Robert Mansfield “Bob” French ~ Class of 1966

Robert “Bob” French ~ Class of 1966

Departed ~ 11/1/2022

Lovingly submitted by Bob’s sister Peggy French ISB 1971

Bob loved life and would do anything he could to please, or help others. He was living in the state (Vermont) that he loved and wanted to buy a farm and have lots of dogs, a fabulous garden, raise Alpacas, and hike the mountain trails.

He loved to write and wrote some really fabulous stories about his his time in Thailand, especially his senior class trip riding a raft with his classmates down the river Kwai! If I can find his story I will repost it! He was an avid reader who would take out 20 books at a time at the library . He had a really good memory… he knew directors, actors and what they directed or acted in. He loved Song trivia and always tried to get me to guess something by saying “you will, know this”. Of course I didn’t and usually had to Google it. He loved The NY Times crossword puzzles, classical music, FOOD, and cooking. He loved good dancers… all kinds. He would send me YouTube videos of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers of old and the new ones like the Mayas who won Americas Got Talent this year.

R.I.P. Robert Mansfield French 1948 – 2022. Survived by his sister Peggy, daughter Alex and Alex’s husband Heath and two ex-wives, Linda (ISB Class of 71) and Cindy!

A Steamy Night in Bangkok

by Bob French

One night in the summer of 1968, I interviewed a Thai whore. Back then, if you were to say the three-syllable phrase, “so-penny,” to the driver of the ubiquitous three wheel open-air samlor (taxi,) on a hot and humid Bangkok night, you would find yourself at a Thai brothel in 15 minutes. For whatever reason, I did this one night while on home leave after my sophomore year at Syracuse. This was something privileged, 19-year-old white college boys did; maybe part of “the Ugly American,” syndrome. But this time was different—I went back to the same place the next night and requested the same young lady and suggested that maybe we could go somewhere else for more privacy and to talk. Somehow, through broken Thai and English a deal was reached with the proprietor, and we taxied out into the night. I could tell from her body language that the young Thai lady must have vouched for me. Instead of going to a hotel as I had initially planned, it occurred to me that my father was stationed in Nam and Mom was upcountry, so I directed the driver to our house on Soy Sipsam.(13) Here we could use my room until my brother and sister, who were sleeping upstairs, would awaken.

Even looking back 53 years later, I am not sure why I did this, except that I wanted to get to know her as a person,and not just as a prostitute: what made her tick, why a sex worker, who she was apart from the brothel. So I got us a couple of drinks, we got cozy in my bed, and in spite of barely speaking the other’s language, we joked, giggled and talked for about 5 hours, almost like hanging out with one’s friends, except of course the part about being naked. One language that we did share in common was the universal ranking of #1 through #10. So-penny we agreed was #1, good Singha (Thai,) beer was #2, and so on.

“G.I. #10,” she said emphatically.

“Why, I asked?”

“They mean and no pay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking that the constant pool of servicemen on R’n’R from Viet Nam probably amounted to 90% of her income. Tough life. Probably where the standard retort of “no sweat, G.I.” came from. She told me that one reason she did what she did was that she had no education and was trying to help her family, especially a younger sister, who wanted to go to college.

“You #1,” she said.

“Oh, how come?”

“You nice.”

“Thank you.”

She told me her name, that she was 25 and lived with her parents and two siblings and that her father worked as a janitor at university. Her grandmother who was 70, lived with them and spent most of her waking hours chewing betel nut, a mild narcotic, that leaves your teeth and mouth dark red, and is suspected of being very carcinogenic. Hundreds, if not thousands of food vendors line the streets and sidewalks all over the city, squatting down for hours with angry red mouths and yet, happy as clams.

“You go to college,” she asked?

“Yes.”

“What you study?”

“Girls and beer,” I quipped, and we both laughed heartily.

“You funny,” she said.

And I said, “you’re sweet, to say so.”

She told me her brother was older and was off in Cambodia fighting the Khmer Rouge. I asked her why and she said the pay was good and some Thais were concerned, that if the Khmers, funded by the Viet Cong and the Communist Party of China, were victorious in Cambodia, they might try to annex Thailand. The Thais are fiercely independent, having been the only country in Southeast Asia to never be colonized, and not for lack of trying.

“Are you scared for your brother,” I asked?

