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CLASS NOTES
Jim Shaw You may have noticed an e-mail address at the top of this
column. Use it. In addition to the few letters I get, I e-mailed
several classmates requesting news for this issue and received good
and prompt responses. Michael Straus: “When I last updated you, I think
it was sometime after returning from The Hague, where I was legal
adviser to the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. But that’s a while
ago, and since then the most notable event was my marriage in 1992
to Philippa Bainbridge, an Alabama native who was practicing law in
New York when we met. In 1995, we moved to Alabama, where our first
child was born that September. She also is named Philippa; our
second child, Jacob Marcus, was born in February 1998. Philippa and
I had formed our own law firm while in New York; she
withdrew/retired when Marc was born, and the firm has since been
reconstituted as Straus & Boies, LLP, with offices in Alabama,
Virginia and California. I would logically have thought that I was
the only class member in Alabama, but a couple of months ago
— thanks to a tip from Duncan Darrow’s brother
Peter ’72 — I found that Jay Waller lives
virtually around the corner from us. We’ve gotten together
since then and picked right up where we left off; it’s only
been 30 years, after all. Temporary visitors from ’71 to
[Birmingham] Alabama also are welcome, of course.” Phil Nord: “I teach history at Princeton. I just
stepped down as department chair after two terms of service. I have
a wife, Deborah ’71 Barnard, and two children Joseph (20) and
David (13). Deborah teaches in the English department here. It took
us a long time to find jobs together, but after a decade-plus of
searching and commuting, we got lucky. Joseph’s a sophomore
at Columbia and is a member of the men’s fencing team which
just won the Ivy title. Our class turned out a number of
historians, Steve Ross, Roy Rosenzweig and myself
among them. I’m in regular touch with Rob Mayer (who
teaches sociology at the University of Utah Salt Lake City), and
through him, I hear news of several other classmates: Lloyd
Emanuel, John Jaeger, Larry Masket and Larry
Teitelbaum. I’m not a reunion attender by nature, but I
did turn out for last year’s 35th, a happy experience that
made me wonder why I hadn’t done this before.” Mark Schickman: “My son, Joshua, entered with the
Class of 2005 and is singing with PIZMON, a Columbia a capella
group. I head the employment/labor group at Cooper While &
Cooper, a San Francisco law firm. In my Jewish communal work, I am
president of the Holocaust Center of Northern California and chair
the Israel Center of the Bay Area. My bar activities are president
of the California Association of Local Bars, the California
Judicial Nominee Evaluation Commission and the ABA’s
Coalition for Justice.” Lew Preschel: “I am an orthopedic surgeon
practicing in Central New Jersey. I coach my younger daughter,
Jill, who plays on a highly competitive girls traveling soccer
team. And I returned to interviewing for Columbia College. Maybe in
the near future my daughter will get to play soccer for the
College. My older daughter is a junior/senior at NYU and a
journalism major.” Arthur C. Helton, director, Peace and Conflict Studies,
and senior fellow for Refugee Studies and Preventive Action at the
Council on Foreign Relations, received the annual Award for
Distinction in International Law and Affairs presented by the New
York State Bar Association. He also teaches a course on refugee law
and policy at the Law School, and his book, The Price of
Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New
Century, will be published this year by Oxford University Press
and the Council. Lashon Booker: “I went directly to graduate school
at the University of Michigan after I left Columbia. I started in
the math department at Michigan. My academic interests changed a
bit, and eventually I earned a Ph.D. in computer science. During
that time, I also earned a third-degree black belt in aikido. My
wife, Doreen, and I were married just about 20 years ago, and
we’ve been living in Northern Virginia since then. We have
two children, Maria (14) and Matt (10). I’m a computer
scientist at the MITRE Corp., where I do applied research in
artificial intelligence for a variety of government
sponsors.” Ed King: “I am enjoying my job with the Air Force
as an occupational physician.” Kenny Tamarkin: “I recently co-authored two books,
Contemporary’s GED Social Studies and Contemporary’s
GED Social Studies Exercise Book.” Jack Lemonik: “I have unfortunately not yet
realized my lifelong ambition to open a water ski school, but
instead I have acquired three advanced degrees and held a
succession of high-powered information technology positions in
government, insurance, publishing and banking. I am chief technical
officer of FxAll, an online foreign exchange trading startup backed
by a consortium of 13 major banks. My wife, Celia (’74
Library), a noted calligrapher (www.kosherketubahs.com), and I
do the suburban thing in Great Neck, N.Y., and continue to
experience Columbia vicariously through our children: Dina
’02L, Zack ’00 (senior software developer with
Multex.com), Micah ’03E (managing director of Datalyte.com),
Josef ’06E and Yonah (will apply in two
years).”
Paul S. Appelbaum Marty Edel writes that he’s been practicing law in
NYC for lo these many years. Having started at Cravath, Swain &
Moore, he moved in 1978 to Miller & Wrubel, a litigation
boutique. Although focused on commercial litigation, Marty has an
interest in sports and teaches sports law at Brooklyn Law School.
He and his wife, Pam, have two children, Charlie, a 2001 Yale grad
who teaches in the NYC public schools, and Eliza, a first-year
student at Virginia. Larry Gans, who soon will have lived longer in St. Louis
than anywhere else, spent 11 years on the ophthalmology faculty of
Washington University. During those years, he traveled the world
teaching eye surgery with Project Orbis. He’s now in private
practice in corneal and external ocular diseases and refractive
surgery, having co-founded SureVision Eye Centers-Midwest, which
has seven offices in the St. Louis area. He and his wife, Carol,
have two sons, ages 9 and 5. Though he didn’t do much singing
at Columbia, he’s now a member of Expanded Sound, a
“barbershop comedy quartet” that performs around the
country and has been seen on TV and in movies. Check it out at
www.expandedsound.com. After 25 years of imitating the Maytag repairman, waiting for
someone to call or write with news for the column, I’m now
going on the offensive. The Alumni Office has been good enough to
supply me with the e-mail addresses of our class, so consider
yourself forewarned. If I don’t hear from you, I’m
coming after you. Of course, if you’d rather not wait, come
say hi at our 30th Reunion Weekend, May 30–June 2. A
committee is at work planning programs for our class, and it will
be fun to be on campus again. See you there.
