DHS Class of 1988 20 Year Reunion

Here’s my story: my folks moved to Atlanta in the summer of ‘88 so I had little reason to return to Darien. I graduated from Bryn Mawr College in ‘92 with a degree in Fine Arts. After 3 years of meandering around the country, working blah jobs, trying to figure out what to do with a Fine Arts degree, I moved to NYC (West Village, then East) in ‘95 and went to Pratt Institute to get a Masters in Graphic Design.

Then, in ‘97, I dusted off my old tuba to record on a musician friend’s album. (You may remember me lugging that big horn around DHS.) This was the start of my illustrious 9-year underground tuba career, which included playing part-time with gypsy-punk originators Gogol Bordello, and the gritty-but-glamorous Vanity Set. Over the years I have done a bunch of recordings, a few radio shows, a tour to London, and many random performances with random bands. It was all for fun, not so much for profit. But fortunately I always had my day job as a graphic designer to pay the bills.

In ‘98 while I was playing with Gogol Bordello, I met my husband, Sasha Kazachkov; he was the accordion player at the time. We were married in ‘03 and our beautiful son James Dmitriy Aleksandrovich Kazachkov (aka Dima) was born in August of ‘06. I pretty much stopped playing music in the Spring of ‘06 (tuba and pregnancy are a tough combo).

We now live in Brooklyn and I work as a designer at Hot House Brand Group in NYC. When I’m not at work making logos, I’m building cities out of Duplo blocks, or chasing Dima around the playground.

I really haven’t kept in touch with anyone other than J. Harrell & I had a brief get-together with Sunyoung Lee & Thea Gray around ‘96, but it’s so interesting to see what everyone has been up to. Here are some pictures of my family…

Enjoy the Reunion!

20 Years can’t have passed us by already, we’re getting old!  Sometimes it feels like an eternity, yet in keeping up with my good friends, Meredith Hughes Donohue, Becca Munro Horning, Brigitte Barton Mansourian, and Corinne Martin Wilson, it feels like no time has passed at all.  I guess that is what old friends are like, timeless and I feel lucky to have made these relationships in Darien.  So much has happened, but in a nutshell, here goes.

After graduating from St. Lawrence University in ‘92 I lived in New Canaan and worked in Greenwich for three years at a small muni bond boutique as a trading assistant.  During that time, I met my husband Palmer. He distracted me so much (in a good way that is) that it took me two times to finally pass my series 7.  Shortly thereafter, we got married in May of ‘95, moved to MA for a couple of years, first Concord then to Newburyport.  I continued working with muni bonds for five more years at Fidelity Capital Markets, then moved to the retail side of the market and worked for Paine Webber.  In the summer of ‘00, Palmer took a new job which brought us back to CT.  He had been working in the golf business and switched gears to work in the financial industry, specifically with pension plans.  He works for MassMutual as the National Managing Director for the non-profit market.  I took a job w ith Smith Barney for just under two years until I decided that l needed a change so I worked as a fund raiser for CT College.  During that time we got pregnant.  I arranged to go back to work part time and work with planned gifts.  Then in December of ‘03 when our first son, Madison was born, I had a change of heart and decided to stay home fulltime.  Madison is now 4 1/2 and has a little brother who arrived on Halloween in ‘06,  named Shep.  After years of working and traveling in between with Palmer, I have to say that being at home now is the best job I’ve ever had.  I do live in a household of testosterone with my boys but can’t imagine it any other way.  We’ve been happily settled in Essex, CT for the last eight years and it’s been great.  I am busy with my boys and volunteering in our community.  My parents left Darien in ‘96 and moved to Ponte Vedra Beach F L, only to return to CT two years ago.  They now live about three miles from us here in Essex,  it’s so nice having them near by, especially for our boys.  Look forward to seeing everyone at the reunion!

