Class Notes

Class of 1956

As Written by Gretchen (Gretty) Dumler '56:

Dear mates of '56,

Do you realize we're coming up to another REALLY BIG celebration?

Eddie reminded me: we're coming up to 70!!! How impressive is that? You know!

Please forgive all the punctuation, but I'm really excited. Friends reunions are fabulous - every year. The day is spiritual, educational, and yummy - yes, guys, breakfast, lunch, and a superb bar, right after Meeting -oh those Quakers! If you haven't yet seen the new/old building that alone is reason to attend and students give us guided tours - with elevators! I urge you to come if logistically possible.

Class of 1961

As written by Peter P. Garretson '65:

In Memoriam, David Garretson '61,

David graduated from Friends Seminary in 1961 and always had fond memories of years there and especially of Dr. Hunter. He was born in Syracuse, New York and died in New Hampshire after a lengthy struggle with cancer. In 1946 the family moved to New York City where his father joined the faculty of New York University to teach International Law, but the next year we moved to Ethiopia when he was 4. Our father was an advisor to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry and Emperor Haile Selassie.

David greatly enjoyed his time in Ethiopia. He went to the Sandford School, establishing a foundation in liberal arts education, excelling in history and starting French. During these years he seems to have developed a lasting taste for travel when our family travelled extensively in Europe, once to Asia and to the United States every second year. It was probably during his Ethiopian schooling that he began to have significant problems in writing and spelling, brought on by his dyslexia, which would not be diagnosed until many years later when he was an adult. Upon his return to New York in 1957 he spent one year at a public school, Wagner High School, before he transferred to Friends Seminary where he fit in much more comfortably, made friends (especially Larry Droutman) and again excelled in History under Dr. Hunter. He then went on to McGill University from 1961 to 1965. During most summers he worked for TWA with Reservations which gave him inside knowledge of flying and booking which he exploited for the

rest of his life. The whole family went from 1963 to 1964 to London (during our father’s sabbatical) where he attended the London School of Economics. During the summer of 1964 he travelled all over Europe as well as taking a short course in Russian at Klagenfurt, Austria. After that year in London remained a Beatles fan the rest of his life, although classical music was also an important part of his life.

The following year he worked on an MA at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to help get into the US Foreign Service, long one of his a major goals in life. He successfully took the exam and joined the Foreign Service in 1966. After training in Washington DC, he was posted first to Niamey, Niger (March 1967 to May 1968). Niger remained one of his favorite postings. It was such a small embassy that he was able to get experience in a wide variety of areas and temporarily hold quite responsible positions when those senior to him traveled or went on leave. He travelled widely in West Africa and made numerous friends and contacts, especially in the Peace Corps.

His next posting was to Saigon, Vietnam (June 1968 to October 1969), a very different and stressful assignment. He dealt mainly with passports and visas, but the daily security concerns which followed the Tet offensive made life difficult, dangerous and unpredictable. Next, he was assigned to Chang Mai, Cambodia (October 1969 to April 1970) which was, perhaps, his favorite posting. It was the only one to which he repeatedly returned and reconnected with old friends. Its slow pace and sympathetic colleagues and staff left a lasting impression. His last overseas posting was to Fiji (April 1970 to February,1971). Here he ran into the boss from hell, which led to being posted back to Washington DC and his eventual resignation from the Foreign Service. While appealing various findings of the State Department, David again enrolled at Fletcher and completed an MA and began thinking about doing a PhD. He toyed with the latter idea for the rest of his life, but it always remained a chimera. During his last year or so in the Foreign Service he applied to a remarkably wide variety of jobs and finally landed what he thought would be a temporary perch at the University of Maryland’s overseas program in the Far East. He would happily remain with them for over forty years until July 2015, though always dreaming of finally doing a PhD or some other more “prestigious” job.

The University of Maryland program provided him with the endless travel he so enjoyed and an

ever-varying number of students, courses and topics to teach. His bread-and-butter courses were

introductory economics and US government, but he created many new courses as well which

engaged his endless curiosity about the culture and government of the different countries in

which he ended up teaching. These included courses on the CIA, the KGB and Korean

Intelligence, African politics, US national security and many others. He always strove to be

neutral and dispassionate. He was consistent throughout his life in insisting on trying hard to see

as many sides as possible in any issue or argument which came before him. This led to endless

discussions on virtually every topic under the sun. David was a remarkable talker. David taught mostly US military servicemen for Maryland at their centers in Japan and Korea, but also in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific. He started out teaching mainly in Japan (seven bases, mainly in Okinawa) and Taiwan. However, later he taught for a longer period and a in more bases in Korea than anywhere else, about fifteen. Thailand was always one of his favorite places to teach. Among other countries he also gave courses in the Philippines, Australia, Diego Garcia and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. He found this variety fulfilling and was perhaps happier than he had ever been before. He was a born teacher, and his students were devoted to him. He always remained a loner yet deeply devoted to his family.

