Ted Bestor:  

To my RHS classmates from '69 I doubt that many of you remember me. Looking back (from great and hazy distance) I suspect that I was kind of anti-social and perhaps obnoxious in high school. Which is to say that I really didn't like high school -- not my fellow students, but the whole regimented scheme of things. So, "high school" stuff was stuff I scorned, and I made my adolescent life among friends who enjoyed with me imagining ourselves to be rebels, misfits, and underground radicals. For some quixotic reason, I ran for the position of class treasurer for our senior year. My platform was a clear promise that I would NOT embezzle class funds. Oddly, I was not elected. I still wonder what I did wrong in my campaign! After graduating from RHS in '69, I spent four years in Bellingham at Fairhaven College (Western Washington U.) where I majored in Anthropology, Japanese Studies, and Linguistics. I went on to Stanford to get an MA in East Asian Studies, spending a couple of years in Tokyo in the process. I then entered the PhD program in Anthropology also at Stanford, continuing on the same track of Japanese interests, and got a PhD in 1983 (with another couple of years in Japan along the way). In 1975, I married my college sweetheart, Victoria Lyon (we met in our Japanese history professor's office in our jr. year, and immediately hated each other, but since we are about to celebrate (August 16th) our 34th wedding anniversary, I hope we might get beyond that loathing thing one of these days! :>) We have a son, Nicholas, born in 1986, who has just graduated from Middlebury College. Since finishing my PhD, I spent three years working for a foundation in NYC, and then 7 years te...Expand for more