“Yes, shot in leg, home 2 months.”

“What did he say about it.”

“Mai pen rai, and went right back to war.”

I had to laugh as “Mai pen rai,” is the universal Thai expression for “no biggie, or “no worries.” It used to drive my mother nuts when the little Thai butterflies, as she called them, would be waving their hands out their car windows, drying their fingernail polish, then giving you a big smile as they cut you off, and exclaim in beautiful singsong, “Mai pen rai, Mai pen rai, madam!”

This banter continued till about 5 AM, and I asked her if she wanted to sleep for a couple of hours and then I would get her a samlor home. So we did, just as if we were a normal couple.

At 7:30, I instructed our gardener to run down to the Main Street, to fetch her a cab, I gave her a generous tip and sent her on her way. When I came back in, the maid was looking at me with a knowing smile. I pointed upstairs, and said, “Madam,” and shook my head. She nodded and that was the end of it.

I had a rinky-dink little portable reel to reel recorder, on which I had taped some of our evening. Great fun to listen to afterwards. I even played it for a couple of my college buddies when we were in Frankfurt, on our way back stateside. They thought it was outlandish and hilarious—unfortunately that player is long gone.

I don’t remember if we had sex that night, and I never went back to another Thai brothel, but I will always remember that night with my new-found friend, a Thai whore. I still don’t know why I did it. Maybe there is a latent sociologist lurking inside me somewhere. I do know I wanted to get to know her beyond the confines of a brothel. Sometimes I wonder what she thought of this still wet-behind-the-ears college kid paying for a night of her service and taking her back to his own home and bedroom, and spending the night just socializing and treating her like a human being. I have also fantasized about going back to Bangkok and trying to find her, but that idea is probably a non-starter.

I have only shared this with one other living soul, and now you guys, so this book, Thai Whores and Loony Bins, will definitely be my coming out party.

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

Elizabeth Anne “Betsy” Hindman ~ Class of 1967

Betsy Hindman ~ Class of 1967

Departed ~ 10/20/2022

Amy Hindman ’71 wrote:

I wanted for inform the network that my sister, Betsy Hindman, died on Oct. 20th 2022, of a massive stroke and her service will be at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Denton, Texas on Sunday at 2 PM.

She went to ISB her senior year of high school and graduated in 1967.

Much love and Blessings!!

Her little sister, Amy Hindman, Class of 1971

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

Dr. Lee W. Riley ~ ISB Class of 1968

Dr. Lee W. Riley ~ Class of 1968

Arrived ~ 10/15/1949

Departed ~ 10/20/2022

Gloria M. Riley-Schaaf ’76 lovingly wrote:

It is with a heavy heart that I bring the news of the passing of my brother, Dr. Lee W. Riley. Lee passed away this morning at 6:22 at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley California with his family. I am so grateful that I had the last 3 months of precious time with my brother as I cared for him in California as he was battling bladder cancer. He has touched the world in so many ways and will always be remembered and missed by many. I will post all information of upcoming services that will be held in his honor by the family and by the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Public Health so those who knew Lee can attend.❤️

UC Berkeley Online Master of Public Health

Berkeley Public Health is heartbroken to announce that Professor Lee W. Riley, world-renowned leader in the field of infectious diseases and vaccinology and friend and mentor to many, has died. We will post an obituary soon, and we keep those whose lives he touched close in our hearts. Dr. Riley will be greatly missed.

Oral history interview with Lee W. Riley
1997-Dec-29 – 1997-Dec-31

Lee W. Riley was born Hiroshi Satoyoshi: he spent his first ten years with his mother in Yokohama, Japan, then lived for a short time in a Japanese orphanage before being adopted by the Riley family, at which time he moved to Tachikawa, outside Tokyo, Japan.

The family moved to Bangkok, Thailand, in time for Riley to attend high school there. Like his biological parents, his adoptive father was African-American and his mother Japanese; Riley has two sisters who were adopted as well. In Riley’s early years his Japanese, schoolteacher grandfather had a great influence on his schooling, encouraging his questioning nature; living in Japan in the aftermath of World War II impacted Riley’s perspectives on life, as well as his Buddhist heritage and being multiethnic.

Riley attended an international high school in Bangkok, about which he talks at length, and had several influential teachers who stimulated his early interest in physics. Riley decided not to attend a Japanese university, but Stanford University instead; he wanted to become a physician and practice medicine in Bangkok.

