New Year

Grateful for all the classmates who keep in touch.  Here's the latest from Chris Lotspeich with an intro by his wife Amy, all via Facebook. 

"Hi everyone! As this year comes to a close, I wanted to be sure to thank you all so much for your generous contributions of meals and financial support toward them. Chris wrote the note below to give everyone an update on how he's doing. As he says, these meals have provided an invaluable source of ease in an otherwise complicated balancing act. Thank you, and Happy New Year!! p.s. - Picture below is of Chris and his brother Matt who was here from Australia for the holidays. From Chris: I'd like to thank everyone who has joined Team Chris via Food Train. Life is getting more challenging. ALS has affected my hands and arms, gait, balance, speech and swallowing. I have lost ~75 lbs of muscle mass. I have regular fatigue and nap frequently. I drool, which is annoying. I have a feeding tube but I can eat and drink most things that others feed me. The whole thing remains a bit surreal. Yet I am very happy, my positive attitude is almost effortless and that can only help me in my predicament. I am highly fortunate to be progressing very slowly and I remain mostly independent eight years in from my earliest ALS symptoms. Half of the poor souls who get this terrible and capricious affliction don't live two years. My relatively slow progression puts me in the ~10% most favorable cohort of people with ALS (pALS). I have an embarrassment of riches in support from family and friends, foremost from my wonderful wife Amy Dunn. She is very busy with her successful independent consulting practice and holding the household together. I don't know how she does it. She is amazing yet her powers are not unlimited. This burden grows as my ability to pitch in and pull my weight diminishes. I am mindful that 80% of caregivers end up in the hospital before the person they are caring for, and I don't want that to happen to Amy. That is why Food Train is a perfect way to support our family. Amy runs hard all day and is tired come evening. Having a tasty nourishing meal delivered is a great help to the whole family, and especially to Amy who doesn't have to pull dinner together at the end of a long day. Your generosity has a direct beneficial impact on our family. Thank you!!"

This is the Meal Train for The Lotspeich/Dunn Family:

https://mealtrain.com/41qq6m

NYC Rendez Vous

 

Doug Schmidt saw John Kikoski at a recent Deerfield event in NYC.  John had been in Taipei during the Covid pandemic and is happy to be back in New Jersey...

The Holdovers

In case you missed it, Deerfield student makes film debut in "The Holdovers".  Sadly he costars alongside Paul Giamatti...a Choatie!

https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/12/how-a-deerfield-academy-student-became-a-star-of-blockbuster-film-the-holdovers.html

DEERFIELD — Two years ago, Catriona Hynds, Deerfield Academy’s director of theater, got an email from a team casting a movie.

“I often wonder what would have happened if that email had gone to spam,” Hynds said. “Or I had thought, ‘This sounds a little dodgy,’ and ignored it.”

Director Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” was being filmed at several Massachusetts schools, including Deerfield Academy. In the comedy-drama set in the ‘70s at a fictional elite boarding school, “Barton Academy,” Paul Giamatti plays an ornery history teacher who has to supervise Angus Tully, an angsty teenage student, over Christmas break because Tully unexpectedly has no place to go.

Also spending the vacation at school is its head cook, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who recently lost her son in the Vietnam War. Inevitably, the three lonely people bond.

The casting team had already auditioned actors to play Tully, and decided to try looking for actors at the schools they were planning to film at, Hynds said. Some schools didn’t respond, Payne told Town & Country magazine.

They set up auditions for a group of about a dozen students at Deerfield Academy. Before Dominic Sessa auditioned, Hynds talked to the team.

“I actually went into the room and basically said, ‘You know, the kid that they’re looking for is just about to walk in,’” she said.

Sessa had much lower expectations. He thought maybe he could score a part as an extra. “I just thought, ‘Maybe if it goes well, I can sit at a desk or something,’” he told the Sioux City Journal.

Hynds was right. Though Sessa had never acted on screen before — his experience was only on stages — he got the part after several rounds of auditions, Hynds said.

“They could see immediately how fearless Dominic is — he just jumps right in and he’s courageous and creative. I was really happy that they chose him,” Hynds said. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer, more hard working and more professional kid.”

Hynds, also chair of Deerfield’s Visual and Performing Arts Department, remembered when she first saw Sessa audition as a sophomore for a role in “Antigone,” a Greek play.

“I knew immediately when he opened his mouth in his first audition that we were dealing with someone special,” she said. “He has just this incredible stage presence.”

“The Holdovers” casting team had seen 800 actors before Sessa auditioned, Payne recently told the Sioux City Journal. “When I was coming down to the final decision, (star Paul Giamatti) was generous enough to read with both of the (finalists) via Zoom. We agreed Dominic was the one,” he told the outlet.

