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CLASS NOTES
Alan N. Miller Except for the local cadre, you guys all over the U.S.A., and the world for that matter, are not keeping Uncle Alan informed. I refuse to do a Pentagon act of disinformation and can only report what I know as the truth at all times. First and most important, our good friend for more decades than I care to admit, Steve Easton, is going the marriage route (for the third time) to the lovely Elke France sometime this fall, and I certainly plan to be there. Steve and I had a lengthy, fun and expensive lunch recently during which we attempted to solve most of the world’s problems. Our own are more difficult, and I hope we started the process going. In the March issue, I noted that we were going to a Columbia
basketball game and a lovely French dinner after, for which my
pregnant younger daughter and her husband joined us. Steve,
Larry Gitten, Buzz Passwell as well as yours truly and my
Janet went to the Columbia-Harvard game. The evening was lovely,
but the game was disappointing, as we found every imaginable way to
finally lose the game as the buzzer went off on a great
three-pointer by Harvard. It was really great fun, and we’ll
do it again next year. The next event is Dean’s Day, Saturday, April 13, which
will have taken place by the time this is published. I’ve
been going for decades, and when Libby was alive this was the
intellectual event she was willing to join in on. Gentlemen, this
day is great to stimulate those old neglected Columbia brain cells,
and they are crying for rejuvenation. So I hope many of you will
make it a point to attend in the future. It is really a stimulating
and fun day. Anyway, enough from your loyal president, who is anxious to hear
from more of you. Call (212) 712-2369 or fax (212) 875-0955;
e-mails only under extreme conditions, as I don’t reliably
read them. So with great fondness to all and hopes of many
favorable lunches, dinners, events, etc., while we are still
kicking hard. Love to all.
Herman Levy Denis Frind has left the firm of Altieri, Kushner,
Miuccio & Frind to become a partner at Goetz, Fitzpatrick, Most
& Bruckman LLP, where he is enjoying his work immensely. His
new office is located at One Penn Plaza, New York NY 10119, tel.:
(212) 695-8100. He has two granddaughters, “stunning Bridget
(5) and charming Margaux (3) in Fremont, Calif.” Alan Frommer writes that last September, he and his wife,
Judy, attended the wedding of Ken Bodenstein’s son,
Todd, in Chicago. At his table was Stuart Meyer, whom he not
seen since 1957. Stu has been at the Kellogg School for the better
part of his career; that is where Todd, and thus Ken, attained a
close student-teacher relationship with him. Alan and Stu shared a
few laughs, reminiscing how their chosen careers did not turn out
to be their actual ones; nevertheless, they had no regrets and a
lot of thanks. As a retiree and local senior citizen, Alan has been auditing
courses at Wellesley College. Last spring, he took a course with
David Bernat, who had his father, a rabbi, give one lecture. Alan
was pleasantly surprised when David’s father, Haskell Bernat
’58GS, told him that they had started out as classmates;
Haskell, however, completed his degree at GS, a year later than
Alan and his twin Paul. Alan thinks that Haskell knew Paul;
Haskell understandably mistook him for Paul, because the brothers
look more alike today than ever! Herman Levy continues his extensive activity with the
American Bar Association section of public contract law. For nine
years, he has been an associate editor of the Public Contract Law
Journal; he has edited articles and book reviews and prepared note
topics for the Law Journal’s student editors at George
Washington University Law School. He edits section comments on
federal procurement regulations for the regulatory coordinating
committee, of which he serves as a vice chair. He also serves as a
vice chair of the following committees: accounting, cost and
pricing, commercial products and services, and research and
development and intellectual property. He takes and transcribes the
minutes for the latter two committees. Stephen Ronai wrote a long letter to me, as his
“co-classmate” at both the College and Yale Law School,
about his most distinguished legal career. He still works full-time
as a senior partner at Murtha Cullina LLP, “a large and
well-respected Connecticut law firm ... and is chairman of [its]
health care department.” He has “always enjoyed working
at [the firm] and the challenges ... of planning, advising, serving
and competing have always been very satisfying for me.” In
1991, he was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of the first
editions of Woodward/White’s Best Lawyers in America
selected him as one of five Connecticut health care lawyers to
