Class Notes: July/August 2026
By John M. PinneyThe annual spring osprey report is not optimistic: we had a nesting couple and were hopeful they might produce healthy offspring. They rebuilt the nest despite the platform having been partially knocked down by a storm, and stayed after we had the platform reset. But in the past few days, they have disappeared without an obvious cause. I’m afraid we saw the harbinger of an osprey-less season: a goose was sitting in the nest yesterday. Local lore advises once a goose sits in the nest, there’s no hope of osprey returning until next year.
On a much more somber note, as I reported on the class discussion group, we lost Steve Clark on April 14. Steve died from complications of Parkinson’s disease, surrounded by his wife Betsy and his daughters. When I alerted the class in April, I said Steve’s passing is truly a great loss for all of us—he was a dear friend to many, our own Olympic champion, and our first class secretary. I was lucky to see Steve often beginning in 1969 when we were both in Washington, DC, and continuing up to a Zoom call a week before Steve died. The comments and tributes posted on the class discussion group are worthy of posting on our website. I’ll pull them together and add them to the In Memoriam section. I also encourage you to post your own remembrances and to read the New York Times obituary posted on the website.
More positive news: the Zoom Hour Series continued with the 62nd event in May, featuring Lauren Noble, Y’11, founder and executive director of the Buckley Institute. Her presentation, “Saving Yale, and the Ivy League, From Itself,” was her second appearance on the program, as she spoke to us in December 2022 on the topic “Free Speech at Yale.” Gerry Doyle and Chris Cooke were the able moderators. The June program will feature [this is written before it happens, though you’re reading this afterwards] our classmate Bill Gruber, a retired English professor from Emory University, talking about baseball, poetry, and America. He will hopefully be joined on the panel by his son Rob, who played baseball at Yale, and Rob’s teammate Ryan Lavernay, who played MLB for ten years. Finally, David Roscoe reported on the prospects for the July Zoom: “We just lined up one other speaker, date TBD: Marnix Amand, an economist and lecturer at the Jackson School whose topic will be digital stablecoins and their potential to transform the global financial and payment systems.” As always, you can view recent (and past) programs on our website.
I commented in the last notes on the upcoming 65th anniversary of our matriculation at Yale. Perhaps equally important to remember is our graduation from high school, which for most of us was in May or June 1961. I received a report that John and Ellen Shattuck teamed up with Bob and Mary Rounsavall at their 65th; Hilly Hillenmeyer and I attended our 65th together; and Bruce and Susan Smathers attended his 65th in Washington and then visited us in St. Michaels. We really were on the cusp of enormous change.
In addition to Steve Clark, I’m sorry to report the loss of an additional six classmates. Suzanne Owen reported that her husband James M. Owen (Jim) died peacefully at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife of 52 years and his daughter Hilary Goldblatt ’00 at his side. Jim was publisher of navigation and digital charts, to cover the whole US coast, the Bahamas, and the Virgin Islands. David Hoy died on January 13, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona, after a long illness. David had an exceptional academic career. Jim Stentzel passed away on February 23 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after a career marked by ministering to AIDS patients and culminating in copastoring with his wife Cathy in the United Church of Christ. Theo Pinson died in Houston on March 13, after battling with Alzheimer’s for several years. We lost Dan Vining on April 19. Dan died at home in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Dan was an associate professor of regional science at the University of Pennsylvania from 1974 to 2006. And finally, Jeremy Beard, Alex Beard’s son, wrote to tell me Alex died on May 1.
Closing on a bit of potentially good news: Seth Hoyt and I are in serious discussions about a possible mini-reunion in Mystic, Connecticut, in 2027. Stay tuned and please stay in touch.