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CLASS NOTES
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
CLASS NOTES
information or need to update their
contact information, visit reunion.
college.columbia.edu.
Mike Byowitz is a member of
our stalwart Reunion Committee.
He is routinely selected as a
Super Lawyer in New York each
year in his specialty of antitrust.
His daughter, Suzanne ’13, will
graduate in May — quite a treat to
commemorate his 40th!
Bob Pruznick also is a Reunion
Committee member; he wrote
a piece for our 30th that wasn’t
published then, so here it is: “When
we arrived on College Walk in 1969
full of excitement, ambition and
muted apprehension, we were not
dissimilar to cohorts 40 years before
or since — or were we As the first
class to make an informed choice
to attend Columbia since the ’68
bust, we were either full-blooded
Aquarians or incredibly tolerant,
open-minded young men. Our
freshman year opened with a
bang, literally — the small bomb
planted in Alma Mater — and ended
precipitously after the massive
demonstrations of the April student
strike led to the shortening of the
semester. Whether you loved those
heady days or regretted the chaos
and the diversion from scholarship,
you must admit that we shared
incomparably interesting times at
one of the preeminent hubs of the
counterculture. Coming of age during
an era when one questioned not
only authority but also reality, the
Class of 1973 certainly had a claim
to distinction, dubious or not.
“If you believed the rhetoric,
we were stardust, we were golden,
and we were finding our way back
to the garden. We hoped, as Ten
Years After implored, to change the
world. We pushed idealism to exponential
proportions — we couldn’t
be co-opted, wouldn’t sell out and
would never grow to resemble our
fathers. And then you hit 60, and
the lyrics to the Kinks’ ‘A Well-Respected
Man’ start to sound like an
indictment; one wonders where our
youth, with its naïve optimism and
its wonderful excesses, has gone.
“Well, I hope that some small
part of that radical heart still beats
within you, that you haven’t been
crushed completely by convention
and responsibility and you can
still follow your bliss. If so, please
carve out a few days from your
impossibly hectic schedule to make
a pilgrimage back to Morningside
Heights to recapture the magic
of our shared youth. Consider
participation in our [40th] reunion
activities; you might just rediscover
yourself in the process as you
reconnect with kindred spirits and
enrich the social fabric of your life
with fascinating new acquaintances.
Tempus fugit — memento mori!”
Well said, Bob!
Fred Schneider’s law partner
retired after 22 years together, so
Fred is now a partner and head of
the matrimonial and family law
department at the firm of Ballon
Stoll, an 80-plus-year-old firm. His
wife, Harriet, is the director of the
Office of Attorneys for Children
at the Appellate Division, 2nd
Department, of the New York State
Courts. Their older daughter, Lauren,
is an assistant v.p. at BHI Bank,
formerly Bank Hapoalim; their
younger, Stephanie, is a secondyear
law student at CUNY in Long
Island City. Fred is looking forward
to seeing everyone in May.
Greg Gall is an architect, living
in Tarrytown, N.Y., and practicing
mostly in the tri-state area. He is on
the CU Fencing Alumni Commit tee
and coaches fencing at the Hack -
ley School in Tarrytown. Greg is
involved in the community in Tarrytown
as a trustee of the historical
society and a member of Little Gardens,
where he often jogs. Greg’s
wife, Kim, is global director for industry
sales enablement at IBM; his
daughter, Christine ’12 Haverford,
is at Shelburne Farms in Burlington,
Vt., pursuing her interest in sustainability
education and farming. They
have a ‘camp’ on Galway Lake,
just west of Saratoga, N.Y., where
they spend time in the summer and
when they can get away.
Steve Hornstein lives in Falls
Church, Va., where he says life is
interesting. In 2012 he received a
sweatshirt from Eastern Virginia
Medical School for doing well on
his independent study; had poetry
published in an international collection;
and received another onegallon
blood donation pin and
T-shirt. He’s looking forward to
reunion.
Joel Glucksman originally was
in CC ’72 but left for a year to do
his Army Reserve active duty and
thus graduated in ’73. He lives in
New Jersey but has been back to
campus often, as two of his three
sons and his nephew are College
alumni. At 63 and a grandfather,
he’s “somewhat nostalgic for my
own days on campus. It was an exciting
time to be there, and great to
be in NYC; I just wish that I could
go back and redo the Core.”
’Tis a consummation … devoutly
to be wished. May we all reune in
May! To whet — a class reception
will be held at the Columbia
University Club of New York on
Thursday, May 30; a High Line
tour and lunch, led by landscape
architect Steve Cantor, is scheduled
for Friday, May 31; a Class of 1973
panel discussion, Affinity Receptions
and Wine Tasting will be held
on Saturday, June 1; and a reunion
brunch is set for Sunday, June 2.
