buchbinder’s play “Coming Attractions” will provide cerebral stimulation.

Fred Ferlic, Gene Cavanaugh, Chris Murphy, Class President Tom Weyer and Rick McPartin

are helping Notre Dame planners fix some bugs and get the reunion schedule ready for us.

The abundance of emails indicate that the reunion will have great attendance and rich conversation subjects. Here are bits from the letters, photos and posts found in full at www.ndclass1968.com: Chris Murphy and Carmi, along with Carmi’s mother Ernestine Raclin, are lead donors for a new Notre Dame art museum. Physician Tom Mork and Dona will attend from Monterey, CA; Tom’s former Cavanaugh roommate Tim Swearingen now lives in Vancouver, WA. Mike Burgener and his wife are in a temporary Southern California residence after the widespread fires damaged their home and destroyed their business facility. Ken Howard will be at the reunion with former track team members Pete Farrell, Bob Timm and Ron Kurtz; they, their spouses and Paul Nowak and Barbara spent an October weekend with the Timms in Lake Geneva, IL. John O’Connor and Jan had to skip when John was needed for a San Francisco opening of his film Mark Felt. Long out-of-touch Dick Blumberg has surfaced – in the class of 1969. Former lawyer and ESL teacher (Laos), Dick splits his year between Polson, MT and Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. Tom Dorsel has composed and performed “Buy a Brew for Jesus”.  Philadelphia lawyer Joe Ferry likes to appear in the class notes as often as he appears on campus; he came back to the Temple game, first visit since 1968.  Pat Collins will be the grand marshal of the Washington, D.C. St. Patrick’s Day Parade March 11, 2018.

I’m in the middle of this photo.  Captained the 65 and over New England team, Outer Cape Stripers (Cape Cod), to 3rd place finish (out of seventeen national regions) at the National Championship in Surprise Arizona last weekend.

Regards,  Jim Bisceglia

PS.  Incidentally, my Uncle Pat (Pasquale Bisceglia) was a first team AP All American at ND in 1955.  He later played for the Montreal Alouettes.  His son, JP, was a classmate and football teammate of Brian Kelley (team captains in successive years) at Assumption College in Worcester.

Paul Ramsey, along with Richard Coburn, travel globally while devoting year-round attention to two robust programs they founded in India and in the Yucatan, Mexico. The 21-year old school serving Mexican Mayan families now counts numbers of college graduates. The program in India is on the same track.
After viewing a CBS Sunday Morning Report that included Dan Doyle’s work in Appalachia, Mike McCullough wrote about the network of health clinics our physician classmate and another man brought into existence. Father John Sheehan will come to the reunion from the Jesuit Center in Amman, Jordan. Gene Schraeder and Ellen live in Bluffton, SC where Gene is a Wells Fargo branch manager. Jim O’Rourke, teaching at Notre Dame’s London, England location (and shown in dining attire below), sent a grand report of dining at the Athaneum, a club with some history.

Chris Manion is one who will not attend the reunion; from Maryland, he sent some thoughts about the Notre Dame of then and now: ”

Tom and ‘mates: Last fall, ND’s guiding light these days, Dean Thomas McGreevy, announced to the world that the Notre Dame we graduated from (yes, “fifty years ago”) was “mediocre.” I was baptized at Sacred Heart and have three degrees from ND. I suppose that my attendance would allow others more progressive to mourn my mediocrity as I walked across campus from one fundraising event after another, disguised as a “reunion” …. clearly an act of humility and charity to those superior souls who had the sense to attend a more perfect Notre Dame in Later years. But no thanks. Notre Dame Our Mother, pray for us.”

See a following post, a moving one from Walt Moxham.  Walt sent a note received long ago from our now-deceased classmate Dennis Hunt.

