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CLASS NOTES
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
CLASS NOTES
were from various classes. I waited
around Columbia until they gave
me a Ph.D., so I had friends across
quite a range of classes. If others
experienced a similar lack of class,
it might relate to our low write-in
rate.
“I’ve had a good life. It’s been
quite a ride. A short marriage, and
no kids, but I’ve lived and worked
in Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico
and various U.S. and European
cities. There’s been lots of other
travel, lots of laughs, lots to think
about. At the moment I live in
Brooklyn and teach part-time at
NYU-Poly, formerly Brooklyn
Polytechnic University. It’s all fine
by me.
“I have an attitude, which may
have congealed into permanent
form during my college years, so
I’m curious to find out if other ’66
alumni are comfortable in this ‘attitude.’
(If they are, that also might
relate to our low write-in rate.) The
attitude, in simple vernacular, is
‘nothing matters.’ Variations include
‘it’s all lies’ and ‘so what.’ Naively,
‘nothing matters’ might seem
a negative attitude but actually it’s
a great freedom, not for positive or
negative, but for eliminating that
duality. It makes me laugh, with
the sheer joy of it. Do whatever you
want. I guess, for many of ’66, this
meant family and career. Wonderful.
For others, maybe ... other lives.
Like most people, I was raised a certain
way; it was to try to be cheerful,
helpful, constructive. So, I try to do
that. In fact, I live by a great many
rules, way too many probably. But
they’re just my rules; I wouldn’t
even try to defend them.
“I’m in the physics racket, so
maybe I’m too close to the life cycles
of solar systems, galaxies, our
universe. From a purely technical
perspective, whatever people do
or don’t do, it doesn’t matter. But
the attitude feels much deeper than
just a technical calculation. Maybe
it’s genetic. Both my parents were
bent the same way.
“Anybody else out there care to
comment Not that it matters.”
Tom Beeler ’67 GSAS writes, “I
stayed on at Columbia for a master’s
in English and for a doctorate,
but though I finished the dissertation,
I never filed it. Reason was I
got sucked into the book publishing
business as a result of the 1968
protests; [I worked] on The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
and became editorial director
of two scholarly reprint publishers,
the second of which moved to
Boston to become a division of G.K.
Hall & Co. By 1978 I was president
of Hall, which published scholarly
books. … I later left to run a British
large print and audio book publishing
subsidiary in New Hampshire,
[which I did] until 1995, when I
started my own large print publishing
company, which lasted 10
years. In 2006 I got involved with a
community newspaper, the Granite
State News in Wolfeboro Falls, N.H.,
which I now edit along with the
Carroll County Independent. I publish
books on the side at The Large Print
Book Company.
“I eloped with my sweetheart,
Sue, in 1965 while still at the College
and we have two children and
one grandson.”
Daniel Gardner, who among
other roles is a professor of physiology
and biophysics and head of
the Laboratory of Neuroinformatics
with Weill Cornell Medical
College, writes, “There often is that
intermediate stage in which you’re
not sure whether you are alive or
dead. This is not a plea for money
but Weill Cornell Medical College
is most appreciative of the donors
who support its mission of advancing
medical care and scientific
understanding, and training new
generations of physicians.”
George Gutman shares, “Here’s
my last decade, in a nutshell: In
2004, after having lived in and
raised our two kids in southern
California for 27 years, my ombudsman
wife, Jan, was becoming
frustrated by her long commute to
work. She started looking for a job
closer to home and took a job in
Manhattan, where she could walk
to work across Central Park. We
were bicoastal (‘practicing bi-coastuals,’
as our friends described us)
for a couple of years, then I decided
to take a somewhat early retirement
from my professor gig at UCI Medical
School and join her in New York.
Jan retired in 2011 and we bought
a car and took off on a 4½-month
road trip back to our home in Costa
Mesa, Calif., which had been rented
out during our absence.
“I continued teaching after my
retirement (until this year) and am
pursuing research on a couple of
long-standing projects in computational
biology, work which doesn’t
require a laboratory or grant
applications. I’ve been compiling
and organizing family history and
stories, particularly those of my
parents’ experiences as refugees in
wartime France, which I’ve been
posting on gutmanfamily.org.
