Blurb for Don's Class of 1965 Update

Since our last reunion in 1995, we have all headed through the worm hole to middle age. I look upon life very favorably. In late 2001, I changed jobs and am now the chief financial officer at one of the largest Head Start programs in Washington, DC, called the Rosemount Center.

At Rosemount, located in Mt. Pleasant near the National Zoo, 70% of the children and their families are Hispanic, 25% are African American, and 5% are Asian or white. I teach an ESL class two hours a week to Spanish speaking staff members (remembering Dr. Beltran saying "CON Edison" to us…) and speak quite a bit of conversational Spanish. Working with the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder means that every day is like a giant service project. The non-profit sector is its own world!

One of my cousins married an Indian in late 2002, and I accompanied the couple to an Indian wedding ceremony that was a 20 hour train ride south of New Dehli. The bride and I were the only two Westerners we saw in a city of 2 million (Jabalpur) for a week. It is 200 times dirtier than you could ever imagine, with loads of people living everywhere, and it took 24 hours to get back to New Dehli and another 23 to return to New York a few days later! It's an experience of a lifetime to see the Taj Mahal, and we managed not to get bitten by a malarial mosquito or otherwise get sick, a major accomplishment. This was one wild adventure not for the faint of heart.

Most day-to-day experiences are not so dramatic. I have just completed an assignment for the last three school years to teach an early morning religion class in the Mormon Church to about 15 teenagers a year, from 6 to 6:45 a.m. every school day, September - June. This past year it was about the whole New Testament. Now that that's over I feel like I have all the time in the world.

My parents have both died and most of my family lives in New Jersey. I spend a lot of time on Long Beach Island at the shore, and live in Northern Virginia outside of Washington. As I write this, we graduated 40 years ago, on June 22, 1965! Reunion ought to be a great time - see you there.