Annette M. Tillemann-Dick, M.A.R.

To say I am chagrined that it has been so many.many years since I have communicated with the faithful class secretaries would be an understatement. But here is a brief (well...it is not so brief...you may wish to drastically edit it!) account of the 36 years that have elapsed since graduation...39 since our production of Godspell. I eloped with the Godspell production manager, Timber Dick, in March of 1978. Nine months later, with two dogs along for the ride, we had our first baby,a boy,in the car on the way to Yale, New Haven Hospital. He is now the Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State for Civil Society and Emerging Democracies (whew!) and, much more importantly, with a great wife, has produced four adorable grand children. That first production number was followed by many more...eleven living babes in all, stillborn twins and a beautiful adopted teenager from Honduras. So we were highly reproductive. I continue to enjoy the fruits of all those labors. Timber and I spent 30 exhilarating years married on earth and in 2008 shifted to the eternal marriage mode. Since Timber's death, almost six years ago, one of our daughters, Charity Sunshine (fourth baby), has undergone two bi-lateral lung transplants. Miraculously she has emerged, smiling and singing, from very near death both times. You can look her up on the internet...either by checking out some of her TED talks or just Google "Opera singer-lung transplants". All of the kids are wonderful ...two are living in Denver full time. Zen, our youngest, is a relatively normal 17 year old boy and skateboards daily to Regis U where he is a sophomore majoring in Philosophy, Economics and Biology. The next three are students at Yale, though currently Mercina has stopped out to serve a full-time mission for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The other child in Denver, Liberty Belle (born on Sept 17, 1987, the bi-centennial of the US Constitution)is a short trip from home and works for Dan Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, while her husband Pramel is doing a residency in radiology at CU Medical Center. This could go on and on... and could get rather deadly. Simon and Schuster is scheduled to publish the book of our second son, Levi. It's on the race to electrify cars that has been raging amongst the US,Japan and China. Our second baby, Kimber Rainbow, another Yalie, has three adorable babies of her own; she, her amazing husband (who has kept me from all sorts of disasters....financial and otherwise... since Timber's been gone) and their sweet gang live in Washington DC, from where she blogs with her sisters on Fivetdsisters.blogspot.com. Dulcia, an artist, athlete and all round great woman,lives near my mother, Annette Lantos, and helps with her work to carry on my father's legacy as an international advocate for Human Rights. That just leaves our third son, Corban, who has added to our United Nations kind of family with a brilliant, beautiful wife born and raised in South Korea. If you are still reading this...(it is certainly understandable if you are not)I am wildly enthusiastic to be recently associated with an outstanding group, Facing History and Ourselves, that develops and offers for free, in-depth, thoughtful curriculum and teacher- training designed to meaningfully share with youth the sad but vitally important stories of bigotry, genocide and racism that we must learn from or risk repeating in new and awful ways. When not cleaning up, feeding or playing with our six dogs...two Great Pyrenees and four smaller fuzzy white foundlings... I try to serve as Co-Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice which we established to carry forward the voice of my dad, Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the US Congress. We also advodate for organ donation...for obvious reasons of abject gratitude. Now, aren't you dreadfully sorry you asked to catch up! I;m sorry this is as concise as I could be at this time of night/day. I apologize in the words of E.B. White, who once wrote to a friend, "I've written you a long letter because I did not have time to write a short one." Forgive me. Thanks so much for your ongoing effort to keep us updated on your lives and those of our Div School classmates and friends. I truly appreciate your constancy and remember with gratitude your band's vital contribution to our production of GOdspell so many years ago. Warm and loving wishes to all...please visit us in Denver when you are in town.