CLASS NOTES
Stuart M. Berkman
24 Mooregate Square
Atlanta, Ga. 30327
overseas@mindspring.com
Adding to our undoubtedly accurate perception that an
inordinate number of our classmates have joined us in the Peach
State, we heard recently from Steven Leichter, who writes,
“Don’t look now, but I am southwest of you, down in the
wilds of Cataula, Ga.! Actually, I live where Hamilton, Cataula,
Waverly Hall, and Ellerslie all meet. After years in Kentucky and
Virginia, I found my way to life as a country gentleman on a small
estate northeast of Columbus. I have a large endocrine practice in
the city of Columbus. I am also active as the business editor of
Clinical Diabetes, a member of the board of the regional
American Diabetes Association, and a professor of medicine at
Mercer University in Macon, Ga. I am married, have five children,
one grandchild, and three dogs. I never could have conceived that
my life would lead me to reside in the rural Deep South. But it has
been a satisfying journey, filled with many accomplishments in
diabetes, which has become the professional focus of my
life.” His e-mail address is Sugardoc6@aol.com.
We
noted with interest in reading A Global Perspective, the
President’s report for 1998-99, that Ira Katznelson
chairs the new European Task Force at Columbia. The Ruggles
Professor of Political Science and History is charged with
“considering how Columbia can best organize to foster
European studies in the coming decades, retaining the excellence
already achieved and positioning the University to realize new
opportunities.”
Steve Weinstein of Corona del Mar, Calif. was proud to
attend the graduation of his son Josh ’00, a four-year
varsity soccer player. “Couldn’t get him interested in
fencing in sunny California,” Steve comments.
“I am a counselor in a New York state prison for
women,” writes David Stern, who lives in Brooklyn N.Y.
“My wife Robin is photo editor at Abbeville Press. Our son,
Jonathan, is 8, a student at PS 321 in Park Slope, active in Little
League and the 78th Precinct basketball.” David sends a
special greeting to his “old tablemates from the Caravan
Restaurant and, of course, Tom’s.”
Congratulations go to Lydia Roach, who was admitted
early-decision to the College class of ’04. Her father,
Bill Roach, is still with the Chicago-based law firm of
Gardner, Carton & Douglas. “Just completed my second and
last term on the firm’s management committee and have
accepted the position of chairman of its national health law
practice. Some say this evidences a need for mental health
treatment.” Bill reports that his wife, Deborah, Barnard
’66, remains busy and happy as a graphic designer. Catch up
with Bill at wroach@gcd.com.
Bruce Trinkley is taking a year-long sabbatical to write
an opera based on the journals of Lewis and Clark. He has
residencies at artist colonies in California and Scotland to
compose the work. Bruce, who lives in State College, Pa., has been
teaching and directing the Penn State Glee Club since
1970.
From
Bryn Mawr, Pa., we received the following news from Rick
Davis:
“After graduation I stayed on at Columbia and received a
doctorate in anthropology in 1974. I am a prehistoric archaeologist
and have focused on the Paleolithic period primarily. I have dug
extensively in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Tajikistan and central
Siberia, and for the last four years I’ve been working in the
Eastern Aleutian Islands. For over 20 years I have been teaching at
Bryn Mawr College, where I am a professor of anthropology. My wife,
Rita, and I have four children, two already through college (Yale
and Penn). The big news is that our third child, Alex, has been
accepted early decision to Columbia College class of 2004. He saw
the light. Go Lions!! So I hope to be on Morningside more often and
keep in touch with my old friends, Tom Kappner, Ken
Ascher, and Roger Sanjek, all ’66 grads living on
the Upper West Side.” Reach Rick at rdavis@brynmawr.edu.
John Burrows informs us that most of the sales of The
Perfect Storm CD, about which we reported recently in this
column, are from the website theperfectstorm.net, which
has three songs to download free. “I am beginning my fourth
year playing with my band at John Stone’s Tavern in Ashland,
Mass. The tavern is listed in the National Historic Haunted
Register. On a more academic note, my daughter, Amanda, is
entering Dartmouth in the fall and is ranked as one of the top five
girls in golf in Massachusetts. She captained her otherwise
all-boys golf team in high school, leading them to the state
championship tourney, and competing against 84 boys, recorded the
first hole-in-one in the Massachusetts tournament’s
history.” John’s e-mail address has now changed to
pks4000@mediaone.net.
