May 17, 2003

Bob and Julie Stokstad 150 Hill Road, Berkeley, CA 94708

Twenty three years at the same address in Berkeley, California - it sure has been nice to stay in one place. We've seen our children grow up, leave home and start going to their own high school reunions, the 15th for our oldest son. I haven't been back to Pearl River since our 25th reunion and am looking forward to seeing you all and introducing my wife, Julie. Living in an urban area and reading a newspaper has brought home how special were the time and place where we grew up and went to school. Thirteen years in the same school building, only sixty in our graduating class, great teachers and, by comparison, a crime and drug free environment - we were pretty fortunate.

A bit about us: we both still work full time. I'm at a national laboratory located about five minutes from our house and Julie is the pastor of a church in San Jose, sixty miles from Berkeley. Her career change from high school biology teacher to the ministry happened about six years ago. Physics research has always been my vocation but I've also had a bit of a career change within that discipline. Thirteen years ago I got involved in a study of neutrinos, fundamental particles whose properties can only be described as weird. They are everywhere but you'd never know it. We've found some sources and are trying to discover more. They originate in the core of the sun, in exploding stars, nuclear reactors and bananas. They weigh practically nothing but, because there are so many of them, have all together as much mass in the universe as the visible stars. Another advantage of studying neutrinos is that it gets me out of the house, to places I otherwise would not have visited. We have neutrino detectors located 6800 feet underground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario, inside a mountain in the Japanese Alps, and one at the South Pole. My first time at the Pole was at the turn of the millennium. ABC flew in a camera crew to televise the New Year's party and I got to wave Hi to Peter Jennings and the folks back home.

Before leaving Pearl River in 1962, I was bitten by the motorcycle bug. It's like one of those tropical diseases that, once you get, you can never get it completely out of your system. I was "cured" for a while, but 20 years ago after we had moved to Berkeley, I succumbed and now have two bikes, one for the road and one for off road. I ride every day and manage about ten thousand miles a year. Each year I burn some frequent flier miles and go to Europe to ride with GMC, the Geriatric Motorcycle Club, over beautiful high passes in the Alps and, last year, on Corsica. This is a group of old friends (several older than I) for whom eating well and staying in very comfortable accommodations have become as important as not riding too far in one day. At the other extreme are trips to Baja California, Mexico for off-road riding with younger friends who ride hard and well but are patient with me.

Digital photography is my other hobby. The combination of instant gratification (you see your mistakes immediately), the ability to modify an image with a wonderful piece of software called Photoshop, and a large digital printer at our local community college has been irresistible. I've got more prints than I can frame. Add the Internet and World Wide Web for sharing images and a whole new world opened up for me. At the end of this note I have added some links where you can see and read about what we've been up to if you're curious and have time.

Being a solo pastor of a congregation of 150 people doesn't leave Julie much time for recreation, not to mention having to work weekends. But the job has its rewards, and her flock has grown during the five years she's been there. When she arrived there were one or two kids who came forward for the children's sermon. Now there are twenty.

Of our three sons, two were married (by their mom) during the last year and the eldest has also made a long term commitment by buying a house that, to understate grossly, is a fixer upper. No grand children yet but we've done some dog-sitting for Arne and Wendy's beagle who is an absolute charmer.

One of these years one of us will retire and then the other. We don't know when this will happen, but we enjoy talking with people who have taken this great step to find out how they managed their transition.

Julie and I look forward to our Class of '58 reunion this September and thank the members of the reunion committee for making it possible.

Bob Stokstad