Does joy ever come pure? We have the sadness of Dana Hart’s death Dec. 16, 2017 after years of trouble with Parkinson’s. John Hickey wishes us to remember Bret Bernoff, a class member who is carried on the 1969 list but began with us:  Barnett “Bret” Bernoff passed away after being involved in a motorcycle crash in Volusia County, Florida, on Thursday, March 16, 2017.  Pray, too, for Professor Donald Sniegowski and his family; the Sniegowskis’ youngest son recently learned he has leukemia.
Please send news and photos to: Tom Figel, 1054 West North Shore, Apt 3E, Chicago, IL 60626, tel. 312-223-9536, tfigel@reputecture.com.

Dana L. Hart, 71, of Oro Valley, AZ, formerly of Gloucester Massachusetts, passed away on December 16, 2017.

Dear husband of Mary Ellen Flynn.  Also survived by his sisters, Diane Hart of North Adams MA and Patricia Hart of Warsaw, Poland, by his brothers in law Joseph (Judith) Flynn and Richard (Cindy) Flynn, by nephews Justin and Aaron Flynn, all of Massachusetts.

Dana was born in Brunswick Maine to George L. (Capt. USN) and Viviane Hart.  As a Navy brat, he lived in many places on the east and west coasts and attended at least 7 different schools before graduating from St. Anthony’s High School, Long Beach CA.

At age 10, Dana fell in love with golf on a Norfolk VA municipal course and played as much as possible for the rest of his life. 7 handicap for several years for any golfers reading this.  He was a long time member of Bass Rocks Go lf Club in Gloucester.

Dana also loved the University of Notre Dame and its sports and was a proud graduate (B.S. in Chemical Engineering 1968).  He greatly valued the friends he made at Notre Dame.  Dana also obtained a M.S. in Polymer Physics from the University of Akron.

And he loved Mary Ellen who did not golf, did not attend Notre Dame and knew nothing about Polymer Physics.  Go figure.

Dana had a long career with Raychem Corporation (Menlo Park CA) where he first worked in Research and Development but later moved into Sales and Marketing. He ended his career as a National Sales Manager.  Following his retirement, he worked as a consultant for Raychem/Tyco in East Asia.  Dana enjoyed his career with Raychem. He traveled a great deal for work (United Airlines Million Miler but was never dragged out of his seat as far as we know) and traveled for pleasure in North America, Europe and Asia.

Dana lived well with Parkinson’s Disease for many years but sadly he developed and battled Advanced Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia for the last few years.  An informal Memorial Service will be held on the Gloucester coast across from his much loved and sometimes detested (depending on what he shot) Bass Rocks Golf Club.

An update from London: the day went well, I taught a lesson on strategy at 12:45 p.m. here, then did a dry run for tomorrow’s lesson on Image, Identity, and Reputation in Corporate Communication back at Mendoza. The Zoom system we use to connect to the US seems to work nicely, so I’m looking forward to all that.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

From Mike McCullough:

Our classmate Dan Doyle is  a key part of a story narrated by Ted Koppel on CBS Sunday Morning today.  If you didn’t catch it, you can see the full story at https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/living-with-copd/

Dan has one of the great stories of our class that, to my knowledge, is till untold to the rest of the class.  In the 1970s, Craig Robinson, who is also interviewed in the story, was working with United Mine Workers about health issues facing their members in West Virginia and made a trip to Harvard Medical School to try to recruit doctors.  Dan, I believe, was the only one who responded.  A few years later I attended the inauguration of a tiny medical clinic in which Dan was the only doctor and Craig was the business manager.  From that humble start they have built what is now a network of clinics which, the last time I heard, had  about a dozen doctors and many more physician assistants and nurses. http://cabincreekhealth.com/cabin-creek-health-center/

Dan is now retired but only in the sense that he doesn’t have a as rigid a schedule as he used to.  He’s still hard at work each week working at various satellite clinics.  I think our class should push for Dan to get the Laetare Medal or at least some other special recognition.

