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CLASS NOTES
Robert Hardt Jr. Please hear me out. As you read this, the last-minute details of our 10th reunion are being taken care of by some very responsible and hard-working classmates. Some of these volunteers are highly successful doctors and lawyers, the powerful people who invariably write to me of their accomplishments. These are the same people who would attend the class reunion if it were in Norway. I want to see the rest of you. You, the cheese-puff eating slackers who got laid off from some dot-com job last year and are now temping and answering the phones at some awful company; you MUST attend the reunion. You, the continental drifters who have been exploring yourself through opaque haikus for much of the last decade; you must meander back to campus for the first time in years and hug Roger Lehecka. If you don't, our reunion will suffer. I know many of you in our class are doing incredibly interesting things and never write; and that's cool. But now it's time to make up for that in spades. Our class was and is incredibly diverse; we even somehow elected a Democratic Socialist to be our senior class president (who better show up or I'm flying to Detroit to kick his butt). Please, let's get it together because I think this can be a good time if enough people from enough odd places decide to come. Steve Weinstein and the rest of the reunion committee have done a superb job trying to make this thing work. The events start on Thursday, May 31 and go through Sunday. As part of the reunion, a young alumni bash is going to be held that Friday night at the Hammerstein Ballroom where every young alumni class will be invited. Some of the other highlights include a party at a downtown loft space; cocktails at Sardi's; a class dinner at a carriage house; Broadway show packages; picnics, barbecues and volleyball on the quad; and a Saturday night champagne and dancing party on the Steps. Incredibly, even travel discounts have been arranged. If you have any questions, please contact Steve (212) 728-8540, shw17@columbia.edu; Adlar Garcia (212) 870-2786, ag80@columbia.edu; or Emily Kasof (212) 870-2769, ek294@columbia.edu. I also should mention that Steve wanted me to report that the day we broke The Streak has become only the second happiest day in his life, as a result of his marriage to Anne Carmignani last June. The ceremony was held on campus, in St. Paul's Chapel, under blue skies and a blazing sun. The happy couple was joined by many Columbians, including bridesmaid Janet Weinstein-Zanger, Barnard '92, Steve's parents, Sheila Weinstein, Barnard '64 and Sheldon Weinstein '61, '64L, and groomsmen Elijah Schachter and Mark McMorran '91E. Also present in full party mode were 1991 classmates Chris Antolino, Joel Barron, Michael Cohen, Darryl Colden, Peter Cole, Darren Finestone, Gordon Haas, Jennifer Perez Konsker '91E, Kaushal Majmudar, Greg Ostling, Eddie Ryeom '91E and Andrew Stone. Steve is a senior corporate associate with the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher while Anne is the director of finance and strategy with Cablevision Systems Corp. If you want to get married in front of more classmates than Steve, you'll have your big chance at the reunion. I'll even be your best man if you need one. I ran into Josh Saltman at a reunion meeting planned by Steve at a Knicks game (smart planning). After playfully reminding me that I once dissed him in front of a woman more than 10 years ago, Josh gave me the goods on some classmates. Josh, who is a lawyer for Cablevision, told me the following: David Kaufman and his wife Anto Rodriguez-Ruiz are in Philadelphia, where David is doing a pulmonary fellowship at Penn. Chapin Clark married Elise Bauer on December 26 in the Municipal Building near City Hall. The marriage chapel was closed because of water damage, so the two exchanged vows in the cubicle of a gracious city employee. Chapin just began work as an online editor at Women's Wear Daily. Tina Gianquitto moved out to San Francisco for a few months for a change of scenery while she finishes work on her dissertation at Columbia. Matt Segal sees her there. Matt, who is working for the Justice Department in San Francisco, also travels frequently to Guam for work. Alice Vosmek is living in the Silverwood section of Los Angeles. Josh recently had dinner with Eva Jerome and Eileen Reardon, both lawyers in New York. Eva is a litigator at Robinson & Silverman and Eileen does trusts and estates at Kirkland & Ellis. Both like their jobs (two happy lawyers - can you believe it?) Thank you, Josh. My unofficial West Coast correspondent, the fabulous Tina Fitzgerald, told me to plug Martin Hynes' performance as George Lucas in the Internet film sensation George Lucas in Love. Tina is still a grad student at UCLA but is progressing. She now has her master's and is working on her Ph.D. in English literature. Her dissertation is on masculinity in the medieval drama cycles of Chester and York, England. She promises to explain it to anyone who is curious, if she decides to attend the reunion. Tina has been giving conference papers all over the place, including somewhat exciting locations like Leeds, England; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Victoria, British Columbia; and soon, not so glamorous places like Tempe, Ariz., and Kalamazoo, Mich. I got an e-mail with a funky font from John Evans who informed me that Dr. Michael Gitman is working and living