1986

In June Ed Fanning left Provident Capital Corp., where he was senior managing director and group head for five years. Ed was recruited by The Provident Bank in Cincinnati in 1999 to create and build Provident Capital Corp., a middle-market investment banking boutique. Also in July, Ed formed FNJ Group Inc. with a colleague from Provident. FNJ Group is a private investment firm seeking to acquire middle-market companies. Ed marked some personal milestones last summer too. In July, Ed and Nora celebrated their 10-year anniversary with a 10-day trip to Barcelona and Madrid. To make it a real second honeymoon, their three girls (Riley, 7; Erin, 5; and Jordan, 2) stayed with aunts and grandparents in Chicago.

Sarah B. Steinberg has been named associate dean of advanced academic programs in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University. Sarah is responsible for strategic planning for all aspects of this growing graduate program for part-time students.

	1986 classmates Todd Brachman, left, and Kevin Damon hit the slopes.
	Charlie and Lauren Baker, both '86, and family
	Ginger Campbell '86 with daughter Mkoyo

Charlie Baker is still riding a high from the Red Sox victory in the World Series. Combine that with the Patriots win in the Superbowl and all of New England should have a happy 2005. Also, the Baker family is planning to meet the Dodge McFall family in Washington, D.C., this spring for a long weekend of checking out the memorials, the famous buildings and hotel swimming pools. Charlie pointed out that Dodge's wife Mimi is Garrett Gifford's cousin (Garrett introduced them). Dodge and Mimi have two children, Archer and Cammen.

Cindi Bigelow is very happy to report that she has been promoted to president of Bigelow Tea. She is co-president and partner with her sister Lori. Cindi will oversee marketing, sales, operations and finance. Lori will oversee R&D and blending. The company enjoyed a good year, with sales up more than 5 percent. Bigelow Tea is celebrating its 60th year in business. The sisters are working well together and have no plans to appear on "Family Feud."

Ginger Campbell also had a good year. She has been busy moving into bigger offices, skiing and missing old friends. She has not invited me to ski with her.

Bill Collins is enjoying life in the heart of Texas. He and Kelvin Walker were the point people on a deal last fall where Bill represented a folding packaging company in the sale to Kelvin's private equity firm. The rumor that Bill had a wild child moment and threw the contracts on the floor during negotiations is strictly a rumor. The other Collins, Lori Collins, shared this scoop: Last year LendingTree acquired Home Loan Center in the "O.C.," so they are now bicoastal and very cool. They are not just a little North Carolina company in the backwoods. LendingTree now has 1,300 employees and Lori managed the integration of the two companies. Lori is again one of five finalists competing for Business Woman of the Year in Charlotte. Apparently there are only five businesswomen in North Carolina. Last year she was a bridesmaid, and if she is still talking to me, I will report how she did in the next Kellogg World.

Eugene Kamarasy is living and working in Indianapolis. He has promised a full report in the next few months.

Ada Koch sent a great Christmas letter. Last year her family moved into a large brick tudor on 1 1/3 acres. Ada cut the grass once with the 21-inch push mower and when she finished a week later she decided to hire a team of hunks with riding mowers. The "gentleman's farmhouse" was built in the 1920s and could have been used as a museum. Apparently the house has received very few updates in the past 80-plus years. On the plus side, the house has seven bathrooms, which came in handy when the plumber moved in for three weeks to rebuild six of them. Ada received a thank-you note from the plumber's children, who can now go to the college and graduate schools of their choice. Ada's three children (RJ in seventh grade, Gwen a high school freshman and Megan a junior in high school) are all doing well in school and have many extracurricular actives. Ada has continued her career as a painter and instructor. She has added the title of general contractor to her list of accomplishments. The reason given for the move was to have more space for the kids and a yard for gardening, but the real reason is a four-car garage for husband Kevin and his Corvairs. Ada and the children park in the driveway.

Dan Lambert left the beach long enough to let me know that he and his brother have the second largest real estate development firm in Hawaii. They are building and restoring resorts from Hawaii to China. Dan encourages his classmates to contact him anytime and come for a visit. This has not been cleared with his wife Kathy or his two children, Sterling and Sean. Ron Leaf took his daughter Alison college shopping last spring in the Boston area. Ron was hoping she might go to Tufts (Mary has family in the Boston area) or even stay in the Midwest and go to Northwestern. She will start at Cornell in August. I am amazed at how many classmates are sending their 8- and 9-year-old children to college. Maybe I need to do a better job of keeping up-to-date.

Tony Mann and Sally and the rest of the family are doing well. The kids look very cute in the pictures. Thank you, Sally. Tony had hoped to include a picture of Fred O'Connor finishing the Ironman Triathlon, but the filing deadline arrived and Fred was still on the course.

Nikki Pope is getting used to life, weather and government work in Washington, D.C. She was happy to miss the biblical rains that floated California. Not that the weather on the East Coast has been so wonderful. But as her good friend Don Rumsfeld says, "You have to learn to live with the weather you have, not the weather you want to have." She was sort of hoping that her good friend Craig Brennan would send her a plane ticket to visit him and the warm weather of South America, but that did not happen. She is doing a great job with her position in the Justice Department and will not take responsibility for the rest of the government.

Lauren Schreiner and her husband Jim are spending the winter throwing rocks across the ice. Jim does more sweeping while curling then he has ever done around the house.

Mark Schwartz and his wife Mary '85 had a busy 2004. Various family members traveled to Denver, Des Moines, Steamboat Springs, Keystone, Telluride, Phoenix, South Bend, New York, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Sycamore, Ill. Most trips involved visiting family members, skiing, business or baton twirling. I think daughter Alex is the twirler, not Mark. Mark had arthroscopic knee surgery in October. He can still golf and ski, but his best twirling days are behind him. Mary is still at Northwest Airlines. As one of the few remaining employees, she is getting very good at selling tickets, loading baggage and flying airplanes. Kyle is involved in all sports, the faster the better. He has also fallen in love with playing the piano. Mark and Mary look so good in their Christmas card picture that I think they took a bunch of pictures when they got married and just PhotoShop pictures of the kids in each year.

Martin Suter and family visited Kenya for four weeks last year. They saw lots of wild animals and had a one-week scuba diving adventure on the Kenyan coast. They are still living in Geneva, Switzerland. With the falling U.S. dollar, they hope they can visit the United States this year. We should all keep our guest rooms clean.

My good friend Andy Birol '85 of Solon, Ohio, is president of Birol Growth Consulting, which has twice won the Weatherhead 100 Award as northeast Ohio's fastest-growing, single-employee business. His clients include corporations such as IBM and First Energy. Andy is the author of Focus, Accomplish, Grow ... the Business Owner's Guide to Growth and regularly appears as a business growth strategist in regional and national media, including CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He speaks Turkish, understands Spanish, French and some Swahili, has consulted on four continents and worked for USAID in Nairobi, Kenya. 

I am still teaching and consulting. I have become an "expert" in the beer industry. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Advertising Age have interviewed me. During the past few months our house has been falling apart, so I have been involved in home repairs —which in my case means using the Yellow Pages, or most often, asking Laurie to use the Yellow Pages. I did visit Kevin Damon and his family in January in Park City, Utah. We had a great time skiing and I enjoyed making paper airplanes with sons Parker and Travis. Unfortunately, while I was there daughter Katie slipped on some ice and broke a bone in her hand. Katie really wanted to entertain me with a harp recital, so Kathy became Katie's right hand and I enjoyed a concert by a two-headed harpist. Plans for this summer include going to lots of Brewer games and playing bad golf. Thank you all for keeping in touch and making my job so much easier. Oyvind, you owe me lunch.