Larry Reed, who died on January 30, was a member of our class for only two years, but that was more than enough to make a profound impression on everyone.
“He and I roomed together freshman and sophomore years,” says John Griswold. “He left school after sophomore year and went into the Peace Corps and served in Bali, where he began his career in theatrical production that eventually made him an internationally known expert in Balinese shadow puppetry. After the Peace Corps he lived in San Francisco with his wife Jane and their family and became a legend among alternative theatre groups. Dick Fates and I visited him there many times over the years.”
In 1972 Larry founded ShadowLight Productions and managed it out of his home for the next forty years, introducing shadow theater to a wider audience by integrating traditional shadow theatre techniques with a modern theatre style.
In the 1990s he developed a method of casting shadows that incorporated techniques from cinema, modern theater, and dance. Using live music and a crew of actors, his shows featured unique masks that looked different from various angles, allowing for a single, unchanging mask to appear dynamic.
In 2019 Abby Chen, curator and head of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, commissioned a performance by ShadowLight in the museum’s newly constructed pavilion. It played for a full house of 200 two nights running. “I see him as a culture translator and amplifier, not just for Asian culture, but Mexican and Indigenous cultures, too,” Chen told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He had a kind and gentle soul that allowed him to understand culture from a very human level. He was super kind, and I can’t say how rare that is these days.”
When Jim Ratner passed away on November 2, with his wife Janice and their children, Derek and Andrea, by his side, the Red Sox lost one of their most devoted fans.
“Jim was the first Yale classmate I met,” remembers Bill Mace. “We were assigned to be roommates in Durfee Hall, and we stayed roommates through senior year. He and his sister were driving to New Haven from their home in El Paso, Texas and decided to stop for a few hours to meet me at my home in southern Illinois first. Once in New Haven, Jim let people know that he was a Texan – not by mannerisms, but by facts that would play well in trivia contests – and that he was headed for medical school.
“He had a dry wit and rarely laughed out loud, although he was easily amused. He met Janice at a mixer, as I recall. After graduation, I attended their wedding in New Haven, visited them at Dartmouth, where Jim was learning to be a dermatologist, and then in pine-pollen-covered Louisiana, where he was serving in the Army. (He eventually ended up as a Major.) He said he could choose anywhere in the country to set up a practice and settled on Amherst, MA, which he and Janice knew well from her time in graduate school at UMass.
“Jim was an avid sports fan, loving to watch Boston sports teams, UMass, Yale and UTEP teams. He was fortunate to see the Red Sox win four World Series, the Patriots win six Super Bowls, and UMass Hockey win a national championship. He and his son once were shown on the TV broadcast of a Red Sox game holding up a sign they had carefully prepared to get that attention.
“I don’t know how well he adjusted to the success of the post-2004 Red Sox. The ‘cursed’ pre-2004 teams offered ample material for his mixture of sarcasm and grudging hope; the winning teams after 2004 must have put him a bit off his emotional balance. When he and Janice moved to California to be near their daughter and her children, their son traveled from Florida to set up all their electronics to allow Jim to watch every Red Sox game.”
Rob Wagner died from a heart attack in 2024. “He and his wife Karen had just returned from his daughter Kristin’s wedding in Spain,” says Paul Lamar. “He was originally in the Class of ’66, but after freshman year he took a year off in his hometown, Cleveland.
“Rob and I met in the elevator of Morse Tower in September 1964. His sense of humor, his musical skills at the piano and as a composer, his ping-pong prowess, discussions about his family and mine, visits to each other’s home, shared experience in Music Theory 10, and yaks about everything and nothing around the dining table in Morse – thanks to all of this, a 60-year friendship was started. He had a great smile and an easy laugh, always!
“When we first met, I quickly discovered that he had a fake front tooth and diabetes. To me such physical anomalies in a young person seemed unusual. The tooth? A sports accident. It was a partial that he would occasionally take out in order to look goofy – in other words, another opportunity to laugh.
“The diabetes, though, was a different matter. He had been diagnosed as a boy sometime in the 1950s, so managing the condition was a lifelong challenge. He did it admirably, always sensitive to his intake of the right kind of food at the right time, pricking himself as needed, and taking stock of how he was feeling. Of course, as treatment became more sophisticated and user friendly he adapted, and we often discussed those blessed changes.
“I’m sure that his diligent and intelligent handling of a condition that, before insulin, was a death sentence, enabled him to live the long and active life he did. Another reason why I admired Rob.”
That’s it for now, friends. I’m sorry the class notes have been so full of sad news these days, but I feel I owe it to our classmates who have gone before us. They were remarkable people, and as Arthur Miller said, attention must be paid.