After graduating from DHS I went to Hampshire College, where I majored (or “concentrated”, in we-don’t-give-grades Hampshire-speak) in science fiction and neuroscience. About the science fiction half: in college I took classes at U-Mass Amherst from Samuel R. Delany, who encouraged me to go to the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in ‘90. One of my instructors there was Gene Wolfe, who I believe is the greatest American author of the last millenium (even more sincerely than I believe that Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master II is the last millenium’s finest cinematic achievement). The short story I wrote during Wolfe’s week at Clarion was published by Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine a dozen years later, and I expect to keep up with that pace by selling another SF piece by 2014. I’ve been slightly more prolific as a critic, writing essays for The New York Review of Science Fiction and capsule reviews for Publisher’s Weekly (where I got to proclaim John C. Wright as the best SF author of this millenium).

About the neuroscience half: My senior thesis at Hampshire was called “I Saw My God”: The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience. That led to grad school at UCLA’s Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program from 1995-2001, where I was interested first in hypnosis and later in cigarette smoking and got to study some people with split brains (aka complete commisurotomy patients), some other people with multiple personalities (aka dissociative identity disorder), and some smokers who volunteered to go into a fMRI scanner while I sucked cigarette smoke into a glass syringe inside a Plexiglass box so they could inhale it through an eight-foot-long hookah made of platic tubing and a face mask. This was fun, as was living in Southern California, but I eventually realized I liked everything about science except actually conducting research and left without finishing my dissertation.

Both of these more-or-less relate to my current part-time job as a freelance writer, in which I help scientists write grants to get funding from the National Institute of Health, and also write books of supplemental rules for “the world’s most popular roleplaying game”. My full-time job since ‘02 has been being a stay-at-home dad to my son Javi. Now that he just finished kindergarden, I’m looking to make being Mr. Mom my part-time job and am interested in networking about opportunities in medical copywriting or other fields that involve understanding what scientists are talking about and translating it for laypeople.

In personal news: I married Marjorie Bradshaw, the girl next door in my first Hampshire dorm, in 1992. This was what folks nowadays call a “starter marriage” in that we got together young and didn’t have any kids, although we broke the pattern by staying together for seven years. In 2000 my dad, David Allison, drowned while we were on a family trip to Hawaii to see my mom Pixie dance in the Merrie Monarch Festival as part of the first non-Hawaaian-or-Californian hula group to compete. In ‘01 I married my current wife, Jennifer Manly, and if “a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience,” the hope was certainly justified. Our son Javi was born in ‘02, and we’re still working on a sequel. Jen is a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University, whose faculty housing lets our family live affordably on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I never liked visiting NYC in high school, but love living there now, perhaps because it’s become a lot less wild and wooly than I remember.

I cut my hair short for the first time since junior year on New Year’s Eve, 1999. (My dreadlocked passport photo taken that summer has made airport security personnel on three different continents laugh out loud.) Nevertheless, I’m still actively involved in trying to relive the spirit of the early ’70s. These days that takes the form of playing Dungeons and Dragons, often still using the books that my mom bought me after seeing an article about the game in the Darien News Review during its early-80’s peak of popularity. I hope classmates Josh Davis, Keir DeFriesse, Susannah Donahue, Ted D’Ottavio, Jay Harrell, and Brian Stith won’t mind me outing them as incorrigible nerds when I say that I’ve had some great times rolling funny-shaped dice with them over the past few years. Other classmates I’ve seen while not pretending to be an elf or an orc (most recently at Susannah’s wedding) include Emily D’Araujo, Thea Gray, Rob Hodil, Sunyoung Lee, and Christina Raskopf  and, less recently, Charlie Freeman and Marcella Smith. I’m looking forward to seeing more old friends, and also getting to know folks that I didn’t back in the day, at the reunion!

Having just checked the recent blogs, I see that Veronique (Marchal) has gotten hers up.  Since she and I made a deal to write blogs before the reunion, I guess it’s my turn.

After high school, I went to Holy Cross and majored in French and Russian.  That may seem like an utterly impractical choice, but the French part turned out to be more useful than I could have ever imagined.  Subsequent to college, I spent a year teaching English in Brive, France, where I met a charming, young Frenchman named Laurent.  We were married in 1994 and Veronique was my maid-of-honor.  It was handy having her at the ceremony because she was able to translate the best man’s toast into English while censoring out (most of) the embarrassing parts.