Aware during the sixties of the countercultural movement and anxious about the draft at Stanford, Riley found his perceptions of the American presence in Southeast Asia changing. His growing interest in public health led him to spend a year in Japan after college. Riley chose to enroll the University of California, San Francisco, to pursue his medical degree; during his first year he undertook a clinical rotation in a missionary hospital in Thailand.

After deciding to shift from clinical medicine to public health he completed his internship and residency at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He found interesting the differences between the types of medical conditions encountered in New York and those encountered in Thailand, and he entered the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he used enteric pathogen fingerprinting technology to identify strains of Salmonella and identified E. coli 0157:H7 as the cause of an outbreak in Oregon.

Riley then accepted a postdoc in the Gary Schoolnik lab at Stanford to study enteropathogenic E. coli using molecular biology technology. Next he studied tuberculosis (TB) for two years in India and published a paper in Science identifying the invasion gene for TB. He then proceeded to an assistant professorship at Cornell University Medical College, where he worked on devising a technique to identify primary and reactivation TB. Through his understanding of the molecular basis for disease transmission he identified why a high percentage of drug users in New York City had a particular strain of tuberculosis. Riley’s interest in approaching biological questions from the standpoint of public health led him to work on developing a Salmonella vaccine for chickens.

From Cornell Riley accepted a position as professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at University of California, Berkeley, and he has since become Director of the Fogarty International Center Global Health Equity Scholars Program at University of California, Berkeley, where he continues to work on TB pathogenesis, drug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections, and global health focusing on infectious diseases of urban slums.

During the interview Riley discusses his acquisition of the scientific skills and knowledge necessary to accomplish his research goals; his belief in the need to make science understandable to the public and obstacles to that understanding; the scientific community’s response to his dual focus on epidemiology and pathogenesis; his desire to advance on the strength of his work rather than through self-advertising; and his relationship with other Pew Scholars.

He elaborates on his decision to work with Stanley Falkow and Gary Schoolnik at Stanford and explains how he collaborated with Schoolnik to establish the geographic medicine program at Stanford. He concludes his interview by describing how he attempts to balance career and life with his wife, Jesse Frances Furman, and three children.

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

Paul Stephen Soderberg ~ Class of 1967

Paul Soderberg ~ Class of 1967

Departed ~ 10/7/2022

Lovingly reported by Paul’s brother John.


My brother Paul Soderberg passed away unexpectedly this morning, probably from heart-related issues. So many memories.

This photo, with a broken-winged eagle he saved, is the only one I have of him in Afghanistan when he was working in famine-relief as a Colonel in the Afghan Army. He saved the lives of 30,000 people during the country’s worst famine- shortly before the Russian invasion and occupation. This was in the winter of 1972. The Russians tried to kill him three times.

Paul was an unusual person. He was a Lawrence of Arabia type. He had a scientific mind, and was a Herpetologist at 14 years old (study of snakes,) and was curator of the museum in Bangkok. He and I spent countless weeks trekking through the jungles of northwestern Thailand hunting for rare snakes for the Smithsonian with the Lahu Hill-tribes.

Paul graduated with a degree in Anthropology from ASU in Tempe, Arizona. He was first runner up for the Rhodes Scholarship. He was also an artist, and one of my favorite paintings is one he did of Blue Herons at sunset.

After he returned to America from Afghanistan, he became a published author and worked as a columnist with the Scottsdale Progress. He impacted many thousands of lives, and left us too early. Via con Dios, brother ❤️

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

Paul Walker LaRoque ~ Class of 1991

Paul “Froggy” LaRoque ~ Class of 1991

Arrived ~ 6/11/72

Departed ~ 8/31/22


Obituary

Paul Walker LaRoque
June 11, 1972 – August 31, 2022


Paul passed away on August 31, 2022. Paul was born on June 11, 1972 to Fred R. LaRoque and Susan L. LaRoque in Falls Church, Virginia. Paul spent his childhood living abroad in Thailand and South Korea while his father worked for the U.S. Army overseas as a Foreign Affairs Officer. Paul loved living overseas, attending international schools, and exploring exotic foods and destinations as part of his childhood. He was adventurous, enthusiastic, and loved a new challenge.

