class notes

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In Memoriam | People & projects

1980s

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1985

Cindy Pendleton
cindyp1@charter.net

After spending two years as landscape manager at Menla Mountain Retreat and Conference Center in Phoenicia, NY, Evelyn Augusto and husband Ken moved to a new mountaintop home in the area to live “off the grid” in a solar-energy-powered home. They established their own landscape company, Eden Landscape. Daughter Julia, 19, is attending college in NYC; “it’s too quiet on the mountain for her.”

Linda Beck’s book on Senegalese identity politics, Brokering Democracy in Africa, was published in May. She continues to work with the World Bank to promote social accountability of governments to citizens and civil society—most recently in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world.

Steve Zeisler has been a painting contractor in Fairfield County, CT, for more than 20 years. He has three children: a 9-year-old boy and 12- and 14-year-old girls. He encourages anyone who wants to get in touch to Google him.

Tariq Khorma traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, with his family and met up with Ahmet Sadikoglu and two daughters. Ahmet was there to celebrate his mother’s birthday with siblings Tasiana ’80 and Zeid Khorma ’82. A brother, a Union grad, was killed a couple of years ago in the Al Quaeda hotel bombing in Jordan. Tariq has opened a third gym in the seaside resort city of Aqaba and hopes to roll out the fourth next year. He is an advocate of spreading health and well-being to every region in Jordan. He connected with Farhd Sheikh Bahai ’83 in NYC, where Farhd lives with his wife and two daughters and has a dental practice on Madison Avenue.

After many years in NYC Angela Nevard has returned to Montreal, where she lives with son Jackson, 7. She completed her first year of law school at McGill. She says studying has changed since the days of the computer room at Skidmore. She wrote her exams on her laptop and uploaded them.

John Eckert accompanied a two-month humanitarian mission aboard the USS Boxer as a member of the medical executive team. Part of a joint effort by the US military services, Public Health Service, and civilian volunteers from Project HOPE, the mission provided medical, dental, and veterinary care to over 24,000 people in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Peru. John and his colleagues focused on threats like unsafe drinking water, toxic-waste exposure, and air pollution. He says it wasn’t all work. The ceremonial “cleansing of the slimy pollywogs” (sailors who hadn’t crossed the equatorial line previously) included crazy games, skits, a little light hazing, and lots of cold saltwater! In addition to achieving “honorable shellback” status (having completed and survived the ceremony), John also got “the sunburn from hell.”

Thomas Brandt and his wife, Sue, spent two weeks this August skiing and wine-tasting in Chile. Thomas is CEO of Trans-Lux Corporation in Norwalk, CT.

Karen Kern is an assistant professor of Middle East and Ottoman history at Hunter College in NYC. Her article “Rethinking Ottoman Frontier Policies: Marriage and Citizenship in the Province of Iraq” was published in the Arab Studies Journal in spring 2007. Karen also presented a paper at an April symposium at the University of Pennsylvania’s Middle East Center, and another at the 41st Annual Middle East Studies Association Conference in Montreal last November.