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Beverly Terry Burmester
Cottage Grove, WI 53527
Email: dburmester@hotmail.com
Dear High School Friends,
Occupation: Retired ‘ work elections for Township of Cottage Grove
Spouse: Bill
Children: Dale (37) Kurt (35) Kevin (32)
Grandchildren: Denise (11) Leah (10) Susan (8) Erin (7) Kelly (5)
Now that Bill is retired we plan on doing more traveling and to
spend more time at our cottage on Lake Wisconsin. Of course the 5
granddaughters keep us busy and we enjoy watching them whenever we
can. I still do crafts and want to get into quilting this winter.
Michael Thornton
Redington Shores, FL 53708
Occupation: Freelance Editor/Retired Yacht Broker
Back to living on the water with two Labradors. After 25 years in
LA, I moved to Florida for some peace and quiet.
Steve Victor
Email: steve.victor@yale.edu
More photos
New Haven, Connecticut has been home for 23 years. For the last 10, I have been at the
Association of Yale Alumni, planning educational programs. I enjoy
working with faculty and alumni in developing programs. A recent
venture has been to create and test online courses for alumni; the
courses seem to be working out well.
Educational travel programs are a favorite part of my work. I
develop and manage them, with delightful colleagues, and I have
traveled to some amazing places on trips with alumni. New Zealand,
China, and Greece and Turkey are among my recent trips.
Before starting to work for Yale, I planned interpretive exhibits
for historical museums, mostly as a consultant. I enjoyed the
projects, but being a consultant wasn’t satisfying. And before that,
I taught history of science.
My wife is Susanne Roberts; we met in grad school at Harvard and
have been married since 1973. She is Librarian for European History
at the Yale library. We have two kids, Ethan, starting his Senior
year at Skidmore College, and Serena, a Junior at a local private
high school.
I don’t get back to Madison often, and I am looking forward to
seeing you all.
Warren Wade
Park Ridge, IL 60068
Email: wwade@northpark.edu
Occupation: Professor
Spouse: Mitzi
Children: Scott (deceased) Dana
Since ’61, I received BS and MS degrees from the UW and a Ph.D. in
Government from the Claremont Graduate School. I married Mitzi
Schneider in 1968 and we have two children, Scott and Dana. I was on
the faculty at UW-Stout for six years where Bruce McMurry was one of
my students, four years at Ripon College, and since 1980 , I have
been a Professor of Politics and Government at North Park university
(located on the northwest side of Chicago). I am now serving as
Chairman of the Social Science Division one-half time and teaching
courses in Constitutional Law, Political Parties, the Presidency,
and Political Philosophy the other one-half. We live in Park Ridge
(only 8 blocks out of Chicago) where Mitzi teaches first grade. We
live close to childhood home of Hilary Clinton, not a claim to fame
on our part, just a fact. Unfortunately, our lives took an
unexpected turn in June 1996 when our son, Scott, then an honors
student and a soccer player at St. Olaf College, was tragically
killed by lightening while refereeing a soccer game in Park Ridge
while home for his summer vacation. Coping with this tragedy has
been difficult and painful, but we have survived the struggle by
working to keep his memory alive.
Alana (a.k.a. Lannie) Waisman Lasover
Email: alasover@coldwellBankermove.com
I am having a great deal of difficulty imagining that we have been out of high school for 40
years!! Impossible, because people who are that old are OLD!!
Anyway, here I am in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. where I
have been since 1963. I have two incredible, successful grown-up
children and three perfect little grandchildren who I adore, all
within 10 miles of my house.
Following in my father’s footsteps (Badger Realty), I was a very
active real estate agent in the DC metro area for 16 years, and have
been a sales manager for the last 12. In 1994, 4 of us bought the
company we worked for, and in 1998 we sold it. We were very
fortunate, the timing was perfect, (the offer was too good to
refuse), so now I work for the new owners and currently manage about
125 people in two offices. Our company specializes in upper bracket
homes so we have the opportunity to meet some very interesting
people. This year I am President of the Greater Capitol Area
Association of Realtors so I have a very full life and feel very
blessed that I love what I do and always have.
My brother and sister still live in Madison with their original
spouses, (I do not have one), so I do come "home" fairly often and
never tire of its beauty.
