52 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN | CLASS NOTES made three additional trips to Vietnam and highly recommends it. Looking for a five-star hotel, he says to check out the Metropole in Hanoi. Feeling cabin fever during COVID, he bought a motor home so he and Sherry could get out and travel. Howie is now recovering from a hip replacement. They are blessed that their two children and four grandchildren all live in the area. On the other hand, most of Tom Best’s eight grandchildren live more than 1,000 miles away, including four in Portugal. This gives Tom and Luellen many reasons to travel. They also travel between their Newton, Mass., home and second year-round home on the Maine coast. Tom graduated as an IE, and his first job was a combination industrial and manufacturing engineer. He gradually shifted toward facilities management and construction/real estate and then project management. He held project management positions for several companies and fully retired in 2016. Tom had two extracurricular passions at Lehigh that continued for his entire life—singing and soccer. The Lehigh Glee Club led to 37 years with the Spectrum Singers (where he has been board chair, section lead and soloist) and 25 years with the Cantata Singers. The Lehigh soccer team led to many years of playing with a competitive league in the Boston area. Tom is often the oldest person on the team and is included in the “over-68 division” playing 10 games each spring and fall. Luellen is still teaching voice lessons and enjoys walking the Maine shoreline. ’67 Eric Hamilton, journeyman618@ gmail.com Thanks to all my classmates who contributed to this column, some for the first time and a few for the first time in over 55 years. Mike Caruso attended the EIWA championships at Penn. He commented, “One round, I sat between Joey Caprio and Mort McClennan, who was visiting his son. Nice weekend!” Harvey York wished me well and wrote, “There must have been an error in your email. Enjoying retirement? Not a chance! I am enjoying the practice of law more than ever. Having fun at least 40 hours a week. Both my sons, Michael ’94 and David ’98, are partners in the firm. My wife, Barbara, also is in the firm, helping with timekeeping, part time. All of us are involved in community charities, the county college, food bank, etc. We do make time to travel and enjoy our four grandchildren. We play golf at home and Saucon Valley. No complaints from us.” Tom Ramsey writes, “Much has changed. I retired May 28, 1999, at 53! Christina and I were married Dec. 26, 2010, in Bryn Mawr, Pa., in an eightinch snowstorm. Christina is Dr. Christina Clay, a hematologist and oncologist with MD Anderson Cooper. Christina graduated from Northwestern University ’83 and Northwestern Medical School ’85. She has two daughters, Ellen (30) and Charlotte (27), both of whom also went to Northwestern. Ellen and her husband are half-way through a six-month sojourn through southeast Asia. Charlotte works for FalconX, a cryptocurrency trading company. Ellen has her master’s from Penn. “My sons are Andrew (30) and Douglas (25). Andrew, Cornell ’14, works for the Toronto Maple Leafs as senior special assistant to the president of hockey operations. Douglas, George Washington University ’20, is getting his master’s at Georgetown University. Both boys rowed for their respective colleges. I also have two daughters, Elizabeth and Laura, twins who are 52. They live in downstate Delaware and graduated from Temple University. They each have two children, all of whom attend or are about to attend the University of Delaware. Julia, 21, the oldest, is getting married in August. My daughters are from my first marriage to Nancy, who I was dating while I was an undergraduate and married before graduate school. Nancy and I divorced in the mid ’80s. My sons are from my marriage to Cynthia Archer. Both marriages lasted 15 years. “Christina and I live in Merion Station, Pa. We’re about 70% of the way through restoring, redecorating and generally renewing a 105-year-old house we moved into in August 2018. This fall, we’re cruising the west coast of Norway from Bergen to Kirkenes in the hope of seeing the Northern Lights. We have a 4-month-old puppy, a West Highland Terrier (a Westie) named Freyja for the Norse goddess of love. “Personally, I stayed at Lehigh and got my MBA in 1968. I was in ROTC at Lehigh, so I spent two years in the Army, including one year in Vietnam. I worked 30 years in the railroad industry and, as I mentioned, retired in 1999 from Conrail.” Robin Miller says he is sorry not to have seen many ’67s at the last reunion. “I was both a resident student and townie. It was my privilege after graduating to have befriended professors Jerry King, Rich Aronson and Dean John Karakash, all sadly gone, as are Joe Dowling, Robert Sprague, and many other great Lehigh teachers. Karakash would mention my name in his talks to alumni and community groups as an example of how ‘not all his engineers practice pure engineering. Instead, they apply their problem-solving skills as lawyers, politicians and one filmmaker.’ “For 30 years, after IBM assigned me as client producer of a sales film, I made a few hundred features and documentaries—some fundraisers for Lehigh—recognized by 52 awards, including the Peabody. Having an engineering background also meant I could design and build my own facilities, synchronize film to audio and videotape and computer, and patent a method of full-sphere 3-D sound reproduction. I, too, found teaching rewarding; I was an artist-in-residence for third- and fourth-graders, wrote the syllabus and taught two courses in Lehigh’s grad school and mentored an Integrated Business-Engineering (IBE) team. “Some may remember I had a party band, and four others, with Nancy Desiderio, Miss Lehigh Valley 1965 and my spouse. It’s a hoot that BBC2 plays our music, as do streaming services. Nancy sang my arrangements as a pop soloist with symphony orchestras from Rhode Island to Palm Beach. We finally retired from performing American Songbook jazz and light classical for 60 years, headlining at black-tie fundraisers and community concerts, such as at the Mesa Arts Center before an audience of 1,200. “All in all, it’s been a thrilling ride, including the ups and downs running two small businesses and raising two children, one with Down syndrome. Our son is a chief revenue officer and father of two teen boys. Our parents and daughter have passed, but we keep active, including writing my fourth book. More than a half-century later, I see that it all had roots at Lehigh.” Robert C. Rickards spoke interestingly of his overseas educational work and travel. “In Germany, all professors at public universities are civil servants. We all ‘retire’ at the end of the semester that includes our 65th birthday. Practically, for me, that only has meant no longer having to sit in seemingly endless committee and faculty meetings at my former home institution. Universities continue to invite me to teach
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