Walter Johnson High School Class of 1966

Classmates

The most important part of this effort is to reconnect with friends in the great class of 1966. As Baby Boomers, think about what we’ve experienced, from learning cursive with cartridge pens to posting Instagram images with our smart phones; from learning about JFK’s assassination during the school day to watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11; and for many of us, going from worrying about prom dates to welcoming grandchildren into our lives. It’s an amazing time to be living! Let’s celebrate and share.

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Your contact information will be hidden, and secure. This website is maintained by our committee, not an outside commercial outfit. It will only be used with your permission for the 50th Reunion Book we will put together for attendees of the 50th Reunion.Those who are unable to attend the Reunion in the spring of 2016 will be able to order the Reunion Book.

Please post your bio and comments. Confirm your name, add your memories, observations, and reflections. Upload a recent picture. With your permission, these will be included in the 50th reunion memory book. THINK BACK and share your thoughts about last 50 years: high school, friends, the '60s, family, growing up in Bethesda. Have fun with this! Also, take a look at the “High School Life” section. We’d love to use those in our class book as well. It’s easy to upload and caption them.

Use the "send a message" feature to contact friends, and your email will appear for them to respond. HAVE FUN RECONNECTING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!

Please note: the reunion committee reserves the option to edit or revise entries for spelling, grammar, and length.

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G. Terry Ross

Then

Stevie Ross (Flather)

Then

Occupation:	formerly The Waldorf School of Garden City
Comment: After WJ I went to college in upstate NY where I met my husband, Bob. We lived in the Bronx and Westchester were Bob did graduate work at Cornell Medical school and then continued to do research and teach at Fordham University and I worked in special ed. with autistic children. We later moved to Long Island where we raised our two daughters and I taught Kindergarten at the Waldorf School of Garden City. We have both recently retired and plan to move to a more rural area in upstate NY were we also have a home. Life has been very good!

Occupation:

formerly The Waldorf School of Garden City

Comment: After WJ I went to college in upstate NY where I met my husband, Bob. We lived in the Bronx and Westchester were Bob did graduate work at Cornell Medical school and then continued to do research and teach at Fordham University and I worked in special ed. with autistic children. We later moved to Long Island where we raised our two daughters and I taught Kindergarten at the Waldorf School of Garden City. We have both recently retired and plan to move to a more rural area in upstate NY were we also have a home. Life has been very good!