achieve that distinction. The “selection was based on the
recommendation of peers without knowledge or participation of the
recipients.” Steve writes: “My development of knowledge and competence
in my specialty took shape during the boom period [of] the health
care industry’s expansion of facilities, [during which] major
medical equipment and provider services grew and when physician,
hospital and long-term care facility service costs became ... an
inflationary 14 percent ‘business’ portion of the gross
national product. I was driven to advance my industry position by
expanding my nursing home labor law management client base (my
practice specialty side door) to other large sectors of the health
care provider market ... [including] hospitals, hospital systems,
physician groups, ambulatory surgery centers and other provider
entities.” In 1973, the Connecticut Commission on Hospitals and Health Care
adopted a stringent requirement for “health care facilities
and institutions to obtain a Certificate of Need to build
facilities or to provide new services.” Steve acquired
considerable expertise in CON matters, which inspired his CON
clients to seek his services in other development services as
well. Steve’s prior firm, which had but 12 members, could not
provide CON clients with “the full panoply of
multi-disciplinary legal specialties” they needed; Steve then
joined Murtha Cullina. Steve has written “and lectured nationwide on a broad
variety of health care subjects and [has held] leadership positions
in various health care membership associations.” He has
served as a director of the American Health Lawyers Association,
chairman of the board of directors of the Connecticut Hospital
Association, president of the Connecticut Health Lawyers
Association, and chairman of the Health Law Committee of Lex Mundi,
an international network of 150 law firms. After January 1, 2004,
when the firm’s policy will require him to assume the role of
counsel, he looks forward to serving as a marketing partner of the
firm, or other activities (perhaps teaching health care regulatory
law), or a combination of both. He looks forward to attending our
45th reunion. Correction: Ralph Brunori writes that contrary to
our entry in the January 2002 issue, he did not visit the reunion
tent, although he had intended to do so; he had guests with him.
Ralph also especially asked me to note that he was not an All-Ivy;
the only Columbia ’57 All-Ivy was Claude Benham. I
much regret the error in reporting and thank Ralph for calling it
to my attention.
Barry Dickman Congratulations to Dick Waldman on the birth of his
granddaughter, Kaitlin Sarah Waldman, daughter of Dick’s son,
Mitchell Waldman ’90E and his wife, Jolene. Dick has been
appointed an adjunct associate professor of government and politics
at the University of Maryland University College. After 35 years in the California attorney general’s office, Asher Rubin has retired. However, in order to pay tuition for his son, Jacob, who has just been admitted to the College in the Class of 2006, he will continue to practice law, including consulting work for the attorney general, while he decides what to do when he grows up. Mark Luftig is the manager of the Strong Dividend Income
Fund.
Ed Mendrzycki It is with great regret that we note the passing of our
classmate, Bob Nozick.
His achievements in philosophy and in making erudite concepts
available to all of us are a legacy that any of us would be proud
of. Though his intellect set him apart from the rest of us, he was
a witty, down-to-earth, approachable human being. Howard Mencher reports from Los Angeles: “After I
graduated from Columbia, I served in the Army and finished law
school in 1965. For the next 10 years, I spent my time at various
jobs in Arizona and California. I have a license to practice law in
Arizona and have been practicing in California since 1975. I have
been a solo practitioner since 1985, representing primarily
plaintiffs in the area of harassment and discrimination cases
involving sex, race, ethnicity and so forth. In addition, I
represent people who have been injured and also handle legal and
medical malpractice cases. “I’ve been married for 31 years and have three
children, the oldest of whom started working with me in 2000. My
younger children, twins, are in Texas and Arizona — my son is
at the University of Texas Law School at Austin and my daughter is
doing social work in Tucson. My wife is a playwright, actress and
painter. I recently spoke to Bob Ratner, and we are making
plans to have a group of classmates get together this summer in
Vancouver, B.C. Getting together would be myself, Bob, Mike
Zimmerman, Fred Lorber and Joel Nelson.”
Sounds great, Howard. Any space in the RV? Also from California, we heard from Bob Nelson.
