Andy Hedin

— 10th — (1981) Ronald Reagan

Peter and I will be attending the tenth-year Reunion for the Class of '72 but since we live in the area, people should feel free to call us and stop by. My life seems to have gotten busier but happier with the years. I love psychiatry and am looking forward to being able to practice out of my own home. I expect that having a baby will change my life in ways that can't be described but I think I'm ready for that. It feels like I've waited a long time.

— 15th — (1986) Ronald Reagan

I'm happy with my life. I love my work and I love being a mother. I've felt very lucky to be able to do both in a way that allows me to feel somewhat in control some of the time and to feel very happy and satisfied most of the time. My only real worry is that we're supposed to move to California this summer and I keep wondering if I want to give up a situation that feels so good and works for one that is unknown. I don't know what's best and I don't know what we'll finally do. I do know that Cambridge finally feels like home.

— 25th — (1996) Bill Clinton

HAVING spent most of our adult lives living in Cambridge, Mass. (minus B School for Peter and medical school for me and one to two years in southern Illinois for both of us), Peter and I moved to Davis, California, as of August, 1991. We left friends, jobs, connections and what had become an expensive way of life and a very stressful one for Peter who was living the life of a successful consultant; on the road Monday to Friday.

The move brought many changes, public schools instead of private, proximity to my family, distance from many beloved friends, etc. But the biggest change was that Peter and I switched roles. He became the parent with the office in the home and I became the parent commuting. My psychiatric practice changed from providing mostly long-term individual psychotherapy with a smattering of Student Mental Health Services, inpatient State Hospital work, and on-call and inpatient work at the local general hospital, to working for the largest HMO in California. Currently, I am Chief of Outpatient Psychiatry, so I do administration about half time and clinical work about three-quarters time. These long hours are not pleasing my family nor me, but I am hoping it will get better.

All health care is in limbo right now, as we struggle to provide better care for less money. I too am caught up in that effort. I see my administrative task as trying to provide psychiatric services to a previously neglected population, the middle-income person. In psychiatry, we've been treating the indigent and the rich for years, now the group in the middle is discovering that we have something to offer and demand is on the rise. It has a been a challenge to find the right combination of education, groups, individual therapy, medication management, and liaison with the primary care physicians. I've been struck with how much can be done with limited resources; I hope someday to find the time to sit and write up some of the histories of the people I've been privileged to work with. Certainly, my new work puts me in touch with many more patients than I previously worked with. Meanwhile, I miss being the class parent, the volunteer in the classroom, the chauffeur to the music, ballet, karate, roller hockey lessons, practices, games and performances. Peter has stepped into his role as chauffeur and homework manager with grace and humor. People love having a man along on field trips and the kids love him. The lunches look different; chips instead of frozen peas and carrots, and there is a new tradition of Dairy Queen on Friday afternoons. My kids don't seem to be suffering.

I feel that I had more balance in my Cambridge life, but Peter has found the balance that I seem to have lost. My goal is to achieve a better balance by the time I turn fifty and to find a balance within the couple such that each of us has found the right balance between work and family and our efforts to make the world a better place. I find myself coming to the end of my letter without having talked much about my children. Let me simply say they are wonderful and a joy. I have a daughter who plays roller hockey, rock climbs and wants to build cars and a son who plays basketball, does ballet and has written the first two pages of a Stars Wars sequel. I love watching them grow up and I miss each stage as we zoom on to the next.

— 30th — (2001) George W. Bush

This report finds me in transition. I have just ended a position at Kaiser South Sacramento as chief of outpatient psychiatry. On November 7, I started a new position at Kaiser San Rafael, where I will be re-inventing myself as an addiction specialist. It is both strange and exciting to be starting a new job in a new area of my field at "my age." I am hoping that it will keep me young. We are selling our almost two acres and moving to a much smaller property in Marin County with the hopes of having more time for play and entertainment. I am excited to be moving back home and look forward to finding old friends.

