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CLASS NOTES
Henry S. Coleman As most of our classmates now know, Bernie Sunshine, Norm Cohen, Carlo Cella and your class secretary met to discuss our 55th reunion coming up in June. We decided to concentrate on the Saturday of alumni weekend, June 2, 2001. The program will include a selection of talks similar to Dean's Day, a barbecue on South Lawn between the talks, a class cocktail party and dinner, and finally a Starlight Reception. There will be a variety of other activities for those who wish to spend the entire weekend. Thus far we have heard from over 20 classmates who are planning to attend. This list will grow as time goes on and you will hear more from the committee about our plans. At the luncheon I picked up some news about our classmates. Norm Cohen is active in a conflict resolution program in Westchester. The program is in the Middle Schools of Peekskill and Ossining. In addition he is working with the Senior Retired Volunteer Professionals. Bernie Sunshine has been elected to the Board of the Harlem School of the Arts. As everyone surely knows, Bernie has been serving this past year as president of the Alumni Federation. The one bit of sad news at our meeting was that Carl Cella lost his wonderful wife, Dorothy, last April. We all have such wonderful memories of Dorothy at our past reunions. She will be missed by all of us. I had a letter from John McConnell, who is now in Post Falls, Idaho. He notes that Northern Idaho has many outdoor activities and celebrations as the area takes pride in attempts to retain early traditions. Agriculture, logging and mining are the historical industries, with recreation becoming a greater factor of the economy. I did have my usual call from Howard Clifford, who has settled in Rusty Bridge, North Dakota. Howard is trying to organize a ferry service across the Knife River because he does not think that the famous bridge will last another hundred years. Howard was sorry to miss our reunion organizational meeting but assures me that he will be there in June. He is looking forward to seeing all of you there. Don't disappoint him.
George W. Cooper Between five-year anniversaries, there seems always to be a dearth of classmate communications. For this issue, the total is nil, nothing and zero. By contrast, of sorts, it can be reported that, on a beautiful, sunny fall Homecoming day, the "usual suspects" gathered at Baker Field to watch the Lions overwhelm the lads from Hanover in Columbia's only Ivy league victory of the season. Among those present from our class were Cy Bloom, Al Burstein, Larry Friedland, Bill Kahn, Herman Tannor, Bob Young and this correspondent (apologies to any omitted out of faulty or failing memory).
Theodore Melnechuk Had the presidential election outcome not been judicially settled just before I began writing these notes a week after Pearl Harbor Day, I would have devoted the balance of this column to election comments solicited from classmates who live in Floriduh, as it is being called. But now that all the votes have been counted, at least of Supreme Court members, I will write a more normally variegated column. As usual, classmates are discussed in alphabetical order. G. Durham Caldwell sends the good news that a book for which he did the bulk of the interviews and all of the editing is now in print and has become a local bestseller in Western Mass. Remembering World War II: Ludlow Veterans of the Armed Forces Tell Their Stories in Their Own Words was published by the Ludlow Historical Commission on which Durham has been serving. The book contains the stories of more than 100 veterans (mostly first-person), who include a survivor of the Bataan Death March, an airborne "pathfinder" dropped into Normandy during the wee small hours of D-Day, men who fought in North Africa and Italy as well as on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and five survivors of German prison camps. Durham doesn't hesitate to tell people that the stories are better than those in Tom Brokaw's book, and free of the pontificating therein. He and his wife live not far from Ludlow at 15 Ashland Ave., Springfield, MA 01119. In October, Herbert C. V. Feinstein served on the international jury of a film festival in Valladolid, Spain. Contrary to an implication in the September 2000 edition of these notes, he has not yet retired from San Francisco State University, and may not do so for a year or two. (Herb, I apologize for doing the dean's dirty work.) Herb lives at Apt. 8, 2201 Virginia St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1630. (Classmates: I don't know why this magazine doesn't use the post office's state-name abbreviations in Zip codes.) [Editor's note: We now do. We are following AP style, which is to use the longer and clearer state abbreviations in textual references, but the two-letter post office abbreviations when the full address is given.] On November 9, Ted Melnechuk gave an invited lecture on the history of modern neuroscience to an evening seminar at Smith College. His pleasure in being listened to for two hours not only by his host professor but also by 10 bright young female students averaging 19 years of age has since been followed by his pleasure in finally having read every word of Jacques Barzun's latest great book, From Dawn to Decadence. Having heard Professor Barzun speak last spring at an international conference on Hector Berlioz, Ted decided to simulate taking a course with him, like one taken at Columbia in 1947, by reading his new book for an hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Its lucid survey of our culture's exemplars is amazing for its scope and clarity, and delightful for its witty precision-for example, when the author writes of "the blur of Finnegans Wake and the stutterings of Gertrude Stein." The book reaches a climax in its coverage of the century just ended, which it makes sense of for the first time in Ted's experience. In November, this book was nominated for a National Book Award for nonfiction. What a creative career Leonard Ornstein has had as a cell biologist, educator, and inventor! After getting a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1954, Len became a reseach associate at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and stayed there, with occasional interruptions to teach at places like Harvard, until retiring in 1990 as a professor emeritus in pathology. Meanwhile he has been and remains a consultant to scientific and medical instrument companies, for he has invented quite a few such instruments, including a hematology machine and an instrument for an improved form of gel electrophoresis (which enables the separation and identification of mixed biomolecules), for which he was honored in 1986 with the International Electrophoresis Founders Award. In semi-retirement, Len is currently working on the application of pattern recognition and machine learning to automated diagnosis. He is still married to the lady he wed in 1945; they have four children and eight grandchildren, and live at 5 Bilton Road, White Plains, NY 10607. For more information on Len, visit his Web site: www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/index.html. Robert L. Rowe and has wife had some interesting experiences while recently traveling by ship. Health considerations have limited the length of flights they can take, so they no longer range over the world as they used to but are concentrating on the Americas. Their most recent cruise went from Boston to Bar Harbor to Halifax to St. John's to St. Pierre to Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island (which Bob had seen only in the distance on 35 previous trans-Atlantic crossings) to Quebec and finally to Montreal (the poor man's Paris). In Quebec they docked next to a park where a Thanksgiving Festival was in progress with jugglers, clowns and music. There were street musicians on the crowded Old Town streets, and as Bob and his wife climbed up toward the Place Royal, built by Champlain in 1608, there were some steep cobble-stoned inclines that made progress with his wife's wheelchair difficult, but they made it to the top and beyond. Their persistence seems to have been inherited by their daughter, for in 2000 she ran in four marathons (Boston, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio). Her parents live at 6226 Elmgrove Road, Spring, TX 77389. In the paragraph on Seth Rubenstein in the September 2000 notes, his address was omitted. It's 189 Argyle Road, Brooklyn, NY 11218. (Sorry, Seth, if therefore you missed any "Season's Greeting" cards.) Finally, congratulations to Columbia on raising $2.74 billion in a nearly decade-long fund-raising campaign. I was one of the 300,000 donors and hope that you were another and will like me be one again, for the need never ends.
