I attended Tufts University in Medford MA, just outside of Boston, from September 1971 until June of 1975, graduating with a B.A. in History.  It was a heady time to attend school, not like now.

Over time, I had lost contact with many of my college friends but after a posting of this web site address in the Tufts alumni magazine in January 2001, I suddenly started hearing from many!

But, back to history. This is a picture of my family at Christmas, during my sophomore year in 1972.

I have kept in contact with Bob Vallis and his ex-wife Joanne Vaccaro; some of you know them from their castle they had on Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester MA.

Bob is now the owner of the Blackburn Tavern in the center of town; Joanne is living in San Francisco and has a thriving career of her own in computer training.

One of the first people I met at school was Dana Wharton; he was two years older than me but had a room at the stairway entrance to our floor along with Tony Russo.

Dana now lives in Hopkinton with his wife, Paula, and their three sons.  He looked sillier then, in this picture from 1973.

I lived in the dorms for the first two years.  My freshman year roommate was Nick Paleologos who later went on to serve in the Massachusetts legislature and now works in the film industry with his old friend Fred Zollo as ZPi.

The following year, my roommate was Steve Pelle, who now lives in Florida with his wife, Vickie.  They have two sons who are now adults!

Also part of that social circle, which includes the Vallis pair, are Dave Selden and Doug Hadden.

At the beginning of my junior year, I moved off campus with a group of guys into a two-family home at 14 Dow Street in Somerville.  It became a rather famous address.

Included in the group were Ben Lynch, Bob Molloy, Roman Zajac, Fred Sanchez and Andy Kilburn.  All of them went on to good lives ... with the notable exception of the last person who through being in the wrong place, wrong time is now spending a life sentence in one of our nation’s housing facilities!

I had gone off to Tufts with all intent of becoming the good boy that my Italian-American heritage predicted.  But after four years of learning more about social life than the social fabric in my history classes, I decided against law school and for living in Boston.  I threw my fate to the winds.

At the beginning of 2001, I regained communication with Ben and Bob and soon after with Penny Liebl (now Starin) with whom we spent most of our time playing cards, particularly Hearts.  In a recent post, Bob wrote:

I've been thinking about your comments about love and caring and all of us at 14 Dow Street and our other friends of the time, and I think that while Tufts provided the environment, and the environment was part of the times of the 70s in the larger world outside of us, the love and caring came from inside of each of us.  If we had been together at Columbia, I think it would have been similar.

Additionally, I have also heard from Diane Jacobson Zankowsky and Mike Morin.

In April 2000, I received a surprise phone call from Bob Horne; he was taking a new job in marketing in Manhattan.  Unfortunately, we never got together; my belief is that the new job and a new baby on the way interfered.  But he sounded good and I hope this is good news for my readers.

Post College After graduating from college, I drifted aimlessly as a degree in history prepares one for not much else than teaching or law school, neither of which had much appeal.  But out of sheer coincidence, someone who was temporarily staying at the house, Bob Nathanson, had a connection to a job as a manufacturer’s agent in the audio industry.  Since he wasn’t interested in it, and stereo equipment had always been a hobby of mine, he passed along the information and soon I had my first job (I don’t think I should count a stint pumping gas at the local Gulf station or working with Bob at his Big Fish, Little Fish store). This is a picture of my parents, with my Uncle Emil on the right, during Christmas 1975.  I spent two years working for Arbetter Sales representing lines such as Acoustic Research and JVC; I had all of New England as my territory.  Also at that time, I met John Hood; he was working for the ad agency representing JVC.  He also had a co-op in Greenwich Village and a house on Fire Island Pines.  Yes, I had been touched by the fabulous! John passed away from liver disease a few years ago; but he left me a lasting legacy.  David Littler and the Episcopal church.  Yes, getting to know David not only meant learning about gay clubs and dunes on the beach, but also a return to faith.  But that was for the future. Note that I have included some very rare photos of John Hood, unavailable anywhere else in the world as far as I know. After awhile, I could see that my job wasn’t going anywhere.  At the same time, I was getting more involved in the gay scene in Boston.  My ‘coming out’ if you will. So taking leave of Dow Street and its last crew (which also included Doug Hadden), I moved out to Winchester with a gay couple and began a new life.  I was a writer for the Gay Community News for a short time in 1978, interviewing Allen Ginsberg and Tom Robinson; my editor was Eric Rofes, who is now in San Francisco.

As mentioned at the beginning, I have current information for names in bold face; if connected to a hyperlink, it will either open a mail dialog, connect to a personal web site, or connect to a web page with information about that person.  Feel free to contact me for further information or to pass along a note to those who aren't linked.  Not everyone on my address list is mentioned on this page; those names are found in the diary pages.