Peter continues to work in the Napa Valley for a business that sells barrels to the wine industry. He has been wonderfully supportive of this move.

My children seem to be going into the arts. Matt is in NYC trying to make it as a dancer. He is now performing with a small company and has his eyes on bigger companies. If that does not work out, he plans to go to graduate school in international environmental policy. Emma is a senior at Carleton College and is majoring in theater. She hopes to become an actress but is planning to support herself as an EMT as she tries out for plays in NYC. She worked in L.A. last summer as an EMT and was quite successful at it. She says that medical school is her back-up plan if the acting career is unable to support her.

Life has treated me well. I am very grateful to be able to do work that I love and find wonderfully gratifying and to have a family I feel proud of and connected to.

— 40th — (2011) Barack Obama

I don't have a lot to say this time. The move back to Marin County has been timely, as my parents who were then eighty-six and eighty-one are now ninety-one and ninety-six and needing more attention. It was wonderful to be here when they were still very independent and wonderful now to be so nearby as they appreciate help negotiating the medical world and some support with dinners, shopping, etc.

I am still working very full-time but hoping to start reducing my hours once Emma finishes medical school in a couple of years. I have loved learning a new area of psychiatry, addiction medicine. I passed my boards a couple of years ago and expect that to be the last set of Medical Boards I will have to take.

My son, Matthew, married his dancing partner, Tiffany, whom we love dearly. They live in Jersey City and work in Brooklyn and NYC. Matt is working in a small company called DigiFi, which takes pictures and movies and digitalizes them. Tiffany is now the assistant artistic director of Elisa Monte Dance Company, where both Matt and Tiffany danced until their retirement from dance. My daughter, Emma, is in medical school at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, New York. She has decided to do her residency in Hawaii so she can continue to dive with the turtles and see more of the sun.

I am still very happily married to Peter Fisher '72. To me, marriage is an amazing institution. I continue to be pleased and delighted that one can be married to one individual for thirty-three years, or, in my parents' case, sixty-seven years, and still enjoy each others' company, want to spend time together, find something to chat about every night, continue to explore new things together, and laugh at the same old jokes and a few new ones.

I have to say, I feel very lucky in this life, and when I look out at the world, it is hard to fathom the variability in life's experiences and challenges.

— 50th — (2021) Joseph Biden Of late, I have been thinking of my life in thirds, the first third focused on education, the middle third on active employment, and now my final third, yet to be fully realized, but a slower pace with time to read and think and live without a schedule.

I have mostly retired from my career as a psychiatrist. Over the years, I have managed to do most aspects of this field, starting with long-term individual psychotherapy and managing medications for my and my psychology colleagues' patients, then working in a small group practice, then a large group practice, working in county hospitals, being a chief of psychiatry for a department of seventyplus providers, doing consultation-liaison work in medical hospitals, being an addiction psychiatrist, and now, finally, working in a county clinic with at-risk late adolescents. I have loved this career, grateful that it has allowed me to learn and grow and have connection and feel that I have helped at least a few people and perhaps made the world a slightly better place. I have been blessed with an incredibly supportive partner, without whom my career and the time it took would not have been possible. We have switched back and forth over the years, with one of us being the main at-home parent and the other working outside the home. This has allowed our home system to find a work/home balance when there was not balance for the individual working outside the home. After our kids went off to college and moved away, our aging parents stepped in to fill our nonworking hours. My parents died in the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, and Peter's mother and younger, disabled sister died in 2017, leaving us with more open time than we had ever experienced. We managed to get in some trips to Italy, Sicily, New Zealand, and Africa before COVID shut down travel.

I continue to work on this new, last phase of my life. I hike, bike, garden, read, pick up trash on the road, the beach, and the hiking paths, play the piano again, support the arts and organizations that feed the hungry, protect the poor, and try to protect the environment. I am grateful for all that I have been given in this life, and for having had the opportunity to give back some of what has come my way. I worry for our world, and I plan to keep working to try to make it a better and safer place.