"If it would depend on you, Michelle, we would probably all remain spiritually together like a 'Utopian Senior Society'. Let us be more realistic, and hope that sometimes we will cross each other's road in life."

Welcome to USS NEWS (Utopian Senior Society News). I would like to publish a monthly update with information that could be used by ASM Today.

I continue to be a bit of a dreamer with great plans. Realistically, this could all be a flash in the pan. We may renew connections for a brief moment and then go back to our real worlds putting the American School of Madrid and the past behind us. For the moment though, we are making the connections and remembering the past.

It is a fascinating process. Remember the future that we imagined as we walked to our places at graduation almost 30 years ago? It was exciting and new. It was also scary and a bit intimidating. We planted a tree on the grounds of ASM. That was our way of saying, "WE WERE HERE - DON'T FORGET US."

The American School of Madrid is now asking, "Where are you? How have you been?" Who could have imagined the impact of computers in those days when an electric typewriter was such a novelty. Remember the teletype machines: the 60's version of e-mail? How the years flew by!

Who have we contacted? Where are they now?

Michelle (Fearey LaGue) Mock resides in Corona, California with her husband of 17 years and two teenage children. Formerly a computer programmer, she now teaches science, computer and Spanish to preschool through 8th grade students at the Montessori School of Corona. She also teaches Spanish at St. Catherine of Alexandria School in Riverside, California. She is the ASM Class Agent for 1969 and brings you this newsletter.

Joanne (Hattrick) McGrath moved to Panama from Denver in 1976. She's been married since 1977 and has five children.

Word has it that Jamie Kevlin is a newspaper editor in Pennsylvania. It must have been that experience as AMSCOL LANCE editor in High School!

Bill Mock and his wife of 23 years reside in Miami. They have four children. Bill wrote, "In 1990 I had the wonderful opportunity of performing A Midsummer Night's Dream with an English language company in Madrid at the Retiro Park. I was hoping to play a stately bearded Shakespearean role where I could stand and gesture grandly and spout drivel, (I was hitting 40 by then so I felt stately) but got cast as Puck and found myself romping around stage like an idiot in green tights and sparkles in my hair trying to imitate Nureyev again (never quite equaled his jumps though ...). Once a clown, always a clown, I guess."

Henry Sanz also lives in Miami.

Pedro Arbona is somewhere out there - but where?

Carol Farron was a member of the class of '69 but was in Madrid off and on from 1965-76. She now lives in Lodi, California.

The whereabouts of the rest of our classmates remains a mystery. Keep passing the word and tell all former ASMers to check out the ASM websites:

< http://www.learningoasis.com/pages/asm/index.htm > (Official site)

< http://www.gutech.com/asm/ > ("Unofficial" site)

A Chinese Fortune Cookie says, "We must always have old memories and young hopes." May the old memories be good ones and may you always have high hopes for the future.