Class Notes

Bill Dedman, LA82, received Peabody and Murrow awards with his Newsday team for their three-year investigation of illegal steering by real estate agents on Long Island, N.Y. (See newsday.com/divided.) A Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter, Dedman is a co-author of the bestseller, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune (Ballantine Books, 2013).

John Ritter, EN81, recently retired from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., and has moved back to the St. Louis area to be closer to family. Ritter says he’s looking forward to new challenges and adventures.

Michael Lipman, LA81, who is an architectural photographer, writes that he wonders how his classmates are doing 40 years after graduating from WashU.

Steven Beer, LA81, LA81, an attorney with Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P.C., was named to the Super Lawyer 2020 list in the entertainment and sports practice category.

Susan Padfield, SW80, keeps busy at home with online courses and a psychology webinar taught by Washington University medical faculty. During the pandemic, she has been staying safe in her home and her neighborhood and exercising her dog by tossing balls in the courtyard. Padfield says she is grateful to live in Seattle, where the threat of COVID-19 is taken seriously.

Stephanie Stevens, GR79, has worked as a volunteer trustee, vice chair and chairman for several nonprofits in the United Kingdom. She is completing a certificate of executive leadership at Oxford University’s Said Business School. Stevens writes that WashU is a superb university, where she earned her most cherished degree. She lives in the Wiltshire countryside in southwest England with her second husband and three dogs.

Joan Naylor, OT79, is retired from occupational therapy and has a new focus: volunteering to help refugees. She and her husband have volunteered in multiple locales, including the Calais Jungle refugee and migrant encampment in France and at Camp Moria in Lesvos island, Greece. Scheduled to return to Lesvos in June 2020, they were unable to go due to COVID-19. That has not stopped their efforts to help. Creating “Sharing With Refugees,” the couple is selling Naylor’s paintings, handmade hats and other creations for such endeavors as opening a sewing school in Kabul to help women learn a trade: www.sharingwithrefugees.com.

Thomas Goodmann, LA79, is executive director of The New Chaucer Society, a forum for teachers and scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age, and president of TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies). Goodmann is an associate professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Miami, where he teaches courses on medieval British and European literatures, and on literature and environment.

Gary Feldman, LA79, was named to the 2020 Massachusetts Super Lawyers list, 2020 Chambers USA list and the 2021 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. A shareholder with Davis Malm Attorneys in Boston, he focuses on employment practice.

Robert Choplin, HS79, is still at WashU after 41 years, working remotely as a radiologist while living in Virginia. In his free time, he enjoys pickleball, bicycling and working as a member of the League of Women Voters to protect and promote the constitutional right to vote.