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CLASS NOTES
Alan N. Miller Dear honored (at times) classmates, What can we say post-9/11? We all try for normality but realize in the deep recesses that life has changed. NYC is as marvelous as ever and I, who was caught at a family wedding at Lake Tahoe, Nev., was overjoyed to finally make my way back to the Big Apple. I also haven’t ventured further than the car would take me since, and plan to stay close to home for a while. I’m not impressed with the changes in airport security yet and even the new Congressional bill will take a while to put into practical action. On a class note, we had a great Homecoming with the exception of the score against Penn. Sixteen guys and dolls got together, then came to me for fortification and then to dinner at an Upper West Side French restaurant. Participating in this great fun were Steve Easton and Elke (they are doing well), Danny Link and Eleanor (a lovely lady), Larry Gitten and Vera, Mark Novick and Maya, Mike Spett and Lisa, Bob Siroty and Margo, Bill Gregory and Vicki and yours truly and Janet. Also at the game were Lou Hemmerdinger and Anita and Lenny Wolfe, sans Ruth, who is feeling much better and we pray returns to 100 percent so that she can join us in the future. Our next attempt at football was the Harvard game on a lovely Saturday, again except for the score. Janet and I drove up with Steve and Elke and met Bob Siroty there. Bob hasn’t missed a game, which impresses me. Retirement, as a hematologist, seems to fit him well and a telephone call just asked if I was going to the Brown game. Janet and I were going to Connecticut but there seemed to be a negative correlation between my presence at a football game and the score so it was just as well I didn’t go. However, we discussed as the next event a basketball game in February. It is really great fun and the current gym is 1,000 percent better than that old dingy one we experienced. So let me know who is interested, and we can make an evening of it. Otherwise, no news from my classmates, and I hope you do better over the next few months. Do keep in touch. You can call me at (212) 712-2369 or fax (212) 875-0955. (Only use e-mail as a last resort, as I don’t read it religiously.) One further note. At the Dean’s Scholarship reception, where I chatted with three of our scholarship students plus a number of other students, as well as alumni and professorial friends, Austin assured me that that eyesore on the quad [The Lions Court, a.k.a. the Tin Box] would be removed shortly and we would be in for an aesthetic experience at Columbia. In addition, I was pleased that our sometimes marching band was dressed uniformly in rugby attire, a vast improvement from five or six years ago when I wrote a letter to President Rupp about the situation. Who knows, but we may get blazers someday. So here’s wishing you all health, wealth and happiness. [CORRECTION: Two name errors appeared in the November issue of CCT: Steve Easton’s name was misspelled and Larry Gitten was incorrectly referred to as Larry Gill.]
Herman Levy Marty Fisher and Ed Weinstein report that Marty and Doris, Steve Fybish, Mark and Helaine Stanton, Ed and Sandra Weinstein, and Paul and Dianne Zola attended the Homecoming football game and dined together under the reunion tent. Also there were ex-grapplers Dave Kinne and Tony Antonio, and our all-Ivy guard, Ralph Brunori (all the way from Clarks Summit, Pa.). They enjoyed a splendid day: bright sun, clear sky and colorful festivities. Nevertheless, something must have infected our Lions, who went down in defeat at the hands of Penn’s warlike Quakers, 35-7. It was a good game until the third quarter, with the score at 14-7, before things got out of hand. Rabbi Alvin Kass was one of the clergy officiating at the memorial service held at Ground Zero on October 28 for families of the September 11 victims. Alvin, senior chaplain of the NYPD, earlier in the month participated in the ceremonies at Yankee Stadium. The Fall 2001 issue of Spa Finder features an article, “Lovers in Los Angeles,” by Lois B. Morris, featuring Bob Lipsyte and Lois. The journalist couple enjoy taking a vacation at the end of a business trip “at an elegant hotel with a plush spa.” They always travel with their laptops and constantly check their e-mail. The magazine asked Lois and Bob to check out the new spas at the Four Seasons, The Peninsula, The Century Plaza and the St. Regis. In order “to provide an authentic L.A. experience for readers who do not need a business excuse to travel, [they] decided to leave [their] computers behind.” This omission opened “a whole new world of possibilities.” Lois tells of their shopping for exotic fruits and vegetables at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market and for custom-designed furniture and antiques in Venice Beach. They then proceeded to luxuriate in treatment rooms and cabanas and swim laps in the pool. Bob even had a facial, his first, “com[ing] out looking like a million bucks.” Later they visited the Getty Museum, where Jan Steen’s painting, Bathsheba After the Bath quite appropriately may be found. After a workout and more shopping, they spent the rest of the trip’s last day in Santa Monica. Bob had “another childhood flashback” at the air museum as he “[set] his eyes on a small, open-cockpit, single-engine prop plane”; it reminded him of the Air Boy comic book. After “a long lingering lunch” they walked down to the pier, where they watched children on the rides at the amusement park.