“After medical school and internship, I ended up with the
Navy and a year of sea duty and then a year at Treasure Island in
the middle of San Francisco Bay. That was my introduction to
Northern California. I started a solo ophthalmology practice in
Napa following a residency in Cincinnati. Although the city has
grown from 20,00 to 70,000 in the intervening years, it is still a
wonderful ‘small town,’ and the neighbors are
supportive of each other. The Napa Valley has become more
sophisticated since the 1970s, with premium wines attracting
visitors who appreciate fine wines and excellent restaurants. (No!
I can’t get you reservations at the French Laundry.) “During the last 30 years, I have been active in the
community. On the medical side, it was as president of the county
medical society and roles in the California Medical Association as
well as chief of staff at our local hospital. I also served on
committees for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and have been
a recipient of its achievement award. Teaching ophthalmology
residents at California Pacific Medical Center and being a trustee
of the Pacific Vision Foundation also occupy some of my time.
Outside of medicine, there has been time for our local Kiwanis
Club, and I recently completed a term as president for this
wonderful group of 100-plus citizens who contribute so much to this
community. As I didn’t have much else to do, I got an M.B.A.
in 1995. As a rusty blade, I have continued fencing but
haven’t been in any competition for the last five years due
to Achilles problems and a bypass operation. However, I was drafted
to teach fencing at the local community college and will return to
club fencing as soon as time permits. My first marriage ended in
the early ’90s. Fortunately, I met a wonderful lady a few
years later. Pam, a fine artist, and I have been married for five
years. I am looking toward cutting back, as I am merging my
practice with two other docs. I look forward to seeing or hearing
from classmates and will try to keep upright until our 50th
reunion.” Lou Stephens is still living in Mexico City, where he has
been since 1962 when he left USS Mullany, DD-528, out of San Diego.
Obviously, Lou went south on Interstate 5 instead of north to La
Jolla! In semi-retirement, he tries to do as much in the arts as
possible, painting mostly. He has five children; his oldest is 27
and lives in NYC, his youngest is 12 and will be off to boarding
school in two years, “then Karen and I may try to move to the
Big Apple — si dios nos da licencia,” he says. After 30 years as a professor and writer in residence at the
University of Massachusetts, Jay Neugeboren is now a
full-time writer living (once again) in New York City. His first
novel, Big Man, was reissued this past year, and a documentary film
based on his memoir, Imagining Robert, will appear sometime within
the next year on PBS. He recently completed two new books — a
nonfiction book on heart disease and friendship, and a new (his
third) collection of stories — both of which should be
appearing within the next year. He is living at Broadway and 111th
Street (e-mail: jneug@earthlink.net). Bill Berberich runs his own energy consulting practice
following stints with Exxon-Mobil and El Paso Energy. His firm
recently has migrated into e-commerce as WinWin-Worldwide.com.
WinWin completed a successful $5 million e-procurement auction for
Alcan, the giant Canadian aluminum producer. Bill is planning to
expand into the electric power, chemicals, paper and government
sectors. Saul Brody writes from his home in Demarest, N.J., that
he got his Ph.D. in medieval literature from Columbia in 1968 and
took a job at City College where (apart from stints in France and
Italy) he taught for all of his professional life. Along the way,
he busied himself, among other things, by chairing the faculty
senate (two one-year terms) and his department (six years) and
writing this or that on medieval subjects such as Chaucer and
leprosy. He retired in 1998, and since then he has continued to
publish, including a recent piece on Shoeless Joe Jackson’s
bat and the invention of history. He still loves to swim, but the
great love of his life remains his family: He married in 1960 and
is still married to the same woman, with whom he raised two
daughters. Even though he introduces Frohma as his first wife, he
has no intention of abandoning her for another. Finally, we get this from Aaron Priest: “I’m
happy to see an expanded format in our class notes and would urge
more people to come forward to tell what they’re doing and
where they are. [Your correspondent echoes that thought.] In 1974,
I started the Aaron Priest Literary Agency after working for
Doubleday for 14 years in sales. Molly Friedrich ’74 Barnard
has been with me since 1978, and today we’re partners. We
represent primarily adult trade (non-academic) fiction and
nonfiction, running the gamut from women’s historical romance
— Johanna Lindsey — to Pulitzer Prize-winning Jane
Smiley. Other authors include Frank McCourt, David Baldacci, Sue
Grafton, Philip Caputo, Robert James Waller and Terry McMillan. I
also represented Erma Bombeck until she died in 1996.”