I’m looking forward to spending time with my old West High friends,
and am hoping this is not our last reunion. Kudos to everyone
working to make this happen.
Don Waisman
Email: waisaus@aol.com
We have enjoyed living in Austin, TX for the past 17 years (the longest we have lived
anywhere by 3 times). We settled here after 10 wonderful years in
South America where I worked for an oil company.
Having our own
gemstone business allows us to travel back there and to other exotic
places on buying trips several times a year. We love our lifestyle!
Barbara and I have been married for 36 years and I could not have
been more fortunate with a lifelong partner. We have two great
children; Debra 32, married 1 year, lives in Los Angeles and has her
own casting company; Aron, 28, married 3 years, is an award-winning
salesman for Dell Computer in Austin. We see him often–no grandkids
yet.
We will be returning to Madison in two weeks after the reunion
to attend the dedication of the addition to the Waisman Center, a
facility (named after my father) for the purpose of research on
mental retardation and human development. We are looking forward to
reacquainting with classmates and enjoying the weekend!
Dave Walsh
Email: dwalsh@foleylaw.com
Occupation: Attorney
Spouse: Nancy
Children: Michael (24) Molly and Katie (22) John (19)
It is hard to believe that 40 years ago I was getting ready to go to
the UW. Four years later I graduated and entered the US Navy. I
survived and left as a Lieutenant JG to attend Harvard Law School
and returned to Madison in 1970 where I have been practicing law for
the last 31 years. I am presently a senior partner at Foley &
Lardner, a national law firm with 920 lawyers. Lawyer jokes aside,
it is actually a pretty good place to work. I have enjoyed the
practice, particularly seeing a lot of classmates who I have had the
fortune to represent over the last 31 years. My wife, Nancy, and I
have four children and in September, I suspect all four will still
be in college. Although our four children graduated from Edgewood
High School, I still look back fondly at my West High School
experience.
Cindy Way Raffill
Madison, WI 53711
Occupation: Retired
Spouse: Dennis
Children: Debbie Hanson (Madison) Dan Raffill (Colorado)
Christine Weiss-Roberts
Email: cwr1@cornell.edu
More photos
Read Christine’s Obituary
Like so many others in the class, I attended the UW and thought that I would do
something in medicine. During the fall of my senior year my father
died after a year battle with lung cancer and, since he had been a
single parent for the previous 12 years, it meant that we would sell
our house in Shorewood. My younger sister, who would start the UW
the following fall, went to live with my older brother, and in the
fall of 1965 I took off for Boston, thinking it was the Mecca of
medicine. My first job was a huge disappointment and luckily I had a
good friend who was a graduate student at Harvard in Biochemistry.
She convinced me to interview for a research job with a young
physicist who was becoming a Molecular Biologist. It turned out to
be a wonderful experience. For the first time in my life I was
around people who loved what they were doing and worked very hard at
it. It was contagious. I loved doing basic research, and the man I
worked for was willing to teach me everything from what constitutes
a good experiment and how to set it
up, to learning how to use tools to fix the machines that would
invariably break down. That experience has served me well in life.
During my second year I met Jeff Roberts who was a biophysics
graduate student. We were married in the fall of 1968. In February
of 1970 we headed to England where Jeff had a postdoc position at
the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge. We found out two months before our
departure for England that Jeff was selected to be a Junior Fellow
at Harvard, so instead of spending three years in England, we
returned to Cambridge, Mass after 18 months. The time in England was
spent adjusting to English life, including living in a 17th century
thatched-roof cottage whose average temperature was around 47
degrees, and traveling across the channel to other parts of Europe.
After we returned to the US I began to work with Jeff in the lab.
In the fall of 1974 we moved to Ithaca, NY to work at Cornell
University. Our children Matthew(26) and Katherine(24) were born in
Ithaca. Matthew works for an investment company in Jersey City. He
majored in Government and English at Cornell . He eventually plans
to use his finance experience in a government position. He also
talks about returning to school. Katherine, who majored in
neuroscience at Oberlin College, played lacrosse and soccer all four
years and is the women’s lacrosse and soccer coach at Lycoming
College in Williansport, Pa. She too talks about returning to
school, and became engaged two weeks ago to another Oberlin grad.