Wendy Ross

Then

Robert Row

Then

Gary Rowland

Then

Donald Rubinstein

Then

Now

Occupation:	don.rubinstein@gmail.com
Comment: We are sad to learn of Don's passing on Sept. 27, 2023. Please see the In Memoriam section for an obit and place to leave a tribute. 10 year old profile from the 40th reunion: Bio. from: Donald Rubinstein email rubinste@uog9.uog.edu The stream of WJ-66 bios have been fascinating to read. Current students at WJ should study them for life experience lessons for the next 40 years! They'll learn that (1) there is life after WJ; and (2) whatever happens will be unscripted and unpredictable but nevertheless rewarding, at least in retrospect. I would never have guessed in 1966 that today I would be living in Guam -- halfway around the planet from Bethesda -- and deeply immersed in a part of the world I had never heard of in high school. Right after WJ I went to U. Penn with vague plans for taking pre-med courses and eventually going into medicine. After my freshman year I got a summer job in Bethesda at NIH, in what was then the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness. Great job, and one of those serendipitous life-changing junctures! The lab was involved in early forefront work on prion diseases (then called "slow viruses") in New Guinean highlanders, and epidemic ALS-PD in southern Guamanians, among other projects. The lab's chief scientist shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976 for the prion work. I spent nearly every college vacation day I could manage, and sometimes weekends during the semester, working at that lab over the next three years. Meanwhile I was finding Penn intellectually exciting but socially unappealing -- too preppy and frat-house oriented -- although the place became a lot less buttoned-down after the 1968 sit-ins. The NIH summer job I had stimulated an interest in anthropology and especially Pacific Island cultures, an interest also fueled by my inherent wanderlust (escapism). Penn permitted me to piece together an interdisciplinary major involving anthro, developmental psych and linguistics, and some pre-med courses. I did an honors thesis on cross-cultural child language acquisition, and graduated cum laude in 1970. After college I had no clear idea what I really wanted to do long-term with my life, but my immediate goal was to satisfy a growing itch to travel before continuing with graduate work. I spent 11 months hitch-hiking and solo backpacking around Europe, North Africa and the Middle east, from Reykjavik to Algiers and Tel Aviv to Granada, visiting just about every museum and historical site in every village or city I saw, and getting a look at most of the major sites of paleolithic cave art in Europe (including Lascaux, literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience). I was lured back to the States by the offer of a full-ride graduate fellowship at Stanford's doctoral program in anthropology. Grad study was even more intellectually exciting than undergrad work and really great fun as long as one treats it as an adventure and ignores the career-prep and competitive aspects. After the first year at Stanford I took off a year for further traveling, this time in the Pacific. Spent four months living on Fais, a very isolated tiny Pacific island of 250 people in the Outer Islands of Yap, Western Carolines (where I later returned for two years of dissertation field research on child socialization). That year I also worked as an assistant on a Scripps Institute medical research ship for two months that toured remote islands in Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) and the Solomon Islands, and spent another couple of months living on Kapingamarangi, which like Easter Island is one of the most isolated Polynesian Islands in the Pacific. Two days after completing my doctoral degree at Stanford in 1979 I began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in medical anthropology at University of Hawaii, and that led to a nine-year sojourn in Honolulu, with many more trips throughout Micronesia. With NIMH funding I began a long-term study into the socio-cultural reasons for epidemic rates of suicide among Micronesian youth (work which, years later, got a nice plug from Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point"). Completed a Masters degree in Public Health at University of Hawaii, did some teaching, and a stint in academic administration, before leaving Hawaii in 1988 and moving to Guam to direct a small Micronesian area research center at the University of Guam. After three years in that job I moved into a position of full-time research and graduate teaching. Have been based in Guam ever since, for the most part quite enjoyably. One of the best aspects of a small, isolated school like University of Guam is that, although we have many first-rate faculty members, nobody takes themselves too seriously, unlike at powerhouse schools like Stanford or Penn. The academic calendar is another great advantage: a full month off between fall and spring semesters, and three months of free time in summer. I've been able to join friends for New Year celebrations in some extraordinary places, from Kyushu in southern Japan to Luxor on the middle Nile to Ubud in central Bali. University teaching is tremendously satisfying, the students in the program I teach are enthusiastic and truly grateful, and each class in a continual rediscovery. I've had opportunities to be visiting professor twice at the Institute of Ethnology in Heidelberg, and the Kagoshima University Research Center for the Pacific Islands (former colonial rulers Germany and Japan continue to take at least an academic interest in Micronesia). Because anthropology is so eclectic and Micronesian Studies so interdisciplinary, I can pursue all sorts of intellectual interests and research projects as part of "the job." So work is never boring. Or repetitive. And I've quite happily remained single throughout my life. I have an extended "family" of about 300 Fais Islanders, a couple dozen of whom have lived in my house for a few years while attending high school or college or working in Guam, and I get back to Fais or neighboring islands Ulithi and Yap once or twice a year for family visits and research projects. University and community projects keep me fully engaged and the agenda is always diverse enough to provide a sense of adventure and novelty. Currently I'm on the board of the Guam Humanities Council and I'm serving as humanities scholar for a Smithsonian Museum-on-Main-Street exhibit coming to Guam in 2007, I'm doing a second year as president of the university's faculty senate, and I'm serving as a faculty mentor for a junior colleague who has a National Science Foundation Minority Research Fellowship. Plus teaching graduate classes, advising student theses, working on research projects, writing.... I have two siblings who live in Chevy Chase and Rockville, so I get back to the DC area about once a year, but I won't make the reunion this weekend. I'm hoping to locate some long-lost high school friends through the reunion list. Much of what I wrote biographically ten years ago for WJ’s 40 th reunion still holds: I’m still a tenured full- time member of the University of Guam faculty, enjoying teaching graduate courses in Micronesian Studies, advising students on masters’ theses, pursuing an eclectic agenda of research projects, and trying to travel to all my bucket-list destinations during the 3-month summer vacations and 1-month winter breaks. The teaching becomes easier and more rewarding each year, and I’ve been especially fortunate over the past ten years in getting involved in interesting new research on ethnomathematics (math and culture). In 2015 we wrapped up a 6-year project funded by National Science Foundation, designed to test the hypothesis that island children do better in school math when they’re taught indigenous mathematics—the sort of math that is imbedded in activities such as traditional navigation, canoe-construction, house-building, weaving, etc. (The answer in short: yes, they do). Over the past decade I was also involved in curating and writing for a series of art exhibitions in Guam, Paris, and Saipan, featuring the work of the French artist Paul Jacoulet, whom I’ve had a long-standing interest in, as he’s certainly the most internationally recognized artist to focus on this part of the Pacific. The main change from ten years ago, when I boasted of “quite happily remaining single throughout my life,” is that I’m now even more happily married. My partner Aaron is an RN and shares my love of travel, and in the past few years we’ve journeyed together to Sydney, Cairns, Auckland, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Yangon, Manila, Palawan, Seoul, Taipei, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Washington DC, London, Edinburgh, Cork, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Pompeii, Honolulu, Hilo, Palau, Saipan, and Bali. We have a trip to Cebu planned for Thanksgiving, and to Vietnam over the winter break. We both can take advantage of the academic calendar (Aaron is a school nurse) which gives us nearly 4 months of vacation each year. Sorry to have missed the 50 th reunion (and the 40 th and all the others)! Guam is a long way from Bethesda. Maybe by the 60 th, if all goes as planned, I’ll be retired in Hawaii, and a bit closer to the East Coast than here in Guam.