That and much, much more is not
to be missed.
74
Fred Bremer
532 W. 111th St.
New York, NY 10025
f.bremer@ml.com
I don’t know what you guys were
thinking as you watched the amazing
“12-12-12 concert” last year,
but it seemed to me that parts of it
were like the soundtrack to our life
story. We grew up on The Who, the
Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen
(to name but a few), from our
days before Columbia to the days
after. But it was strange to see that
our idols have aged significantly.
After all, Bruce is 63, Pete Townshend
is 67, Roger Daltrey is 68 and
Mick is 69.
It is amazing how differently
a half-century has affected each
of these cultural icons. Bruce and
Mick seemed still full of youthful
vigor, while Pete and Keith
seemed to have succumbed to the
ravages of the years. Mick was still
strutting and grinding, while Pete’s
voice and presence seemed like a
weaker rendition of his glory days.
Perhaps it is a good lesson for us.
As is inscribed above the fireplace
in the John Jay lounge, where we
assembled almost 40 years ago for
Class Day, “Hold fast to the spirit
of youth. Let the years come, do
what they may.”
The latest news shows that the
Class of ’74 has a firm grasp on the
“spirit of youth”; many in the class
are charging ahead in their career
path at an age when members of
older generations were booking
time to receive a gold watch at their
retirement party. Here are just some
of the stories I have been privy to:
I caught up with Roger Kahn
a while back and got an update
on him and his family. About two
years ago he left Burnham Securities,
a boutique investment bank,
for Northeast Securities (both in
Midtown). He continues to focus
on healthcare deals (e.g., he recently
sold a medical device company
for “a bigger medical company in
New Jersey” and is also working
on a sale of a company in Israel).
His older daughter, Amanda, is
completing the “post-bac, pre-med
program” at Columbia (which I am
guessing is a program for young
folk with undergraduate degrees to
qualify for medical school), and his
other daughter, Charlotte, studies
art history at NYU. Those getting
Roger’s Facebook posts know he
always seems to be off to some rock
’n’ roll venue around town. What
is left out is that he frequently sits
in with the bands — he plays the
drums. (There is some apropos quip
here about “marching to the beat of
a different drummer,” but I won’t
reach for it. Sorry, I guess I did.)
When Roger said he was doing
healthcare deals, I let him know
that Ed Kornreich recently was
named a “2013 Lawyer of the Year
for New York” by Best Lawyers, the
respected peer review guide, in
the area of healthcare law. Maybe
they will make “beautiful music”
together! (Sorry, again.) Ed is a
longtime partner at the Midtown
law firm Proskauer Rose.
Before moving on, we need to
note that in an ad in another publication,
The New York Area’s Top Rated
Lawyers, said, “We salute Arthur
Schwartz, rated as an AV Preeminent
Attorney by Martindale-Hubbell
for 15 years, one of New York’s
leading plaintiff’s employment,
civil rights, civil liberties and unionside
labor lawyers.” For more than
30 years, Arthur has been general
counsel for numerous labor organizations
and, for the past 15 years
has been an elected Democratic
District Leader or State Committee
member for various areas in lower
Manhattan. He is lead lawyer for
Advocates for Justice Chartered
Attorneys, a public interest law
firm that, his website says, “goes
toe-to-toe with wrongdoers such as
corporate polluters, discriminatory
employers and unsafe manufacturers.”
When you hear of a high-profile
political scandal, many of us
instinctively start to look for news
of D.C. attorney Abbe Lowell.
Sure enough, reading the accounts
last fall of former CIA director
David Petraeus and “unpaid social
liaison” Jill Kelley, we were not
shocked to find Abbe involved.
The surprise was that Abbe was
representing Kelley. Turns out
he took the case as a result of a
longstanding relationship with the
Kelleys. That was not enough to
stop the gossip website Gawker
from commenting, “It’s like hiring
David Boies because your friend
got a speeding ticket.”
Another classmate involved
with controversy is Peter Sullivan,
a partner in the Midtown law firm
Gibson, Dunn. Peter and his team
have been representing UBS in the
worldwide regulatory investigation
surrounding UBS’ involvement
in the setting of London
Interbank Offered Rate interest
rates. He also is representing UBS
in 25 other civil actions in the
United States.