Jeff and I continue to work together. Using the bacteriophage lambda
which infects E. coli, we study the process by which DNA is
transcribed into RNA in the cell. Transcription is one of the ways
genes are regulated. We know that the main protein that carries out
transcription is conserved from bacteria to humans so we can make
contributions to the higher systems by studying this process in a
simple bacterial system. We will probably never completely
understand this process, which is part of the allure for me. I also
have enjoyed working with the graduate students and undergraduates
in the lab and have watched them move into the real world.
Since our kids are sort of launched, we are enjoying traveling like
so many others. We like active trips and have done a lot of hiking
over the years, enjoying the Southwest in the past few years. The
most exciting trip for us biologists was a trip to the Galapagos
Islands last year. The birds and animals were as tame as Darwin
described 140 years ago, and snorkeling with sea lions was a wild
experience.
I look forward to seeing everyone.
Chris
Gene Wells
Madison, WI 53703
Occupation: Screenwriter/Fry Cook
Imagine your teenage daughter is a genius. Unlike others portrayed
in films, she’s also rebellious. She knows what she wants and she
knows how to get it. Imagine you have the power to control the
course of a lightning bolt ‘ in effect, the power to commit murder
without being accountable. And a man who wants you dead has the same
power. Imagine you are a Jewish woman who is raped. You put the
resulting son up for adoption, and he grows up to become the
national leader of a Nazi organization, not knowing he has Jewish
blood. These are the themes of three of the screenplays I’ve
written. In addition to the screenwriting, I’m now working for the
Monona Taco Bell. During the past 40 years, I’ve been a lawyer in
private practice with legal services offices, a newspaper reporter
and copy editor, the editor and publisher of a bimonthly newspaper
in Madison and the leader of an Israeli dance performing group. Most
of those things brought in little if any money, but as I wait for my
big break in the screenwriting business, I have a wealth of
experiences to look back on.
Judith Troia Wettengel & John Wettengel
Email: jwettengel1@wi.rr.com
John (Wettengel) and I will be celebrating our 36th wedding anniversary on July 10. We have
two sons, David (32, lives in Boston, works for Houghton Mifflin
Publishing, single) and Christopher (30, married to Michelle, two
kids: Amelia, age 2; Joshua, age 7 months, got my dad’s genes and is
in restaurant business in Massachusetts).
John is officially retired from Miller Brewing Company, but works
for them as an Independent Consultant. I have been first Director,
Corporate Client Services (5 years) and second, Director, Affiliate
Network Operations (past 2 years) for FEI Behavioral Health. Earned
my MSW in 1986. Am retiring from FEI the end of June and starting my
own totally unrelated business. I will be an Independent Consultant
for Juliana Collezeone, a fashion design house headquartered in NYC.
My business will be headquartered in Milwaukee and I will develop
the whole state for starters. I have always loved fashion, and my
greatest strengths are networking, relationship building, and
customer service. I am told that is what is most important in this
business. Tell anyone who is interested more about it at the
reunion.
John and I are looking forward to some good quality time with our
classmates from Madison West.
It was with great sadness that I read the list of deceased
classmates…I could see the faces of each and every one of
them…all wonderful people. I hope we will take some time to salute
them all at the reunion.
To all of you who cannot be with us at the reunion, we wish you all
the best and hope that we have other opportunities to reconnect. Old
friends are among the greatest.
Denis (Denny, Zeke) White
Email: rhapsody@peak.org
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I have been in Corvallis, Oregon for the
past 13 years working as a geographer at a research laboratory
of the US EPA. Before Oregon, I lived in the Boston area for 16
years. I have a son age 30 from my first marriage, and from my
second marriage, still thriving, daughters 21 and 19. We went to
my wife’s high school reunion this May in New Jersey, and we’re
looking forward to seeing all of you in Madison in August.
Thanks to Bob Buran for setting up the web site.
I would sure like to see Bill Donkle, Jim Loder, Bill Mowry, Dave
Spatola, and the others who won’t make it…
Jill Wiedman
Email: Bayweeds22@aol.com
I am living in Brown Deer which is a suburb of Milwaukee. I have been in education since graduating from UW-Madison in 1965. I taught physical education and coached for many years. I am the principal of Bayside Middle School.