That’s quite a list of clients! Don’t forget that you can send an e-mail with class notes
to Ed at the above address and/or to Bennett Miller at miller_bennett@yahoo.com.
Robert A. Machleder Tired of spending vacations in Paris, London, Venice, Newark?
Ready to explore more exotic locations? Richard Friedlander
may provide the answer. Richard has traveled the byways, spans and
creases of the globe from the Antarctic to Uganda, from Tasmania to
the Falkland Islands. Having returned from an excursion this
January into Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home of the
Great Apes, Richard shared his experiences, photographs and diary
with us at the Class of ’60 monthly lunch. A place of breathtaking natural beauty, ringed by the twin
horrors of crushing poverty and unspeakable brutality, the Bwindi
Impenetrable Forest lies in the southwest corner of Uganda. Wedged
against the borders of Rwanda and the Congo, where countless lives
have been taken by genocidal warfare and famine, the Bwindi nature
preserve is habitat to half the world’s remaining mountain
gorillas and is the only place on earth where gorillas and
chimpanzees live in proximity to one another. Mindful but undeterred that only three years ago Hutu rebels
abducted 31 foreign tourists, eight of whom, together with the game
warden and three park rangers, were slain, Richard and a limited
number of foreign tourists undertook the arduous trek through the
dense, humid rainforest, climbing to an elevation of more than
4,000 feet across a treacherous ground cover of vines and shrubs
and under a canopy of vegetation and vines so tightly meshed atop
high trees as virtually to bar entry to the sun. There, within but
a few yards of the subjects, Richard observed 350-pound male and
250-pound female mountain gorillas that live and travel together in
groups of 8–20. Richard was enchanted by the gentle, docile
herbivores with their enormous childlike eyes. By contrast, the
frenetically active and aggressive chimpanzees were kept at greater
distance. Having familiarized himself with the primate studies of Louis
Leakey, Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall before the trip, Richard was
intrigued by the extraordinary similarities in human and primate
behavior patterns and facial expressions. Richard is to be credited
with this original scientific observation: Competition among
gorillas is played out in the arena of establishing sexual
supremacy; competition among tourists is played out in scoring the
best deal in the arena of the local crafts market. Both involve
much ostentatious display and breast beating. Finally, the essential question: “Richard, wasn’t
your Columbia College education indispensable in preparing you for
your trip to Uganda to see the Great Apes?” The sudden,
unanticipated inquiry does not catch Richard off balance. Leaping
with agility back to another time and place, to blue books and
proctors, the Steamboat and Morningside Heights, Richard’s
nimble mind crafts the perfect response without a moment’s
hesitation: “Yes, in two ways. First, I learned how to do
research. Second, I knew a smattering of botany from Professor
Metzger’s class. I wish I had paid greater attention.”
Well done, Richard, you’ve earned an A. Now let’s go back a long way to two kids who grew up in
the west Bronx, classmates in grade school, junior high and then
Columbia. It was a special delight to receive Michael
Hein’s e-mail accompanied by our ninth grade graduation
picture and then to catch up with him by phone after 40 years to
reminisce about the Bronx of our youth and to recount each
other’s odyssey through the years. In our youth, we knew a Bronx of robust, sharply delineated
ethnic enclaves; Mike’s lunch money and spare change balled
up in his socks when making border crossings; of corner candy
stores even more ubiquitous than present-day Starbucks; purveyors
of mostly innocent pleasures, like comic books, those formative
introductions to art and literature (Classic Comics for those
interested in high culture); of rococo movie theaters, faux palaces
of shimmering chandeliers, glittering mirrors, plush purple seats
and operatic flying staircases flanked by marble sentinels. It was
a world we were certain would endure, with World Series
championships arriving as cyclically as the seasons, an integral
part of our Bronx birthright. But Robert Moses’
“grander vision” — the Bronx as a corridor and
his creation of the Cross-Bronx Expressway — fractured the
borough pelvis to brow and forever shattered its distinctive
provinciality. Mike’s post-Columbia journey, after a brief sojourn in law
school, started in the world of advertising and then turned to a
career in education after he returned to graduate school for a
degree in library science. Completing 14 years as librarian at the
Lenox School and 10 years at the Horace Mann Lower School, Mike
retired in June and now segues gracefully into his new role of
reading, swimming several times a week and collecting memorabilia
at his home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He and his wife, Ann, anticipate
with great pride their daughter Rebecca’s graduation this May
from Bard College. Rebecca, the recipient of an International
Honors Program scholarship, had a life-transforming experience last
year studying environmental challenges in Tanzania, India, New
Zealand and Mexico. At the time of my conversation with Mike,
Rebecca was in York, Pa., studying bio-intensive winter organic
farming in greenhouses. In keeping with the philosophy that we hold
land in stewardship and have an obligation to assist those in need,
Rebecca is dedicated to making organic foods less expensive so that
healthier foods will be available to people throughout the world.
