All the Roads Taken Class of 1971 50th Reunion Yearbook Supplement Middlebury College June 2021 Class of ’71 2 SUPPLEMENT Class of ’71 With the official canceling of our on-campus Reunion in June, the Reunion Committee felt it was important to try to get as many of our classmates as possible to submit bios to the Yearbook by way of a Supplement. After sending out the Yearbook earlier this year, it had already prompted some of our classmates to submit bios in the hope we would find a way to include them. As a result, we have some new bios, but unfortunately, we also have new “In Memoriam” to add. In addition to the bios and memoriams, we have added an article on the Woodstock experience and some MiddMoments. We hope this Supplement and the Yearbook will provide you with some connection to our class that we would have shared in person. The College is trying to find a time when the reunions canceled due to COVID-19 (1970 and 1971) will be able to have in-person gatherings. We are planning some virtual events in June during the Reunion at Home dates (June 7–13), that we hope you will participate in and enjoy. Until then, enjoy the stories and the memories of even more “roads taken”! Gay Mann Folland Peter Wood 1971 Yearbook Co-chairs When Tom Rush was on campus, before his concert, he got a kick out of watching and playing with the dog catching a Frisbee. He even mentioned it at the concert—so it is tied back to our time at Middlebury. 3 Class of ’71 MIDDMOMENTS An addition I remember a time when there was a bagpiper playing as we walked to the SDU buildings for dinner. He was in a kilt and silhouetted against the sunset. A beautiful image in my mind forever! —Lynn Turner Cluff A correction Laird Myers and I were studio art majors. Pleiad by the Snow Bowl. I am not a big I got to know him during art classes Soph- consumer of fish, but as we were cooking omore year. He was an incredibly talented the brook trout we had caught over small artist, sensitive, caring, funny and serious si- campfires, another aroma struck me. It was multaneously. The attached photo was taken coming from Laird’s frying pan. He had while we were recording his paintings onto brought fresh mushrooms and butter with slides in the Johnson Art Building. him. That evening, Laird introduced me to I learned a lot from Laird. But the one mushrooms sautéed in butter, now a lifelong piece that I have carried with me for over favorite. Thank you, Laird! fifty years, other than his friendship and —memory from Craig Morris, not warmth is different. During senior year, a Mike Kintner as previously written on group of us camped overnight next to Lake page 289 of Yearbook. 4 JOHN S. BATTLE III “John” Class of 421 Ward Street, Seattle, WA 98109 c. 206-390-2314 | [email protected] ’71 After graduation, I worked Union. In 1995, I as a carpenter first in Maine joined Microsoft and then in Richmond, as a project VA, my hometown. Soon I manager and for got on as a gofer in an architect’s office and began the next five years, to explore that profession. This led me to apply to I traveled to many Columbia’s graduate school of architecture. Before cities in the U.S., matriculating, another carpenter friend of mine Europe, and Asia and I traveled and worked our way across the as the Director of country to San Francisco. There were about a dozen Worldwide Design Middlebury classmates who migrated to SF at that and Construction. time—enough for us to have many softball games Raising my son together—and many of us have stayed on the West and remodeling my Coast after that introduction. houseboat kept me I returned to NYC and, following a year of sane in those days! architecture school, I returned to SF and joined In 1999 I married my current wife, Candice, and other friends became a stepfather to her two wonderful children. from Virginia For the next ten years, our blended family enjoyed renovating living on the lake and traveled several times to Eu- the Victorian rope. I became a partner in a development manage- homes there. ment firm and managed the design and construction After a few of several wonderful projects, including the Seattle years in SF, Art Museum and the first phase of Amazon’s head- my love for quarters. the outdoors In 2008 with the sudden death of a friend, and waterways the youngest child in college and exhaustion from took me to commercial development, I resigned from corpo- Washington rate life. I trained for a complete knee replacement State and I set- and during the recovery, we plotted our next phase, tled in Seattle. which was to sell the houseboat, buy a townhouse I worked as a in downtown Seattle and a cabin in the Methow union carpen- Valley in north central Washington. ter on I became a consultant and an owner’s represen- commercial buildings, then started a business as a tative for commercial construction projects, and I general contractor and began attending classes in had the opportunity to be involved in many enjoy- construction management. able projects, including a cable-stayed pedestrian I married in 1980 and began working in the field bridge in the Methow Valley, a seismic retrofit of of commercial construction management through- my church in Seattle, and the renovation of the out the Puget Sound region. Over the next ten years, Space Needle in Seattle. we had a son, built a solar home, and hiked and I am now finally retired and we split our time sailed around the Northwest. between Seattle and the Methow Valley. We are My marriage ended in 1990, and instead of a red involved with several nonprofit boards and I serve as sports car, I bought a houseboat on Seattle’s Lake chairman of the local Planning Commission. 5 LOUISE GENTRY BRENNAN “Louise” Class of 303 S. Jefferson Street, Lexington, VA 24450 c. 202-904-5927 | [email protected] ’71 So, clearly, I missed the deadline for the yearbook! It’s been a particularly busy year, with a slightly uninten- tional relocation from DC to the Shenandoah Valley during the pandemic, but I’ll try to catch you up on what preceded that. After graduation from Middlebury, I did a master’s in English at UVa, where I paid in-state tuition as a Virginia resident, but that’s the best thing I can say about that year. I finished as quickly as I could, and then took a teaching job in Manches- ter, NH, at a small independent high school where I was generously taught by my colleagues how to be a teacher (and generously supported by my students which faced huge challenges. He often told stories of who knew that I didn’t know what I was doing). coming to court with his notes on legal pads which In short, I fell in love with teaching—especially he had brought from home, and then facing a bank with high school teaching where students are so full of law-firm lawyers with paper, pens, and assistants of life, courage, and openness to new ideas. They aplenty. But he loved his colleagues and he fought are also very funny about themselves while remain- hard for causes that really matter. ing serious about the world; I have felt lucky to be We lived on Capitol Hill, just five blocks from among them. the Capitol, and raised our three children there. In 1974 Bruce Brennan ’72 and I married, and We sledded on the Capitol grounds, walked to the then moved to Virginia where he attended law museums, rode our bikes around the Lincoln school at Washington and Lee and where I taught Memorial, renovated an “unlivable” Victorian in a community college. (Older students are also rowhouse, and loved the feeling of living in a small inspiring, I found out!) Then we moved to DC, town in the midst of a big city. where I taught at Georgetown and at American Then Covid pushed us to give over our Capitol before realizing that high school teaching was what Hill house to our daughter and her family (who had I loved best; I found my dream job at Georgetown just sold their own house and needed a place to land Day School where I taught for twenty years. GDS’s for a few months while she applies to veterinary commitment to great literature (I taught Shake- dentistry programs), and to move to Lexington, speare, Milton, Morrison, Faulkner, Dubois, Ellison, VA, where I grew up. We now live in my childhood and others), combined with its furthering of social home, with a big garden that is my joy. We still get justice, makes it an inspiring place. I made lifelong to DC regularly, and we hope to get back to NYC friends among both faculty and students who to see our other set of grandchildren once everyone continue to be a gift now that I have retired. is vaccinated. In the meantime, we take long walks, Bruce worked in DC for the Corporation read a lot, work to rid our garden of invasives and to Counsel where he dedicated himself to working encourage native plants, and feel very fortunate to for a strapped, understaffed municipal government be where we are. 6 AGNES S.