Jeff Williams
Email: mpiece1609@yahoo.com
We all seem to agree it’s hard to imagine that 40 years has passed since graduation.
I have lived on the west coast for most of those years, first in Los
Angeles and for the last 24 years, in Grant Pass, Oregon.
I have 2 children, Dan 38, by my first marriage and Kristopher 24,
by my wife of 29 years, Maggie.
We own a picture framing and gift shop here in Grants Pass which
Maggie runs single-handedly while I work in the advertising/graphics
department of our local newspaper.
Grants Pass is a small town in southern Oregon, population around
20,000. Nestled in the Rogue River valley, just west of the Cascade
Range of mountains, Grant Pass is the kind of place you don’t really
want to leave to go on vacation. However, we will be happily
traveling to Madison for the reunion and I look forward to seeing
some of my old buddies.
Kudos to you Bob, for the great website, and it’s great to know you
are so close. We visit Reno once or twice a year.
Judy Wilson Ellison
Heltonville, IN 47436
Email: rellison@tima.com
Occupation: Homemaker
Spouse: Bob (class of ’60 ‘ Retired USAF/gentleman farmer)
Children: Kelly (36) Robert (34) Mary (31) Dawn (27) Dave (27)
Daniel (16)
Grandchildren: Janay (14) Dayequana (11) Tiffany (10) Alexander (8)
William (10) Nathan (2) Emmalee (6) Hunter (6) Lillian (1)
Became LPN ‘ worked as such until children; full-time mom and
homemaker living in CA, Phillipines, AZ, Turkey & GA. Added foster
parenting from ’84-’99 for children with Developmental Disabilities
and medical problems. Moved to Bob’s family land in So. Indiana in
’99. Enjoy being next door to 6 of our grandchildren now. Try to fit
in a bit of traveling.
Sally Wilson Sweeney
Lenexa, KS 66219
Email: sallysween@aol.com
Occupation: Kitchen Designer
Spouse: Michael (Psychologist)
Children: Ryan (28) Nolan 27 Brenna (23) Corey (23)
Michael Sweeney and I have been having an interesting life together.
Our four children are grown and on their own and seem to be able to
function well and adjust quickly to the circumstances in which they
find themselves. They are all close friends with each other and with
us. That’s been one of my greatest blessings. Mike and I both
function pretty well too and so far have been able to adjust
(sometimes slowly and painfully) to the circumstances that befall
us. We each have a beloved career, which consumes most of our hours
and energy. We’re building a new home on a little lake in a wildlife
preserve outside of the city, but not too far. We look forward
to moving in this fall whether it’s finished or not and it won’t be.
I’m sure it will be an ongoing ever-evolving project. I like that
feature in a house. I haven’t given up on looking good and
accomplishing lots, but these days I’m mostly focused on staying
balanced, gaining wisdom and enjoying every minute of every day.
Libby Wimberly Taylor
Email: wtaylor654@earthlink.net
Spouse: Wayne
Children: David (28), Leigh (23)
After graduating from college I moved to Los Angeles where I taught
elementary school for eight years. I met Wayne in Los Angeles and
we’ve been married for 34 years. After 11 years in the Los Angeles
area we moved to Washington, D.C. where Wayne was assigned to FBI
headquarters. Over a 17 year period, we moved in and out of the same
home in Virginia as assignments through Wayne’s work took us to
offices in New Orleans and Jackson, MS. We chose to return to
Jackson when Wayne retired from the FBI and we have been living here
for 10 years.
I have been working for nine years as the Business Manager at our
church’s preschool which enrolls 175 children. Having never had an
accounting course, this has been quite an achievement! I love the
work, the people and the four hour work day that allows me to pursue
other interests.
Our children are grown, college graduates and employed! David is
living in Arlington, Virginia and was married in April, 2005. Leigh
is a registered nurse, working in the Pediatric ICU, in Augusta,
Georgia.
Our lives have been blessed through our family, church, and friends.
I’m planning on being in Madison in August, 2006. In the past we
always seemed to move in August and consequently I missed the other
reunions. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone!
