CLASS NOTES | SUMMER 2024 | 59 Fifty years ago, we were ending our junior year and beginning to think about life after Lehigh. The Philadelphia Flyers—the Broad Street Bullies—defeated the Boston Bruins to win their first National Hockey League title. The first check-out scan of an item at a grocery store occurred in Ohio. The Watergate investigations continued. “Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number” by Steely Dan was atop the Billboard list of popular songs. “Chinatown,” starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, was playing in movie theaters. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of our graduation. Our 50th reunion will be June 12-15, 2025. One aspect of the 50th will be the presentation of our class reunion gift to Lehigh. Contributions to this year’s Giving Day-March Madness were by more members of our class than ever and, no matter the designation, will be counted toward our 50th reunion class gift amount. Our co-presidents, Jeff Sherman and Mardi Blacher-Reich, are guiding our reunion committee, which has met several times in planning the festivities. You may recall that our senior class project was publishing “Through the Years: A History of Lehigh Wrestling.” Many said the project could not be done. Yet, with the leadership of Kathy (Kane) Schlegel as editor, Wendy Brouwer as research chair and Patti (Brown) Kelly as business chair who guided many researchers, writers and marketers, the publication was a huge success. In fact, I recently discovered that “Through the Years” is in the Lehigh University display at the U.S. National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla. What a legacy left by our class! One Lehigh official who was a steadfast supporter of our effort on “Through the Years” from the very beginning was Denny Diehl ’70. He went on to become a premier statistician and journalist reporting on collegiate wrestling. He started national rankings of collegiate wrestlers, which caught on and now rankings are mainstays in the sport. At this year’s Easterns, Denny was posthumously inducted into the EIWA Hall of Fame, even though he never wrestled one bout. Following the Easterns, Curt Schmidt, Doug Henning, Barb Turanchik, my wife, Valerie Smith Hirsch ’83, and I attended a commemoration of Denny’s life at Hotel Bethlehem. What a great friend of the Class of ’75. For the second season in a row, Valerie and I attended the Easterns wrestling tournament at Bucknell University. The Lehigh team wrestled to its full potential. They couldn’t quite catch Cornell but had more champions than Cornell with four, the most valuable wrestler in Ryan Crookham ’26, at 133 pounds, who defeated the reigning world and national champion and the wrestler with the most falls in the least amount of time in Nathan Taylor ’25, at 285 pounds. The way the team conducted itself made us proud. Several weeks prior, a tribute to Coach Thad Turner ’61 was held at Lamberton Hall. Terry DeStito, Fred Engelberger, Mike Lieberman, Marty Lynn and I were in attendance. Coach begrudgingly allowed his former wrestlers to rain heartfelt tributes on him and his wife, Janet, for all they have done to positively affect our lives and those we have touched. In his characteristic humility, Coach maintained that there was “a lot of fibbing going on.” I realize that this edition has plenty about wrestling. The sport is a part of the Lehigh tradition and was a part of our time at Lehigh. I would welcome hearing from anyone who wants to relay their experiences in other sports, including the beginning of Lehigh’s women sports programs. Stories about your involvement in other aspects of Lehigh would also be appreciated. Plus, your classmates would like to know what you have done after we graduated and how you are doing now. Please get in touch with me! And, finally, anyone who wants to know more about—or, better yet, help with—our 50th reunion planning, please contact me and I will forward your questions or expressions of interest to our class co-presidents. ’76 Paul Laschiavo and Jamie Holbrook, Lehigh76correspondents@ gmail.com. This installment was written by Jamie Holbrook. After an illustrious 47-year journey in the alumni correspondence column, Mark Goehring has decided to embark on a new chapter, passing the torch to Paul Loschiavo and me. I live in the Seattle area and Paul lives in Florida … so we have two of the four USA corners covered. We’d love to hear from any of the classmates in between those two corners with their current status and interactions with other classmates. The Lehigh-Lafayette football game in November wasn’t all that spectacular, but I hosted the telecast in Ballard (a neighborhood of Seattle) at Bad Albert’s Tavern. I even have a TV shot from the first half that showed us ahead of Lafayette. But that’s not how the game turned out. We had 23 Lehigh folks show up — and hopefully, through this writing, some local ’76ers will show up this November. The good news: The game on the West Coast starts at 9 a.m., the bloody Marys are excellent, and we’re strolling the shops of Ballard by noon. On Oct. 9 of last year, I went to a Town Hall in downtown Seattle to see Marty Baron (editor of The Brown and White during our years at Lehigh). He has written a book, “Collision of Power—Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post.” His talk with Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen illuminated some of the book’s revelations and conclusions. I was first in line for his book signing, and he was somewhat surprised and speechless to find someone at the signing who actually knew him from his graduating class. On May 7 of this year, Lehigh President Joe Helble ’82 visited the Seattle area (Bellevue) to give a chat about Future Makers of Seattle. A wide range of alumni attended from 1965 to 2022. His speech about Lehigh today and what Lehigh’s future holds makes me want to come back to the university for a couple of years. His engagement and energy really inspired the 50-60 folks attending. The next morning, I joined Pres. Joe on his jog through Kirkland, Wash. This was my third year participating in the 7 a.m. Pace the Prez run, and although I didn’t actually do all four miles (amended to better suit the senior division), I did have a good time chatting with Pres. Joe and other runners. We did receive a note from Pete Kershaw for our first edition. Pete was fresh off a Lehigh alumni travel program trip to Tanzania. He said the safari was fantastic and a great way to reconnect with Lehigh. Pete explains that he earned a BSIE but quickly determined engineering wasn’t a fit. So, his MBA from Duquesne University put him in the health care manufacturing sector that offered implantable and disposable devices. His career concluded at Millipore Corporation, where he was responsible for global operations. He now consults with his previously connected organizations when there’s time between traveling and family. ’77 Ann Louise (Werley) Price, 2 Colton St., Farmington, CT 06032. (860) 677-1295 (H); prokemo@comcast.net Alan Karpovitch was able to attend the Rally last year, along with Richard Poole and his wife. Alan reports, “I have been
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