In 1993, I changed my focus to Russian and enrolled in a MA/PhD program at Brown University.  While in graduate school, I had the opportunity to study in Prague and in Moscow.  I learned a great deal in these two beautiful, culturally and historically rich cities, though I should note that I acquired an appreciation for American toilet paper.

I graduated from Brown in the spring of 1999, and then began teaching Russian language and literature at Holy Cross as an adjunct.  Our first son, Cedric, was born two years later.  The 6 years I spent teaching at HC were very rewarding, but the commute between Providence and Worcester was tricky with a child in daycare.  The birth of our second son, Justin, coincided with my departure from the college.  It has been a real treat to stay home with the boys - now almost 7 and 2.5 - and not worry about illnesses, snowstorms, and the like.  Of course, some days by late afternoon things start to breakdown.  Tonight, as I was cooking dinner, I realized that my youngest was suspiciously quiet.  Turns out he was scribbling on the family room rug with a blue crayon.  Three hours later, I’m smiling about it, though I’m pretty sure the hard lemonade helped.  On the topic of my children, I have to say that they adore Veronique.  She’s as much fun now as she was 20 years ago.

I’ve stayed somewhat active professionally by organizing home stays for French students, doing French tutoring, and writing a bit.  This year I have an article coming out on a writer who’s actually not too obscure - his name is Andrei Makine and he wrote a novel called Dreams of My Russian Summers, a popular choice for book clubs.  I’ll probably return to teaching in the future, but for now I’m content with sporadic projects.

I have enjoyed hearing about everyone’s lives since DHS.  So far, it looks like I’m the only one in the Providence, RI, area.  If anyone else is around, please don’t hesitate to look me up.  See you all next week!

Thanks again to Dana and everyone for setting up the reunion. Looking forward to seeing everyone in a few weeks.

Just a quick update. After graduation from DHS, I graduated from Stetson University in 1992. After working for Davis Polk Wardwell and for Merrill Lynch for a few years, I joined a German Energy Trading company called Ruhrkohle Trading Corporation. This job took me from New York to Germany and then to Baltimore from 1995 – 2001. In 2001, I joined an Energy Brokerage named Evolution Markets in White Plains, NY and have been there ever since.

In 2002, I was lucky enough to meet my beautiful wife Denise and we were married in 2003. After living in the city for 5 years, we just moved to Wilton, Ct June 2^nd 2008. We are happy to mention that Denise just gave birth to twins June 29^th 2008. Ellery Mary Worst and Caroline Kelsey Worst. As some of you might have guessed, Caroline was named after my dear friend Matt.

I am still lucky to hang out with a whole group of guys from high school. Chico, Scott, Bondlow, Jimbo, Markowski, Anderson, etc etc all see each other regularly in the city for our boys nights out, on the golf course, and with our families in CT.

See everyone July 12^th.

With the reunion quickly approaching, I finally decided to post an update on what I have been doing since June 1988.  First, though, I want to thank Dana and Steve and the rest of you who have helped organize the reunion and set up the web site. I am looking forward to seeing everyone.

Here is a quick summary of life since 1988: After graduation, I headed to Rollins College and graduated in 1992. It was at Rollins that I met my wife, Gretchen. After college, I moved to Washington, DC and got married in 1994. Rich Weitzel was my best man and Campbell Barrett, Wes Williams, and Alex Michel were all groomsmen. In 1995, I decided to go back to school to get my MBA. I graduated from William and Mary in 1997 and moved to Atlanta to work for BellSouth in Internet Marketing. After doing several different roles within BellSouth for about 10 years, I left in February of this year to become Vice President of Inside Sales and Service for Citysearch. (shameless plug: if you are not familiar with www.citysearch.com, it is a great web site for finding out what is going on in your city and for finding good recommendations on restaurants, spas, etc.)

My wife and I did not expect to be in Atlanta for this long, but we have really enjoyed it. We have three boys (Will is 8, Alex is 5, and James is 10 months…..and Mickey, our dog, who is 11 years old) who keep us pretty busy between baseball, soccer, swimming, and lots of other activities. It is great. I primarily keep in touch with Rich, Campbell, Wes, and Alex and we try to get together at least once a year for a weekend. In Atlanta, I have seen Greg Klingaman through softball and bumped into Anne Lautenbach while apple picking, but I am looking forward to seeing many others at the reunion.

