1998 - 10th Reunion

The Class of 1998 set another reunion attendance record, this time for our 10th. Friday night brought the traditional clambake and overtired children. Saturday was filled with official Yale lectures and touring, capped off by a dinner at the New Haven Lawn Club with dancing to the DJ’ed music of Richard Lyn-Cook and his perennial roadie/sidekick, Steven Williams. Along the way we got updates from many of our classmates who were there.

Senai Asefaw lives in New Haven, where he works as a hospitalist at Yale-New Haven Hospital and does part-time consulting work. Kristen Aversa lives with her husband and children in Woodbridge, Conn., and continues to practice ob-gyn locally. Tamar Braverman and husband Michael brought their daughters Yael and Talya on Friday night. Tamar is an internist in Branford, Conn. Sydney Butts lives in Syracuse, N.Y., where she works as an ENT surgeon and volunteers her time reconstructing the faces of domestic violence victims. Kent and Shelley Chou flew in from Phoenix, where Kent is an orthopaedic surgeon.

Pediatricians Dan Coghlin and Barb McGee brought children Molly and Henry, who look like clones of their parents. Dan and Barb work in the same practice in Rhode Island. Psychiatrist Caroline Dumont lives with psychiatrist husband Brian Tobin and their three mentally healthy children in the New Haven area. Lawrence (Lori) Etter is a dermatologist in Durham, N.C. Husband Jeff Welty and daughter Caroline were barely recognizable beneath layers of sunscreen, hats, and long-sleeved shirts. ENT Mark Homicz and Pam Loman came in from California wine country, where they live with their two children. Russ Huang is married, lives in New York and is a spine surgeon. Unfortunately, he has not had much time to play guitar, perhaps explaining the absence of class band Haploid Floyd at our reunion. Or Scott Floyd, for that matter, who wasn’t at the reunion but who is a radiation oncologist in Boston.

One of our longest-in-training classmates, neurosurgeon Hahnah Kasowski and husband Robert Seminara live in New York with their son Nathaniel. Lisa Lipschitz practices obstetrics and gynecology in San Diego, where she lives with husband Steve Montal and their two children. Rich Lyn-Cook treats adults and kids, he spins tunes as a DJ, and he can impersonate any human born in the 19th or 20th centuries! The versatile Rich lives in Houston with his wife Monica, who is a surgeon but was too busy operating to join us.

After several years on faculty as a hospitalist at the University of Vermont, Ursula McVeigh recently moved to Boston to start a palliative care fellowship. Matt Mealiffe works as the director of clinical research at Perlegen Sciences in the South Bay. Ali Portnoy lives in Villanova, Penn., with husband Raphael Crawford; Ali works for GlaxoSmithKline as medical director of early phase clinical drug development in infectious disease. Ruth Potee lives in western Massachusetts with her husband Steve Martin and three kids; Ruth commutes once weekly to Boston, where she is on the family practice faculty at Boston Medical Center. Ruth is probably our only classmate who still sleeps in a call room once a week. Paul Pottinger lives in Seattle with wife Julie and children Zoe and Matthew. Paul is an infectious disease specialist, especially now that he has two children. Nikki Rabidou and her husband have a new baby boy; Nikki ractices rheumatology in Torrington, Conn.

Greg Raskin lives in New York City and works at Alliance-Bernstein. Greg occasionally practices medicine on his wife Jackie Weiss and on his children Daphne and Morris.

Lisa Gale Suter, husband Lindsay and children Fenn and Halvor live near Yale, where Lisa is on faculty in rheumatology. They still have a sluice gate. Kimara Targoff and Josh live in New York with their three children. Kim is an instructor at Columbia in pediatric cardiology, and is also doing research on the regulation of cardiac development. Meena Thayu and husband Eric Keuffel have a year-old daughter Anna and live in Philadelphia, where Meena is a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Ricky Torres isn’t even in our class, but he gamely showed up on Saturday night and danced some salsa. He’s on faculty at Yale. Sus Waikar is a nephrologist at the Brigham in Boston and lives with his wife and kids in Brookline, Mass.

Steven Williams is a plastic surgeon in San Ramon, Calif., where he lives with his wife. Steve occasionally goes to Honduras on medical missions. Ashley Wivel lives with son Jackson in Philadelphia, where she works for GlaxoSmithKline as a pharmacovigilance specialist. Say that 10 times fast!

Lori Etter