Brian Hand, Peggy Bertelsen Hampton, Laurie Elm, Alisa Levy Klein and Larry Hickey, all ’84, celebrated the holiday season with a party at Brian’s house.

1984

It's hard to believe it's 2003! While this year has begun with turmoil and uncertainty, I hope you and your families are happy and healthy. Here's who we heard from this quarter ...

It was great to reconnect with long-lost Mike Held. He has a lot of great news. He was married to Pamela Bennett on Oct. 13. They live in Newtown, Pa., but are not taking too much time to relax, as they recently purchased a new home and moved to the Princeton area in February. Life has been great, as they spend most summer weekends at the beach on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and several winter weekends each year skiing at Killington, Vt. In terms of his career, Mike spent 16 years with Johnson & Johnson, spanning several divisions and holding various marketing positions within brand management, category management and cross-functional team management. He left J&J in 2000, and then joined Foley Inc., the northern New Jersey and Staten Island dealership for Caterpillar construction equipment. He is the corporate marketing director at Foley, as well as a member of the executive leadership team. He is also responsible for six sigma, strategic planning and customer relationship management.

Catherine Morales writes that though she still lives in Rowayton, Conn., she is on the road again. She spent four years in London running the consumer financial services global practice for AMS and had returned to New York to do some public sector work. She is now working in our nation's capital, as the exec in charge of managing AMS's accounts at the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior in the company's public sector practice. She relates that she "is happy be in D.C. because my daughter, Nicole, her husband and my three granddaughters live in Virginia." Still on the road, in her free time she has gone hiking, biking and sailing in Ecuador and the Galapagos, and spent two weeks cycling around Burgundy.

Howard Friedman shares that he, Paula and the family moved last June to New Jersey, but are now returning to Fairfield County. Howard is consulting primarily as vice president of business development (and looking for funding) for an Israeli technology firm that has a proven application for the trade show industry. He is also doing other marketing consulting projects for companies in enterprise marketing (what used to be called B2B).

Michael Hugos related a wonderful story: "A great event happened for me today. I found the book I wrote in the business management section of the Borders bookstore on State Street in Chicago. It all started a couple of years ago when my wife told me she loved to hear me talk, but maybe I ought to try writing a book so that I could reach a wider audience. I took her up on that idea." The inspiration for Michael's book came from the advice to "write what you know." Michael says that for the last 13 years, he worked in the distribution and logistics industry in both consulting and executive positions. So he created a detailed book outline and wrote a draft of several chapters and sent them around to publishers that were interested in this kind of topic. Michael writes, "Mostly I was ignored or I got rejection letters. Then at the end of 2001, I received a response from a publisher who was interested. They wanted some changes and they wanted me to finish writing the whole book within seven months. I didn't give up my day job, so those were some intense seven months." The title of Michael's book is Essentials of Supply Chain Management and it was just published by John Wiley and Sons. Michael says, "It might not be quite as exciting to the general public as a Tom Clancy novel. But if you work in distribution or logistics or manufacturing or retail, you will experience some heart-quickening moments."

Wendy Weiss Kritt wrote from Chicago. She has been at Kraft for 18 years ó the last two years as senior director of the Consumer Resource and Information Center in the e-commerce division.

Jun Adachi ’84 and his family gather on the lakefront in Highland Park.

Last month I heard from my old indoor soccer teammate, Jun Adachi. He lives in Chicago and has a fascinating career as a lifestyle developer, (see www.lifestyledeveloper.com). Ten years ago he started his own consulting business focusing on exporting the U.S. lifestyle to Japan. He says, "It has been a lot of fun getting involved in a variety of projects ó home health care, home schooling, shopping center development, outdoor sports retail, sports park development, real estate securitization, executive coaching and e-learning, to name a few." And Jun says he has even more business ideas to export. He and his wife have two children, Michie, 12, and Kazemi, 4.

Bruce Hoyt is living in Denver, married with a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy. He works for an investment bank, McDonald Investments, primarily executing M&A transactions. He is involved in a number of nonprofits, including one he founded to provide funds for Manual High School, the inner city high school he attended many many moons ago. In three years, he and his family have helped raise more than $1 million for the school. Bruce has given up running due to strain on the knees, but stays in shape by biking and playing tennis. He keeps in touch with Kirk Davis, Tom Buiocchi, Dale Visokey and Jeannie Fay, all of whom are doing well.

I want to thank all of you who wrote in. For those of you we haven't heard from in a while, please do email or write Alisa or me. Your classmates would love to hear from you! This is a great way to stay connected.