in Manhattan with his wife, Cindy. He met Cindy at med school in Syracuse and they were married in the spring of 1998. They just had their first child, Joshua, in December after 35 (OUCH!) hours of labor. Dr. Sam Trotzky (John writes: "It's hard to imagine these people as life-savers.") moved from Washington D.C. to New Hampshire with his wife, Judith, also a doctor. They had a son, Zachary, last year. Earl McAlear works for Charles Schwab and lives with his wife, Kelly, in Arizona. After four years of practicing law, Natasha Zaslove decided to play Russian roulette and try working in the Internet industry. She's the director of marketing for GirlGeeks.com, a career success site for professional IT women. Natasha lives in San Francisco in the former apartment of classmates Kenyatta Monroe and Robert Sincler, who have moved to Santa Monica. Natasha hopes to meet other alums in the Bay Area and offers her e-mail (nzaslove@yahoo.com). For the past six years, Phyllis Stone has been teaching right near Columbia at the Bank Street School for Children. She married Glenn Davis (not the baseball player) in 1997 and they had a baby girl last year, Sarah Stone Davis. Last but not least is Andrew Hearst, who has been writing columns for mediabistro.com. He's offered to buy everyone a beer at the reunion. Maybe not, but there's only one way to find out. I hope to see you there.
Jeremy Feinberg Hi everybody! Although it's a light mailbag this time, I'm pleased to report that I heard from three entirely new correspondents. Please follow their example. I don't know how many times I get letters or e-mails which say, "I've always read your column but have never written in to you." There's no time better than the present. Eva Graburn e-mailed from Portugal and reports that after graduation, she worked for a Japanese real estate company. When that company folded in the fall of 1993, Eva traveled to Portugal. She has been working part-time exporting Portuguese ceramics and glass and spending the rest of her time caring for her 2-year-old son, Noel. She sends "cheers to the rest of the class." Alexandra Hershdorfer lamented that she had finally "caved" and gone to law school, after "forays into high tech, advertising and publishing." Having graduated from UC-Hastings law school in 1998, she sat for the February 2001 bar exam. She said she would love to hear from any '92ers in the Bay Area, and she can be reached at ahershdorfer@hotmail.com. Julie George (Holt) e-mailed from Denver that she is working for the Colorado legislature as part of the Legislative Council. Her expertise on the council is education, and her council is the research and committee staff component of the legislature. On August 15, she and her husband, Larry, welcomed Joshua Scott George to the world. She describes Joshua as "a nice and robust little buckaroo." Finally, Andrew Vladeck writes to clarify some details from my last month's column. He is a featured performer at NYC's top clubs and is about to begin recording his second album for Organ Grinder Records. He has just finished a project with a producer in Ireland he met while on tour there last summer and is doing a lot of recording session work for guitar, harmonica and banjo. Two of the members of his nine-piece band are Rob Pearle and Chris Wiggins '93. His current Web site is www.mp3.com/andrewvladeck. 'Til next time. Please do stay in touch and let me know what's going on in your worlds. That, more than anything else, makes this a pleasure.
Elena Cabral Jennifer Hays Woods and her husband, Don, welcomed a set of twins into the world on September 15. The girls, Alexandra Southerland and Samantha Claire, have the great fortune of having Nina Abraham as a godmother - the woman is already gushing about the pair like a pro. By the description of the fraternal twins, it's easy to understand why. Alexandra and Samantha, who both sleep through the night, are fond of giggling and cooing. Alexandra appears to be the inquisitive one, checking out everything going on in a room, even behind her. She is multi-talented, having learned early to make the ZZRRBT noise and demonstrated her loyalty as a Jets fan. Samantha is the talkative flirt who grins and giggles and then hides her face in feigned modesty. She is carefree and relaxed and knows how to hold a bottle like a champ. Both reportedly love the game "airplane," enjoy being flipped, and show, as all twins should, a great bond between each other. Nina reports that Jennifer is an amazing mother, organized, attentive and totally adoring. Laura Biederman is engaged to be married in June to Jason Woehrmyer, a fellow law school student. Laura went to law school at Georgetown and graduated in 1998. She is now an associate in the business litigation department at the D.C. office of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. The wedding is set in Bermuda. Jason proposed in a lovely old restaurant in the Virginia countryside. The fact that the restaurant burned down a week later is hardly a negative for the couple. If anything, I'd say it's God's way of breaking the mold on a love story with no equal. Plus, your kids will have a good laugh. Speaking of love stories, Stephanie Ellis married Dean A. Jones on September 9 in Ulster County, N.Y. Drs. Cori Schreiber and Zack Meisel, who live in Philadelphia, attended the celebration. Stephanie is finishing a master's degree in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Wonderful news all around. Keep it coming.
