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09 Oct 2005 (Update)
I’m just back from the 50th reunion, inspired by the experience of re-connecting with a group of wonderful people, remembering those years and what’s happened since.
One interesting coincidence: this weekend, “Good Night and Good Luck”, the movie about Edward R Murrow’s challenge to Joe McCarthy, opens in theaters; I vividly remember listening to that radio broadcast in Dierdre’s home. It was a thrilling, scary moment. The success of the movement to derail McCarthy, the development of a vaccine against polio that threatened our college careers and Watergate bringing down a corrupt Nixon presidency were events that made it seem there would always be happy endings to the threats to the good America we learned about in Spike Southard’s History classes. We all learned better, and Kennedy’s assassination brought it home.
Life for me after Hamp High was something like a conveyor belt or an assembly line: college, medical school, internship, residency, learning the intricacies of intervening in life and death and shouldering the responsibilities of jousting with disease. Sometimes scary, always challenging and exciting, I count myself fortunate to have worked in medicine—31 years in practice of Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine in suburban Boston at a wonderful, collegial community hospital and now part time at the Lahey Clinic.
I married well—Caroline is a wonderful woman who housebroke me (or at least kitty-litter trained me) and we’ve enjoyed what has astonishingly turned into decades. We have two terrific kids, Eric and Karen, both still single and exploring their options (do you know any singles?). Eric’s in New York, working in corporate communications and living in the ancestral homeland, the Lower East Side; Karen’s back from two years in Kabul doing reconstruction aid work, now is with Physicians for Social Responsibility in Cambridge.
We’ve adopted the “work hard, play hard” philosophy; I wasn’t much of an athlete in school years, which probably was for the best because I’m not hobbled by a lot of old injuries; I’m in better shape now than when I was a kid.
In spite of my disastrous introduction to skiing by Jon Cowen, who took me to a small slope in the Berkshire hills and launched me down, oblivious, from the top of the rope tow; skiing became a passion and winter my favorite season. One summer in college I worked on the summit of Mount Washington, I picked up a pair of Limmer boots, which lasted me through all the New Hampshire 4000 footers—they blew apart coming down the last slope of Mt. Tecumseh, my final climb. Last winter I climbed Mt. Adams in the snow and have plans for more. Kayaking is a blast; it lets me get out on the ocean, Maine coast and Adirondack lakes, paddling and camping—it doesn’t get better—and it’s easier on the feet than backpacking!.
I also got the travel lust, starting with Europe after college, and evolving, with Carolyn, into longer and longer trips culminating in a three month ramble through Korea, China, Tibet, India, Nepal and Viet Nam, usually combining travel with learning about the culture and trying to work in some volunteer work.
I volunteered as a doctor to work with Bosnian refugees, then in a clinic in Tibet and a program in Nicaragua which brought medical students to the 3rd world and encouraged Tufts University to create a program in international community development.
It’s been a helluva ride; I’ve made some goofs and missed some calls but I feel fortunate to have spent a couple of great years in Hamp and get to know some terrific people. I hope that we will continue some of the conversations we started at the reunion.
Good luck to all of you
Fondly
Tom
18 Sep 2005
I'm looking forward to attending the 50th--delighted to have been "found". Aside from reading Tracy Kidder's "Hometown" and a few brief visits through town en route to Tanglewood, haven't had any contact with Hamp.
I'm half-retired--work 3 days a week as the pinch-hitter for Lahey Clinic docs with full schedules; that leaves two weekdays and weekends for real life. I have taken up kayaking, skiing and mountain biking with a vengeance, manage to do a fair amount of travelling, had a phase of working on a medical project in Nicaragua and enjoy my wife and two as-yet-unmarried kids.
Look forward to seeing you at the reunion!
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