It
was certainly disconcerting to see in the report of the 47th Annual
College Fund that the donations from the Class of 1966 were the
lowest of any class in two entire decades, the 1950s and 1960s. Our
total was even less than the average for the classes of the 1970s,
who attended Columbia during times far less spirited than ours. The
ignominy of it all! What do you suppose we can do about this,
fellows?
The
usual reminder: Please include your e-mail address when submitting
your news.
Kenneth L. Haydock
817 East Glendale Avenue #3
Shorewood, Wis. 53211
klhlion@execpc.com
News
of members of The Cleverest Class in the World (ours) reaches us
from a number of widely dispersed fronts. From Washington, D.C.,
Carlton Carl quotes Harvard Law Dean Roscoe Pound as having
written, “The fight over jury rights was, in reality, the
fight for American independence.” Carlton adds, “The
Seventh Amendment rivals or exceeds the First Amendment in my
Pantheon. Then there’s the much-maligned Fifth. Give us back
a discussion of American basics. I am privileged to defend these
rights and get paid for it.” In an even more poetic vein,
John Elsberg, across the Potomac in Arlington, Va., reports
that New Hope International has just published Sailor, a
collection of poems he wrote about his relationship with his
“enigmatic father.”
The New York Times covered Joel Hoffman’s
ambitious real estate activities in Ellenville, N.Y., purchasing
and upgrading the 800-acre Nevele Grande Resort in the Catskills, a
project due for completion next March. David Schiff, a music
professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore. and frequent
contributor to The New York Times and leading magazines, has
received an award from ASCAP for his talents as a composer, for the
eighth year running! David is also an alumnus of Cambridge, the
Manhattan School of Music and Julliard.
The
Robert Costa family crossed Manhattan’s Central Park
recently, for more than an idle stroll. After 35 years on the West
Side, Bob is now an East Sider. Bob is a senior officer of the
Chase Manhattan Bank. And after a four-year, five-month job search,
your class correspondent is more than casually pleased to report
his emergence from the ranks of the unemployed as counsel on the
legal staff of newly created CNH Global, N.V., in Racine, Wis. A
descendant of the threshing machine founded near there in 1842 by
Jerome Increase Case, the successor Fortune 500 company is the
world’s third-largest producer of construction equipment and
leading producer of tractors and other farm equipment. Ken will
primarily support CNH Capital Corporation, the commercial lending
arm.
What
keeps this column filled with information not about Kent
Hall is your letters and e-mail. Dick Jupa recognizes
the value of this. You can, too!
Ken Tomecki, M.D.
2983 Brighton Road
Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120
The
Yankees and Mets will see October daylight. The Indians
won’t.
Re:
News and such, I got (e)mail...
Bob Yuhas, friend and roustabout from the past, sent
greetings to “long lost friends” (Bender, Stras, The
Greek, Ooze, et al — “All the Jocks at AXP”).
Still strategically based in Los Angeles, where he’s a TV
producer and programmer, he recently completed a documentary for
the Travel Channel entitled Gasherbrum: Ascent on G2. The
assignment necessitated a trek of 19,500 feet up the Karakorum
mountain range in Pakistan, a task that was “a little more
difficult than climbing the flagpole in front of Low
Library.” In a different vein, he proudly claimed status as a
full-fledged “grandfather Lion,” courtesy of his
daughter, Tonya (“who was born when I was at
Columbia”). Thanks Bob, for keeping in touch. Re: your
question, “Ever hear from Don Hubert?” No, but
he and all the other AXP rascals are always welcome to write or
call.
From
the home office... I learned that Tom Barran, associate
professor of Russian at Brooklyn College (CUNY), wrote a book
entitled Russia Reads Rousseau, 1762-1825, soon to be
published by Northwestern University Press, which I’ll gladly
review if asked. Another book, on Tolstoy, is near completion. Ever
prolific, he “read a paper” at the International
Conference of Scholars, held last year at Yasnaya Polyana,
Tolstoy’s home estate. Xopo(sho). Tom lives in Park Slope
(Brooklyn) with his wife, Barbara, and two dogs, and travels
“whenever I can write it off.”