Occupation:

don.rubinstein@gmail.com

Comment: We are sad to learn of Don's passing on Sept. 27, 2023. Please see the In Memoriam section for an obit and place to leave a tribute.

10 year old profile from the 40th reunion: Bio. from: Donald Rubinstein email rubinste@uog9.uog.edu The stream of WJ-66 bios have been fascinating to read. Current students at WJ should study them for life experience lessons for the next 40 years! They'll learn that (1) there is life after WJ; and (2) whatever happens will be unscripted and unpredictable but nevertheless rewarding, at least in retrospect. I would never have guessed in 1966 that today I would be living in Guam -- halfway around the planet from Bethesda -- and deeply immersed in a part of the world I had never heard of in high school. Right after WJ I went to U. Penn with vague plans for taking pre-med courses and eventually going into medicine. After my freshman year I got a summer job in Bethesda at NIH, in what was then the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness. Great job, and one of those serendipitous life-changing junctures! The lab was involved in early forefront work on prion diseases (then called "slow viruses") in New Guinean highlanders, and epidemic ALS-PD in southern Guamanians, among other projects. The lab's chief scientist shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976 for the prion work. I spent nearly every college vacation day I could manage, and sometimes weekends during the semester, working at that lab over the next three years. Meanwhile I was finding Penn intellectually exciting but socially unappealing -- too preppy and frat-house oriented -- although the place became a lot less buttoned-down after the 1968 sit-ins. The NIH summer job I had stimulated an interest in anthropology and especially Pacific Island cultures, an interest also fueled by my inherent wanderlust (escapism). Penn permitted me to piece together an interdisciplinary major involving anthro, developmental psych and linguistics, and some pre-med courses. I did an honors thesis on cross-cultural child language acquisition, and graduated cum laude in 1970. After college I had no clear idea what I really wanted to do long-term with my life, but my immediate goal was to satisfy a growing itch to travel before continuing with graduate work. I spent 11 months hitch-hiking and solo backpacking around Europe, North Africa and the Middle east, from Reykjavik to Algiers and Tel Aviv to Granada, visiting just about every museum and historical site in every village or city I saw, and getting a look at most of the major sites of paleolithic cave art in Europe (including Lascaux, literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience). I was lured back to the States by the offer of a full-ride graduate fellowship at Stanford's doctoral program in anthropology. Grad study was even more intellectually exciting than undergrad work and really great fun as long as one treats it as an adventure and ignores the career-prep and competitive aspects. After the first year at Stanford I took off a year for further traveling, this time in the Pacific. Spent four months living on Fais, a very isolated tiny Pacific island of 250 people in the Outer Islands of Yap, Western Carolines (where I later returned for two years of dissertation field research on child socialization). That year I also worked as an assistant on a Scripps Institute medical research ship for two months that toured remote islands in Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) and the Solomon Islands, and spent another couple of months living on Kapingamarangi, which like Easter Island is one of the most isolated Polynesian Islands in the Pacific. Two days after completing my doctoral degree at Stanford in 1979 I began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in medical anthropology at University of Hawaii, and that led to a nine-year sojourn in Honolulu, with many more trips throughout Micronesia. With NIMH funding I began a long-term study into the socio-cultural reasons for epidemic rates of suicide among Micronesian youth (work which, years later, got a nice plug from Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point"). Completed a Masters degree in Public Health at University of Hawaii, did some teaching, and a stint in academic administration, before leaving Hawaii in 1988 and moving to Guam to direct a small Micronesian area research center at the University of Guam. After three years in that job I moved into a position of full-time research and graduate teaching. Have been based in Guam ever since, for the most part quite enjoyably. One of the best aspects of a small, isolated school like University of Guam is that, although we have many first-rate faculty members, nobody takes themselves too seriously, unlike at powerhouse schools like Stanford or Penn. The academic calendar is another great advantage: a full month off between fall and spring semesters, and three months of free time in summer. I've been able to join friends for New Year celebrations in some extraordinary places, from Kyushu in southern Japan to Luxor on the middle Nile to Ubud in central Bali. University teaching is tremendously satisfying, the students in the program I teach are enthusiastic and truly grateful, and each class in a continual rediscovery. I've had opportunities to be visiting professor twice at the Institute of Ethnology in Heidelberg, and the Kagoshima University Research Center for the Pacific Islands (former colonial rulers Germany and Japan continue to take at least an academic interest in Micronesia). Because anthropology is so eclectic and Micronesian Studies so interdisciplinary, I can pursue all sorts of intellectual interests and research projects as part of "the job." So work is never boring. Or repetitive. And I've quite happily remained single throughout my life. I have an extended "family" of about 300 Fais Islanders, a couple dozen of whom have lived in my house for a few years while attending high school or college or working in Guam, and I get back to Fais or neighboring islands Ulithi and Yap once or twice a year for family visits and research projects. University and community projects keep me fully engaged and the agenda is always diverse enough to provide a sense of adventure and novelty. Currently I'm on the board of the Guam Humanities Council and I'm serving as humanities scholar for a Smithsonian Museum-on-Main-Street exhibit coming to Guam in 2007, I'm doing a second year as president of the university's faculty senate, and I'm serving as a faculty mentor for a junior colleague who has a National Science Foundation Minority Research Fellowship. Plus teaching graduate classes, advising student theses, working on research projects, writing.... I have two siblings who live in Chevy Chase and Rockville, so I get back to the DC area about once a year, but I won't make the reunion this weekend. I'm hoping to locate some long-lost high school friends through the reunion list.

