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CLASS NOTES
Jim Shaw Aaron Albert: “After my career in industrial computer systems started to sputter, I enrolled as a law student in Rutgers-Newark’s evening JD program, so I’m a 1L-evening hoping to graduate in May ’05. Better late than never. My wife, Jill Bellinson, a psychologist, has finished her book Children’s Use of Board Games in Psychotherapy, published by Jason Aronson. The March 14 issue of the Psychology Book Club features it, and the book publication date is about the same as this issue of CCT. My son finished his junior year of high school and is shopping for colleges, and my daughter finished eighth grade and is shopping for high schools. We have extra space in our brownstone on West 71st that we use as a B&B — we’ve seen a few visiting alums: offbroadwayny@yahoo.com.” Alan Kuntze: “After celebrating the millennium by taking 2000 off to travel, study Spanish and do some volunteer work in Guatemala and Mexico, I returned to my work and 20-year association with the Swinomish Indian Tribe of LaConner, Wash. The Tribal Council thanked me for returning (or was it a punishment?) by appointing me to the Tribal Bar. Hard for this ‘paleface’ from New York to believe that I am winding up my legal career as a sitting Tribal Court Judge. My wife, Libby, and I live and play among the shores of Padilla Bay in Puget Sound about 75 miles north of Seattle. We planned a two-week trek to Colorado for June and hoped to stop and visit Eileen and David Canzonetti in Salt Lake City now that the Olympics are history.” Allen Fagin: “Having started our family right after graduation, Judy and I are reaping the rewards of early grandparenthood ... four grandchildren so far (Joshua, Alissa, Michael and Nachma) and another due this month. I practice employment law on behalf of management at Proskauer Rose in New York and am co-chair of Proskauer’s 170-lawyer labor and employment law department.” Rich Milich: “I have been at the University of Kentucky for 17 years, where I am a professor and associate chair in the Psychology Department. I never anticipated staying so long in this part of the country, but as my old Kentucky home and I get older, the idea of picking up and moving seems less desirable. I fear the next move I make will be to a retirement home. One of the main reasons for staying so long down here is the high caliber of the psychology department, which is recognized as a program of excellence in the university. Although the national ranking of the department may not be quite as high as that of the basketball team, we do a better job of avoiding scandals and sanctions.” Jack Lemonik: “We are happy to announce the birth of our granddaughter, Hannah Aliza (Class of 2024?) to our daughter, Dina ’02L, and her husband, Natan Hameman, on April 4.” Juris Kaza: “Just thought I would resurface after 31 years. I live in Latvia and work as a business journalist for a Latvian-language business daily. What was once a curious aside about my name and where my parents come from has turned into my life. I went to Boston University Law School after Columbia, then took a job with Radio Free Europe in Munich in 1976; I thought I would ride out the recession for a year or two. I ended up living in Europe — Germany, then Sweden (from 1982) and now Latvia (since 1995). I have been a journalist, Eurobum and sometime film producer. Married twice, three sons, 16, 15, and 6. The older two guys live with their sorta stepfather in Sweden. Their mother, with whom I split in ’91, died in ’99; she had severe MS. I remarried in ’93 to a Latvian filmmaker, Una Celma. I produced — signed the payments — her award-winning documentary, Egg Lady, and we finished a feature film that is being edited. Otherwise, I have freelanced the gamut: IHT, the Independent, Guardian, the Economist, ABC Radio, Christian Science Monitor (broke the story of the Latvian freedom march in ’87); some TV: ITN, BBC, Swedish TV; magazines. Been around here and there, Southeast Asia, Japan, South America (my wife’s film festival). It has been fun, but not quite a career.”
Paul S. Appelbaum Jonathan Crary ’75, who entered with our class, received the 2001 Lionel Trilling Award for his book Suspensions of Perception (MIT Press, 2000). The prize is given by the Academic Awards Committee of the Columbia College Student Council. Jonathan, who received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1987, is a professor in Columbia’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. More professorial accomplishments come from John Dawson, whose research labs at the University of South Carolina recently moved into the new, $34 million Graduate Science Research Center. John gave major addresses last summer at scientific conferences in Italy, the Czech Republic and France, and has been named to a five-year term on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He also has been elected chair of 2005 Metal Ions in Biology Gordon Research Conference to be held in Oxnard, Calif. Lots of news from Steve Jenning, who has lived in D.C. for the past 16 years. After working in the House and Senate, he and his partners opened a “health issues government affairs consulting business.” His wife, Linda, writes and edits for People, and his older son, David, just graduated from Muhlenberg College and accepted a commission in the Marines. His younger son, Sam, will be a first-year student next year at SEAS, “and has a mysterious, inexplicable preference for my freshman dorm, Carman.” Well, teenagers are hard to figure out, but they usually get over it. Steve works on his tennis game with partner Mike Bromberg ’59 and John Donelan ’73. Who was that clever College junior quoted in the cover story on the Columbia Political Union in CCT’s last issue (May 2002)? Sure enough, it was my son, Yoni ’03, one of the CPU’s founders, who just completed his year as CPU general manager and now is the chair of the Student Governing Board. As the deadline for this issue comes before our 30th reunion, stay tuned for news from that get-together in upcoming issues.
