CLASS NOTES
FALL 2012 | St. Lawrence University Magazine 57
am the director of psychological assessments
at the Center for Counseling and Psychological
Health at UMass Amherst. I had a St. Lawrence
student shadow me at work for a day last spring
and that was fun - it was great to hear about the
experience of today's students there and all the
changes in the (gasp!) 14 years since we gradu-
ated!”
Melissa continued, “Over the past year, I've got-
ten into running and most recently ran the Har-
poon 5-Miler in Boston with SharonMuise '00 and
Kathy Crane '01. My goal is to do a 10K before the
summer is over!" she wrote in late spring.
Sarah Sanderson Belile
received her M.Ed.
in counseling at St. Lawrence in 2004. She has
been employed through the SUNY Research
Foundation as the director of the ATTAIN Lab in
St. Lawrence County for seven years. She teaches
academic courses and offers counseling for alter-
native education students.
Sarah says she and Joe have twowonderful boys,
Walker, 6, and Sawyer, 4, and live along“the beau-
tiful St. Lawrence River about 40minutes from the
SLU campus.”
She added that her twin sister,
Jamie Sanderson
Lopez
,
is in her 13th year as a biology teacher at
Ogdensburg Free Academy. She is married and
has two children, Harry, 10, and Lauren, 3. She too
received her M.Ed. in counseling at St. Lawrence.
Sarah continued, “We have another sister, Tracy
Sanderson LaFlair '92, who lives in Ogdensburg
with her husband, Chris '92. She is a doctor and
he is a dentist, and they both have their private
practices in Ogdensburg. My sisters and I all went
to SLU and loved every minute of it. We grew up
only 15minutes from campus, and as children fre-
quented campus often. It will be a few years, but
I'm sure SLU will be back in our family heritage!”
Libby Siebert
and
John Conover
recently went
to visit
Matt LaSota
and his wife and daughter,
Harper. They are well and living in Connecticut.
Ryan, Adelaide and I are very well and continue
to live in New York City. We are lucky enough to
keep in close touch with many of our wonderful
St. Lawrence friends. Please write and keep me
posted for our next Class Notes!
2000
Joe Kerper ’00
8156
Centaur Drive
Evergreen, CO 80439
303-674-3181
SLU2000notes@mac.com
Next Reunion: 15th, 2016 (cluster with ’01, ’02)
Jennifer Todd
completed her master’s in psy-
chology for general psychology and addictions
counseling in the fall of 2011. She also noted that
Liz Conger
graduated from law school at Syra-
cuse University and passed the New York State
Bar.
Terse as always,
Booth Platt
writes in to let
us know about the birth of his son, Olin Reed
Platt, on April 14, 2011. Olin is Booth and McK-
enzie’s second child. Also,
John
and
Sue Moffitt
Delegan
welcomed a beautiful daughter, Eva-
nia Grace Delegan, on February 11, 2012. All
newborns are beautiful, but Sue sent a photo as
backup and I can confirm that Evania is a keeper -
Congratulations, guys!
Zach Green
and wife Kate said hi to daughter
Zoey. She was born in May.
In the midst of his fourth year as assistant prin-
cipal at Cypress Lake High School in Ft. Myers,
Fla.,
Adam Kurtz
says he still travels to New York
twice a year to visit family and friends. Adam has
two kids: Zoe, 5, and Mason, 3. He was planning a
summer get-together with “at least Brendan Gay-
er '98,
Jim Riley
and Brad Catton '01 and his wife,
Melissa VanBrocklin '99. I look forward to making
a trip to SLU, sometime in the near future, to share
my love of our school with my kids,”he wrote.
Andrew Grossman
is perhaps the busiest man
alive. He is in his 10th year of teaching science.
He’s at the Haverford School, outside Philadel-
phia, where he teaches eighth grade science
and an acting elective and is the middle school
athletics director. “I also coach soccer, ice hockey
and lacrosse,” he said. “I recently earned my Mas-
ter in Education and have a certification to teach
high school biology as well. My band plays fairly
regularly around Philadelphia. Karen and I have
a 2-year-old daughter named Sadie.” Whew-
-
compiling these class notes is enough to get me
winded. Keep it up, Andrew.
Reporting from Japan with a fascinating take
on the tsunami and nuclear disaster is
Kelly
D. Johnston
: “
I've been living in Kofu for two
years. I was here during the triple disaster and
its aftermath. I was able to get out of the coun-
try and go home for a week to show everyone
back home that I wasn't glowing. While my fam-
ily and friends in the States didn't agree with my
decision to come back here, they did support
me and it made coming back a little easier. If, 30
years from now, I find out that I do have radia-
tion poisoning, I will have no regrets about the
decision I made.
“
I could write an email the size of a novel and
still not be able to cover everything we have
experienced,” Kelly wrote. “Shelves were empty,
we were given iodine pills just in case we were
exposed to radiation, I had to ration food, rolling
blackouts occurred on a daily basis, there were
and still are numerous aftershocks, the word
"
dosimeter" became a part of my everyday vo-
cabulary. Things are improving and yet, things are
different too.”
Kelly said she was intending to leave Japan in
July“tomove on tomy next venture. I'm currently
applying to the FBI, CIA, and Border Patrol.”
Sarah Lester-Guzman
kept a light schedule
over the summer: "pirate party planner and pirate
ship cake designer and baker for Guillermo, who
turned 4, plus landscape architect and free labor-
er for the redo of the front yard of our house with
artificial turf, brick laying and planting. All before
the little guys' birthday. My husband is working
on starting his catering route for his truck, to be
called ‘Omnivore's DELIght Express’ in the Mon-
terey Peninsula area,” she added. “That involves
my computer know-how, very rusty mathematics
skills and amateur design skill.”
Aaron Cook
and wife
Heidi Moore
welcomed
Megan Rebecca on Superbowl Sunday, Febru-
ary 5, 2012. Their oldest daughter, Adrienne, says
Aaron “is in her third year of a Spanish immersion
preschool and is fluent in Spanish, thus already
smarter than Mom and Dad! She is gearing up for
kindergarten and loves being a big sister.”
Aaron says he has“retired”from teaching and is a
“
a full-time student in my first year of a Ph.D. pro-
gram at UNC Chapel Hill. I am in the biochemistry
and biophysics department, and will be studying
platelet biology.”Heidi is a dentist and co-director
of the dental department of Piedmont Health
Services.
John Connell VII
says that he is living in Boston
“
with my wife, Rebecca Hester (SLU Kenya Semes-
ter Program '99), son Jack, 3 1/2, and daughter
Emma, 1. I'm working toward a master's in sys-
tems engineering at Boston University and glad
to be back in the U.S., after nearly five years over-
seas in Taiwan and Japan.”
“‘
Problems are a potential source of awakening.’
–
anonymous.” So ends
Kelly Thayer
’
s email up-
date. Helping to solve a few problems herself, Kel-
ly writes that she’s still in Tanzania and“will be fin-
ishing my three years (did the two then decided
to stay for an additional year) of Peace Corps work
with small groups of women on empowerment
and income development projects and working
with schoolchildren on environmental projects,
plus teaching lots of youth about life skills and
staying safe from HIV. I have been spending my
A get-together of Elizabeth Houze Clarke '01, Marisa Dolinsky Bartlett '01 and Russell
Bartlett '01 at the Bartlett house in Wenham, Mass., on March 31, 2012, brought together
potential Future Laurentians (from left) Oliver Wilcoxson, Lucy, Adeline and Sam Bartlett,
and Beatrice and Charlie Clarke.