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CLASS NOTES
Alan N. Miller These CCT communications are getting more frequent (6x per year now) and you outgoing, independent, iconoclastic guys are not doing your job of feeding relevant or irrelevant info to yours truly — it's shape-up time. Spoke to Danny (the flesh) Link and Elinor (spelled correctly), who are going strong, and this is a woman I approve of, not that anyone cares. Spoke to Larry (the reliable) Gitten, and he and Vera are into their mutual retirement and enjoying their new housing arrangement. The aforementioned joined myself and Janet for a Columbia basketball game the weekend of February 8. Hopefully, I will have been more of a positive influence than I managed at Homecoming and the Harvard game. But really, the basketball games are great fun. If I can find Steve (the peripatetic shadow) Easton again — we had dinner recently in between his and Elke's various and many trips around the country and world — maybe they will join us. Steve and Elke also are doing quite well. These women really have a difficult job shaping us men up, and when mentioned to my Janet, she concurred. Got an interesting note from our man in Chicago, Phil Shapiro, who, with his sons, represented dear old Columbia at the UCLA–Columbia basketball game in Los Angeles on December 27. To prove he was actually there, not that Phil's veracity has ever been questioned by a living soul, he sent me not only several news clippings concurring that Columbia gave a highly ranked UCLA team a very good game and a real scare, but one of his ticket stubs, which I shall cherish. Phil, one of our reunion committee members and with his wife, Carole, a staunch Columbia supporter, also is teaching part-time managerial finance and project management at the DeVry Institute. I hope his stocks are rising, and maybe we should exchange opinions about the emotional, incomprehensible stock market. Otherwise, all is well in this boat — all except my request for calls at (212) 712-2369 or faxes at (212) 875-0955 to keep me up-to-date is unheeded to a significant degree. Don't get Alan upset! So here's wishing you all health, happiness, wealth, a great retirement, loving children and wonderful, extraordinary grandchildren.
Herman Levy On December 12, 11 of our classmates gathered at the home of Ed Weinstein for a reunion meeting and holiday reception. Attending were Pete Anker, Joe Diamond, Marty Fisher, Steve Fybish, Alvin Kass, Dave Kinne, Bob Klipstein, Ronald Kushner, Bob Lipsyte, Carlos Muñoz and Tony Vlahides. This was by far the largest gathering of our class reunion committee. It indicates the building enthusiasm for our upcoming Reunion Weekend. We discussed our programming efforts and settled on the topic for a panel: Our Second Awkward Age. This will be a discussion of our present and future outlook as many of us enter or contemplate retirement; Bob Lipsyte will lead a panel of '57ers. A group of our Glee Clubbers will entertain us at one of our events; Paul Zola, who couldn't attend the meeting, came up with this suggestion and will be contacting '57 Glee Club members about participating. Most of all, we will celebrate each other, as we did at the December 12 reception. Based on the enthusiasm at the reception and comments from others, we believe that this may turn out to be the largest 45th gathering in Columbia's history — certainly our class's largest. By the time you read this, you should have received information about the reunion and even the official reunion package. A word to the wise — you need to act fast to get the best theater tickets. And because of the expected large turnout, we are rethinking our restaurant locations to accommodate the group. Please get your reservation in early to help us plan. Peter Anker is fully retired and living in Connecticut. Steve Fybish continues to teach first-graders in the NYC public schools as a supplementary resource in the program to reduce the student/teacher ratio. Rabbi Alvin Kass gave the invocation at the January 4 swearing-in ceremony of Ray Kelly as New York's 41st police commissioner. Alvin is the senior chaplain of the NYPD and has known Kelly since his service as NYC's 37th police commissioner. A picture of Alvin behind the commissioner appeared in The New York Times on January 5. Bob Klipstein is about to begin a new phase of his career, heading the estate and trust department at Hertzfield & Rubin. After years of working in midtown, Bob will be located on Wall Street. Best of luck, Bob! George Leibowitz retired at the end of 2001 from his position of CFO of Star Gas Partners, L.P., a NYSE-listed company selling heating oil and propane. He has relocated to Boca Raton, Fla.; he would welcome a call from any classmate visiting the area. He will try to attend our 45th reunion. Mark Stanton ventured into the Big Apple for one of his rare appearances. The occasion was dinner at The Terrace with Sandra and Ed Weinstein. Mark enjoyed brunch with the Weinsteins at their home the following morning. For the second time in six months, Ed and Sandra are grandparents. Hannah Grace Lederman arrived in San Francisco the evening of December 15, her father's birthday. She is the daughter of Ilene S. Weinstein '87 and Marcos Lederman. Tony Vlahides lives in Montclair, N.J., and continues his work in international marketing. Tony decided a few years ago that he did not enjoy working in a large organization. These days, he works out of his home with a partner in Italy. He enjoys being in the NYC area except in winter; many years of living in Puerto Rico apparently thinned his blood.
