-- Married since 1971 to Libby, a successful mother, RN and now hospital administrator.

-- Semi-retired parent of three quasi-grown-up Reichmans:

-- Ted, age 26, professional jazz/Klezmer accordionist living a life of “jet-set poverty” (his words) in Brooklyn and Europe; 

-- Dan, age 24, market researcher in Cambridge, Mass. and current applicant for grad school anthropology slot;

-- Mary, age 22, research analyst (overeducated grunt) at health-care consulting firm in D.C., now seeking corporate CEO position.

-- Currently unemployed refugee from a corporate acquisition with a golden parachute of sorts that gives me way too much freedom for my own good.

-- Holding true to my writeup in the ’67 yearbook – more interested in outdoor adventure sports than anything with serious merit.

Being a laggard in responding, I was able to enjoy your postings on the CHS web site.  We’re a lucky bunch of people, as just about every one of you noted.

I’ve been on a mostly smooth and maybe even predictable curve since many of us got together at the reunion at Great Gorge way back when.  The major punctuations being the death of my mom and dad, in 1988 and 1995, respectively, and Libby and I becoming true empty-nesters when Mary graduated from college this year.

After graduating (how?) from NYU, we were able to bypass the 1970s by hunkering down on a farm in northern Maine where we grew our own food, had babies, and I tried to make living as a bean-farmer and high school teacher.  Then a brief stint as co-owner of a public relations firm in Portland, Maine, followed by 20 years of doing corporate communications and government relations for a natural gas utility in New England, which is what brought the family to the Boston area in 1981.

Probably the biggest career stunt was building a new 300-mile natural gas pipeline from Canada to Massachusetts, which started operations in 1998.  I spent a good part of the preceding 10 years doing the public and government relations work (with 2,200 hostile landowners and 88 town governments) needed to get the federal and state permits to build the damn thing.

So, the pipeline gets built, the value of our company grows, and we’re acquired by an Indiana-based utility within a year.  I become a member of disposable senior management and am set free at the end of 1999. Who knows what’s next?

In the meantime, I’ve become a more practiced mountain biker, trail runner and cross-country skier, and I still manage to get in a good surf session off the Rhode Island coast every now and then (eat your heart out, D’Andrea). 

 It’s wonderful being able to stay in touch with everyone – of course, I should talk. Anyway, I can be reached at dreichman@mediaone.net, and I expect to be sending the occasional e-mail outbound as well.  Best regards to you all!