She hopes to find a farm from which to realize this objective. If
any of you has farmland and wants it tilled for a worthy purpose,
or knows of land that is available, contact me and I’ll
advise Mike. Over the years, Mike has remained in touch with Michael
Lesch (each served as best man at the other’s wedding),
who returned to New York only recently to chair the department of
medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. St.
Luke’s-Roosevelt is right around my corner (as now and again
I’m reminded when a siren’s urgent wail inflicts a
jagged wound on the stillness of night), and I had the pleasure of
running into Mike being led by his visiting granddaughter who,
although new to the ’hood, seemed to know precisely where she
wanted Grandpa to take her. Temporarily residing in the
neighborhood, Mike and his spouse have joined in that ever-popular
New York pursuit: apartment hunting. Mike, I hope you’ve
found something. One of the marquee events in American sports is the Millrose
Games, the thrilling indoor track and field invitational held each
winter at Madison Square Garden. February 1 marked the 95th running
of the games. And for close to the past 40 years, with lots of gaps
in between, Allan Chernoff, Michael Hertzberg and
Robert Hersh have been gathering to celebrate their own
mini-class reunion and enjoy the exceptional achievements of
athletes such as Eamonn Coghlan and Marcus O’Sullivan in the
Wanamaker Mile. Allan informs me that Bob’s role has been a
good deal more than that of ardent spectator, and his presence at
the games has been exceedingly consistent. Recognized and respected
worldwide for his expertise in the sport of track and field, as an
official at world championships, consultant to the U.S. Olympic
Committee, television commentator, announcer at the track and field
venue at the Atlanta Olympic Games, Bob has been the track
announcer for the Millrose Games for the last 30-some odd
years. Allan is an executive with a large resort, real estate and
timeshare company in Orlando. Mike, who recently retired from the
NYNEX legal department, continues to provide legal consulting
services to NYNEX when he isn’t traveling the globe. Mike,
have you been to see the Great Apes in Uganda? The Sunshine State also brings news from William
Tanenbaum. Bill found paradise 30 years ago in the brilliant
sun and sparkling beaches of Boca Raton; or, perhaps, if the
coordinates of paradise are not geographical, if paradise in fact
is a condition of the spirit and soul, Bill will celebrate the 39th
anniversary of his discovery of paradise on the day in July when he
and Reina wed. The Columbia connection in the Tanenbaum family continues
through Bill and Reina’s two daughters, Ruth and Betty. Ruth,
Harvard ’92, Columbia M.A. ’95, and her husband, Rob
Friedman, live in Manhattan. Betty ’96 and Jewish Theological
Seminary M.A. ’98, and her husband, Michael Baron, moved to
Boca Raton last June. While those around him succumb to the lure of retirement, Bill
finds contentment in his real estate investment business, the
seasonal nature of which affords opportunities to spend extended
time during the summers in the Colorado Rockies or in France and
Italy. This past summer, Bill and Reina spent five weeks in
Vail. Bill’s enduring commitment to alma mater finds expression
in chairing the Palm Beach area Columbia Alumni Representative
Committee, interviewing candidates for admission to the College and
Engineering School. Bill mentions with pride that 124 interviews, a
record for his committee, were arranged during the recently
concluded interviewing period of November 2001–February 2002.
He looks forward to hearing from classmates visiting South
Florida. As always, I wish you all well and look forward to news from
you.
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