Beaver Reflections:
I graduated in 1975 and Beaver was like a saving grace for me. Everyone at Beaver was lovely, and the school made everyone feel welcome. I didn’t have a single bad teacher. Tracey Powers, my first French teacher, was amazing. I was at a conference of about one hundred people where I had a translator from Canada. They were not doing a good job of translating, so I tried translating it myself. I found that I am now fluent in French and can say almost everything except for some of the more complex vocabulary used in my work. Ann Grayson, my 8th-grade history teacher, inspired me so much both in and out of the classroom. We formed a great connection and I learned so much from her.
What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went from Beaver to Yale — Beaver’s math department was way better than Yale’s — then got my master’s at Oxford. I then went to law school at the University of Virginia and practiced law for 35 years. About 27 years ago I had two children with my husband through surrogacy. After my second son was born almost 26 years ago I started a surrogate parenting agency called Circle Surrogacy which has become the largest surrogate parenting agency in the world. I sold about eighty percent of it three years ago. It was the right thing at the right time for the right set of people. I had clients from 74 different countries, there are now close to 100 employees, and we’ve had 2,500 babies, and I’ve changed the world. I’ve been all over the world helping people that couldn’t have children otherwise: straight people, gay people, singles, couples. I absolutely loved it and I miss it terribly. I officially retired about four months ago. I skied 90 days this year and have been waiting to do my one-man show about Truman Capote for two years. Keeping the 41 single-space pages in my head for the one-hour and 25-minute show for two years because of Covid, because we couldn’t perform. We will probably put that on sometime in August or September of this year.
“I used to go to France where I thought I was going to get thrown into jail for both helping gay people have children and doing surrogacy, which they consider baby selling, and I managed to at least keep myself out of that. What I’m doing is right.”
– John Weltman ’75
Advice to Beaver students:
It’s really hard having a job that doesn’t excite you. If you do something you love, you are so much more likely to do well at it and pursue your passion.