“Jan, too, seems to be restless,
and she’s signed up as a reservist
for FEMA as part of its Alternate
Dispute Resolution cadre; she’s
been deployed for month-long
stints in Connecticut and New
Jersey, helping FEMA in its role of
providing assistance to victims of
Hurricane Sandy.
“Our son, Dan, finished a B.A. in
history and business at Brooklyn
College and moved back to
California; he’s looking for a job
in finance research. Our daughter,
Elizabeth, founded the Brooklynbased
company Liddabit Sweets
a few years ago with her friend
and business partner, Jen King.
They produce artisanal caramels,
candy bars and other wonderful
confections, retailing them at various
NYC markets and online, and
wholesaling them to a number of
stores in the Northeast and other
spots across the country. They’ve
also recently published The Liddabit
Sweets Candy Cookbook, which has
been well-received.
“We’re enjoying being close to
our longtime California friends
again, and Jan is especially happy to
have her garden back, yet we miss
the energy and excitement of life in
Manhattan. We figure it’ll take us a
while yet to decide where we want
to live when we grow up.”
From Gene Leff: “In 2011, I
became a deputy commissioner in
the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation and
moved to Albany. I supervise the
study of fracking, the cleanup of
toxic waste sites, the regulation of
pesticide use and the regulation of
solid waste disposal.”
Gene, your latest work is of current
interest to many of us. Perhaps
you could offer some insight
William Roach writes, “OK,
Rich, although you could make up
much more interesting stuff, here’s
a snapshot of what I’ve been up to
for the last few years.
“At the end of 2010, I retired
from my law practice at McDermott
Will & Emery but worked
part-time for one of my large
hospital system clients, setting up
its in-house office. That took about
18 months, after which I retired
for real and assumed the chairmanship
of the American Heart
Association’s national board. The
AHA has occupied much of my
community service time for the last
20-plus years and remains a labor
of love. When I rotate off the national
board in June I’ll assume the
volunteer leadership of the AHA’s
joint advocacy initiative with the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
to combat childhood obesity. Combating
childhood obesity has been
an AHA goal for many years and
still seems a bit like sweeping back
the sea, as a third of the nation’s
children are overweight or obese.
But with the foundation’s funding
support, the AHA will marshal
other organizations that are active
in the fight at the grassroots level
and intensify the effort to reduce
the problem substantially by 2015.
I suspect this will keep me out of
mischief for the next few years.
“Otherwise, I keep a hand in
one construction project or another
and luxuriate in the general enjoyment
of retirement. My spouse,
Deborah Rosenberg Roach ’66
Barnard, remains busy with her
multimedia business and with
helping our daughter, Lydia ’04,
with August wedding plans (I
remain in my bunker, doing what
I’m told). So, we’re all busy and
reasonably productive.”
My correspondence with Robert
Meyerson began with the following
email from him: “I’m killing time
waiting for my wife and have an
idea for Class of ’66 Notes. Which
would you rather hear about:
how decrepit NYC seems when I
return there for a funeral, my life
with Hegel or my decision to work
forever”
I suggested he do it all, and Bob
responded with this:
“OK. So let’s start with Hegel.
What would you like to hear —
my first impression of his mad
philosophy in CC, where a huge
Sasha Zill opined from the back
of the room and I never knew
anyone before or since named Zill,
let alone Sasha Or how I wrote
my master’s thesis about him and
wound up liking the guy [RF: Zill
or Hegel] Perhaps my run-in with
the idiot local school superintendent
who misquoted Hegel in our
local weekly and whose defense
was that he was actually quoting
Dennis Green, that great Hegel
scholar and coach of the Minnesota
Vikings Or my spying a portrait
of the handsome devil in Berlin’s
National Gallery, after attending
our son’s show there at the Galerie
Michael Janssen Berlin Or my
experience, firsthand, of Hegel’s
concept of quantity transforming
into quality in his Phaenomenologie
des Geistes, after buying another
bank this past December 31
I hardly know where to begin!”
