Class of 1996: 15th reunion

We had a small but festive group of classmates gathered for our 15th Reunion. Traveling the farthest and most circuitously were Peter Ferrin and partner John Prigeon (an engineer). Peter is a child psychiatrist at ucsf and he and John came to New Haven via Copenhagen and Serbia, or it might have been Croatia. In addition to his work at ucsf Peter makes an annual trip to Vellore, India, as volunteer faculty at the Christian Medical College and also finds time to sing as a tenor in the Golden Gate Mens’ Chorus.

Yin Ho was at the event with her real husband, Henry Hsia, and her work husband Owen Garrick. Henry, after a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton, is on the faculty at Robert Wood Johnson in New Jersey in plastic surgery, with a specialty in wound care (thus, alas, he did NOT bring Botox to our dinner). Yin and Henry live in Greenwich Village and have two daughters. Yin and Owen also have a “baby,” which is their company, “Context Matters,” which they describe as the “leader in risk metrics in pharmaceutical and biotech products.” For you clinical types this was explained as being a “specialized data software company.” Owen, who came to us fresh from his Princeton undergraduate reunion where he serves as a marshal of P-Rade, is living in Oakland, Calif., married to Jocelyn, an ER physician, and they have three sons.

Sarah Clever traveled from Baltimore, where she is an internist. She is married to Keith Gaylor and they have toddler twins. She told a harrowing tale of developing “benign” ventricular tachycardia (who knew VT could be “benign!”) at 23 weeks gestation while vacationing in Mexico. Unfortunately it did not resolve with “la dieta blanda” she was prescribed at the local hospital and she was medically evacuated. All went well in the end and it was an exciting seven-hour ride in a Lear jet and she at least avoided the security lines.

Ian Chandler came from New York, where he is working for Standard and Poor in “systems work” that has something to do with 1) investments, 2) computers, and 3) India. I couldn’t exactly follow, again, being a practicing clinician. But it sounded like you had to be smart and have multiple degrees to do it.

We had the good fortune to stay with John Beiner and his wife, Melissa Wolf Beiner, M.D. ’00, during our visit. John is a private practice orthopaedic surgeon specializing in spine surgery and Melissa is on hiatus from her work as a pediatrician as she cares for their two school-aged children. The Beiners enjoy a good quality of life in Madison, Conn., and treated us to a boating expedition in the Thimble Islands.

Matt and I traveled from our home in Chevy Chase, Md., for the reunion with our two daughters. This was our 10-year-old Eliza’s third YSM reunion! Matt has left the Navy and is working as a radiation oncologist at Alexandria Hospital, where I work as a perinatologist and have a teaching appointment at Georgetown. Despite our proximity we have no mutual patients, as Matt is pretty good about not radiating pregnant women!

We missed Kathleen Figaro (home with new baby #2 and on staff at Vanderbilt). Also missed were medical oncologist Jeff Meyerhardt and his wife Liza Halpern Meyerhardt (M.D. ’00), who have two children and live in the Boston area, where he is on the staff at Dana Farber. Unfortunately the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting is always the same weekend as the Yale reunion. With the way his career is going, he will probably be running the conference some day and can hopefully switch the date. (Richter’s is still open, Jeff!) We hear that Lillian Oshva has left the glamorous world of consulting and now works in the trenches as an ER physician in New York City. Jon Grauer is on the orthopaedics faculty at YNHH and married with two wee ones, living on St. Ronan Street. I’ve heard from Rebecca Crichton (on teaching faculty at Brown in ob-gyn) that she and Simon Cornelissen (private practice orthopaedics, hand specialty) are doing well in Rhode Island with their two children and Simon’s new beard. Lynne Strasfeld sent a darling picture of her two children from Portland, Oregon, where she works as an infectious disease specialist. Matt and I bumped into Dave Kroll at the Association of American Medical Colleges meeting in D.C. Though he still looks like he could be “aroundin’ third and headed for home” (ladies, he still has those guns!), he is working for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, living in Princeton, N.J., with his wife and two potential Little Leaguers. Through the grapevine we learned that psychiatrist Rebecca MacLean is the mother of triplets and building a house! I’ve run into Cynthia Holcroft at our maternal fetal medicine meetings and she has been on staff at Johns Hopkins since her fellowship there. Jiyon Lee sent her regards from NYC, where she is a radiologist specializing in breast imaging at NYU. New Haven-based internist/author Lisa Sanders continues to contribute not only to her patients but to the public in general via her column “Diagnosis” in The New York Times Magazine and through her technical advice for the medical drama House.

Hope to see you at the 20th!!