Class Correspondent

Getting more and more updates from folks we haven’t heard from in a while. It’s great to re-connect.

Ilene Freier Brookler lives with her husband and two children in northern Israel. Ilene works from home as a lawyer while the kids are in school, then spends her afternoons chauffeuring them to their activities, which include karate, rhythmic gymnastics, tennis, piano and pottery. Her husband works for Microsoft. Michelle Weisberg Cohen, a member at Ifrah Law in Washington, D.C., was elected to the board of the Sewall-Belmont House Museum, a national historic landmark on Capitol Hill that is the home of the National Women’s Party and the American suffrage movement. Janelle (Peery) Durham is a parent educator at Bellevue College. She co-authored the fifth edition of “Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn” and the third edition of “The Simple Guide to Having a Baby.” She also writes a blog (GoodDaysWithKids.com) for parents of children up to age 5. She lives in Seattle and has three kids, two in college (Oberlin and Pomona) and a preschooler. Karen Haymes Adams had her first solo show of landscape painting at the Oresman Gallery, in Larchmont, New York, which Jill Birnbaum Orlich attended. View Karen’s portfolio at www.karenadams.net. Karen recently met up with Tara Simon Shapiro ’95 for a hike in the woods with their dogs. Camille Lizarríbar was named dean of student affairs and senior associate dean at Yale College. For the past five years, she served as residential college dean at Ezra Stiles College. Camille earned her PhD in comparative literature from Harvard and her JD from Harvard Law School. Karen Marks recently completed her fifth marathon, in Rotterdam. She’s learned that finishing a marathon isn’t just an athletic achievement; it’s a state of mind that says anything is possible. Melissa Misch is customer-care manager at Masy Bio­Services, in Pepperell, Massachusetts. She and her husband of 23 years have two teenagers, one in middle school and the other in high school. Former Brandeis soccer star Ted Porterfield was inducted into the Joel Barlow High School Athletic Hall of Fame, in Redding, Connecticut. Ted was a three-sport varsity athlete during three of his four years at Barlow, playing soccer, basketball and baseball. He and his wife, Melissa, and their children, Luke, Jake, Sam and Julia, live in Waxhaw, North Carolina. After earning master’s degrees in social work and education, Stephanie Gruber Ripps is using neither of them. Instead, she has returned to doing what she did in high school — teaching fitness classes — which allows her to stay in shape and drive her three sons to after-school activities. She lives in New City, New York. Mihal Ronen has happily settled in Ithaca, New York, where she teaches second-graders. Her son, Noah Elman, is a rising-sophomore theater student at SUNY Fredonia. Terry Sack has been a realtor in the Boston area for 20 years. He writes, “Although the Red Sox have won three championships, I am no less a Red Sox fan than I used to be — I’m just more mellow about it now.” Cornelius Salmon lives in Decatur, Georgia, where he serves as deputy clerk for the DeKalb County Clerk of Superior Court. He volunteers with Brandeis’ Posse program in Atlanta and attended the Brandeis-Emory soccer match in Atlanta last fall (Brandeis won, 1-0). On Oct. 12, 2015, Ellen Seidman gave birth to Ben Spencer, the third child for her and David Smokler. Brandeisians at the bris included Lauren Resnikoff, Jill Orlich, Hedy Cardozo, Wendy Reimer, Betsy Portnov and Lisa Gerber ’90. Ellen is a blogger and magazine editor.

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