Mike McCullough

Walt Moxham sent this note Dennis Hunt, now deceased, wrote on graduation day, 1968 about Notre Dame and friendships:

A Big Reunion, Big Plans

Tom Phillips and Tom Culcasi practicing for the 50th during a Traverse City, MI visit

     If you read class notes in the printed Notre Dame Magazine, what you are reading about the 50 reunion May 31 – June 3, 2018 may be two or three months old. There are ways to become current. As a safeguard, our blog, www.NDclass1968.com has a post titled “50th Reunion” (see categories at right, in column) and, in addition, www.my.nd.edu has a section titled “Reunion 2018” where, for example, you will find information about accommodations. Of course, the best way to make good plans is to make plans directly with the lifelong friends you made as a young man on the Notre Dame campus.

Tom Gibbs entertaining young ND grads at our 40th reunion

     Thanks to the effort of South Bend classmates led by Fred Ferlic, Gene Cavanaugh, Skip Strezlecki and Chris Murphy, October, 2017 ended with quite a reunion taking shape. The South Bend group plus Rocky Bleier and President Tom Weyer met often with the Notre Dame staff responsible for our class. There will be performances of Rocky Bleier’s “Rocky’s Show”. John O’Connor will talk about Watergate’s Mark Felt and the film John has produced, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. Our class dinner, with help from Matt Walsh, may take place in the Architectural Building. Chris Murphy – hope he’s told Carmie – has invited the class for brunch at his South Bend home Sunday, June 3^rd. There will be a class Mass celebrated by Rev. John Sheehan, perhaps with Rev. John Pearson concelebrating. There will be a hospitality center ready for heavy use. A ceremony will honor the military service of our class.

     The battle of the bands taking place in committee at the end of October will be resolved as a Rick McPartlin faction favoring a Neverly Brothers group and a Fred Ferlic faction favoring a Darryl Buchanan band come to an agreement. Fred has dance floor plans for a new knee gained in an October surgery. Whether the knee is of gatoring quality, well, that will be decided at the party, maybe with the help of a stack of other athletic classmates: President Tom Weyer, Gene Cavanaugh, Tom Gibbs, Tom Condon. . .

     The coming together will be great, the core of it talk.

     For the best of conversation, of course, we will need one another, so get in touch, begin catching up, and make plans. What about locating the friends who have become mysteries? Look up emails, phone numbers and addresses at www.my.nd.edu.

     Reunion practicing is a good idea, too. Tom Culcasi offers an instructive example: “Phil Mika and his wife Mimi spent a couple of days with us in early Sept. The plan was to head up to MI and find the famous judge Tom Phillips. Unfortunately, the hurricane (Irma) had other ideas and Phil thought it better to head back to Orlando to make sure his homestead was still there. So Mimi and Judy decided to make use of the shorter visit time by shopping. Judy and I then decided to try on our own to find the judge in northern MI. We made the trip to the wilds of Traverse City and found his Honor, Tom Phillips. We had not seen each other since graduation. Got to tell you we picked right up where we left off. Told lots of stories about Keenan Hall days. Tom is a great host and showed us the sights and dining places of Traverse City. We found that we can use the same barber now. We have made a promise that we will get together more often than once every 50 years. We all plan on going to the reunion so see you there.”

     Jim O’Rourke is coming and says that the same is true for Tom Scully (Illinois) and Tom Warner (California).

O’Rourke family pet Mochi ready for USC game

     The quality football play this season has been a good supplement to the attraction of the two tailgate areas of our class, too. Tom Condon and Anne were there with John McCoy at the NC game, saw both Tom McKennas as well as Dave Martin, Roger Guerin, Bryan Dunigan, and the birthday-celebrating Tom Weyer.

Kevin Daly and Jack Lavelle at wedding of Jack’s son, summer, 2017

     In late September, Bill Kenealy’s wife Joan succumbed to cancer. Please keep the Kenealys in your prayers.

     Please send news and photos to Tom Figel, 1054 West North Shore, Apt 3E, Chicago, IL 60626, tel. 312-223-9536, tfigel@reputecture.com.

In answer to a request for photos and news, Jim O’Rourke, who is a member of the faculty of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business, sent this:

From the website of the organization: The Arthur W. Page Society is a professional association for senior public relations and corporate communications executives who seek to enrich and strengthen their profession.