John Vorhes

In 2007, I’ve been retired from the Federal Government and the exhibits design business for 13 years. But I’m still working. I’m doing local house renovations for friends. Currently some additions, a new kitchens and a Zen basemen, I stay active and go to a health club almost daily. No health problems beyond having to pee at night. I’m the oldest person in my abs class!

My wife continues her freelance consulting for non-profits, a little direct mail design production and our semi-attached office/garage stays cluttered with phones ringing a lot. We are adjusting to empty nest status, my son graduated from Northwestern in June – a film major working now as a bell hop in an Evanston hotel and playing in a rock a billy band. My daughter is now the disco queen of DC, having graduated from Smith two years ago. She has hit the alternative rock scene here as a DJ at the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat, two of the area’s hottest venues, while bar tending and paying her rent at a group house in town. I look for discarded furniture for her. I’m probably many years away from grandchildren.

We’ve lived in the same house since 1981– improving it, adding decks, fishponds and waterfalls. I have an outdoor model railroad with 1950s locomotives pulling Union Pacific scale trains through a make-believe Kansas – where my father was born. I spend the winter months building scale buildings of the Main Street I remember in Seneca. This past May I helped an Action Committee from Seneca win the 2007 Kansas Main Street competition to help preserve the architecture and bring in new business. I did a pro bono exhibit for the Historical Society there with old photos from their files – it was fun and brought back many boyhood memories of Kansas, where during my summer visits I learned to drive, sail, ride a horse, and call dinner “supper” – and also chase trains.

I wonder what my life would have been if I had stayed in New York. I sometimes think New Yorker’s are awfully provincial thinking the world revolves around them. I understand if you move to Washington DC you may still be able to be enhanced by the aura emanating from Manhattan. I sometimes stick my face out the window looking north to get the rays. My career in DC sent me around the world designing cultural exchange exhibitions – I met my wife at USIA. My boss hired her to work on a project I was managing with no funds to spare. She seemed nice but I didn’t talk to her for months while grumbling about my budget. Actually, it worked out okay; we’ve been married 25 years. I like Washington, there’s sky and trees and an active theater scene and plenty of great restaurants and museums. A perfectly lame Administration, but I can hang on until 2009.

I don’t miss Great Neck – eventhough it was a nice town with great schools. It wasn’t a good cross-section of America but I saw most of the country later and got a better perspective. I still love the West, hiked with my wife and son down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon two years ago and rode some narrow gauge railroads in the Rockies. I don’t ski or golf, play video games or cheer for the Redskins. My wife and I are good entertainers and set a wonderful table. My daughter tells us which drinks are in. I like Mojitos but I think they are now very “last year.”

I don’t hear from any high school friends – or many college friends for that matter – my fault, but life does keep you otherwise occupied. I hope everybody comes back to the reunion, My wife Kirsten, is very good at chatting with other wives and husbands who know nothing about the Class of ‘57 either. We were good, silent generation-types, too young to be wise, and focused on success instead of challenging or protesting. I think we must have done okay – It was Ma. Bowen’s geometry class that taught me life’s lessons.