Barry Dickman Congratulations to Russ Ellis on his election as a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the organization's highest level. Russ is chief engineer at United Technologies in San Jose, Calif. Class stamp expert Chuck Swenson's latest book is An Introduction to Japanese Philatelic Terms. It received awards at JAPEX '01 in Tokyo and from Japanese philatelic publications. Our recent announcement of several retirements prompted Marty Abrams to report on his. He has given up his family practice in Cresskill, N.J., and moved to the Catskills. Marty retains one connection to medicine by performing FAA physicals for all classes of pilots. To visit Marty, just fly in to Wurtsboro airport and cough ... The Class of '58 was well-represented in a recent full-page ad in The New York Times. Sponsored by George Soros's Open Society Institute, the ad was entitled, "Time to speak up for American values: We register our profound disagreement with the attorney general's extraordinary statement challenging the patriotism of those who have raised questions about some of the administration's antiterrorism measures" and was signed by David Rothman and Mort Halperin, among others. Dave has been on the board of the group's New York office for many years, and Mort is now the director of its Washington, D.C., office. Dave was about to leave for Phoenix, where Joel Karliner was being inducted as president of the Association of University Cardiologists; Joel had invited Dave to be a guest speaker. Joel is professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and the associate chief of medicine for research at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dave, who is professor of social medicine at P&S, gave a lecture on a hot topic: "Amazing Forms: The Risks and Benefits of Genetic Enhancements." 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 West 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; by fax at (212) 315-3752; or by e-mail at scott@shukat.com.
Ed Mendrzycki Where are your cards and letters? Send us something. Do it now!
Otherwise, you'll forget, like we do. Says Bennett Miller,
"If I don't talk to Ed every month, I have to ask my wife for his
last name, especially where all the consonants go! Send notes to Ed
at the above address or to me at miller_bennett@yahoo.com, a
new e-mail address. The old e-mail still works but I'm trying to
get everything in one mailbox to minimize the list of things I have
to remember. If you are like me, you can't remember any more
passwords, ID numbers, dial-up numbers, account numbers, the name
of your banker, your broker, your wife's birthday, kids' birthdays,
but you always remember your grandchildrens', right? So, just sit
down now and Jerome Charyn, who has been writing mostly fiction since our days in the College, teaches film theory and the art of crime fiction at the American University of Paris. He has published 35 books, including Hurricane Lady (Warner Books/Mysterious Press, 2001) and Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001). St. Martin's will be publishing Bronx Boy, the third volume of his memoirs, in July. Jerry's memoirs are worth reading. He lives in Paris and New York and can be reached at his home page, www.jeromecharyn.com. [Editor's note: See more on Jerry.] Fred Lorber is alive and well on the West Coast. "I have a management consulting/fundraising business in San Francisco and a home in Stockton (where your asparagus, tomatoes, etc., come from). Before heading west, I worked for Columbia at the medical center for about four years. Joining the swells for black tie dinners at Low was an accomplishment. Occasionally, I see Howie Mencher and Mike Zimmerman, who has had a distinguished academic career in SF. But, my real vocation is teaching spinning (indoor cycling) in SF and the East Bay." Fred would be delighted to hear from old friends and classmates at lobo13428@aol.com. Josh Fierer writes, "I have not been in touch with many of our classmates since Mike Gang died almost 20 years ago. He was a close friend, and I miss him. I see Joel Ruskin at meetings, as we are infectious diseases specialists. I also was in touch with Bob Nozick [before he passed away in January]. Otherwise, not many connections. [My wife and I] moved to La Jolla in 1969 and have been here since. I was hired by UCSD as an assistant professor and now am a full professor and head of the division of infectious diseases in the department of medicine. I have been very busy lately working with local public health officials and the medical society on bioterrorism. This is not something I ever wanted to do, but we are under attack and I want to do what I can. I did spend two years at CDC, so I have some epidemiology training as well as my clinical expertise. For the past 15 years, I have been doing research on a fungal infection that is endemic in the southwestern U.S., coccidioidomycosis. It is one of those nearly-impossible-to-spell, constructed medical words that names a common disease here but one that was exotic on the East Coast. Just another reminder of the difference between East and West. Norma Damashek, '60 Barnard, and I have been married 41 years. We have three grown children; our eldest, Daniel, now lives in NYC on Morningside Heights and is an AIDS doctor at Mt. Sinai. Our middle child, Adam, is a surgeon at Tri-City hospital just north of San Diego. He rowed on the UC Davis crew, and I enjoyed watching them race here on Mission Bay. Not much resemblance to the Harlem River course. Our daughter is the only one who is married, and she is an architect working in Detroit. Norma is a retired city planner and active in the League of Women Voters. I spend most of my time working. I