Also an officer of the club is my girlfriend Jennifer Deane <jennifer_deane@hotmail.com>—now working as Editor with Miller Freeman, Inc.—who recently organized a group of Vassar alums to participate in this year’s Hands At Work Day, a citywide volunteer effort bringing together more than 800 volunteers to work on nearly 50 projects around San Francisco. Other Class of ’99ers in our volunteer group included Dave Halleck, Katelyn Milinowicz, and Jen Guevin, who are all living and working here in San Francisco. Also in our group were recent alums Enoch Davis ’98 and Tahl Raz ’98.

Moving outside the City by the Bay, the first order of business is to congratulate two members of our class on their recent engagements. Robert McKenney, who has completed his first year at Vanderbilt Law School, is now engaged to Stephanie McEntee, whom he met at the beginning of the school year. Jessica Sawyer and Aaron Warren ’00 have planned their wedding for June 2001. After studying astrophysics at Vassar during the summer following our graduation, Jessica spent some time with Aaron in Michigan. Come fall, they will both be pursuing Ph.D.s from Rutgers University—Jessica in astrophysics and Aaron in string theory. Jessica is certainly keeping her Vassar connections alive; she had a mini-reunion on campus with April Dawn Klemm, Jessica Golub, and Adele Smith. Finally, Jessica writes that she spoke with Karly Pitman, “who is at Louisiana State University and keeping quite warm and occupied with studies in physics.” Good luck to you and your respective partners, Rob and Jessica!

On the international front, I get occasional e-mails from Anna Hutchinson, who’s working at a law firm in Sydney, Australia, and having a wonderful time. I’m often jealous of her Outback adventures—traveling to Tasmania, exploring caves, and frolicking with koalas (to gloss over a few highlights). Anna gets a Vassar visitor, such as Mark Abelson, from time to time. On the other side of the world are Melissa Walker and Amar Reganti, who continue to represent our class in London. In early May, Melissa ran into President Frances Fergusson at a Vassar function at the British Library, “and also talked to Eric Vassar, a great, great, great, great nephew of Matthew’s.” Melissa is working for an Internet/marketing/design firm, copy editing and performing other general tasks. Amar is finishing up his Master’s program at the London School of Economics.

I received several notes from the New York City crowd. Oscar Gil writes that he has “been working in a campaign with Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who plans to run for May of New York City in 2001.” Oscar is happy to announce that he’s been accepted to a “Sociology Graduate Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara,” and plans to start classes there in the fall. The New York Times reported last December that Angela Goethals had a leading role as Margaret Mackenzie in “True History and Real Adventures,” which ran through January at the Vineyard Theater in New York City. Trisha Balbert is working as Administrative Assistant at Cornerstone Research, which, she reports, “is working out great.” She was also cast in “A Little Piece of the Sun” and has begun work on a one-woman show. “It’ll probably be a year before that comes to fruition,” says Trisha, since she just started working on it. Brian “Dingo” Grosz dropped me an e-mail to say that “The El Conquistadors, formerly Skabba the Hut (Seth Berkowitz ’98, Brian Grosz, Sam Endicott, Chris Miller ’98, John Togo, John Conway, Will Carlough) are in New York City, with the exception of John Conway, who is in Los Angeles. After scoring a gig as the house band for Comedy Central’s latest season of ‘Premium Blend,’ [The El Conquistadors] went on to sell a song to an ABC movie and win the Japanese variety show ‘Seize the Night.’” By the time you read this, Becca Schlesinger will have earned her Master’s degree in Museum Education, and will have moved “from New York to Columbus, Ohio to work in the education department of the Wexner Center For the Arts.” Becca also reports that she regularly sees Kate Donovan and Paul McCaffrey.

A handful of our classmates have landed in the nation’s capital. Yevgeniya Pinkusovich is finishing up her first year of medical school, which, she writes, “was quite a bit of a challenge.” Jeremy Decker, who’s living in New York City “doing research at Albert Einstein School of Medicine,” recently paid a visit to Yevgeniya. Pam Epstein <PIEpstein@kennedy-center.org> has been living in Washington, D.C. since October—after backpacking through Italy and Spain with Ariel Spira-Cohen. Pam “recently completed a four month internship at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution.” She “got a job at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts doing Event Planning,” and has been there since March. Pam spent two weeks in June visiting Kate Halverson in Berlin and Amsterdam. Amber Close is working in D.C. as Marketing Associate for CollegeImpact/VarsityBooks.com. “CollegeImpact is a marketing services company geared towards the college student demographic,” she writes. “Our primary client is VarsityBooks.com, an online textbooks company.” Amber manages “student representatives in the Mountain region (i.e., Utah, Colorado, Idaho).” Just outside D.C. is Milton Welch, who’s working part-time as a librarian at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He is “also enrolled in a Master’s Program in the ‘Great Books of Western Tradition.’” After a chance meeting with a New York literary agent, writes Milton, he is now “working on memoirs of my philosophical education.”

Back on campus, some ’99ers cheered on the Class of 2000 at Commencement. Marivel Oropeza dropped me a line from Ann Arbor to say that she, along with Jill Cadre, Tom Pyun, Ebony Rucker, and Evan Greenstein, attended this year’s graduation ceremony.

I heard from two of Philadelphia’s Class of ’99ers: Kevin Aldridge and Conor Corcoran. Kevin has been living there since graduation and working as a Paralegal at the city’s largest firm. He is preparing to take the LSAT and plans to apply to law schools. According to Kevin, “Simone Girner is working for Departures, a travel magazine, in New York City, and is occasionally being whisked away to some gorgeous locale for research. Sharon Cohan is working for the psychology department of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Matt Newton has moved to Los Angeles, where he is extremely busy with auditions and getting several roles on television.” Conor reports that he misses Brian Grosz.

Brooke Jacobs filled me in on “the Denver crew.” She, Robin Burton, and Jessica Maklan “have a beautiful house together. Robin is doing development for a non-profit organization called the Public Education & Business Coalition.” Brooke and Jessica are working for Thomas & Perkins Advertising—the former in Account Planning and the latter in Account Management.

Sarah Good is living in the Northeast and working as an Americorps VISTA. She “established and [is] currently maintaining the Rolling Readers tutoring program in an elementary school on the Kitsap Penninsula (right across the sound from Seattle).” Sarah writes that “it is an amazing place to live” and that she loves working in a school.

That does it for this installment of Class Notes, so until next time, have fun and play nice. Drop me a line from time to time. Or, if you’re ever in San Francisco, give me a call.