Leyla Kokmen Thank goodness for Chris Schmidt, who saw last quarter's pathetically short column for exactly what it was-a desperate cry for help. And help he did, with lots of updates on plenty of classmates. Chris writes that he's loving his job; a New York City cop for seven years, he has been promoted to sergeant and now works in the South Bronx. Chris writes that Matt Ripperger lives in Tribeca and has a successful career as the No. 2 health care analyst at Paine Webber/UBS. Chris and Matt both went to Boston last September to be in the wedding party of Matt Spielman, who married the former Sharon Fox. The two met at Harvard Business School, where they graduated in 1999. They've been living in Manhattan, where Matt Spielman has been working at a dot.com, but Chris writes that the couple has recently bought a house in Chappaqua. In December Chris attended Pete Egan's wedding in Garden City, N.Y. Also there was Gabor Balassa, who himself got married in October 1999 in Chicago. Pete and Gabor are working as lawyers in New York and Chicago, respectively. Thonos Basdekis, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., also made it to both weddings. Chris also offered some info about some SEAS '94 graduates who made it to Pete's wedding. Jim Wilson is at UCLA Business School and "living on the beach in L.A." Steve Marusich is also in California, working as an engineer, while Bert Chen is working for a New York City investment firm. Chris Hutmaker graduated from Wharton Business School last spring and is living in Manhattan, where he works as a senior analyst at Chase. Vic Tarsia, who has been married to his wife, Kristy, for a few years now, has finished his ER residency at Long Island's Stony Brook Hospital (he attended medical school there as well). Amanda Falick has been happily married for about a year, and after finishing medical school at New York University, she's almost done with her OB/GYN residency. Rebecca Stanton is teaching at Columbia while working on her doctorate. Madelene Nemessanyi is living in the East Village, working on a master's degree at the School of Visual Arts. Some of Chris's pals have made the move out west. Bill Bernards is living in Oregon, working as a real estate broker, while Dan Wilson recently quit his job at a New York investment firm to start fresh in San Francisco. Samir Sinha moved from New York to Houston and is working as a financial analyst. Thanks a million to Chris for his wealth of information. Until next time, keep the news coming!
Janet Frankston I apologize if this column is short and dominated by weddings. Daniel Kass married Deborah Gillman in January. Daniel, a resident in internal medicine at the Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital, received a medical degree from NYU, according to an announcement in The New York Times. Daniel's new bride is a candidate for a doctorate in clinical psychology at the City University Graduate Center and a graduate of Penn. Jen Lew writes that she is still working at ABC, where she's been a producer at Good Morning America for more than a year. She and her fiancé, Tom Goldstone, got engaged last summer in Paris. "We were on vacation in London and he surprised me with a mystery trip!" she writes. A September wedding is planned in New York. Tom is a field producer for 20/20. "He went to Cornell, but what can you do!" Jen says. Non-wedding news: La Vaughn Belle moved home to the Virgin Islands in August 1999 to pursue an art career and leave the cold of New York. Her career is blossoming: La Vaughn is showing and has traveled to Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Barbados, St. Thomas and Cuba. "Ironically, after getting a M.A. from Teacher's College I thought I would never teach again, as I planned to live in my parents' guest house and paint until it hurt," she writes. "I am teaching again, but not in the capacity of a classroom teacher." La Vaughn teaches a course at the University of the Virgin Islands called "Humanities Overture," which is a survey course that covers seven artistic disciplines throughout the Caribbean. "I love it! It gives me the opportunity to be intellectually stimulated and share my love of the arts," she says. "Finally, I wake up everyday with the sun in my face, step outside with the grass in my feet and thank God I'm home." Finally, I've randomly run into friends from Columbia all over the world: in front of Notre Dame in Paris; a bathroom in the Rome airport; a street in downtown Chicago. But I never expected to run into someone in Birmingham, Ala. I was in town to see a Matisse exhibit last summer and to meet Lindara Halloran '94, who used to be known as Lindara Elias. She is now married and a resident in pediatrics in Birmingham. As we were catching up at the Birmingham Museum of Art, we looked up to see Leslie Nass '94 (now Leslie Estrada), who is also a medical resident. Leslie, who was an RA with me in Wien, is doing her residency in ophthalmology. That's all for now. Please keep the news coming. If you've never written in to class notes, now is the time.
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