Mary Wright
Email: mwright44@msn.com
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Classmates – I am looking forward to seeing you at the reunion. Here’s my life so far:
After graduation, I went to UW, majoring in Portuguese, probably the
first undergraduate major in the U.S. Then it was a couple of years
in the masters’ program, including a Fulbright for a year at the
University of Lisbon, then a year of teaching at the University of
Cincinnati. I found I wasn’t wild about teaching, so reassessed my
options and entered UW Law School in 1968, graduating in 1971.
I spent a year and a half working on education issues for the
Wisconsin Legislature, then headed to Washington D.C. for a year of
appellate work at the Federal Communications Commission, and six
more years in various assignments that had to do with energy – the
Arab Oil Embargo changed a lot of careers – from the emergency
agency set up to deal with petroleum shortages and price controls to
the Department of Energy, by way of the Carter White House.
The work was great in Washington, but that was all I did. I started
dreaming about living in the mountains or by the ocean, chose the
mountains, and headed for Denver, where I served as General Counsel
of the Solar Energy Research Institute, now known as the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory. In Colorado, people carried gym bags
instead of briefcases and didn’t work late every night. I did many
fun things in Denver, but the best was learning about rivers and fly
fishing.
Those interests took me to Montana on a fishing vacation. I had been
many places I wanted to return to, but I had to live in Montana. A
partner and I started an outfitting company, specializing in
five-day trips on the Smith River with fly fishing instruction, good
food and wine (to distinguish our company from the norm at the time,
which had to do with beans-and-weenies-type fare). I enjoyed
spending the warm half of the year outdoors and the cold half
traveling around marketing trips for the next season. The off-season
I also learned how to teach aerobic dance (which I still do at a
small women’s fitness club in Madison).
Outfitting and the law came together in 1985, when I was a lobbyist
for some conservation groups, and together with some landowners and
the Montana Fish and Game, worked to pass legislation protecting the
public’s access to rivers and streams under the Public Trust
Doctrine. I took the Montana bar exam in 1986 and went back to
practicing law in Helena with the Montana Consumer Counsel, the
state’s utility ratepayer advocate. What fun – getting paid to fight
with monopolies. And it occurred to me one night that I was living
the dream I had back in Washington – living in an historic house
built into the side of the mountain, heated by a wood stove, a half
mile from the National Forest Boundary, with a loyal (if sort of
goofy) black lab named Alex.
But much as I loved Montana, I missed Wisconsin, and in 1998
accepted an offer from a Madison firm in the area of
telecommunications and energy/public utility law. It has been a
challenge, but I am enjoying being back in Madison, especially being
close to my family in Eau Claire and to Marcy Harrington Evans and
her family.
That’s it in a nutshell. Let’s trade some stories at the reunion.
Y. Stephen Yamamoto
Wilmington, DE 19808
Email: y_s_y@yahoo.com
Read Steve’s Obituary
Occupation: Internet developer and consultant
Spouse: Divorced
Children: Son (21)
Sorry I won’t be able to attend. BS degree in chemistry from UW and
PhD in organic chemistry from Penn State. Research chemist for
Eastman Kodak; assoc. prof. of chemistry and head of the science
co-op program for Rochester Institute of Technology; senior editor
for Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry.
Married/divorced. Son who is a network technician and is working for
his computer science degree at RIT. In my spare time, building my
own dot com and managing my real estate investments in Palm Beach
County, FL.
Gilbert Youmans
Columbia, MO 65203
Email: YoumansG@missouri.edu
Occupation: English Professor, Univ. of Missouri
Spouse: Svetlana Grobman
Children: Ann (34) Bill (31)
Grandchildren: Five – ages 1 month to six years old
After graduating from West High, I majored in English at UW, then
spent six months in Europe, and two years in the Army (at Ft.
Benning, GA rather than Viet Nam). I married while in the army and
we had our first child. After the army, I returned to the UW for a
PhD in English, and we had our second child. I taught for five years
at Iowa State University. Since then I’ve taught at the University
of Missouri, with a year in England. My wife and I divorced ten
years ago, and I remarried four years ago. Apart from being under
worked and overpaid, I’m doing fine.