Payne said Sessa was “just born to be a film actor.”

Sessa, now on leave from school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, hopes to next take on new roles next.

“Moving forward, I definitely want to be stretching my legs and playing things that are a little further from my own life experience,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s what makes acting fun.”

Bit players

Deerfield Academy students, faculty and staff are in the background of the film, and another student was cast in a small speaking role, Hynds said. Will Sussbauer, an Ashfield resident, was cast as a student who delivers a line about Cobb salad early in the film.

The movie was filmed in a number of locations across Massachusetts, from Boston to Deerfield. Several other western Massachusetts towns are depicted in the film, including Gill, Shelburne Falls and Buckland, according to the Massachusetts Film Office.

Hynds thinks that has encouraged western Massachusetts moviegoers to watch the film.

“I’ve seen it a couple of times and I was sitting behind a couple who really enjoyed pointing out .. ‘Oh, there’s the Main Street in Shelburne Falls and there’s that,’” she said. “I think it’s been great for the local community to see themselves up on the screen as well.”

Sessa sees “The Holdovers” as a movie with broad appeal.

“There’s nothing you need to understand beforehand going in, and you can just enjoy watching these characters live their lives and discover new things about each other,” Sessa told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Hopefully it inspires people to have that willingness to empathize with real people in their own lives.”

Happy Thanksgiving ‘83!

Enjoy any family time you get this week!

JK and Doug

Morley on the move

 Congrats to David Morley on his recent trip to Egypt!

A Challenge for Chris

Based on Facebook posts by his wife Amy Dunn, Chris Lotspeich appears to be in a battle with ALS.  There was a family wedding this summer and there are lots of wonderful photos, some are included here.

There is also an effort to support the family with meals (they are in Glastonbury, CT) that was posted by a family friend.  We'll see if there are other ways to support our classmate. Stay strong Chris!

Quiz Answer

The dog in the DA outfit belongs to Leigh Guyer and is named "Marchand" after a Boston Bruin named Brad Marchand! (Bonus note: Brad MArchand was just named the 27th captain of the Bruins!)

Gettin' Around

Rob McGill is living his best life.  He' recently been backstage at concerts and at art galleries supporting his mom.  What a guy...

Along For the Ride

It can be a chore when you attend your spouse's high school reunion, but not when a DA83 classmate is there too!

Van Sullivan and Mark Czuj survived together!

The great backstory is that while both were attending our 40th reunion in June, someone recognized Van's wife and told her about the upcoming reunion for her high school this fall.  And the rest is history!

Double Dougs

Huge kudos to California resident Andrew Stewart for making the most of a single day in the NYC area! He visited with Doug Schmidt and Doug Cruikshank!

Quiz Time

Which classmate has a dog named Marchand and wears stylish DA outfits?

 

Reunion Photos

Please see the following albums for photos:

Deerfield Academy photos - Reunion and Reunion Class photos (and other school events)

Class of 1983 Google Photo Album (Please ADD yours)

40th Reunion Weekend

"It was a great weekend!"

"Tremendous event.  Absolute blast to be together."

"What a great weekend. I was a bit hesitant at first because I was concerned that I was not close with many of our reunion attendees while we were at Deerfield. Fast-forward 40 years and it was as if we were all best friends at Deerfield. I really enjoyed catching up with everyone and exchanging DA memories."

"It was a GREAT turnout, and a wonderful weekend!"

THANK YOU to the 37 classmates who were able to attend our 40th reunion! More pictures will follow in future posts...

Beaubien, Mark

Bennett, Geoffrey

Blohm, Eduardo

Bresnahan, Kevin

Brown, John

Brown, Spencer

Campbell, John

Cruikshank, Doug

Czuj, Mark

Ehmann, John

Feiges, Adam

Flagg, Christopher

Gagne, Chaz

Guyer, Leigh

Harris, Chris

Jackson, Hardie

Keirstead, Robert

Kerr, Alexander

Knight, John

LeMieux, Henry

Madden, Dave

McGill, Robert

Morley, David

Munro, John

Nourse, Nathan

Patton, Benjamin

Peterson, Eric

Rehberger, Frederick

Schmidt, Douglas

Sheppard, Whit

Singewald, Dean

Stewart, Andrew

Suher, Eric

Sullivan, Van

Townsend, Peter

Wareck, James

Watts, Taylor

Amazingly enough, our attendance number was enough to win the coveted Warren Agry '41 Award for attendance by a non 5th or 50th reunion class.  (1988 was NOT happy with us)... Way to represent '83!