Attached is a photo of my boys.  (There doesn’t ever seem to be time or willingness to get a complete family photo).

Hi Everyone,

I have enjoyed reading all the blog entries and decided it was finally time for me to contribute.  So… the last 20 years in a nutshell…  after graduation I headed off to St. Mary’s College in Indiana where I majored in Elementary Education.  St. Mary’s is the sister school of Notre Dame and I was in the Notre Dame Marching Band and Concert Band.  College was an amazing time and I traveled all over the country with the band.  ND won the National Championship our freshman year and I got to four great bowl games during my four years.  Didn’t think that 20 years later I would still be waiting for ND to win another title!!!  I graduated in 92 and took a job in San Francisco teaching 1st grade at a private school in the city.  I loved the west coast and the Bay Area and spent the next 9 years living in SF and teaching at Stuart Hall for Boys, in Pacific Heights.  Coincidentally, while I was teaching there, Amy Burton and her husband Michael joined the faculty, so it was fun to re-connect with her.  As much as I loved California, it became harder to be so far away from my ever growing family.  With 5 siblings, there were lots of family weddings and several nieces/nephews being born.  In 2001, I left California, drove across country and returned to CT.  I got a job teaching 2nd grade at Fairfield Country Day School, and I resided in Fairfield for the next 5 years.  It turned out to be a great decision in many ways.  I had a great 5 years being near my parents and family.  In 2006 my dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer and we lost him 8 months later.  It was an absolutely devastating experience and was certainly the hardest year of my life.  On a happier note, in 2005 I re-connected with the love of my life, Gerry O’Brian.  Gerry (also a Darienite… those who grew up on/around Fairview Ave. may know him) and I knew each other from St. Thomas More and had dated back in 1988.  As I was just headed off to Indiana back then, we went our separate ways and hoped that when the timing was right, we would re-connect.  Over the years we lost touch, but our parents had stayed in Darien and remained friends.  In 2005, I ran into Gerry’s mom and she asked for my email address.  Gerry and I got back in touch after 17 years and fell madly in love.  Gerry and I were married last August and we are living in Chester, New Jersey (in the Morristown area).  We are expecting our first baby at the end of August, so I will be the one with the enormous “baby bump” at the reunion!!!  (Jill Waggener… just stand next to me all night and you will look tiny!!!)  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone on the 12th!  Here are a couple photos.  The last picture was two years ago at the Black Goose (Kathy, Me, Jenny, Annie, & Mollie).

Lucy 6, Courtland 4 and Zander 2 keep my wife Marianne and I plenty busy.  We live in Hanover, NH where I moved after graduating from Brown U. with Rob Hodil, Bill Baker and Geoff McDonald.  Soon after school and a winter stint skiing in Snowmass, CO, I became the Head Sailing Coach for Dartmouth College for one year in part to help out my sister Kristin who was a senior at Dartmouth.  She graduated that year and ten years later I was still coaching at Dartmouth.   I was the national US Olympic developmental coach for Sailing for six of those years as well.  After winning a world championship in Auckland, New Zealand at the beginning of ‘03 I decided that was enough of competing and coaching as a profession and soon after I began managing investments for individuals and institutions.   That turned out to be a great move.

The DHS classmate that I have seen most recently is fellow ‘88 class co-president Josh Davis.  Josh, of course, is exactly the same. The rest of us are welcome to use name tags.

Best,

BD

But for the three kids in my house who aren’t my siblings, I feel like I’ve been in a time capsule.  I am surrounded by legos and Strawberry Shortcake.  Scooby Doo and Tom & Jerry are on too.  I guess they just love the classics.  However with Cyndi Lauper playing at the grocery store, I come crashing back to reality…

Life is good.  I finished Princeton in ‘92 and couldn’t find a job like 60% of my classmates.  Landed at a small consulting firm in Greenwich and stayed for five years.  Met my wife on the banks of the Hudson River in September ‘93.  Married in ‘97 and moved to Los Angeles for her residency.  Spent a lot of time in both LA and SF for those three years.  In fact, my last class contact was a burger and beer with Charlie Mordy in SF while I worked on a project nearby in ‘99 (I think).  Even hung out with the Bachelor for lunch also in SF.  (I didn’t get a rose either.)

