Neergaard Family
Christmas Letter
– 2003
Dick
Lois
Arthur
Steven Peter
Ishraq
Richard
Jan Willem
Sue
"Snowbirding"
– the retreat from November through February to Hilton
Head Island on the Carolina coast, punctuated by a return to
Cincinnati
for the Christmas season - has become a regular and quite pleasant part
of our
yearly schedule. And indeed,
Hilton Head is where this letter is
being
written in those intervals during which I can pry my gaze from the lazy
wafting
of the palm fronds, and detach myself from kinship with the
gator basking on
the far lagoon bank.
Our third
not-exactly-biannual-but-close, informal MIT fraternity reunion of the
classes
of the '50's (now there's a title!) was held in
Phoenix in March of this
year. It was as always enormously
warming to spend a few days with close friends of yore, brethren and
spouses. As extra dividends,
the galleries of Scottsdale and Sedona were a joy to traipse through,
and the
road looping to the west between Phoenix and Sedona proved to be a
delight to
drive.
In
October Lois and I fulfilled our several-times-postponed ambition of driving to New England to watch Autumn
leaves fall. We spent three weeks,
wandering around the region visiting friends, ending up with a week
amidst the
glorious foliage of Smugglers Notch, Vermont.
We returned home just long enough to get through
the mail, then I flew to Europe for two October birthday parties –
grandson Samer's
7th in Belgium and
long-time friend Trig's 80 th in Germany. Home, again a few days
turn-around, then off to
Hilton Head for the month of November, where Weltschmertz is limited to
the
mourning of the morning's bungled backhands
and yearning wistfully for breakthroughs on the morrow.
Of course
the more interesting doings in a family's life come from those to
whom Time is
passing the baton.
Sue and
Jan Willem moved
mid-year from the Netherlands to the US (Evansville, Indiana), where
Jan Willem
is serving as global manufacturing manager of GE's plastic sheet business. Or I should say "whence" rather
than "where". "Global" does
mean travel; he
just got back from a dizzying
three-week tour of his plants in Asia. Sue
in the meantime is reveling in being Hostess in
their lovely new house.
Arthur continues to create
engineering
solutions for P&G's Product Development
Division. Arthur's always been a
dog-loving man, properly disdaining
cats, but who can resist feline wiles
when projected at mega-strength by a
seductively needful eight-month-old street kitten. "Sue will need a cat" he at first
explained "when they move to the US".
But as it played out (to revert to New York-ese), "fuhgedaboutdit!".
In short
order Arthur was hooked, and Oliver was here to stay, Sue being left to
get her
own cat. Arthur has now
toilet trained Oliver. Really. (But he can't flush.
Oliver that is.)
Arthur's enthusiasm for biathlon
has expanded into a keen interest in guns, and has led him to amassing
a
fascinating collection of firearms, which he keeps carefully locked
away from
nieces, nephews... and Oliver.
Richard's business (he's General Manager of
Reckitt-Benckiser's
Belgian subsidiary) and his family, both continue to prosper in
Brussels. Richard motivates his staff by
among
other things, offering exciting non-monetary incentives for reaching
goals, many
of which incentives by (a-hem) sheer chance involve Richard's passion
for fast
cars, such as getting to spend a day driving race-cars around various
of
Europe's tracks. Richard's
enthusiasm for the sport is such that the scheme certainly works for him!
Ishraq, much applauded in the
community
for her popular Belly-Dance classes, was asked to organize a dance show
for the
annual fair of the International School of Brussels, which their
children Samer
and Lila attend. Recruiting the
bravest from amongst her students, she choreographed, staged and
starred in a
performance that can only be described as wildly
successful (see it at
<
http://www.neergaard.org/IshraqDanceRecital/DanceRecitalAtISB.index.html
>).
Peter started his new life as
a bachelor
fittingly by moving house in January.
Lois, Arthur and I helped;
three stories in each residence, and the old calf muscles
complained
bitterly for a week afterwards.
But it was helpful for Peter to move nearer the airport since
his job as
trainer and consultant with IBM (did you know that IBM has the largest consultancy business in the world?)
keeps him well on the move
– Sydney, Singapore, and Beijing being among recent destinations. He and his son Steven, bless them,
spent Thanksgiving week with us here in Hilton Head (for pix, see < http://www.neergaard.org/HHdSites/Index.html > .
We'll
soon be back home to Cincinnati for Christmas, to be joined there by
kids and
grandkids – how wonderful! A
week later, Lois and I will return to Hilton Head to
recover, fondly reminisce, play(at) tennis – and
simply abide, waiting out the Midwest's Jan-Feb Gloom Period,
then to rejoin
our friends in Cincinnati once Spring starts appearing to be around the
corner.
Merry
Christmas to you from us all!
Which is assuredly only right
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Samer and Lila |
Steven |
Nicky and Willem |
(Top priority project this Christmas will be to update that Family Portrait!)