42 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN | CLASS NOTES for my efforts in preparing the column and keeping up with our relationships developed during our years at Lehigh. He went on, “As for me, after graduation from Lehigh and NYU grad school, I started my entrepreneurial efforts in San Diego. No more snow for me! I went into the chemical distribution business and had offices in 11 countries in Asia. That led me into the chemical packaging business, which I grew into a public company with five facilities in the United States. I moved back to my home in Houston, where I continue to found new companies. My wife, Susie, and I have been married for 42 years, have three great boys and now have six grandchildren.” Bruce Haines wrote, “Hotel Bethlehem is where I continue, at age 80, to be the on-site managing partner, overseeing the hotel for our mostly Lehigh investors. It has been over 25 years since Bill Trotter and I envisioned this venture and were joined by Harvey York on this journey. We are proud to say that with the support of our customers and the Lehigh Valley community, we have taken a boarded-up, bankrupt building to America’s No. 1 Best Historic Hotel by USA Today. (The year) 2024 was the fourth straight that we earned this rarified distinction. “We jumped in to save this hotel from becoming senior citizen apartments because we always considered this to be Lehigh’s hotel. Thanks to all the alums that have supported us during this period to allow us to achieve our vision. “My wife of 50 years, JoAnn, has been an integral part of our success, and I would be remiss to not acknowledge that. We have a home in Fort Myers, Fla., that we get to occasionally to take a break from Bethlehem. “Historic Bethlehem became the 26th UNESCO World Heritage Site this past summer, which will be a game changer for Bethlehem as a tourist attraction, with the Moravian church settlement adjacent to the hotel.” Wayne Hall retired early from the IT management ranks at the former Digital Equipment Corporation in 1999. He has been active as a musician and nature photographer in the Boston area since then, as well as doing volunteer work with several local land conservation organizations. He and Judy, his wife of 55 years, live in Sudbury, Mass. I still have news from six other classmates to share in the spring, then I’ll need news. Let me know what you’ve been up to recently at the contact info above. ’68 George Klacik, 27 Oak Forest Lane, Summit, NJ 07901, gklacikjr@aol.com, (908) 273-7850. Tom Gilligan sent a note about the unexpected passing of Jim Frazee. Tom wrote, “Joni Mitchell wrote, ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.’ I’ve read some of that ‘now I’m here, now I’m not’ stuff in Alumni Bulletins, but recently, it’s hit our own little group and making me write to the Bulletin for the first time ever. Since the late ’60s, our small band, Rob Schneck and Sue, Bill Janes and Vickie, Jim Frazee and my wife, Georgine, and I have gathered for Lafayette weekend and for events throughout the year. Often there were others, but rarely fewer than the seven of us. We were a diverse group. Rob spent 35 years as an environmental engineer with the New York State government, protecting and managing the water resources of Long Island. Bill worked in commercial banking for 33 years, taking early retirement to work for several nonprofits as finance director. I spent my time teaching and coaching. After a few decades, Kathy and Mike Webster ’69 retired from the last of his corporate roles in the major appliance industry and rejoined us. “When COVID kept us apart, we began to meet on Zoom every two weeks, and we’ve kept that up for five years until a fall, a stroke and a bad heart took Jim down and pneumonia finished the job. Jim, a research medicinal chemist, retired from GlaxoSmithKline, was our goto for all the aches of getting older. We thought we’d have him forever. But more important than that, Jim was a good guy who could argue politics for hours and then share a couple of pints of beer, and we miss him terribly. We’re all officially old now. Enjoy each other and the time we still have.” Frank Kerrigon ’70 sent a note to let us know of the passing of Buddy Swartz. He wrote “R. Budd ‘Buddy’ Swartz died in early May at his home in upstate New York. If you didn’t know the man, you might remember instead a custom cherry-red and chrome Harley Davidson Sportster (known as the ‘Swartzter’ to his Sig Ep brothers) that growled around campus … with young Buddy behind the handlebars. In a campus of classic, often-British motorcycles—Triumphs, BSAs, Nortons—this loud, beautiful American piece of iron was hard to miss. “Budd started at Lehigh in 1964, then took several gap years away from academia in the middle of his studies. He returned to campus and graduated cum laude in 1972 as an M.E. His first job, with GM, was ‘mind-numbing,’ but he was soon recruited by General Electric, where he spent three decades doing the engineering he loved in GE’s power division. “Budd’s favorite saying was, ‘Life is all about decisions.’ His close friends and family should be honored and grateful that he had a life well-lived and that he chose all of us to be a part of that marvelous journey.” In addition to this column, I also work on my high school reunions, which included setting up a website that helps keep track of classmates who graduated from Summit High School in 1964. Five students from our high school class went to Lehigh. We just learned that Theodore “Ted” Breton passed away on June 6, 2025, in Richmond City, Va. Ted was a Theta Chi and earned his degree in chemical engineering. He earned an M.S. in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Ph.D. from George Mason University. He was a vice president of ICF Consulting for 22 years and professor of economics at the University of EAFIT, Medellin, Colombia, for 15 years. He married a girl from Colombia, whom he met while serving in the Peace Corps. They have three children. The message contained in this column is that if you have not been in touch with your old buddies, now is the time to get in touch. I have now caught up with the information that has been sent to me, so unless the silent majority comes across with an email, phone call or postcard, I will have nothing for the next Bulletin. Tell me how you are doing on your bucket list or anything you are doing. Hoping to hear from you soon. MMXXV ’69 Peter Dane, pkdane@ sbcglobal.net and George Ikeda, gaikeda425@gmail.com As class members have now worked their careers and lived most of their lives after Lehigh, George and Pete crafted a short survey to ask classmates about their perspectives on the Lehigh experience. We asked them to note fondest memories of their Lehigh years, reflecting on how they felt getting a Lehigh education had affected their careers, lives, experiences and relationships they forged at and after school with people from Lehigh. At the end, we asked them to imagine being president of Lehigh today and speculate on what they would try to do to improve the university. We did not get a flood of responses, but replies we did receive were varied, interesting and thoughtful. The comments were extensive enough that we did not have space to include everyone’s in this column. We will provide more in the next column or two, including the thoughts of three classmates held from this issue that will appear next time. Some named experiences
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