Barry Etra Mark Lehman is executive vice-president and general counsel of Bear Stearns — he’s been with them for 22 years. Mark recently joined the Board of Visitors and has a son in the Class of ’05. He would love to hear more from classmates (where are you, Will Schmidt?) in and out of CCT. As would I. Write if your head works, as they say.
Fred Bremer A growing veneer of normalcy has started to take hold in New
York City as the threat of another terrorist attack is pushed
deeper into our collective psyches. Turning a blind eye to an
ever-present possibility (dare I say probability?) seems more
psychologically comfortable than dealing with the constant assault
on our feeling of safety. (But still ... no, it is better not to
think about it too much.) The following column is devoted to how
our classmates’ lives have been influenced by the various
spheres of crisis in our troubled world. While most businesses slowed down after the attack, some became
busier. Writes New York City and Long Island-based estate planning
lawyer Asher Miller: “Unfortunately, every disaster
creates opportunity. The estate planning business is definitely on
an upswing, in part because of 9/11 but also because younger people
are doing estate planning as well as because of the major changes
in the tax laws in 2001. So, I’m pretty busy.” If you
could benefit from Asher’s help, let me know, and I’ll
put you in contact with him. Another classmate whose livelihood has been affected by a
different type of crisis is David Melnick. After 12 years of
research and teaching about viral infection (HIV), most recently at
a hospital in Connecticut, David moved to Wilmington, Del., and
became head of clinical research at AstraZeneca (a European drug
giant). David writes, “The switch to bacterial drug
resistance has been a refreshing challenge.” David’s
daughter, Katie, is a junior at Columbia. His son, James, is 15 and
“seems quite happy at Wilmington Friends (with an able assist
from Steve DeCherney, who helped to arrange his admission).
(Side note: Isn’t it amazing that we have become old enough
to have significant influence in our communities?) Tom Sawicki has surfaced after at least a decade. In an
e-mail from Jerusalem, Tom writes of his efforts in yet another
area of crisis. “After many years with the Jerusalem
Report magazine, which I helped found, I have joined the AIPAC
(a D.C.-based pro-Israel lobby) as deputy head. Our two sons
(Amitai, 16, and Ariel, 13) are doing great at their
endeavors.” Tom plans to pass through New York soon, so I
should be able to report more details later. The above indicates how the lives of classmates are influenced
by the events of the moment. But let’s turn back the clock a
quarter century and imagine the challenges faced by classmate
David Black during the “lazy, crazy and, for many,
hazy” days of our undergraduate years. David e-mailed me from
Raleigh, N.C.: “I submit what I suspect is a trump in your
quest to find the earliest new member of the ‘Class of
’74 family.’ My son, Chris, was born in January of our
freshman year. If, for some technical reason, that doesn’t
count, his brother, Bryan, was born in ’76, as I was
finishing up a master’s in architecture. I will stay out of
the competition for first grandchild! Going to school, working,
running track and being a husband and a father — all at the
same time — gave me a unique perspective on the Columbia
experience.” David, who has been practicing architecture in Raleigh for the
past two decades, ends his e-mail with an interesting comment:
“Those Columbia days sometimes seem like something that
happened a long time ago to someone else. But I retain an affection
for alma mater.” You needn’t have solved a crisis, or even have spawned the
earliest child, to be in this column. Just drop me a note or e-mail
and let your classmates know how and what you are doing.
Randy Nichols Glenn Bacal has been included in Best Lawyers in America.
Glenn is an intellectual property lawyer working in Phoenix, and
his articles regularly appear on numerous Web sites, including that
of the American Law Institute-American Bar Association. He lives in
Scottsdale with his wife and two children. Randolph Scott McLaughlin gave the keynote address at the
35th annual Freedom Funds Awards banquet of the NAACP’s New
Rochelle branch. Last summer, he received the NAACP’s William
Robert Ming Advocacy Award at the association’s annual
convention in New Orleans. Randy Nichols recently was honored by his employer,
Systems & Computer Technology, which awarded him an Emerald
Award for Outstanding Service. The Emerald Award is SCT’s
premier employee recognition, and is awarded based upon nominations
from other staff members. Randy is a member of a team that develops
and deploys Internet applications for connected learning in higher
education. Robert A. Sclafani wrote: “I was being nostalgic
about the old eighth floor Hartley gang of 1973–74. I had
such a great time that year. I tried to remember some of them
(below) and have indicated where I think they lived on the floor
(all are class of 1975, except where indicated). I hope they
remember and contact you or me to see if I have it right: South
End: Bob Sclafani, Corky Leary, Marcos Delgado
’74, Marc Grossbard, Theo Mamouneas, Leon
Weiseltier ’74, Richard Slovak, Tom Sawicki ’74,
Joel “Freshman” Bennett ’77, and the
Pollack Brothers (Jeff and Steve). Middle
section: Peter “Dad” Lane ’73 (head resident),
Fred Bremer ’74, Joe Lipari and Mike Willson.
North end: Lou “The Greek”
Dalaveris.” OK, guys, how good is Bob’s memory?
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