Dick "Skip" Dunn

Yes

After Williams, I went to Wesleyan for a Masters in Art in Teaching (MAT). The program was coed, and another MAT student from Texas caught my eye: Hedy and I were married there and soon thereafter moved to Massachusetts to begin teaching in our prospective fields.

I taught music in the Walpole Public Schools for five years while Hedy taught art. A fellow Williams alumnus, (Phil Preston ’63), and I started a low-budget high school ski team: cut a x-c trail through the adjacent town forest, narrowed and retrofitted old wooden downhill skis laced with Coach Ralph Townsend’s mystery wax potions and still managed to win lots of races. We lived in Foxborough where the arrival of our son, Mark, and daughter, Lara, brightened our lives immensely.

We next moved to Stanford University (’71-’74) so I could pursue a degrees in Cultural Anthropology (MA) and in Educational Organization and Policy Analysis (PhD). The family thrived on campus and we became friends with a “United Nations” of families in married student housing.

Moving “back east” we came only as far as to Los Alamos, NM in 1974 where I served as a school administrator for twenty years. But Los Alamos is rather like an old New England factory town of 18,000 people. You’re a handshake or two away from knowing everyone, from community founders to Nobel prize winners of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I sing in and direct local choirs, and remain active in the old car club.

After early retirement, in 1995 I worked as a temp during tax season for Intuit, TurboTax telephone support. That stint evolved into my own home business, Dr. Mac Computer Support, which I still operate and a limited basis.

Since the ‘70s gas crisis, I’ve been interested in solar energy and sustainability. Thus in the early ‘80s I built a solar greenhouse and hot heating system on our house. In 1998 we moved into a passive solar adobe home with a solarium backed by 80 tons of double thick adobe. In 2010 we added a 5.3Kw PV system, reducing our electricity costs to zero. UPDATE: 2020 the PV System is still going strong.

In 2004 I combined my love for efficient cars by using and advocating electric vehicles with a ’00 Honda Insight Hybrid (my daily driver, 73mpg), ’73 Porsche 914 EV (ca. 100mpge: a cheaper, shade-tree way of getting into EVs), and ‘07 ZENN NEV (245mpge).

With retirement has come more civic activity. I have served four terms on the local Transportation Board. In 2005-6 I served on a committee of Governor Richardson’s Climate Change Advisory Group which focused on Transportation.

We now enjoy these retirement activities: travel to families on both coasts and relish spoiling four (you guessed it) lovely grandchildren: two in Oregon where our daughter and son-in-law live and two here in Los Alamos where our son and daughter-in-law live. We look forward to catching up on the past half century with our friends at the next Williams reunion. Perhaps some day we’ll finish our eastward migration that stopped in 1974 when we fell into the “Land of Enchantment” in New Mexico. UPDATE: 2021 we're still in New Mexico ;-D

Memories of Williams:

• English Prof. John Ingraham Gardner aka JIGS, with his startling (for a teacher) F**king language and his Shovel stamp on our papers when we were faking it.

• Music Prof. Robert G. Barrow and four years of singing–and traveling–with the Glee Club. During Freshman orientation, I remember Bob Furey headed down to audition. I tagged along, and noticed upcoming travel to Wheaton, Simmons and Vassar. Hmmm, guess I’ll try out! Thus started my choral career, which continues to this day as a tenor in the Santa Fe based Sangre de Cristo Chorale.

• Music Prof. Irwin Shainman, whose band formations led me to enough mastery of the “Scramble” that I was able to adopt it later at Walpole High School as band director.

• Art Prof. Faison, who amazed me with his on-the-second starts and finishes to his lectures. More importantly, in History of Architecture, he taught us the three most important qualities by which to judge any building: oriented toward humans (especially entrances that draw you in), “form follows function,” and integration with surroundings. (OK—I’m a little vague on these and welcome your corrections). Now there has to be a fourth: zero-net carbon energy. I am appalled at how many buildings we have erected in Los Alamos and the country in the last 15 years that violate almost all these principles. Even the Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building in New York that Pro. Faison admired has terrible energy efficiency.