Much of what I wrote biographically ten years ago for WJ’s 40 th reunion still holds: I’m still a tenured full-

time member of the University of Guam faculty, enjoying teaching graduate courses in Micronesian

Studies, advising students on masters’ theses, pursuing an eclectic agenda of research projects, and

trying to travel to all my bucket-list destinations during the 3-month summer vacations and 1-month

winter breaks. The teaching becomes easier and more rewarding each year, and I’ve been especially

fortunate over the past ten years in getting involved in interesting new research on ethnomathematics

(math and culture). In 2015 we wrapped up a 6-year project funded by National Science Foundation,

designed to test the hypothesis that island children do better in school math when they’re taught

indigenous mathematics—the sort of math that is imbedded in activities such as traditional navigation,

canoe-construction, house-building, weaving, etc. (The answer in short: yes, they do). Over the past

decade I was also involved in curating and writing for a series of art exhibitions in Guam, Paris, and

Saipan, featuring the work of the French artist Paul Jacoulet, whom I’ve had a long-standing interest in,

as he’s certainly the most internationally recognized artist to focus on this part of the Pacific.

The main change from ten years ago, when I boasted of “quite happily remaining single throughout my

life,” is that I’m now even more happily married. My partner Aaron is an RN and shares my love of

travel, and in the past few years we’ve journeyed together to Sydney, Cairns, Auckland, Bangkok, Chiang

Mai, Yangon, Manila, Palawan, Seoul, Taipei, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis,

Washington DC, London, Edinburgh, Cork, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Pompeii, Honolulu, Hilo, Palau, Saipan,

and Bali. We have a trip to Cebu planned for Thanksgiving, and to Vietnam over the winter break. We

both can take advantage of the academic calendar (Aaron is a school nurse) which gives us nearly 4

months of vacation each year.

Sorry to have missed the 50 th reunion (and the 40 th and all the others)! Guam is a long way from

Bethesda. Maybe by the 60 th, if all goes as planned, I’ll be retired in Hawaii, and a bit closer to the East

Coast than here in Guam.

