As the readers and editors of alumni Class Notes, there are names we get to know pretty well. Some of these are the folks who serve as the Class Secretaries who contact their classmates for news before each issue of Vermont Magazine is published. And there are those regular submitters who share their family updates, keep us apprised of their careers, their creative work, and never seem to have UVM far from their thoughts and their hearts.

Jules ‘62 and Effin ’64 Older are in the second category. So when we got a note about Jules’ (then) latest published articles, followed by an email letting us know about Effin’s in-progress chapter-book trilogy, we were excited to hear more of their story.

We got to meet in early 2025 to learn a bit more about this extraordinary Catamount family, and hope you'll enjoy doing so as well.

Finding Themselves at UVM

Effin came from Brownington, a very small town in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

“Being on campus really opened a whole world to me that I just didn't know about - coming from Brownington with a population of about 25 and coming from a high school class of maybe 50 and then getting to UVM? It was really fabulous. I got away from home and met people from everywhere, starting with my roommate who had a background a lot like mine.”

Being at UVM also put her in touch with people that she says she never would have encountered. “Any college probably would have done that, but going to UVM did it for me, gave me access to people and ideas and events that really changed my life.”

One of those life-changing people was Mallie Mattison Mandel ’64, who was not only Effin’s roommate, but also has the distinction of having introduced her to Jules.  Mallie was going out with one of Jules’ Phi Sigma Delta fraternity brothers (Steve Burzon ’62), and the two conspired to introduce Jules to Effin.

Unlikely though it may seem, a grapefruit on a fencepost has a significant role in this point in the story. The citrus orb was sitting on a campus fencepost, and Effin recalls, “There was just this big grapefruit, and someone had drawn a face on it that looked just like Jules, and I thought “Well, this must be inevitable.’”

The date went well.

Jules chimed in. “I believe she kept that grapefruit in her dorm room for some time. I think it rotted.”

Besides the busy social life in which they found themselves, there was plenty to occupy the undergraduates’ time as CAS students.

They fondly remembered their religion classes, and credited Modern Art with Professor Colburn (after whom Williams Hall’s Colburn Gallery is named) with having provided transformative, perspective-shifting class content.

Effin laughs a little ruefully when she admits, “While I was at UVM, I never remember thinking I was going to be a writer!” Though she didn’t see the path ahead then, today she’s deeply thankful for the way UVM opened her horizons. “I went to Brownington’s one-room schoolhouse for eight years, with one teacher and 40 kids in one room, across the road from our farm and then a very small high school in Orleans.”

“I had a meager upbringing in terms of literature - I had a lot of catching up to do while at UVM,” she remembered.

Looking back, Jules has special gratitude for then-chair of psychology Doctor Chaplin, who took interest in his student’s rising success. “For me, he was very influential. He clearly wanted me to become a psychologist, and I had absolutely no skills in mathematics or statistics at the time. (Unlike today, when I still have no skills in these areas!) So I took and flunked statistics at UVM and then made it up in a summer course in Baltimore.”

“But I had to take a math course too. Chaplin accurately saw I wasn't going to pass an advanced mathematics course. So they let me take another one instead. That one was held in the bowels of the museum at five o’clock at night, which was pitch dark in December. It was a math course for jocks. You truly could not flunk this course.”

In retrospect, Jules says, this long-ago move was a brilliant one. “I became a psychologist, and if I hadn't passed math, I would not be one.”

Editor's note: We should remark that times and standards have changed. Today, the commitment to academic achievement for UVM’s scholar-athletes is evident in their dedication and in their cumulative GPA, which is higher than the overall student body’s. (Read more here.)

Effin’s New Whimsical Trilogy of Children’s Chapter Books

In a lovely example of a couple cheering each other on, the two announced Effin’s latest work via a December 2024 email from Jules saying “Please find the story of a Brownington, Vermont farm girl (and UVM grad, class of 64) who now writes books from Auckland, New Zealand.)” The trilogy is the HELP! Series and features children saving Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy from the trouble the plots find them in. “They’re all imaginary, and fanciful, and fun,” Effin shared.

They’re also just the latest among many works for readers aged 6-9. As a writer, she says she likes writing for this age group because she gets to combine grown-up concepts with good jokes for kids. She says, “I like to write books that adults will enjoy reading to their kids.  It’s for both of them - if kids don’t like it, they won’t want to hear the books again, and if adults don't like reading them, then you can forget it.”