Class of 1962

As written by Peter P. Garretson '65:

In Memoriam, Deborah A. Garretson '62

Deborah Ann Garretson '62 died quietly on March 2, 2025, of complications of stage 4 lung cancer. She had just celebrated her 80th birthday. A long-term resident of the Upper Valley of New Hampshire, she was a professor of Russian at Dartmouth College from 1976 until her retirement in 2019. Deb led a peripatetic life of accomplishment and adventure. She was born in 1945, in Syracuse, New York the daughter of Albert Henry Garretson and Agnes P. Garretson. When Deb was two years old, the family, including brothers David, Peter, and stepbrother Ronald Maddox, moved to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. There her father became an advisor to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry and to Emperor Haile Selassie. The ten years she lived in Ethiopia cemented her taste for travel and adventure and her passionate interest in culture and language.

Deborah began her education in Ethiopia at the Sandford school whose student body was made up of

children from all over the globe. When her family returned to New York in 1957 she briefly attended Wagner Middle School and Grace Church School before settling in for three years at Friends Seminary. At both she honed her knowledge of languages by strengthening her French but also added Latin at Friends. At first, she went through culture shock from the move from Addis Ababa to New York, but then she found herself becoming a New Yorker – an identity that never disappeared but faded significantly when she moved to New Hampshire and Dartmouth College. While in New York she learned to play the guitar and benefited greatly from exposure to life in Greenwich Village. A special treat was the occasional ticket (given us by a close family friend Howie Sargeant) to see tennis matches at Forest Hills (which later became the US Open). She spent part of her junior year studying in Brussels and became fluent in French which She had begun studying while in Ethiopia.

Deb briefly attended Bryn Mawr College and then spent a year at Bedford College (while her father was on sabbatical there), a constituent college of the University of London, before completing her undergraduate education at the Royal Victoria College at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, graduating with an honors degree in French. While at McGill, she began studying Russian. She later remarked, “It was the cold war era, we were young and optimistic and wanted to find a way to forge peace in the world. Understanding the Russian language and culture felt like a way I could contribute to this.”

Wanting to take a break after her undergraduate studies, Deb accepted a Swiss fellowship and studied Russian and then translation at the universities of Lausanne and Geneva. Always an adventurous wanderer, she traveled, often on her own, throughout Europe and eastern Europe. In 1967 she returned to graduate school at New York University (and obtained a grant for work on her thesis from the American Association of University Women) where she received her doctorate in Slavic linguistics in 1975. During graduate school she travelled on a prestigious IREX fellowship (International Research & Exchanges Board) which allowed her to study at Moscow University and travel to many parts of Russia and Europe in 1971 and1972. Few of her letters survive but many of her photos. She also studied and then taught at the University of Vermont’s Russian summer school from 1972-1979.

In 1976 Deb accepted a tenure track position teaching Russian at Dartmouth College where she remained until her retirement in 2019, years she found both rich and rewarding. She was granted tenure in 1982, after which she played a major role in mentoring new female faculty seeking tenure in the newly coed Dartmouth. She was among the first wave of women professors to receive full tenure at Dartmouth College. Farther to the left than the rest of the family in her politics, she was the only one of us to go to the March on Washington in 1970. Publications were not the major focus of Deb’s life at Dartmouth, her passion was teaching while interpreting came next in importance. Her areas of expertise were in Russian linguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition, consecutive and simultaneous interpretation and

cross-cultural issues. She also studied the psychological aspects of interpreting. Deb strongly believed that language scholarship and teaching should be immersed in cultural experiences, and thus her deep commitment to leading groups of Dartmouth and ivy league students to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in her study abroad program. She dealt with the stress of academic life by adding a horse (Kary Mar) and a dog (Promises) to her family. Throughout her life she followed an active life of riding, hiking and skiing and often spoke of her “horsey” and “doggy” friends. Among her closest friends at Dartmouth, however, were the “birthday sisters” (Lynda Boose, Joy Kenseth and Nancy Frankenberry). They regularly celebrated each of their birthdays with a communal meal each year.

