Claremont, California. 1981–1984 — and forty years after.
Webb School of California is a boarding school in the Claremont foothills — a few miles from the Claremont Colleges, which is where most of the Doofs would end up a few years later. I arrived at 14 and left at 17 with a class of 1984 diploma and a classmate named Kip who I’m still talking to forty-plus years later.
No name for the group that stayed in touch after graduation. No Tuesday Zoom. No Dooffest. Just the people who didn’t let it drop, and the ones who’ve drifted back into the story since:
- Nicholas Corwin (Kip)
- Minsoo Kang
- Richard Holly
- John Scalzi
- Roland Dilley (“Roc”)
- Thomas Kendall ("TK")
- Chris Barrus (“CK”)
- John Montgomery
- Jo Saab
- John Clements
- Ray Tecotzky
- Rick Shull
- Jim Sheehy
- Tim Orr
- John Boal
- Jeffrey Cannon
- Mike Macgaffey
- Jeff Luhnow
- Scott Little
- Eduardo Links
- Randy Baker
- John Holliday
- Christina Mercer
- Patty Van Vranken
- Cristy Ebberet
- Chris Carr
The connective tissue was letters. Kip sent verbose dispatches from Dallas, Munich, and eventually Germany. Richard sent careful ones from Paris until around 1997, the last one ending: “I will always be a foreigner here.” I replied to all of them and kept most of them.
At Webb we had birthday tables — you could invite friends to sit with you on your birthday. Kip’s is December 12. Mine is December 13. Rick Shull’s is December 14. Three in a row.
Roland Dilley trained on nuclear submarines. At the Grand Canyon graduation trip, he carried multiple people’s packs. Because he could.
The reunion in 2009 confirmed that everybody still looks like themselves, just older, and that Rick Shull now has a turquoise mine near Lee Vining.