These are skills – plus a delight in playful language - she’s put to work many times over the years: the HELP! series follows 10 “Silver Blades Figure Eights” books, as well as adventures of the Treehouse Trio (who consist of “Marigold, who wants to be a ventriloquist, Jazz, who loves to juggle, and Sapphire, who loves to explore”), and a good shelf-full of other works as well.

At UVM in the Early 1960s

The two found themselves at UVM as young people in a dynamic world. Jules grew up in Baltimore and came north to Burlington at a time when the fight for civil rights for all Americans was alive across the nation - and of course that fight was lived and felt on campus too.

Just like today, students were navigating their learning and societal obligations with navigating young adulthood.

As in the rest of the US, some students on campus were called to activism. Jules recalled, “When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference started picketing the Woolworths in the South, I organized a picketing of Woolworths in Burlington. One day my friends and I made signs and went to the store (then located on the corner of Cherry and Church St.)

“It was not a popular move. The student council condemned us for it. But we weren't arrested and basically not harassed except for one very sweet old lady who started hitting us with her umbrella and denouncing us as Jews. Which largely we were.

“She said I don't want those other people here and I don't want you here either.”

UVM practices reflected racial and cultural segregation too.

Effin looked back on her housing (incidentally at Grasse Mount, the building where this story is being written) and shared, “Now this seems shocking, but it was just normal at the time. The Women’s Dean put students together based on their identities. My roommate was just like me. They put Jews with Jews, Protestants with Protestants, Catholics with Catholics. It was horrible apartheid.”

This didn’t mean any lack of appreciation or impact of what being at the university meant.

“My time at UVM was certainly life changing for me - I mean majorly life changing. For one thing, I met Jules, who was to become sort of important to me,” she laughed.

Jules Writes

While Jules was on the way to his psychology degree, he found himself as a columnist and then editor-in-chief at the Cynic. This got him started writing for newspapers – and helped develop the writing habit that carries on to this day. He says writing is now something he does for everything from medical journals to kids’ books, but a brief interaction quickly shows that even that is a partial description of creative output that includes videos, blogs, trivia quizzes and more, on topics reflecting wide-ranging interests and knowledge - from scholarly works on psychotherapy and behavioral science, to travel, wine and skiing, to reflections on life as ex-patriate Americans living in New Zealand.

Then there’s “Special Ed” -- a children’s book that has “nothing to do with special education whatsoever” and features a title suggested by a writer friend. Jules remembers that three years after hearing the name, “the book just came to my fingertips and I started typing a crazy book about a kid named Special Ed, that takes place in two dimensions. It’s sort of sci fi, sort of crazy, and I was delighted that the publisher (Three Ravens) went for it – the first children’s book they had published.”

The couple each have a clear heart for reaching young people in ways that make a difference.

Jules mused that the youth characters he writes about are “Kind of like me in that they are intent on saving the world, which is what I am. That’s truly the focus of my work and probably why I became a shrink. So what I do with a lot of my time is help people in crises, and that comes out in my writing.”

The two share author credit on some of their published works.  Whether they’re collaborating or just cheering on each other’s writing projects, they agree on one creative rule, Jules says: “The common denominator in all of our books is that the kids come up with a solution. The kids do it, not adults.”

Effin emphatically agrees, “It's very, very important in kids’ books that adults don't solve anything for them. They have big, big problems, but it's the kids that do the solving.”

A Family of Catamounts and Writers

The pair of authors represent just one part of their family’s UVM connection.

Effin has five siblings. Four of them (brothers Bradley Lawes ’77, Carroll Lawes ’60 and David Lawes ’72 and sister Esther Lawes Swett ’61) graduated from UVM. Niece Lindsay Lawes ’10 graduated from UVM. As did nephews Geoffrey Swett ’90, and Nicholas Lawes ’06,

Their identical twin daughters Amber ’91 and Willow ’91 are also alumnae - and also authors. “So, the whole family's writers, which is sort of tragic,” Jules quipped.

(For a taste of their daughters’ writing, see Amber’s “Recipes for Life: Lessons from a Chaotic Cookbook” article for Ensemble magazine, and a link to “Today I Noticed,” a book on mindfulness that Willow co-authored.)

Of course, it goes without saying that a family of authors is about as far from a tragedy as we can imagine.

Whether they’re writing about young people saving Santa, or saving the world from monsters, or navigating strange dimensions of space, or helping adults to understand medical conditions, the couple’s commitment to being part of stories that matter is clear. As is the next generation’s commitment to following suit.

And they credit UVM in no small part for having helped them get there.

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And we're always eager for yours too! Drop us a line via Class Notes, or send an email update any time.