Ann Ruderman

Then

Now

Occupation:	Veterans Administration

Diane Ruff

Then

Charles (Gene) Russell

Then

Now

Comment: Right after high school I started working in the Ladies Sportswear Dept. at E.J. Korvettes on Rockville Pike. A young buck working in the Ladies Sportswear Dept. you'd think there would be many memorable moments...the only one that has been seared into my mind is the gal who came waltzing into the department in a pair of lime green hip huggers with white poke-a-dots and a matching halter top, full bare midriff...sounds exciting! Only problem was she had to be 90 if she was a day!! But she was hip! I resigned my duties at E. J's to take a Job at The Dept. of Justice, Office of Immigration and Naturalization. On my breaks I would check out the file cards on the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Fidel Castro among others. From there I transferred over to The Dept. of Health Education and Welfare. I worked there as a Visual Communication Specialist. As some of you may remember I spent most of my time at WJ drawing Hot Rods and "Ginks" in class rather than paying attention to our teachers. (a Gink is a caricature created by "Mouse" a pseudo famous artist who airbrushed tee shirts at Hot Rod Shows). Well it paid off. I've been in the art field most of my life. During the 5 years with HEW ('67-'71) I managed rock bands. The first was The Ludicrous Sunflower Dynasty, with George Demma (WJ alum.) on drums. We played in Georgetown, colleges, and out of state. That group evolved into "The Harrison Act" and played in clubs in Georgetown and was the house band for Sam's Club on Conn. Ave in DC. I then formed a new band with the lead singer of "The Fallen Angels" home based at the district line off Wisconsin Ave. They were an original band doing their own music and had an album. Their lead singer Guy (pronounced Gee) and I formed a group called "Gravity". We went to California and recruited Kathe, the lead singer of a group called "Natty Bumpo" who used to perform in Wash. DC. Gravity played clubs in DC like My Mothers Place, The Keg and the Silver Dollar in Georgetown. When Gravity had the opportunity to go and play in St. Thomas for 6 months I quit my government job. In 1972 Kathe and I got married. Her brother and I started a refuse company based in Gaithersburg, MD. We had a few trucks. One we painted burgundy and gold and I painted the Redskins logo big on the back. The truck was what was called a Barrel Packer, so the round back lent itself well to the logo. We actually wound up with Larry Brown, the running back for the Redskins, who lived in Potomac, as one of our clients. In 1976 Kathe and I divorced and I left the refuse co. I got a job as a technical illustrator with a publishing co. at DuPont Circle in DC. From there went to ARINC Research in Annapolis as a Tech. Illustrator. They developed the Harrier Jet, the one that lifts off straight up in the air then blasts off. In 1977 I remarried. We were together 15 years and had 3 children, a son Bray 25, daughter Casey 23, with one daughter Makaiya Renne and another son Blake 21. All my boys are single. In 1980 I started work as an Advertising Artist/Designer for Patuxent Publishing Co. based in Columbia, MD. They produce 13 weekly newspapers and the Columbia Magazine. I worked for them full and part time for 18 years winning over 35 regional advertising awards and 5 national advertising awards from Suburban Newspapers of America which included Canada. During that time I also worked for ad agencies and for Mattress Discounters Advertising Department. I've designed numerous corporate logos. One still shows up on TV sometimes "Oak Tree Furniture" not one of my best, but it has endured. I remarried in 1997 (Threes a Charm) her name is Evelyn and we will be together thru time and all eternity. Evelyn enriched our family with 2 children, Melanie 33 and Laura 31. I had known Evelyn and her children since 1977. Melanie married and has two children, Emily 5 and Sam 11 months and one on the way. They live in Rexburg, Idaho. I currently work designing ads for The Baltimore Sun newspaper. They are owned by The Chicago Tribune. As a hobby I collect historical documents and artifacts. Some of the most interesting are the ancient Egyptian and pre-Columbian artifacts. I have some early documents including Illuminated Manuscripts. There is an interesting page printed in 1532. It is a printed page from the letters that Cortes wrote to King Charles of Spain, describing how unbelievably beautiful and advanced Mexico and it's people were and how he turned around and annilated them. Go figure. I have a Mayan artifact to frame together with the page along with its translation. The page is printed in Latin. I've obtained a rusticle from the RMS Titanic that I need to frame with three pieces of coal recovered from the wreakage along with signatures of one of the survivors and Robert Ballard who discovered the wreakage. I haven't had any contact with most of you who I went to school with since 1966. Most of you probably don't know who I am, but I was the guy that hung out every morning on the corner by the school bank across from the school store watching everyone go by. Actually, one Saturday about 8 years ago, after one of my daughters soccer games near Gaithersburg, I took her by WJ to show her my old High School. A custodian just happened to be there and he let us in. I couldn't resist leaning up against that wall just one more time. I was surprised to find out they are now the Walter Johnson Wildcats. They have a new brass Wildcat logo inlaid into the floor right next to our old brass Spartan logo. Go Spartans! Oh, and incase you were wondering... yes I can still draw a Gink in a Hot Rod.

Lonnie Jr. Rutledge

Then

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