Class Notes, January/February 2002

Friday March 01, 2002 Category: Archives Permanent Link

I hope this new year finds you and yours safe and sound. Though you’ve seen Cornell Alumni Magazine post-Sept. 11, this is the first column actually being written since then, so I thought we could pause before our regularly scheduled programming to let you know that our thoughts are with all of our classmates who lost loved ones in the attacks, and with the families and friends of our classmates Balewa Albert Blackman and Jennifer Lynn Tzemis. Jennifer worked for Fred Alger Management in the World Trade Center. Balewa was a junior accountant at Cantor Fitzgerald.

I’m writing this on a post-runner’s high. Dressed in my “United We Run” T-shirt, I ran my third marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon, in October. The marathon includes a loop around the Pentagon. I cried this year as I passed it, and again as a man ran by me dressed in full firefighter gear. As countless American-flag-covered signs waved this year expressed: “Pain is temporary, but pride is forever.”

Katie Brandano wrote in during a layover in Juneau, AK. Katie’s been living in Brookline, MA, since graduation. She started out working in financial sales, but “cashed in her chips” after two years to become a teacher. She has been teaching seventh and eighth grade science in Lowell, MA, and is starting a new position at the Devotion School, again teaching eighth grade science. Katie was the head of a wilderness expedition organizing back-country wilderness trips for children through Maine and New Hampshire for two summers. She spent this summer traveling through Alaska to backpack and sea kayak.

Tom ‘95 and Vanessa Gubbins Dodson, who just passed their one-year anniversary, are living in Athens, GA, where Vanessa is in her fourth year of vet school at the U. of Georgia. Katherine Kilroy is pursuing a master’s degree in computer engineering at Penn State. John Reardon is a lieutenant in the Navy. John flies the H-46 Seaknight Helicopter for Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Eight. He was deployed to the Mediterranean/Persian Gulf for six months on board the USS Detroit this fall. Ashesh Badani and wife Radha Mehta Badani (Penn ‘96) finished their MBAs at Wharton in the spring and relocated to San Francisco, where Ashesh will be working in the venture and strategic investments group at Sun Microsystems.

My fellow columnist Allie Cahill reports that V. Marie Rodriguez and Albert Nguyen visited Las Vegas in early October in order to reenact the pool scene from Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas. For his part, Al reports that Mick Merritt, a healthcare consultant, is moving to New York City from San Francisco some time this January. Katie Butler forwarded an e-mail from Mark Morrison, who’s joined the Peace Corps and has been dispatched to Panama. He’s living on the island of Tupile with an indigenous tribe called the Kuna Indians. Among other things, they are “the second shortest group of people in the world, behind the Pygmies, so my three visits to Kuna sites have left me with bruises from hitting my head on doorways and cross beams in their huts,” Mark writes. His training group, by the way, was required to do a chicken project, which involved raising 101 baby chickens and selling them. “Anyone interested in a chicken? We sell them dead or alive,” he says. “You pick.” Thanks, Mark.

And finally … Wedding Watch: Amanda Ripley married John Funge on Aug. 25 ‘01 in the Poconos. Becca Kornfeld was the co-maid of honor. Cornellians in attendance included Lisa Green, Sabrina Falquier, Tamar Duvdevani, Gavin Leung, Aileen Gariepy, and Ethan and Joy Frank-Collins. Amanda’s a writer-reporter at Time magazine in New York. Wedding Two (courtesy of the New York Times): Michael Odell married Nancy Brensson, whom he first met in seventh grade, on Aug. 19 ‘01 in NYC. Michael is getting an MBA at NYU, and Nancy is a senior fashion editor at Cosmopolitan.

And finally, Wedding Three: Sonia Talwar and Olaino Hardaway, BS ILR ‘01, were married in Atlanta on Nov. 4, ‘00 (happy one-year anniversary!). After honeymooning in St. Lucia, the newlyweds are living in Philadelphia, where Sonia is an HR professional with CIGNA and Olaino is a technology manager at the Wharton School. Keep that news coming.

—Courtney Rubin, Class Correspondent