Else Benesh Thompson checks in. . .

Hello Bobby and Stan,

It is fun to hear from you - I found this site by accident and couldn't resist checking in.  You ask what I've been doing the last five years.  I attach a photo of the whole family - you will notice that our family tree now has four grandchildren - Brady (4), Penelope (2), Reese (18 mo) and Scout (5 mo).  While being a grandma is actually a lot less work than being a mom, my husband Mike and I keep busy.  After all, someone has to take these little ones to the Chicago Symphony, to Toys-R-Us, to the Children's Museum in Milwaukee, to Disneyland...you get the idea.

I continue to serve as Executive for HR for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  My office is in Chicago and I give a great tour of the Lutheran Center.  Let me know if you are in the city and we'll see what can be arranged.  Working for the ELCA was not easy in 2009.  A 'perfect storm' of events - the recession, being a declining membership denomination and a decision last August to change ministry policies and ordain gay and lesbian people in open, committed relationships resulted in a significant loss of income.  As you can imagine, a lot of the hard work that comes with that fell to HR and I found myself telling literally dozens of people that their jobs were going away.  Duty like that makes children and grandchilren even more important.

I hope all is well with the '65 classmates.  I think about choir, the newpaper, English class, physics (I was terrible at physics) - JHS was a pretty good place to grow up, wasn't it.  Take care,  Else