love what I do and do not plan to retire as long as I am well." And Billy Greenburg, another West Coaster, has this to say: "After 17 years in the newspaper business, I launched a small consulting business from my home in San Bernardino, Calif. I do public affairs work and small political campaigns. I interview high school kids for the College and the Engineering School. You haven't lived until you have negotiated the computer network of the undergraduate Admissions Office. My Mary, who has put up with me for a long time, is a Tennessee Vol, whom I met when I was working for the Nashville Tennessean in the late '60s. Our oldest daughter, Miriam, lives just outside of Boston. Her kid sister, Esther, lives in the Santa Cruz, Calif., area. There are two tough grandsons — big and strong, and smart (of course) — who will make great ‘light blue' Lions. I belong to the Columbia Alumni Association of Southern California and attend a number of its activities. Over the years, I have stayed in touch with Linda and Gene Appel; Jay Neugeboren, my old roommate; Larry Marks; and David McNutt, who rowed on the 150 crew with me. He is now the chief health officer for Santa Cruz County, Calif. When we visit our daughter and her family, we visit with Dave and his wife. I don't know what the odds are for something like this, but the Santa Cruz County health officer a few years before Dave was Ira Lubel '57, who was the Columbia crew manager. Ira still lives in the Santa Cruz area. If the state of public health in Santa Cruz County is failing, it's the fault of the Columbia crew. My e-mail address is wcgofna@earthlink.net or wcg16@columbia.edu. All the best for the new year to everyone." Mike Zimmerman writes, "I'm going on early retirement at San Francisco State at the end of the spring semester, which means I'll be teaching half of my usual number of classes for five years. It's a kind of silver handshake. I've been teaching English at State since l968. (Is that possible?) Before that, I taught in the English department at UC Berkeley from 1963–68, with a Fulbright in Japan to liven things up. (I'm still exchanging New Year's cards with Japanese colleagues.) I'm also practicing psychoanalysis. I graduated from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute some years ago, after the institute decided to offer full training to non-MDs. The course work was almost as stimulating as Columbia's; the training analysis and supervised work with patients just as enriching as Chiappe's Shakespeare class. The synergies between teaching literature, especially James Joyce and modern American literature, and doing analytic work, are very enlivening. My second youngest, Noah, was with Lily and me for a week. He flew in from Budapest where he's spending his junior year abroad. (The University of San Francisco has an intriguing program there.) My oldest, Naomi, is here from London, with her husband and 3 1/2-year-old twins. As Lionel Trilling put it, what a mitzvah! Or was it Moses Hadas? Come to think of it, it was Mark Van Doren. Best to you and all the other 59ers in 2002." Gene Appel reports from Oregon that the year ended with the birth of his second grandchild, Jacob Christopher, on December 11. Gene's wife, Linda Knowlton, retired after 21 years as a librarian. Gene retired in August 1999 from Portland's engineering office only to be talked back into part-time work with a construction management firm last February as its vice president of engineering. In between, he volunteers as assistant coach for his local high school football and wrestling coach. The kids constantly want him to get on the mat with them, but Gene insists its not worth risking dislocating his artificial hip or herniated disk . The Appels are looking forward to 2002 when their daughter, Heather, will be married in early March; Linda will try to publish her poetry; and Gene will lose 40 pounds (he has already lost 12 since December — good start!). Lastly, Gene sends out an invitation to all to visit Oregon. "The snow is deep in the mountains, skiing is great, the trails in the woods are green, the oceans are capped in white waves, whales abound and hay stacks stand sturdy. We are truly blessed to be alive and willing to share our good fortune with our friends." Thanks, Gene. We will take you up on it. Pat Mullins reports from his home in Bumpass, Va. (pronounced the same way it's spelled) that he has just finished serving a one-year term as district governor of Rotary in Virginia. The highlight of his year was traveling to South Africa to secure two $25,000 grants from Rotary International to fund a therapeutic riding program for disabled children in Pietersburg, South Africa, and to build a daycare center for 154 disabled children in a South African village. Pat will become national president of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association in November. Prior to moving to Lake Anna, Pat and his wife, Jackie, lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, for 30 years. While in Fairfax, he served three terms as chair of the Fairfax Republican Committee, the largest Republican committee in the United States. He was frequently quoted in The Washington Post, which once referred to him as "The Republican Prince of Darkness" (knowing Pat, he loved it!), The Washington Times and was widely covered by Washington, D.C., TV. Pat works with Markel Insurance, where he designs insurance programs for horse-related associations. He and Jackie have four children and two grandchildren. Pat says if you are ever in Bumpass, give him a call. He is the only Pat Mullins in the Bumpass phone book. So, friends, that's news from the coasts. How 'bout them Midwesterners and Southerners? Where are you?