Geoff Dutton writes, “If you
hanker to be in touch, send an interesting
message to geoff@maxentro
pyproductions.net and I will surely
respond. All the best.”
Gathering for lunch on April 2
at Evergreen restaurant (East 38th
Street) were a peripatetic and evershifting
group of ’66ers, noshing
and catching up as they have for a
number of years. Present were Michael
Garrett, Mark Amsterdam,
Herb Hochman, Richard Zucker
and Richard Forzani. Regulars
who were not there this time are
Gene Leff, Bob Gurland, Dan
Gardner, David Tilman and Rick
Reder. Many others have showed
up from time to time, and anyone
who is interested is invited. Let
me know and we’ll put you on the
mailing list.
From your correspondent: I am
involved in managing my employer’s
top software clients, in terms
of keeping them happy and spending.
My son, Rich, is completing
his first year at the University of
Richmond School of Law and,
despite his initial trepidation regarding
the competition, has been
doing well. My other son, Casey, is
house-hunting for his family in Los
Angeles and learning how little a
lot of money can buy. My niece,
Deanna Russo, has a recurring role
in Being Human, a TV series involving
a werewolf, a vampire and a
ghost. She is the human. P.S. — It is
not a reality show.
Hurricane Sandy convinced my
wife not to ever relocate to a seaside
community, so we’re now considering
somewhere in the desert,
hopefully geographic rather than
intellectual. If any of you have a
large and luxurious vacation home,
feel free to invite us for a week or
more. Your presence is welcome but
not required.
Keep those cards and letters
coming.
67
Albert Zonana
425 Arundel Rd.
Goleta, CA 93117
az164@columbia.edu
Joel Greenberger writes, “I am
professor and chairman of the
Department of Radiation Oncology
at the University of Pittsburgh
and live there most of the year.
However, I am in Boston every
month for research collaborations
at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
and at M.I.T. I play the trumpet in
several professional and vocational
groups and frequently have brass
quintet rehearsals at my other
house in Lincoln, Mass.”
Joel hopes to entice Mark Schlesinger
to join one of those brass sessions.
Both are alumni members of
the Cleverest Band.
Anthony Sciolino has authored
a book, The Holocaust, the Church,
and the Law of Unintended Consequences:
How Christian Anti-Judaism
Spawned Nazi Anti-Semitism. He
is a retired New York State family
court judge and permanent deacon
of the Roman Catholic Diocese of
Rochester, N.Y.
Fran Furey ’66 writes, “It is with
sadness that I report the passing
of Art Silvers ’68E of Pleasanton,
Calif., on February 4, 2013. Art had
been battling Stage 4 melanoma for
the past year.
“Art was a fellow rugby player,
a fraternity brother and a football
teammate. We met as teenagers
on the football field at Baker Field.
Artie was born in Brooklyn and
raised in Woodmere (Long Island),
N.Y., where he captained the
football team at George W. Hewlett
H.S. At the College he joined Beta
Theta Pi, played varsity football
and captained the 1967 rugby
football club. A five-year engineering
student, Art earned a B.S. at the
Engineering School.
Since 2005, when a group of alumni raised money to honor former Dean of Students Roger Lehecka
’67, ’74 TC upon his retirement, 23 students have received stipends, allowing them to take unpaid
summer internships in places ranging from New York to Geneva to Addis Ababa. Several students
gathered with Lehecka in May in front of Hamilton Hall: (left to right) Mandeep Singh ’15, Lehecka,
Roniquee Marksman ’14, Holly Berlin ’13, Carrie Montgomery ’13 and Tomasz Otlowski ’13.
PHOTO: JANET LORIN ’95, ’96J
“When Art moved to the Bay
Area in 1979 to work for Kaiser, we
renewed our friendship. He was a
fast and loyal friend and loved Columbia
and his fellow Beta Theta
Pi members. He and his companion
of many years, Daniela Karo,
hosted a memorable Columbia
College Beta reunion in South Lake
Tahoe 10 years ago.