I recently found out we have a
real life Law & Order equivalent in
our class. Joe Ippolito has been a
New York ADA for 34 years. What
is unique about his career is that he
works at the Office of the Special
Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of
New York. I asked what the “special”
part of the title was about,
and he said his office has jurisdiction
over narcotics felony cases that
arise anywhere in New York City’s
five boroughs, while the borough’s
individual DAs are limited to cases
arising in their own borough. (If
you listen closely, you may hear
“ching-ching!”)
The career of Steve Simon is
more along the lines of NCIS. Steve
worked in and around the Middle
East for the State Department until
2003, interrupted by a five-year
stint at the Clinton White House
and three years at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
in London. (For those outside the
military-industrial complex, the IISS
website says it is “a world-leading
authority on global security, political
risk and military conflict.”) Steve became
a senior fellow for Middle East
studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations. More recently, he was the
senior director for the Middle East
and North Africa — basically, all the
Arab Spring countries — at the National
Security Council (the group,
chaired by President Barack Obama
’83, that includes all of the administration’s
top officials). Steve says he
now is “back to think tanking” at
the IISS. He will take over both the
Washington, D.C., and Gulf offices
of the organization. He adds, “I’ll
miss working the beat I’m on now
but you know, I’m really getting too
old for it anyway.” (Especially if the
Arab Spring becomes the Arab Fall!)
Similarly spanning the globe
is Ken Krug, CFO of The Asia
Foundation for the past couple of
years (previously he was CFO of
The Jewish Federation of Greater
Los Angeles and, before that, an
executive of the RAND Corp.). The
Asia Foundation website describes
itself as “a nonprofit organization
committed to the development of
a peaceful, prosperous, just and
open Asia-Pacific region.” What
clued me in on Ken’s international
travels were Facebook postings.
In October, he said he was in
Islamabad (Pakistan) and in December,
he wrote, “I’m at the Asia
Foundation office in Phnom Penh
(Cambodia) serving as officer in
charge until December 25.”
Another international and military
note came from up the Hudson
River. Peter Zegarelli, a dentist in
Tarrytown, N.Y., sent in news on
his two kids. He writes, “James was
an infantry officer with a platoon of
Marines and Afghan soldiers in the
Marjah area of Helmand Province.
He soon will be off to Okinawa.
He was married last November.”
Daughter Clare graduated from
Colgate last year and is at the Taylor
Institute for Global Enterprise
Management at Franklin College,
where she is working on a master’s
in international management.
Returning to these shores (literally)
is Howard Tom ’77 Business.
After a long career in the Navy,
Howard is using his training from
the Business School and UCLA to
extend his real estate career. A recent
Facebook post says he “added
a job at Ralph Coti Real Estate to
his timeline.” (Has Ralph Coti
’77L, ’77 Business become the new
“Donald”)
Ted Gregory was among a small
group of alumni inducted into the
Columbia University Athletics Hall
of Fame at a black-tie dinner the
Thursday before Homecoming.
This year there were only 18 former
student-athletes so honored. Ted
also was honored at halftime during
Homecoming. Ted is director
of diversity initiatives and talent
retention for the University’s Office
of Alumni and Development and
has 14 years of experience in the
executive search field.
When UNC’s Kenan-Flagler
Business School inaugurated a
combined M.D./M.B.A. program,
through which students get the two
degrees across a five-year stint, it
must have been a challenge to find
professors with experience in both
fields. Steve DeCherney, however,
fit the bill. Having both an M.D. and
master’s of public health, he had
the medical side covered. His long
career running various global drug
testing firms gave him the business
experience. And now Steve has
been appointed adjunct professor of
healthcare business for the school.
He writes, “It is a little weird, but
I must be one of the only M.D.s to
be a professor in both a med school
and a business school.”
We got an update from Bryan
Berry in Joliet, Ill., about his children.
His eldest daughter, Adrienne,
gave Bryan his first grandchild.
Bryan’s son, John, is engaged and
training as a U.S. Navy pilot. His
middle child, Sister Aeiparthenos,
is a nun who recently celebrated
her three-year vows and is the assistant
leader of the Novitiate of the
Servants of the Lord and the Virgin
of Matará in Upper Marlboro, Md.
Bryan and his wife, Jill, joined their
daughter on a five-day pilgrimage
to Italy followed by an 11-day
pilgrimage to Israel. Bryan adds,
“The company of a nun wearing a
habit opened a lot of doors in the
Holy Land.”
There you have it. Classmates
doing business together and taking
care of business around the world.
It is clear from these short vignettes
that the Class of ’74 has “held fast
to the spirit of youth”!
