25th Reunion
Kathy and I are retired and living in Norwich, Vermont, in the house we’ve occupied for thirty years. Mike, a UVM alumnus, graduated from Vanderbilt Law School in 2005. Most of his classmates were hell-bent to join the largest, richest, and most inhuman law firms they could find. Mike was courted by some of them but has opted for what he hopes will be a more sensible existence, and is taking the Vermont and New Hampshire bar exams. Chris attended Marlboro College and has moved to Fair Haven, Vermont, where he provides alternative healthcare for animals.
I moved to Vermont in 1969, after working as a lawyer in the Virgin Islands and for the NSF in Washington. I felt at home the moment I set foot in Vermont and still feel that way after thirty-six years. Kathy grew up in a tiny town in northeastern North Carolina and moved to Vermont in 1968. We were married in 1974 in Governor Tom Salmon's State House office. The Sergeant-at-Arms tried to block the wedding, claiming that use of the State House required a Resolution of the Legislature, but Tom went ahead anyway. We're still the only couple to have been married there.
Kathy and I had interesting, interlocking careers in Vermont government. I was Tom Salmon's legal counsel; Commissioner of Taxes; Member of the House of Representatives and Judiciary Chairman; and Commissioner of Liquor Control. All of those activities provided a seemingly endless succession of interesting, amusing and sometimes difficult experiences (a disaffected taxpayer once filed a request for my impeachment, but the Legislature declined to act on it). Being Liquor Commissioner provided some new experiences: if you buy a bottle of liquor in Vermont, title to it passes directly from the state to the purchaser, so I had to learn about the liquor business, warehouse management, and retailing. I particularly enjoyed being involved with our department's armed force of fifteen liquor investigators, regulating alcohol and tobacco, and chasing down liquor smugglers (from New Hampshire through Vermont to New York and Canada).
Kathy was Chief of Staff ("Secretary of Civil & Military Affairs") for Governors Madeleine Kunin and Howard Dean; Secretary of Administration (Vermont's chief bureaucrat in charge of everything); and Commissioner of Employment and Training. Her main function as Howard's Chief of Staff was to keep him out of trouble, which she did admirably. If she'd been at his side in Iowa, The Scream would never have been screeched. She had several other functions as well: at a Governors' Conference in Boston, she and two aides "kidnapped" Howard and marched him to Brooks Brothers to get a decent suit.
Kathy's been very active in retirement. She's on the boards of a utility company and a bank (pretty good for a liberal Democrat!) and several nonprofits, including the Brattleboro Retreat and the University of Vermont, as well as our Republican Governor's Council of Economic Advisers.
I'd never really figured out what to do in retirement besides reading, walking, keeping up with public events and enjoying our family, until two years ago when I had to focus on medical matters. It’s been a great labyrinthine tale of acute symptoms, doctors who had no idea of what was going on, and a search for somebody who could figure it out and perhaps treat it. Finally it was a naturopath (a species of healthcare provider much denigrated by some M.D.’s), in Connecticut, who had the intuition to test for Lyme Disease, which came up positive. This search for an answer involved a trek of two tears through the jungles of allopathic medicine. I’ve just started treatment with an antibiotic and an antimalarial. It may take another two years to show results (and no guarantee of success) but I’m hopeful.
Notwithstanding the events of the last two years, the fifty since 1957 have been good. Kathy and I wish everyone in ’57, and your families, health and happiness. I’ve become interested in Buddhism, so I’ll add wishes for a good death, an easy time in bardo, happy rebirths, and enlightenment as soon as may be.