Paul and his family moved to Bend, Oregon in 1987. Paul was a strong athlete in high school, lettering in both swimming and cross-country running. He graduated from Bend Senior High School in 1991. He followed in his father’s footsteps and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in 1995. He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps and worked as a communications officer for 10 years. He enjoyed his duty stations of South Korea; Ft. Hood, Texas; Mannheim, Germany; and Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. Paul was honorably discharged from the Army in 2005. Paul moved to Orange County in 2005 and first worked for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson before starting his own business.

Paul is survived by his daughter, father, sister, former wife, and numerous cousins, aunts, and uncles. He touched many lives with his sharp wit, dry sense of humor, and passionate political views.

Paul’s services will be held at O’Connor Mortuary at 25301, Alicia Parkway, Laguna Hills, CA 92653 on Sunday, September 11 at 10:00am.

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

McKinley “Mac” Anthony Drew ~ Class of 1977

McKinley Mac Drew ~ Class of 1977

Departed 7/15/2022

Mayte Drew lovingly wrote:

With our hearts heavy and grief-stricken, my oldest brother, Donnie and I bring the news of the passing of my twin brother, McKinley Anthony Drew (Mac) who was 63 years young. He has been extremely ill for several months and passed away in his sleep Friday night.

Donnie has taken care of my brother for the past 4 months and being there for my brother when no one else could. No greater love can be expressed than to be the one who takes care of you when you are sick. My brother Donnie is that selfless and generous brother who stepped up to take care of Mac. Donnie is an extraordinary man and brother who I cherish. There were 4 of us kids. Donnie being 2 years ahead of Mac and I and Jackie just 14 months younger than the twins.

As a family we traveled around the world 3 times each time consuming 3 months of intense travel. We certainly got to know each other very well through traveling. These travels lead us places that at the time only people read about those places in books.

This is a tribute to my family and my twin. He was my best friend growing up. I was his sidekick when we went outside to play Cowboys with him imagining himself as Bat Masterson or Jungle Jim in the sixties. He was the one who said “She is on my team” when the neighborhood boys said “No girls” get to play sports. He is the reason I had a happy childhood playing sports and hanging out with the guys.

In Thailand, we would play basketball, football, soccer, swam every day by ourselves with our friends in Rishi Court. In my junior high years, we would play half-court basketball almost every day with our friends in Rishi Court at the outdoor court at ISB. I watched every little league baseball game that my brother played, was scorekeeper, and participated in the practices as my Dad was the Coach of those little league teams.

For our last 2 years of college, we both went to Beirut, Lebanon attending American University of Beirut where again I got to play with boys being the only girl to pay in all male fast pitch softball league. We lived through an intense environment in Beirut and came home to the States. He later came to Texas in his mid-twenties where he lived 18 years there before his work lead him west.

We came into this world together, we played make believe together, we traveled, we played sports together and we cried together. His gift to me was the freedom to enjoy my childhood by participating in something I loved and getting to hang around the guys. This shaped my life in so many positive ways and Mac’s gift to me gave me confidence, freedom, and happiness.

I can never fully express the love and appreciation I have for my twin brother, Mac. I love him with my whole heart and soul, and I know that he has been reunited with with my beloved Mother, Juanita, Sister, Jackie, my nephew, Anthony, my Aunt Rosemary, Uncle Vern, and Cousin John. It is my fervent prayer that the Lord take care of my family in body and spirit. God bless my family.

Special prayers for my father who is 92 years old who just lost his second child and my cousin Gary.

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings

Lanny Mitchell ~ Class of 1968

Lanny Mitchell ~ Class of 1968

Departed ~ 7/15/2022

Lanny Mitchell on bass with Scott Deatrick playing the remote.
https://theflowerstheband.com/
https://theflowerstheband.com/

Download The Flowers COVID Sessions here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/090nmtbecdve8j3/AADDj6MrnTAVo7SUc5U2MgbTa?dl=0

From: Pamela Mitchell Boyd pamelasboyd51 at gee mail dot com
Subject: Lanny Mitchell

Lanny attended ISB as a Jr and Sr in 1966-1968. He was the bass player in the band, Flowers. I wanted anyone who remember him to know that he passed away on Friday, 7/15/22 peacefully at home. We miss him already.

Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories, and tributes to isbeings at gmail dot com or visit us on Facebook at ISBeings