“Dave Filipek ’67 GS, Bob Donohue
’65 and I visited Art often in recent
months at his Pleasanton home
in the East Bay. I saw Artie three
days before he died; aside from
tiring easily, there was no indication
that his time was near. He went
out a winner — he had picked the
Baltimore Ravens to go all the way
and he won the jackpot in a Super
Bowl pool run by fellow California
Beta Dave Filipek (who else).
“He wasn’t so lucky on the
health front, however. He had a
tough last year. He was courageous
under difficult physical duress; he
accepted his situation with grace
and rueful philosophy. ‘The worst
thing,’ Artie said to me a couple of
months ago, ‘is that I am going to
miss out on a lot of the fun.’ We are
certainly going to miss having fun
with him.”
Martin Goldstein, who lives in
Culver City, Calif., sent this note to
CCT: “The crew cohort pictured in
the Spring 2013 CCT — The Royal
and Ancient Order of Buffoons —
mourns the loss of a friend, mentor
and fellow crew mate, Norman
Hildes-Heim ’60.”
68
Arthur Spector
271 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024
arthurbspector@
gmail.com
I’d hoped to persuade Mas Taketomo
to write the column, as he
had received numerous notes from
you about our recent reunion, but
reunion itself had him swamped
with work. Pete Janovsky, meanwhile,
was working on the class
bio book. So, I decided to await the
book and then do something using
that work of art as a starting point.
Thus, I will be brief — this time.
By all accounts, it seems that the
turnout for the 45th reunion could
be record-breaking. I hope so. We
will know by the time you read
this column. I hope that I will have
seen lots of you well, energetic
and in good spirits. A full report
will be in the Fall issue. If you attended,
please share your thoughts
and stories with me to put in this
column. The class photo, however,
may be found on the CCT website
(college.columbia.edu/cct) as part
of this issue’s reunion follow-up
article.
As an aside, we sent Paul de
Bary’s wine book, The Persistent
Observer’s Guide to Wine, to all
classmates to entice them to come
to reunion, or at least to enjoy some
wine more than usual.
Paul, your book is wonderful!
And with its Core relevance, it is
especially special.
John Chee was in NYC from
Hong Kong during the basketball
season. He and I get together on
occasion when he is town, and so
we did this time as well. He joined
me and my wife for February’s
Columbia-Harvard basketball
game, which turned out to be on a
Sunday due to snow the prior day.
It also appropriately took place on
the Chinese New Year, which surely
was helpful for the Lions; they
whipped the Crimson, who were
red-faced by the time they were
sent packing back to Cambridge.
And while Harvard was crowned
Ivy League champion and was
an NCAA first-round winner, the
Lions played superbly at times
this season. You may have seen the
team shock Villanova basketball
on television. We beat Cornell in a
televised game, too, and at home
I saw them beat Penn. Some good
wins for sure. Coach Kyle Smith
is sensational; we can expect lots
from this team and from the coach
next year. John and I agreed we
may be the alumni combination for
wins for the future.
The women’s and men’s swim
teams both came in second in the
Ivy League during the dual meet
season, with the Lions men and
women beating powerhouse Princeton.
With baseball and women’s
tennis having won Ivy titles, let’s
hope football is on the upswing
now, too.
REUNION WEEKEND
MAY 29–JUNE 1, 2014
ALUMNI OFFICE CONTACTS
ALUMNI AFFAIRS Vanessa Scott
vs2470@columbia.edu
212-851-9148
DEVELOPMENT Esfir Shamilova
es3233@columbia.edu
212-851-7833
Michael Oberman
Kramer Levin Naftalis &
Frankel
1177 Avenue of the
Americas
New York, NY 10036
moberman@kramer
levin.com
69
Hank Reichman reports: “I’m
now halfway through California
State University’s early retirement
program, which is limited to five
years, teaching for six months each
year. But to fill the time I’ve become
active in the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP).
In April 2012, I was elected national
first v.p. and last summer I also was
SUMMER 2013
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SUMMER 2013
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