Barry Etra Michael Shapiro, that quintuple-hyphenate (conductor-composer-pianist-author-lecturer) about whom you’ve heard so much, is busy with the Chappaqua (N.Y.) Orchestra; April brought its annual Pops Concert featuring the music of the great Hollywood composers. Michael’s latest commission is a film score for the classic film Frankenstein, which premieres in October. Alan Johnson sends news of the past 29 years: three years at Georgetown Law, which led smoothly into a country/rock music career with the North Star Band. This lasted “seven years, about 250,000 miles, two albums, and several publishing forays to Nashville.” He then formed a political satire act with a friend, The Pheremones (reputedly not a predecessor of the Ramones), had a minor hit song in ’85 entitled “Yuppiedrone,” followed by an album of the same name, as well as three others in ’88, ’89 and ’9l. Alan tells of their loyal following all over the U.S.; they were billed as “pop-relevant cabaret” and performed for nearly 10 years. Along the way, he accumulated a wife and two kids, and at 40 took a long look at life on the road, went to West Palm Beach and became an assistant state attorney. Not such a stretch. As Alan puts it, “A jury trial is sorta like a nightclub performance, only the crowd is smaller and there’s a higher brand of heckler.” He enjoys trying to do some good in the world, and has been at it for 10 years. “Go figure,” he concludes. Robert Levine is the rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Sholom, the largest synagogue on the Upper West Side. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1977, is active in community affairs and has been a media presence. In 1997, he was named Rabbi of the Year by the New York Board of Rabbis and recently was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union for 25 years of distinguished service. He is married to Gina Stahl Levine, and they are the proud parents of Judah, Ezra and Maya. Many thanks to Fred Schneider, who sent in tidbits on several classmates that just missed the last CCT. Fred, who worked across the street from the WTC, watched the scene unfold firsthand on 9/11. He left immediately, but still had several hours of disquiet before he located his daughter, Lauren, who was in the same area at Stuyvesant High School. Fred reports: Lou Venech, chief spokesperson for the Port Authority, whose executive offices were in the WTC, got out of the South Tower uneventfully, unlike his boss, who perished in the command bunker in Tower 7. Lou’s best buddy, John Brecher, has gained renown as an oenophile; he and his wife, Dorothy Gaiter, write a weekly column in The Wall Street Journal on wine and have a best-selling book based on the column. They are staunch Upper West Siders, and their two daughters attend Trinity School, where Larry Momo is the college guidance officer. Larry and his wife, Jane ’73 Barnard, also are UWSs, with a son at Emory and another in high school. To complete this circle, Eric Holder, as outgoing U.S. Deputy Attorney General, gave the commencement address at Stuyvesant (his alma mater, but not THE Alma Mater!) in June 2001. Eric has joined the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling as a partner. It’s his first time in private practice since graduation. Our 30th will soon be here — hope you will be there. Keystroke ’em if you got ’em.
Fred Bremer With the headlines filled daily with all the problems of the world, it would be easy to see only the dark side. However, I see something wonderful coming out of all of this conflict: passion for the issues of the day. Perhaps it is not up to our standards from the ’70s (after all, no foundation garments are being burned!), but at least there seems, once again, to be a pulse in the citizen body of this country. Pro- or anti- any cause beats the debate over whether a given BMW is better than a certain Mercedes. One classmate mentioned in my last column, Tom Sawicki, is involved in this retroactivism as deputy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Jerusalem. When he recently passed through New York, we caught up on old times and his views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and he told me of one of the finalists in the “newest member of the Class of ’74 family” competition: Leon Wieseltier, longtime literary editor of The New Republic in Washington, D.C., has become a father for the first time. (Is this another example of renewed passion?) In keeping with my activist theme, I received the following strident email from Zev Stern: “My 19-year-old-son, Nehemia Akiva, is serving in the Israel Defense Forces bringing death and dark doom to Arab terrorists. My daughter, Sarah Aliza, is 16, a junior at Shulamith High School in Brooklyn and writes for Jewish Week.” News of a “domestic activist” was passed on by CCT class notes correspondent Amy Perkel ’89. She reports that Bill Meehan is one busy fellow in San Francisco (and beyond). While Bill’s job has him working as chairman of the West Coast practice of McKinsey & Co., he also is chairman of the United Way in the Bay Area and sits on its board as well as that of the San Francisco Symphony. In between, he manages to be a lecturer in strategic management at the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. If activism can be loosely defined as “having an impact on the world around you,” many in the class would say the late Professor Wallace Gray is one of the greatest Columbia activists. Chris Kulkosky sent in this eulogy: “I remember him in front of the class pouring out insight, wisdom and wealth of knowledge about literature and life. He was a guide through the darkness of abstruse texts, a Virgil of College Walk. [He was] my greatest teacher and a true friend who taught me how to read poetry aloud and how to hear poetry and to perceive and live in the works of modern playwrights, whom he knew personally. I will miss his pure eloquence and sterling intellect, but he lives on in the better lives of his devoted students.” A quarter of a century ago, we were activists. Many in the class are still attempting to affect the world around them. Let’s keep the passion alive!
Randy Nichols Donald J. Kurth recently was sworn in as
president-elect Just after Dean’s Day, I got a call from Bob Schneider, who keeps me well informed on his activities and those of his family and many classmates. (Without Bob’s assistance, our Class Notes would be much shorter each month. I really should put his name at the top in addition to mine!) Bob told me that there were nine members of the Class at Dean’s Day, a pretty good turnout. During conversations with classmates, someone asked about Michael J. Liccione ’80. The last anyone knew, Mike had become an instructor in religion and philosophy at Guilford College in North Carolina. Mike, if you read this, please check in! I found Mike’s career path interesting. I know that Terry Mulry, Sig Gross and I were religion majors, but I don’t recall that Mike was. A convert, perhaps? Samuel Shafner, a partner at Burns & Levinson LLP, has been appointed a member of the steering committee of the American Friends of the Israel National Museum of Science. Sam is admitted to the Massachusetts and New York bars. He is an active member of the Boston chapter of the American Arbitration Association and has served on its Roster Review Committee. Now that Columbia College Today is published six times a year, we need to churn out Class Notes every two months. So if I don’t hear from you, some of you will hear from me as I try to dig up tidbits.
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