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ECF Reporter FALL 2003 The Environment Issue

ECF Reporter

FALL 2003

The

Environment

Issue

I N S I D E

1 Learning Green, Living Green Joseph P. Healey, Ph.D.

3 Broken Chain Orna Izakson ’83

6 Trees First Melissa Roberson

7 The Shaping of an Environmentalist Roger Davis ’73

8 Earthwatch at ECF Ginger Curwen

10 The Trouble with Rankings Laura Clark

11 My Son the College Shopper Carl P. Leubsdorf ’55

12 Remembering Madame Spodheim Michael A. Glass ’57

14 Journey of a Seeker Soul Singh Khalsa (Steve Singer ’68)

15 Class Notes

Learning Green, Living Green

Children working in the ECF

rooftop greenhouse, circa 1920.

I n antiquity the great philosophers concerned

themselves with the essential elements of existence:

earth, air, fire, and water. For us, centuries

later, the primal elements are the nucleus of

our struggle to maintain the natural environments

that sustain us, and at the same time, to

adapt them to meet our ever-growing needs.

Without a doubt, the ravages of industrialization,

overpopulation, urban sprawl, and unregulated

development have seriously compromised

the natural environment and the ecosystems of

our planet.

One of the foundations of an ethical life is

stewardship. At ECF we try to teach and exemplify

good stewardship of the earth. We are keepers

of a valued and special urban area. It is a mix

of built and natural environments. It allows our

students at all levels in their learning to develop

a love and care for the earth and for its creatures.

The process of maintaining and enhancing

the natural environment is a constant concern.

As we embark on a major campus expansion at

Fieldston next summer, we will find ourselves

challenged even more to both manage and enhance

that environment. We have deliberately

selected an architectural firm, Cooper,

Robertson, with strong environmental credentials.

The buildings that we add to the campus

will be as green as we can make them. We will

tell you much more about this project in the

next issue, but know that we intend to act with

utmost respect for what we have and for what

we will need in the future.

The process of learning and doing that is

involved in making sound decisions about the

environment exemplifies the ways in which a

progressive approach to education engages students

and teachers in the act and not just in the

theory of ethics. In this issue of the Reporter we

explore the ways in which ECF alumni and

present students have done their best as stewards

of the earth.

Joseph P. Healey, Ph.D.

Head of School

ECF and the Environment 1

ECF REPORTER Fall 2003

Published three times during the academic year,

the ECF Reporter is designed to maintain ties

between the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and

its alumni, as well as between the school and

parents, grandparents, and friends, by sharing news

and issues of importance to the ECF community.

ECF Reporter

Ethical Culture Fieldston School

33 Central Park West

New York, NY 10023-6001

(212) 712-6238

(212) 712-8442

reporterletters@ecfs.org

www.ecfs.org

editor

Ginger Curwen

Director of Communications & Marketing

alumni news editor

Toby Himmel

Director of Alumni Relations

contributing writer

(Trees First, Class Notes)

Melissa Roberson

design

Nancy Foote/By Design

ecf office of communications and media

Bruce Posner

Ethical Culture Fieldston School.

Front Cover: Science teacher Peter Mott explores the

Fieldston natural habitat with his Form I students.

Inside Front Cover: Fall sky at Fieldston,

November 13, 2003

Back Cover: Homecoming 2003

Cover photos: Stan Schnier

2 ECF and the Environment

Letters to ECF

GO, EAGLES!

I loved the story [“Hatching the

Eagles”] in the spring 2003 ECF

Reporter about Hiller “Bunny”

Zobel and the origin of the

Eagles. Immediately some of us,

probably in Mr. Lenrow’s seminar,

invented a cheer for the

games:

“Bold as a lion,

Fierce as a vulture,

Give three cheers

For Ethical Culture.”

I remember Myra Feder and Lila

Field leading the cheers.

You can imagine how this

stunned and awed the wimps at

Horace Mann and Riverdale.

—Jonathan Mirsky ’50

London, United Kingdom

I certainly enjoyed the article on

the naming of Fieldston’s sports

teams. Just a little something to

add to the lore. I remember

clearly one of the cheers we sang

before the girls’ hockey games:

“Brave as an eagle,

Bold as a vulture,

Fight, fight, fight

For Ethical Culture!”

Now I know where the eagle reference

came from. I always

thought that it was out of character

to compare us to “vultures”

but the cheer energized us and

we won many games.

—Stephanie Heyman Reckler ’61

New York, New York

MYSTERY GIRLS

The spring 2003 issue showed a

photo of fourth grade girls in a

Family Living class at Ethical in

1953. We asked if anyone recognized

the girls in the photo and

got the following responses.

