Winter greetings!
Dick Perkins ’66, called to tell me he and other Phi Eta Kappa brothers had shared their recollections of Alan Zimmerman’s death in Vietnam. In further research, someone close to the family confirmed Al was killed when the helicopter he piloted was shot down, Dick said, but Al was not missing in action.
Dick also said that while stationed in Georgia, Al reconnected with his New Jersey high school sweetheart, and they married. Shortly thereafter he got his orders for Vietnam and shipped out a month later. I’m sorry; we don’t know anything more about her.
Longtime Maryland resident Linda Tokarz was in Maine in August, visiting her hometown Down East and connecting with friends. We enjoyed a long dinner in Belfast, catching up on life events since we last got together about 45 years ago. Her next stop was a visit with our friend Ellen Toomey ’66, in Harpswell.
Bill Buckley 84G sent a photo of himself with Norman Plourde taken last September at the Penobscot Valley Country Club. He said he and Norman played together several times before realizing they were classmates. Then Norman saw Bill’s red 1965 Ford Thunderbird and mentioned it was the year he graduated from UMaine. Bill mentioned he lives in the same Bangor neighborhood as Win and Pat Mills Stevens.
Ed Schultz wrote that he is back in Portland after a Vietnam tour with the Army, nine and a half months hitchhiking around the world, ski-bumming in Colorado, and 17 years in San Francisco, where he met his wife on a blind date. They celebrated 46 years together last fall, are parents of twins (a son and daughter) and grandparents of two five-year-old boys. Ed returned to his home town about 30 years ago to be near his parents.
“I’ve always been in love with mountains,” he wrote, “so once I retired, I managed to climb all of the peaks over 4,000 feet in New England and the three highest peaks east of the Mississippi River. I even managed to do some trekking in Nepal and Bhutan. My wife and I discovered that we like taking cruises, so we’ve done that to many parts of the world. And, of course, our grandkids keep us busy when they come to visit.”
Alan Banister wrote that he and his wife have lived in coastal Stonington, CT, for over 46 years, where they raised three children and now are blessed to have five grandchildren.
When he completed active duty and was released from his post as company commander at Fort Hood, TX, Alan worked initially with Sperry Systems Management Division on Long Island, NY, as an ocean engineer. “We were ahead of our time, tasked with designing an unmanned deep submersible, which we marketed for the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico” he wrote. “Once our R&D money ran out, I was reassigned to the Polaris Poseidon Division, which led me to find my life’s calling as a teacher.”
Alan earned a master’s degree in education and taught first at an independent school on Long Island. Then, after marrying, the couple moved to Stonington and another small independent school where, as assistant head of school, he taught for 30 years and developed an oceanology course for high school freshmen.
College friends Richard Bishop and Pres Wadsworth found each other in the Northwest after 45 years with zero contact. Pres now lives in Whidbey Island, WA (near Seattle), with wife Linda. He served in the Marines and worked in the automotive industry with Cadillac and General Motors, and now is a motivational speaker in the industry.
Richard moved from his native New Jersey to Portland, OR, 10 years ago, to be near his two daughters and a granddaughter; his son lives in Orlando, FL. Richard worked in supply chain management and retail technology, and finally as a high school teacher in Vernon, N.J. The entire Bishop family returns to New Jersey each summer to the family lake house on Lake Hawthorne in Sparta.
Until next time.