75
Randy Nichols
734 S. Linwood Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21224
rcn2day@gmail.com
After starting a recent email with
“this is the first that you or anyone
from CC ’75 has heard from me
since graduation,” David Cassidy
reported that he’s maintained his
ties to Columbia. He looks forward
to CCT and news about the College.
During the past 22 years,
after a few stops along the way
with the U.S. Army Medical Corps,
David has been in cardiology
practice in Lexington, Ky. He says,
“Every time I ride my bicycle past
a tobacco field, I know I have job
security.” This fall, daughter Darcy
’16 Barnard started college. During
Family Weekend in October, he
walked the Columbia campus with
his daughter, wife and sons. “It
was my first trip back in years, and
all of us loved it — the combination
of old and new, the excitement
of the coming century. Makes me
proud to be a graduate of that great
College.”
After months of impossible-tocoordinate
schedules, Jim Dolan
and I finally met for drinks and
some fine munchies at Baltimore’s
new Four Seasons Hotel. After
catching up on current events, we
(of course) reminisced about our
College days. We hadn’t realized
our mutual connections — mine all
second-hand but his first-hand —
with Schuyler Hall, the Opus Dei
residence at Columbia. Numerous
classmates were mentioned: Fr.
C.J. McCloskey, Bruce Grivetti,
Michael Ansaldi and my former
roommate, Norman Nicholais ’76E,
among others.
One of Jim’s stories was about
standing in line to score tickets
for the Metropolitan Opera Gala
Honoring Sir Rudolph Bing with
Bruce and Michael, after which Jim
became an opera buff, too. After
Bruce moved out of Schuyler, his
mother paid for me to feed him; I
cooked meals for the three of us using
my hot plate, electric coffee pot
and toaster oven. I wonder how
many current Carman or John Jay
residents have the kind of kitchens
we all had back in the days when
the only meal plan option was 15
meals, M–F, but not of any great
quality! (In a separate conversation
later that evening, Bob Schneider
reminded me that he lived
in Schuyler his freshman year,
1972–73; Bob graduated in three
years. Michael Ansaldi had told
Bob about 21 great meals a week!)
Michael Liccione ’80, an honorary
classmate — he didn’t graduate
until 1980, after making a million
sandwiches at Mama Joy’s — was
also mentioned by Jim. While all of
this was going on, Terry Mulry just
watched, listened and gave us his
wicked grin.
To all mentioned above or not
mentioned, please take no offense!
For many, Schuyler, Opus Dei and
what both provided were and are
serious touchstones in their lives.
No offense intended to anyone, just
sharing stories and memories.
At the same time as all of the
above was going on, I was seriously
involved in the two other Roman
Catholic communities at Columbia:
the Woodstock Jesuits and the
Catholic Campus Ministry. Fran
Minarik was, too, and he became
my godfather when I converted to
Catholicism on Pentecost Sunday in
St. Paul’s Chapel my freshman year.
Funny thing: Before I got mar -
ried in St. Paul’s Chapel the summer
after graduation, Fr. Paul
Ted Gregory ’74 was inducted into the Columbia
University Athletics Hall of Fame and also has a
new job at Columbia.
Dinter checked the books and
couldn’t find a record of my being
confirmed. But since it was well
documented, including the center
spread in Jesuit Magazine a couple
of months later, with pictures, he
somehow got it all resolved so
that I could be married “in the
Church.” Terry Mulry was my best
man and Steve Eichel ’76 was one
of the ushers. I won’t list the Barnard
credentials of my former wife
or two of her attendants — all that
is another story, and many of you
know parts of it. Ask if you want to
know more.
The Columbia University Band
Alumni Association is looking for
Steven Lawitts! The band is updating
mailing lists and looking for
current emails. Steven, when you
read this, please email me, and I’ll
get your address to them. Steven is
the first deputy commissioner with
the NYC Department of Environmental
Protection and lives in the
greater NYC area.
Meghan Schneider, daughter of
Bob Schneider and Regina Mullahy
’75 Barnard, has been invited
by the Harvard College Undergraduate
Research Association to attend
the National Collegiate Research
Conference at Harvard. Meg is a
senior at Penn. Bob and Regina
recently returned from a visit south
to see son John ’07 and his wife,
Stephanie, in Houston. While there,
they visited Galveston, Texas; Baton
Rouge and New Orleans; a Louisiana
plantation, Oak Alley; and
Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas.
In Baton Rouge, their three favorite
things were the Louisiana Old
State Capitol, the Old Governor’s
Mansion (the “Little White House”
built for Huey Pierce Long when he
SPRING 2013
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SPRING 2013
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