Speaking of Alex, I had the pleasure of being called by US Weekly magazine prior to the airing of the show…something about pages from the DHS yearbook being in the press package.  Apparently Miller comes right after Michel in the alphabet and my dad (still in CT) was more than happy to help the intrepid reporter who tracked me down in my new home: Nashville, TN.  (I made the reporter bored and still have not collected any royalties for withholding the real dirt.  Alex will be there right?)

I had forgotten all of our Vanderbilt-bound classmates.  I joined the Commodore ranks with a Vanderbilt MBA in 2005.  Our family lives 2 miles from campus near Hillsboro village for those who have wandered through the city.  Since school, I have been a commercial banker with Bank of America.  I specialize in banking for-profit healthcare companies.  Heather is a pediatrician with a practice east of the city.  She is a native of San Diego, CA.  (Long story on how we landed here.)

We have three kids; Grace (8), Thomas (5), and Julia (2).  My mother still lives in Darien, so we’ll be returning not only for the reunion but also with the mission of surrounding her with grandchildren.  Tracy (DHS ‘98) has two - she’ll be visiting from Ann Arbor.  Wendy (DHS ‘95) has two and is still in Darien today.  Any Country Club, Barringer, or Hoyt St. alums who want to wander the old neighborhood?  Drop me an email (rustymiller@bellsouth.net).  Country Club Road will be Reunion Central for my crew.

By the way, does anyone have access to four Yankee tickets?  I am hoping to make one final visit with the kids before it is torn down.

Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Rusty

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since we’ve all marched down the football field to receive our HS diploma, I haven’t said that word “diploma” in quite some time.

After graduation I went off to NY for school (Iona College).  Shortly after graduating from college I landed a marketing communications job in Greenwich, CT and did the commute from home, (good old Darien) for a bit.

The company I was working for was going through a merger and the entire corporate office was laid off, therefore it was time to obtain another job.  I didn’t want to stay in CT. There was no “energy or social scene” plus, since I spent most of my time in Manhattan hanging out with my college friends I thought it was time to join the crowd and become a Manhattanite, so that’s what I did.  I got an apartment on the Upper East Side (86th & 2nd) and job downtown near Wall Street (Zurich Insurance). I resided in NYC for 5 years and loved it.  After the NYC itch wore off, I moved back to CT, bought a condo in Norwalk and did the commute for 5 more years.   During my move to CT I reconnected with DHSers: Kim Beckwith, Trish Valentine, Kevin Keating, Nancy (Kesmodel) O’Neil, Marybeth (Smith) O’Donnell, Susie (Salvatore) Flaherty & Rich Rondano.   AnneMarie DiNardo & I have been in contact ever since graduating from DHS and she reconnected me with her crew: Heather Waddington, Pia Durey, etc.

Shortly after living in CT I met my future hubby (Mike).  My college girlfriends & I all thought we’d meet our hubbies in NYC since it’s such a melting put, but that wasn’t the case.  After a few years of dating, Mr. Mike popped the question in my favorite city: “NYC.”   We married on November 5, 2005.  I stopped the NYC commute and found a job in Stamford then New Haven.

A year and a half later we got pregnant and out came little miss Allison Lorissa Benedetto on Dec 28, 2007!  Yeah, our little tax write off!

We live up in the New Haven area.  I’m a stay-at-home mom right now and have started my own marketing consulting firm called OutSource Marketing. I’m in the early start-up phase, have a few clients and building further.  If you know of anybody in need of marketing services please pass on my name & email and I’ll send them a sales sheet if they respond.  My professional email is stephaniebenedetto@hotmail.com) (I had to plug it :-))

Being a mom is wonderful, a lot more rewarding than I thought.   Our families are close by so it’s nice for us and for Allison.  My parents are still in Darien, Mikes are in Ridgefield and his sister lives near us which makes it nice. Plus I have a few cousins near by.  My sister lives in Staten Island with her hubby and daughter and my brother is in Florida.   Life is good.  Here are some picts of us.