Barry Dickman An article in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin entitled “Crackdown,” analyzing the new post-9/11 antiterrorism legislation, included extensive quotes from Mort Halperin. Mort is no stranger to government surveillance, having been the victim of wiretaps ordered by Henry Kissinger when Mort was with the National Security Council — an episode that led to a long legal battle and an eventual apology from Kissinger. As for the new laws, Mort finds it worrisome that intelligence surveillance has been given broader scope: “If the government thinks you’re under the control of a foreign government, they can... break into your home, copy your hard drive and never tell you.” Classmates on the move include Fred Silverblatt, who has returned to the East Coast and is now chief of primary care at the V.A. Medical Center in Providence, R.I. Heading in the other direction, Ronald Christ, professor emeritus of English at Rutgers and a translator, has retired to Santa Fe, N.M. Tom Henkel also has left the New York area and is now a technical specialist with Duke Solar Energy in Raleigh, N.C. Tom previously was the chairman of the physics department at Wagner College on Staten Island. Steve Scheff doesn’t miss those New England winters; he now lives in Estero, Fla., and teaches at Florida Gulf Coast U. Here’s our reminder about the class lunch that Scott Shukat hosts on the second Tuesday of every month in the Grill Room of the Princeton/Columbia Club, 15 W. 43rd St. ($31 per person). You can let Scott know if you plan to attend up to the day before by phone at (212) 582-7614 or by fax at (212) 315-3752.
Ed Mendrzycki
Robert A. Machleder Our monthly first-Thursday noon lunches at the Columbia Club on West 43rd Street continue to stimulate, inform and amuse. November’s discussions ranged from baseball and hockey (hockey?) to ethics and Aeschylus (no preparation or prior reading required, as the topics arise spontaneously; nor do the evanescent remnants of our once dependable knowledge inhibit the free flow of opinions expressed with conviction and absolute certitude). The offering at October’s lunch was claimed by the tragic events of September 11 and decidedly less lighthearted. We received a harrowing, firsthand account of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Our intrepid David Kirk had once again survived a World Trade Center disaster. In 1993, David, then employed by the Port Authority, escaped from the 72nd floor of the North Tower during the terrorist car-bomb attack. Now, in the offices of his consulting firm on the 18th floor of the South Tower, David, upon hearing the impact of the jetliner crashing into the North Tower and observing from his window an inexplicable blizzard of paper “like a ticker tape parade,” directed that his floor be evacuated. In the plaza area, he dodged burning metal, building materials and debris that rained down after the second jetliner struck the South Tower. He watched in horror as victims jumped from their office windows to escape flames and intense heat or were thrust from their offices, falling to the plaza below not more than 50 yards from where he stood. David reentered the WTC, exited on Vesey Street, took refuge in the City Hall subway station and traveled uptown. Then, returning downtown by foot en route to his daughter’s apartment, he encountered hordes of survivors fleeing lower Manhattan, spectral apparitions covered in white dust. David has always delighted us with reminiscences of his humorous Columbia escapades and days in the Navy. Thus, it was especially sobering and poignant to have “The Unsinkable” David Kirk relate this most traumatic experience. Homecoming 2001: Prior to kickoff, the Columbia band serenaded the assembled students, alumni, faculty, families and friends under the big tent at Baker Field, delivering exuberant renditions of “Roar, Lion, Roar” and other music appropriate to the setting, concluding with “Alma Mater.” Rocking to the rhythms, pumped by the music, Noah Tanzman puts on his game face, ready to enter Wien Stadium for the beginning of play. Two-year-old Noah’s game face is a winning smile and dancing eyes. He brings to the game doting grandparents Larry and Robin Rubinstein. Interrupting his sojourn at his weekend Connecticut home, Bob Berne settles into a stadium seat. Is he here to watch Columbia attempt an upset of powerful Ivy League contender Penn, or is he here to observe the performance of the Columbia Lion in the suit that he donated? The Lion never appears. The Lion’s a no-show at Homecoming! And there’s no upset on the field. David Kirk and Anna Marie also enjoy that crisp, bright autumn day as we look in vain for Columbia pass completions and for the elusive Lion. Congratulations to Irwin Sollinger. Daughter Emily will be married this summer. Rabbi Larry Rubinstein will officiate. My son, Danny ’98, now applying to medical schools, enjoyed a visit in October to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and was greatly impressed. By coincidence, his interviewer was our own Edward Curtiss, a cardiologist and member of the admissions committee. Having mentioned Danny, a further personal note: I have been able to make no more valuable contribution to Columbia than the enrollment of my children. They’re far more accomplished than I was at their age. My son, Josh ’91, has been in Uzbekistan for more than three years, two as a Peace Corps volunteer and now in his second year as country director for Internews, a nonprofit organization that fosters independent media in emerging democracies. Living in Tashkent, Josh, while running the Internews operation, also has served as a resource for foreign journalists now in Uzbekistan covering the war in Afghanistan and has been interviewed on radio and television for background on the region. As time permits, he has prepared reports published on Eurasianet.org, a daily Internet news and analytic service covering Central Asia. My daughter, Shira, has a degree from General Studies and is a marketing consultant with Brand Leadership in New York. She completed her first New York City Marathon this fall, covering the course in 3:50. My daughter, Emily, is completing the requirements for a Columbia master’s degree in physical therapy and looks forward to graduating this June. Columbia College Today has increased its publication schedule to six issues a year. So, more than ever, news from you is essential. Please send a note or an e-mail advising where you are, what you’re doing, what’s happening in your life, your career, your travels, your hobbies — whatever is important to you — and it’ll get into this column. You don’t want me to make stuff up.
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