Joseph B. Russell With profound sorrow we mourn the November 13, 2000 death of Emanuel Chill, emeritus professor of history at City College and a former Kellett Fellow at Oxford, and offer our condolences to his wife, Philippa, their son, daughters and grandchildren. His was a noble and honorable career, a credit to his family and an ornament to our class. With special pride we note that Judah Gribetz has rendered distinguished public service as a special master appointed by Judge Edward Korman of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to recommend a structure for allocating and disbursing the proceeds of a settlement of claims against Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims and their heirs. Judah's proposal was approved by the Court, without modification, after extensive public hearings. Back on local ground, George Spitz recently announced his decision to seek the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York in 2001. A retired State auditor, tax compliance agent, writer and activist, George seeks to improve public functions, such as education, transportation, library, recreational, garbage disposal, etc. and restore free tuition at the City University. He contends that services have progressively deteriorated since Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia left office in 1945. Kenneth Holden is recovering from radiation treatment for pharyngeal cancer and would very much like to hear from anyone who remembers him, making particular mention of Eric Munro. Ken, who started out in the Class of '47, notes that he spent 2 1/2 years in the Engineering School. His address is 2714 Morrison Street, Houston, TX 77009-7614. We hope and pray for a full and complete recovery, and ask all classmates in the greater Houston area to get in touch with him ASAP. Several years ago, during the planning for our 50th reunion, John Weaver mentioned that his son, JonAlf, was showing an interest in attending Columbia. John now reports that JonAlf, now a senior at Stuyvesant High School here in New York, has received notice of his early decision acceptance and will be a member of the Class of 2005. I know he will value and enjoy the experience, and wish him and his family the best.
Mario Palmieri It's never too late for us to take on new ventures, according to John Arents, who writes: "In 1998 I pulled the Secular Humanist Society of New York back from the brink of oblivion by appointing myself editor and reviving the monthly newsletter. It has become a mini-journal of diverse opinion, widely respected and quoted in the humanist community. I should have done something like this long ago." Ralph Italie reports the adoption, by his son Hillel and wife, of "a fantastic little girl from China." The new arrival, named Xin (pronounced Sheen), now lives within several blocks of Columbia. Hillel, a culture writer for the Associated Press, has another Columbia connection, having been a Pew Scholar in residence there. Bud Kassel had classmate John Ellison do a hernia operation on him the week following our 50th reunion. "He did such a great job," Bud says, "that Ruth and I were able to go kayaking in Alaska in August. Then two weeks in Madrid and Barcelona fighting bulls (the kayaking was real, the bull-fighting was just more bull), and then we came home to find John had retired. Which is too bad as I'm about to start my winter volunteer job as a ski host at Stowe in Vermont, and I'll probably end the season needing John again, yet, still." (Note: this was written in December.) Those in the NYC area have an opportunity to absorb more culture. Irving Kushner's daughter, Ellen, is the host of a radio program, "Sound and Spirit," a cultural documentary distributed by Public Radio International. You can tune in on WNYC at 7 a.m. on Sundays. Milton Levine, retired from medical practice, continues to teach at Long Island Jewish Hospital and still exercises his vocal cords by singing at various institutions on Long Island. Milt writes: "I am spending a great deal of time at my home on Shelter Island, N.Y., and love the quiet of the country. My children and grandchildren provide me with great joy and happiness." Milt has a new e-mail address: DrMLLevine@excite.com. Alex MacDonell reports, "Clare had the cochlear implant that we were telling everybody about at the reunion. It's incredible! She hears things she hasn't heard in years, like running water and dry leaves crackling when you step on them. It's a new world!" Alex and Clare celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a party featuring music of "our" era. Way to go, Alex - that was the good stuff. Charley Marquardt got a pleasant surprise last September. "I was surprised to see," he wrote, "that Gay and I appeared on the back cover of Columbia College Today. Good view. Also, on page 32, there's a picture of us dancing at the reunion Champagne Dance. They both were anonymous, so there is no doubt the editor displayed excellent taste in using our photos." Bob Schiller would like to hear from anyone in our class, or from '48 or '49, who is in the San Francisco Bay Area and who was involved in Players or WKCR. Bob lives in Orinda, Calif.; e-mail address: bobschil@silcon.com.
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