Dear Classmates,
First I should say that I’m sorry I
missed the 50th. I had planned to come – even had plane and motel
reservations – but in the end it just got too complicated. I had planned a trip
to Paris for April which I ended up not doing at the last minute for
uninteresting reasons, but I went to Cambridge, MA to visit friends as well as
pretending to do some scholarship over many ales, and made 2 trips to the Bay
Area for grandparent duty last spring. In addition I was scheduled to go on a
teaching assignment in China for 8 weeks in late June. It just got to be too
much traveling in such a short time. And as we all know traveling by plane
these days isn’t what it used to be.
The week before I was scheduled to
leave for China I had a pleasant visit from our classmate Mike Davis (more on
that in a bit) and then fell and broke my ankle 5 days before I was to leave.
The ankle injury was serious (I now have enough metal in the ankle to insure
that I’ll never get through airport security unscathed again), and in general I
don’t recommend it. I’m fairly certain that the cause was my having bragged a
few days before that I had never spent a night in the hospital. There are
forces in the universe that pay attention to such boasts and act vengefully. So
China got cancelled. I spent 2 months hopping behind a walker and another 2
months walking, sort of, but undergoing intense physical therapy (for the
atrophied leg muscles as well as the ankle).
I’m now back to normal more or less
with the occasional aches and pains – for all I know it’s that old age I keep
hearing about. As I say I don’t recommend it, but I also realize that at our
age this is not the worst thing that might happen. Otherwise I’m in great
health except for a slight touch of diabetes, well controlled with magic pills,
lots of exercise, and losing 50 pounds. It has, however, put a dent in my ale,
donut, and ice cream passions (not at the same time), and Mexican food has
become a luxury as well. My doctor insists that such eating habits caused the
diabetes in the first place, but I’m convinced that it’s punishment for larger
sins. Fortunately I like fruit and veggies.
I’ve been officially retired for a
couple of years, but the nice part about being a college professor is that the
lines between employment and retirement are dim. Until last year I had been
teaching a couple of courses a year, but I’m taking this year off – maybe
permanently. Office space is at a premium at Rice these days, so I’m in the
process of vacating my office which I guess makes retirement seem rather
permanent. Going through 50 years of accumulated stuff and deciding what to
send to the trash can has been somewhat painful, and it’s been going slowly. Of
course, I’ve also been discovering all sorts of memos and correspondence that
have reminded me of things I had forgot. I even ran across grade books from my
early days teaching at Amherst, Brandeis, and Stanford and miraculously even
managed to generate some faces to go with some of the names. Wonder what’s happened
to those kids (as they were then). It’s shocking to realize that some of them
have probably met their maker, and others are retired and maybe even rich or
homeless. They’re old by now, and what that makes me, I refuse to contemplate.
I’ve stopped doing research, but I do have what will probably be my last book
(on prejudice this time) at the publisher in manuscript form. Not looking
forward to the revisions.
As I mentioned Kappa Sig fraternity
brother Mike Davis found his way to Houston recently with his charming French
wife and daughter. Mike is retired from the foreign service and now lives in
Marseilles. I had forgot that he actually got a PhD in history from Rice, so we
did a mini-tour of the campus, much changed since his time here in the early
60s. It is a beautiful campus which has managed to keep some architectural
integrity as it’s added an uncountable number of new buildings over the past 40
or so years. It was good to see Mike.
Life is good. We live close to Rice so
I take in most sporting events (a labor of love and lost cause given their
performances except in baseball and the country club sports– well, we did win a
bowl game of sorts this past December). There’s lots of good music at the music
school, one of the best in the country, and we also do opera at various venues
around town, theater, etc. I have been a
docent at the local art museum for several years, and find explaining the
higher mysteries of art to mostly 3rd and 4th graders
with the occasional middle school, high school, or college group great fun and
highly rewarding. Art has become a love of my middle age and beyond (I refuse
to say old or elderly). I have been, on and off, doing other sorts of volunteer
work, AIDs clinic and various groups of those whose lives are less fortunate than mime – mostly working with kids.
Our oldest daughter, Kris, lives about
an hour away. She graduated from Austin College (north of Dallas) which except
for the women reminded me a lot of Wabash – small and the same commitment to
real education and a warm environment. You might be interested to get a copy of
Loren Pope’s 40 Colleges That Change
Lives (an approximate title) which gives rave reviews both to Austin
College and Wabash. Kris works as a legal consultant for Hartford insurance,
and her husband, Scott is a claims adjuster for Chubb; he spent most of
November and December in New Jersey doing what claims adjusters do – hopefully
helping out some. They have two children. Daughter Alyssa is a freshman in
college, and son Taylor is a sophomore in high school.
Our daughter Caitlin and her husband
both graduated from Stanford with law and business degrees from University of
Virginia; they refuse to leave the Bay Area and live in San Carlos. She is a
judge with EEOC, meaning she judges discrimination and sexual harassment cases
in the federal government. Tommy, her husband, works for Financial Engines,
doing whatever people there do. I’ve yet to figure out what that is. Two boys,
one in 7th grade, the other in 4th. For reasons of
modesty I’ll refrain from listing all the brilliant grandchildren
accomplishments. And then there’s the fact that they inherited none of this
from me; my daughters married well genetically. I also had no role in their
upbringing – arguably all to the good. Still, one does take unwarranted credit
from time to time, typically in the annual Christmas letter.
Some of you will remember my wife
Doris who is aging better than I and who keeps busy with various activities,
many of which seem to involve reminding me of my obligations and duties as well
as my various delinquencies. We celebrated our 50th wedding
anniversary in Kauai in December, and then did the Christmas thing with
grandchildren in California.
This is beginning to sound like one of
those dreadful Christmas messages we’ve all got, and for that I’m sorry. I have
the conceit that some of our classmates may actually be interested given that
I’ve been off the Wabash radar for some years. But for those of you who can’t
quite put a face to this name, it’s sufficient to know that I think I’ve aged
gracefully and thrive as much as one can at this point of life. And, as I say,
sorry to have missed the 50th.
Dave Schneider