Robert A. Machleder In a meditation on the Maine woods, Henry David Thoreau wrote: "Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?" Well, for those of us whose souls find no tranquility unless surrounded by caverns of brick, soaring steel columns, shimmering glass towers, the solidity and warmth of concrete under foot, the raging, raucous tempo of cities and the ready availability of an actual bagel, we think we know who we are, we're fairly certain that we know where we are (unless we've gotten off at a wrong stop in a less familiar borough), and Maine is indeed a mystery. But not for David Farmer. David, having made his retirement official as of February 1 as founding director of the Dahesh Museum in Manhattan, is moving with his wife, Pat, to their farmhouse in Maine. David looks forward to a less programmed life and attending to the endless tasks that a 120-year-old Maine farmhouse can demand. The proximity of a grandchild is a potent lure — David and Pat will now be nearer to their grandson in Portland. David will not entirely forsake New York — he hopes to continue several projects for the museum that he started and plans to visit at regular intervals. David, remember that there's always a seat for you (as for all class members who show up) at our first-Thursday lunches at the Columbia Club, and if you crave an actual bagel, e-mail us and we'll arrange for delivery. A lifetime of distinguished service in Jewish communal affairs has brought well-deserved recognition and honor to Stephen Solender. Steve, who was one of the recipients of the College's 2000 John Jay Awards for professional achievement, continues to reap encomiums for his accomplishments and will receive the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York on April 10, and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion on May 9. Steve served as executive vice president of UJA-Federation from 1986–98. He is president-emeritus, having served as the first president of United Jewish Communities of North America, a newly organized umbrella group. The last home game of the football season drew several classmates and family members to Wien Stadium at Baker Field on November 11. We were pleased to see Robert Fischbein, who, with his wife, Brenda, and grandson, Noah, made the trip from New Jersey. Chatted with Norman Hildes-Heim and Arthur Delmhorst, former lightweight crew teammates. Stephen B. Brown was spotted with two youngsters in tow, grandsons, we assume. And Larry Rubinstein in robust voice offered instruction to the coaching staff on strategies for victory and how the team could better be prepared for play; guidance that, alas, went entirely unheeded. Football aside, Larry advises with great pleasure that his daughter, Eve, will wed in September. Eve, a member of the development office of the 92nd Street Y (apparently following in Dad's career footsteps), is engaged to teacher/author Jon Papernick. The subject of engagements warrants comment. The editors of Columbia College Today afford class correspondents a most liberal latitude in the preparation of Class Notes, undoubtedly comfortable in the notion that the lot of us having been immersed as undergraduates in the noblest virtues of Western civilization have been imbued with and are dependably ruled by an impeccable refinement of taste, discretion and unfailing good judgment; a quite reasonable notion as regards the younger classes but questionable for those of us in the afternoon of life whose study of the Core Curriculum by now has receded into a distant past and who, shielded by the immunities of age yet armed with the impious if mistaken belief that we are still young and bold, have emerged, variously, as whimsically irreverent, unpredictably eccentric and determinedly contrarian. Now the editors, to be sure, have imposed a few conventions, and the subject of engagements caused me to consult them. Thus, "try to avoid reporting on engagements," and, "do not include pregnancies in Class Notes." The reason for these admonitions, CCT should not memorialize to our later consternation incipient states that never achieve fruition, a consequence of misfortune in the second case, and sober reconsideration brought on by abject fear in the first. But most lives are littered with promising first steps that end short of achievement, intentions that become sidetracked or fall abandoned. No reason to not report them. I leave to you, dear reader, whether you want to share your unrealized expectations, bold ventures that fizzled and unfulfilled yearnings. As regards the aversion to reporting engagements, I am guided by my interpretation of the rule that it does not apply to our offspring, until and unless the editors inform me to the contrary. As for pregnancies, I will vehemently and defiantly insist on the right to report the pregnancies of classmates. So, if any of you has passed the first trimester, let me know and I'll bend every effort to ensure that it gets into this column. [Editor's note: Any member of the Class of '60 who passes the first trimester merits a feature article as well as a mention in Class Notes.] Be well, best regards, and write often.
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