Yearbook photo

Yearbook entry: Randall Hugh McFarlane (Randy)

E-mail: randallmcfarlane@mac.com

Home address: 818 Villa Ridge Road, Falls Church, VA 22046

Telephone number: 703-534-8526

Wife: Carolyn (née Zeul, James Madison HS Class of 1966)

Brief history: The summer between Marshall and college, I spent six weeks on a trip to France that was organized by my French 5 teacher, Laurie Williams (who, sadly, died several years back). Apart from learning some French, seeing some sights, and getting better acquainted with classmates Linda Gloeckler, Barbara Weber, Marjie Gapp, Susan Hampton and Susan Swartout (who, I’m sorry to say, also has passed away), the trip was notable for me in that one of our group was my wife-to-be, Carolyn Zeul, who’d been a Madison HS student. We got married in 1975.

After returning from France, I idled away the rest of the summer in the company of such bad influences as Glenn Marshall, F. Michael Smith, Richard Browne, Robin Brewer and Tom Friedlander, then, in September, headed off to Dartmouth College, where I majored in history, graduating in 1970. In the fall of that year, since the Army had decided not to draft me, I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, receiving my JD in 1973. I basically spent my entire career as a banking lawyer, focusing primarily on regulatory and legislative issues. My employers were an assortment of federal agencies (the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Resolution Trust Corporation and Federal Housing Finance Board) and trade associations (the U.S. League of Savings Institutions and America’s Community Bankers), and, finally, Fannie Mae, from which I retired in 2008. The work was quite interesting, I thought, although it probably would strike most people as hopelessly arcane. Fortunately, Carolyn, after graduating from William and Mary and getting a Ph. D. in Sociology from Cornell, eventually found her way to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Treasury Department Bureau that regulates and supervises national banks, where she headed up their Congressional Liaison operation until her retirement in 2008. So, we were never bored by each other’s shop talk!

We’ve always enjoyed visiting other countries, and, since retirement, we’ve done a LOT of traveling (France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Iceland, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Panama, Japan, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Australia) and will continue to do so as long as we can. Travel aside, I read quite a bit of history, enjoy birdwatching with Carolyn, take adult education courses in French, follow the fortunes of the Washington Nationals, go to wine dinners with some oenophile friends and drag myself to the gym. And, over the past six months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time tracking down folks for this reunion!

Anyway, that’s fifty years in a nutshell! I’m really, really looking forward to this get-together and reconnecting with my Marshall classmates and some of our teachers!

Photos:

Carolyn poses in front of a statue in Fremantle, Western Australia that honors–notionally–the Australian Coast Guard

Randy and Carolyn on a tour of the open pit old mine at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

Cape Le Grand NP, near Esperance, Western Australia

Randy at his ease on Lord Howe Island, off the north coast of New South Wales