2022 Alumni Work Weekend

A number of alumni met at the House on the weekend of August 5-7, 2022, to prepare the Clubhouse for re-launching in-person campus activities in the Fall semester.  Trustee Charlie Adkins ’94 brought a long list of projects to the weekend, many of which were a continuation of the alumni efforts in summer 2021 toward building clean-out and performing minor repairs. In the end, we needed a little help from our longstanding contractor and partner to finish the job.

The weekend began with Charlie Adkins ’94 and John Freer ’98 rototilling and weeding the volleyball court. After the rototilling, some Roundup® was applied to keep the weeds in check.

Jeff Gorss ’66 brought two chainsaws and a hedge trimmer and spent considerable time removing overgrown bushes as well as trimming our ornamental bushes along with Al Silvia ’75. A lot of weeding and cleanup was completed by Kevin Ahearn ’84, Don Thoma ’83, and Mark Vince ’75 as well.

We filled both a 30-yard dumpster and the House’s 8-yard dumpster. The bar and the stage in the Party Room were disassembled and removed. Kevin Ahearn ’84 used the electric chainsaw to great effect in this effort. Kevin had a substantial support crew including Doug Koop ’63, Jed DeFalco ’78, Mark Anderson ’79, Eric Stoever ‘04, Don Thoma ’83, Eric John ’95, Bob Mooney ’71, Wes Lord ‘72 and Adam Orsi ’03. The pledge plaques decorating the Party Room were photographed, removed and stored in the Third Cellar. More scrap wood was also removed from the Third Cellar along with a considerable amount of ceramic tile found in the Boiler Room.

A variety of maintenance work was also performed. An important task of the weekend involved replacing the seriously decayed fascia on the roof over the basement stairs. John Freer ’98 and Al Silvia ’75 (two former House Managers) spent considerable time battling wasps, removing birds’ nests and properly attaching a new (and straight) PVC fascia board.

Eric Stoever ‘04 replaced the three dryer ducts with flexible metal replacements to address a citation from RPI in an earlier inspection.

Mark Anderson ’79 and Mark Vince ’75 spent time understanding the finer points of the House’s window balancers to address several windows that won’t stay up. Turns out that the balancers are fine but the pot metal window pivot bars connecting the sash and the balancers had broken. We secured the replacement parts and will install them in the future.

Eric John ’95 spent considerable time photographing various aspects of the House including old composites.

We did get to see the progress of the Room Refresh project. The electrical work is mostly complete with the plumbing and floor work to follow. Note that the project scope has been extended to include restoring bath facilities in the Guest Room, specifically to support a coed environment.

For more photos, go to our photo gallery.

The 2022 participants included:

Doug Koop ’63
Jeff Gorss ’66
Bob Mooney ’71
Wes Lord ’72
Al Silvia ’75
Mark Vince ’75
Cary Nadel ’77
Jed DeFalco ’78

Mark Anderson ’79
Don Thoma ’83
Kevin Ahearn ’84
Charlie Adkins ’94
Eric John ’95
John Freer ’98
Adam Orsi ’03
Eric Stoever ’04

P.S.: We had a late-night dumpster diver who rearranged the trash making the dumpster unable to be transported. Ian Henderson of Duncan & Cahill was able to rearrange the dumpster and make it transportable. Thank-you! (RSE has been working with Duncan & Cahill, a local general contractor, for over 25 years!)