In addition to her teaching and research, Deb began working as an independent contractor, interpreting for the State Department’s Russian language division in 1985, just as the relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were beginning to thaw. She worked in Geneva as an interpreter for the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaties (START I and START II) which she considered some of her most important life work. She served as interpreter at the summit in Malta, for two Secretaries of State, Schultz and Baker, as well as for Admiral Crowe and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The highpoint of her interpreting career, however, came when she interpreted for Barbara Bush and Raisa Gorbachev during the latter’s visit to the US in 1990 for

the “summit of the first ladies” at Wellesley College in 1990. In 2009 and 2010, during the Obama administration, she served as interpreter for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) which was intended to further reduce U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arms. Deb described her participation in this crucial treaty as arduous and rewarding and received numerous letters of commendation. The US formally suspended this important treaty in 2019. There was a hiatus in her ever active life in the 1990s when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. By the late 1990s she was declared cancer free and resumed interpreting and also made two trips to Ethiopia between 1998 & 2000 to help a family adopt a child. Also during this time, she worked as a hospice volunteer for over a decade in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley. In the early 2000’s, Deb found a spiritual home in her practice of insight meditation and a serious study of Buddhist thought. She attended numerous retreats at centers in the U.S. and abroad, including the Insight Meditation Society, the Forest Refuge, and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts. In later life she returned to Africa, visiting and sitting meditation at several

meditation retreat centers in South Africa as well as working in an orphanage. The depth of her practice has inspired many, and she has been considered an integral member of several Buddhist communities, including the Valley Insight Center in Lebanon, NH. After retiring from Dartmouth College, and in keeping with her love of scholarship and her desire to understand the earliest strata of Buddhist literature, Deb undertook a serious study of Pali, the ancient language in which the Buddhist canon is transcribed. Several of her translations were chanted at her memorial Service.

In 2003 she returned to Russia after a long absence due to her health, and was shocked by the major changes there. She resumed taking students to study abroad in St. Petersburg in 2004 and continued to do so, mostly only every other year, for ten years. “Her diplomatic skills as a negotiator were a marvel,” says a colleague John Kopper. “Debby’s attitude of cheerful persistence, the ability to convey ‘I’m happy to be talking with you but I’m not going to leave until I get something for Dartmouth,’ brought her many concessions – and the respect of Russian colleagues sitting across from her.”

In 2010 she resumed interpreting with the new START talks. In 2019 she retired and besides studying Pali renewed her interest in French, her first foreign language love. Deb formed and maintained many deep friendships hailing from every aspect and phase of her life. She was a loving and attentive friend, colleague, professor, and family member. Her joyous laugh and infectious goodwill will be missed by all.

Dartmouth professor Victoria Somoff remembers how Deb hosted her and her family for waffles soon after she arrived at Dartmouth as a new faculty member. “My three young children ran through the house, their syrup-sticky hands leaving traces everywhere as they played with her big gentle dog. Debby didn’t mind the mess or the chaos – she just smiled, made more waffles, and shared remarkable stories about her work as an interpreter for world leaders and diplomats at some major political event of the 1980s and 1990s,” Smoff says. “That afternoon, for the first time, I thought this new place might actually become home.”

As her close friend Janet Hoffman insists, Deb did everything with GUSTO. She lived with

gusto and put everything into life every moment. She was always upbeat and caring.

She is survived by her brother Peter Garretson, her sisters-in-law Betty Maddox and Rufina

Alamo; cousins – Susan Garretson Daniel, Martha Garretson Wright, Nancy Garretson, Amy

Fraher, Patricia Harris, Jay Harris, Lynne Harris and nieces and nephews: David Maddox, Karen

Maddox Manukas, Michael Maddox, Tamara Maddox Otten and Debby Maddox.

Class of 1994

Sharonda Callender Ware '94 and her husband, Dwight have started a new podcast, “​​Every Ware We Go Podcast” which you can follow on Youtube. Every Ware We Go is a conversation-driven podcast where real people share real stories. Through honest dialogue and intentional connection, we explore the experiences, cultures, and moments that shape who we are and who we’re becoming. Each episode invites listeners to slow down, lean in, and discover more about life, about purpose, and about themselves.

Class of 2013

Pictured left to right: Ashwin Raghu, the company's Co-founder and Chief Technology Office and Ross Mechanic '13, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Maybern

CEO and Co-Founder, Ross Mechanic '13’s firm, Maybern raised $50 million in Series B funding. Maybern develops a unified platform that integrates financial and operational data for private funds, automating tasks like capital calls, distributions, waterfalls, and fee calculations while providing real time analytics and risk controls. Click here to learn more.

Class of 2022

Tenzin Gund-Morrow '22 has been awarded a 2026 Marshall Scholarship. Click here to read more.