| Planning for the July Reunion continues apace! It is not too late to join your classmates for one of those life-time “peak” experiences. Look for an update of who is attending the reunion in the next few days. For more information you may also contact me at ross@povenmire.com or Ottavia, our reunion coordinator extraordinaire at ogiomo@vtx.ch.
Please continue to send those e-mails around so that I may include your news in the newsletter! Please also consider contributing an article on something you think is interesting. It is just us, folks! On Returning to a New Place As a veteran of all four reunions, I feel like I’ve finally shed the image of my boyhood days at Les Roches. During a reunion, it always takes a day or two for those who barely remember you from those long-ago days to recognize you as a grown-up. It then takes a couple more days for them to recognize the old kid in your now grown up body. But by then, the reunion is over. Thank goodness that for each new reunion, you don’t have to start from scratch with other alumni you’ve met at past reunions. For those alumni that I’ve kept in touch with since the first reunion in 1990, we rarely talk about the good old days. For one, there are only so many memories that one can store, and there are only so many ways you can relive those memories. Add that to the fact that the human mind wants to purposely forget the bad memories, so there are fewer memories to begin with. No, what’s replaced all the reminiscing with my renewed alumni friends is what’s happening with our lives today. Our children, who are now older than we were then, the changing world, our changing lifestyles, our changing bodies, and our latest dreams and desires, which have mellowed and matured with age. When I find that I have that in common with other alumni of Les Roches and Pres Fleuris, it gives me a sense of belonging more thanBluche, Montana Crans or Switzerland can. It’s a sense of belonging to a wider circle of friends, one that has taken the common thread from LR/PF and made sense of it all with real life experiences. So, whether my ‘new/old’ friend lives inBangkok, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain or Durango, Colorado, I see through him or her as a window into my own life now, and how it has all come to pass. I remember George Harrison’s breakthrough album after he left the Beatles, “All Things Must Pass”, which came out when I was at LR. When he died last year, I listened to that whole album (yes, in vinyl form with all the scratches), and it made more sense to me 32 years later than it did then. So it goes. Things make more sense now than they did 32 years ago, and for that I must thank the wonderful relationships I have with fellow Les Roches and Pres Fleuris alumni. 30 Years Difference 1973: Long hair 1973: The perfect high 1973: KEG 1973: Acid rock 1973: Moving to California because it’s cool 1973: Growing pot 1973: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor 1973: Seeds and stems 1973: Killer weed 1973: Hoping for a BMW 1973: The Grateful Dead 1973: Going to a new, hip joint 1973: Rolling Stones 1973: Being called into the principal’s office 1973: Screw the system 1973: Disco 1973: Parents begging you to get your hair cut 1973: Passing the drivers’ test 1973: Whatever |
Gray Tappanwrites: I am pleased to say that I will most likely be able to attend the reunion. I will also be joined by my brother, Jonathan Tappan, who attended Les Roches in 1974-75. We are planning to stay in Bluche itself, so we will not need your assistance in booking hotel reservations. However, we certainly plan to attend all the activities you have planned. I look forward to seeing you in July!
Paul Taylor writes: Haven’t skied in too long! Friends didIran & Lebanon this season and was here in the sun! Verbier is the best! I remember it as mostly chalets – a bit crazy in season, but great skiing. I spent two summers there and took up paragliding big time. Still have my paraglider, but I’m too heavy for it and there’s no where here to fly. I had thought to bring out a tow system, but… The kids keep me grounded. I came to being a parent late and I’m loved up. Makes me think what my parents gave me and what hell I put them through! It would be great to be in the mountains again. Maybe… Steve Bourgeois writes from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: I was in the class of ’69 and came back as an internat in ’71 or so. Any news on Thierry Bovay? I used to see him on layovers inGeneva when he was a pilot for CrossAir (I’m a Flight Attendant for Delta). Rob Sweil writes: I received a call out of the blue from Sharon Baumann-Taylor,Chico’s sister. We chatted for some time and as she is living here in Cape Town we will get together in the not too distant future. I was at LR during 73 and 74 (I think). I was in the Commerce section before completing the diploma at Ecole Lemania inLausanne. It’s quite amazing to read the news of fellow students some 30 years ago. My long term memory is working overtime! Leslie Lovejoy writes: Mark Ensner [an LR alumnus] and I plan to officially marry next year. The interesting thing is that I lived close by to Montana-Crans, in Leysin for almost 10 years, from 1973-1983, so that we both have an interest in returning to this area. I am not sure that it will be this summer, but one never knows! We are enjoying life in Steamboat Springs, doing a lot of backcountry skiing, bicycling and river running in the summers. Denis Lamoureux writes: Since I’ve left Bluche I’ve worked the oil rigs all over the world, commuting back to Vancouver Island (Qualicum Beach) for years. On my days off in Canada I worked as a professional photographer/Salmon charter boat Captain. I just recently sold my house on the Island and moved to Calgary where I continue to work in the oilfields and ride my rare racing Harley Davidson which I’ve bought new in 1977. Wendy Lamont-Woolbright writes: This passage is from a book for young adults book call Bloomability by Sharon Creech, Harper-Trophy. I teach school and my Librarian told me about the book so I read it. The following passage just really hit home to me and even if I don’t get to the reunion I wanted to send it alone because it seems to sum up our collective feelings and experiences. It is part of a commencement speech given by a student at TASIS. The character began by reciting a poem by Robert Frost, the one about two roads forking in yellow woods. He wanted us to pause for a moment, and go back to that place in the yellow woods, to the point at which we turned down this road, to this school. “It has made – and will make – all the difference, because we will continue to affect each other’s lives. Maybe in ways we can’t imagine, but there is something in the air of these yellow woods – these here in Switzerland, which we have run through and hiked through and skied through – that tells me we will take pieces of each other and of Switzerland with us wherever we go. We will! Fantasico!” |
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