Bill Hudgins, based in Gallatin, Tenn., is the newly
elected vice president of the Truck Writers of North America
(TWNA), an association of journalists and PR types in the trucking
industry.
That’s all folks. Hope to hear from somebody(ies),
anybody before the leaves fall in Ohio, especially anyone whose
last name begins with G or H. Got that? In the interim, support the
College Fund.
Michael Oberman Kramer Levin Naftalis &
Frankel
919 Third Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
moberman@kramerlevin.com
Sometimes a classmate’s own good news is good news for
all of us. Such is surely the case with the accompanying item on
Nick Garaufis being named a United States District Court
Judge for the Eastern District of New York. We wish Nick well as he
begins what is certain to be a distinguished judicial
career.
Jonathan Souweine has been re-elected to a second term
on the Connecticut River Watershed Council, a non-profit
organization that advocates for New England’s largest river
throughout the four-state basin. While he continues to practice law
in Northampton, Mass. and visit his son, Isaac ’01, whenever
possible (Isaac is currently on leave and working at a dot.com
start-up formed by some of his Columbia buddies), he finds his
“environmental advocacy work a very satisfying component of
my life work.”
Jeffrey Schwartz writes that “1999 was a great
year.” His new book, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and
the Origin of Species, has been “receiving a lot of
attention in reviews and is shaking up conventional Darwinism with
a new theory of how evolution works.” His wife, Lynn Emanuel,
is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and her third book
of poetry, Then Suddenly —, has been positively
received.
Michael Brown (who notes that our class had two
classmates with the same name, and the other one was valedictorian)
reports that his daughter, Corita Brown (born December 1972), is
now getting a master’s degree from Teachers College. His
other daughter, Nessa (born December 1999), “smiles a lot and
I hope will keep me young.” Michael now directs the Jewish
Organizing Initiative in Boston, a year-long training program in
community organizing and Jewish tradition for post-college young
adults interested in social and economic justice as a vocation. Now
in its second year, the program has been very fulfilling for
Michael by giving him the chance to work with young people who are
“exploring their faith, making a difference in the world, and
generally keeping hope alive.” You can learn more about the
group or contact him at Jewishorganizing.org or
Mbrown7387@aol.com.
Mark Drucker has the most curious item to share. His
friend, Bob Randisi, has published the book, Blood on the
Arch, the latest entry in a police procedural series in which
there is a “Mark Drucker” character. This book
apparently opens with the discovery of Mark Drucker’s body
with its head bashed in, and the book is the search for his killer.
Mark seems pleased by this, although he does point out that the
fictional “Mark Drucker” and the real life Mark Drucker
are not one and the same. This is, of course, proven by the fact
that he e-mailed me and by the fact Mark attended the book
publishing party.
Take
a moment to e-mail me now, so that your news can go quickly from
your computer to my computer and then to CCT’s
computer. This from a class columnist who is old enough to remember
the time when we had to use the phone to get classmates’
news.
Peter N. Stevens
180 Riverside Drive Apt. 9A
New York, N.Y. 10024
peter.stevens@bms.com
My
schedule has been crazy the past few weeks and has prevented a full
report on our 30th reunion. A complete summary on our class
activities and participants will follow in the next column. In a
nutshell, the reunion was very successful. Our class exceeded the
goal for our class gift. The programs that our class committee put
together were stimulating. We also had lots of fun.
As
usual, I’ll be spending my Saturday afternoons at Baker Field
on the North 35 yard line both rooting and occasionally offering
Coach Tellier advice along with our other class faithful: Bernie
Josefsberg, Dennis Graham, Bill Poppe, Phil Russotti and
Terry Sweeney. We welcome new additions.
To
become eligible for the first annual Class of ’70 Morningside
Heights award, please put the following Broadway stores in the
chronological order in which they went out of business: (1) Henry
Verby Photography; (2) Tad’s Steakhouse; (3) Takome 2; (4)
Drive Liquor Store; and (5) Duke’s. More importantly, please
let me know what’s been happening in your lives so I can
report this news to the rest of our class.
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