The last ECF Reporter asked for

information on the people in the

1953 picture with “Scully”

(Mrs. Sculthorpe, the Midtown

nurse). That was my class. Starting

from the left, there is a girl

hidden behind Scully’s head,

then there is a girl I recognize

but whose name I forget. These

are the others, I believe: Vicky

Meyers, Elizabeth Affelder,

Geraldine Fabrikant, and Joan

Kurtin. I am not sure about the

next two in the right foreground.

— Roy S. Neuberger ’61

Lawrence, New York

Fourth grade girls in Nurse

“Scully’s” class photo: left

to right, Sara Jane Radin,

Vicky Sussman, Elizabeth

Affelder, Geraldine Fabrikant,

Joan Wessely, Lisa Taussig, can’t

identify last girl.

—Jon Farbman ’61

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

The ECF Reporter welcomes thoughts and opinions about

issues of interest to the ECF community. Send them to

reporterletters@ecfs.org or Reporter Letters, Ethical Culture

Fieldston School, 33 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023-

6001. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Broken Chain

A hundred years of bad ideas, greed, and racism

trash a sensitive ecosystem and its people.

story and photo by Orna Izakson ’83

In the spring of 2001, drought and politics exploded in southeastern

Oregon, when desert farmers were told there wasn’t enough

water to provide both for them and for four threatened or endangered

species. When the government cut back the irrigation water

for the first time in history, farmers stormed the headgates and

illegally turned the water back on.

The ensuing water war made headlines from the Klamath

Falls Herald and News to The New York Times, and ongoing

developments continue to make front page news. In 2002, when

irrigation in the upper basin returned to the earlier status quo,

one-third of the river’s healthiest salmon run died, the largest fish

kill in recent memory. In 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported

that Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political advisor, may have

improperly interfered in Klamath Basin water policy to boost the

reelection of Oregon’s Republican Senator Gordon Smith.

Eugene, Oregon’s alternative weekly sent me to cover the issue

in the fall of 2001, an excerpt from which follows.

Morning at the headwaters of the Wood River: A shallow

pool glows perfect aquamarine. Whispers of fog lift into the

trees. The boggy land is wet enough to feel spongy even through

shoes. Frost lingers on the grasses and sedges below the pines and

yellowing aspens.

The Wood River is the northern tributary of Agency Lake,

which feeds Upper Klamath Lake and the Klamath River—the

third richest salmon river in Western North America. The crystalline

water that starts here, among the springs under Crater Lake

and the eastern hills, in a few miles becomes the most polluted in

Oregon.

For thousands of years, the complex ecological system that

linked the ponderosas to the redwoods and the desert to the Pacific

Ocean was filled with abundant salmon and suckers, a winter

haven to eagles and migratory birds. In the past 100 years the

U.S. government and the settlers it encouraged rewired the system.

They drained the lakes for farmland, eroded the uplands

through logging and grazing, dammed the river, and drew its water

for irrigation.

Two salmon species are now extinct. Bald eagles and coho

salmon are threatened; Lost River and shortnose suckers are en-

Arnie Nova of the Yurok Tribe nets a hatchery coho

in the incoming tide.

dangered. The perfect aquamarine water upstream kills fish just a

few miles downstream.

The issue came to a head in the summer of 2001, during one

of the worst droughts on record. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

(USFWS) specifically articulated the water needs for fish and

eagles. The basin’s Indian tribes—including the Klamath upstream

and the Yuroks downstream—sued for water to protect their courtsupported

fishing rights. The summer’s news was filled with the

demonstrations of farmers who, after nearly 100 years, found their

federally subsidized water cut. But the stories of eagles, native

fish, and native people went largely untold. This is the story of

15,600 square miles of Indian Country that went from abundance

to scarcity in a century.

PEOPLE OF THE C’WAM AND QAPDO

There was a time, people of the Klamath Tribes say, when

you could walk across the Sprague River on the backs of the c’wam

(“ch’wam”) and qapdo (“kop-doo”)—Lost River and shortnose

suckers—as they migrated upstream from Upper Klamath and

Agency lakes to spawn.

“I lived during those times,” says Elwood Miller, now head

of natural resources for the tribes.The Klamath tribes were and

are a people of land and river, marsh and forest. And now the

resources on which they depended are all but gone.

The Klamath Tribes are a U.S.-forced confederation of three

peoples who traditionally fought over 20 million acres around

ECF and the Environment 3

the rich Klamath lakes until an 1864 treaty whittled their lands

down to a reservation of two million acres. The area’s abundance

allowed the combined tribes to do such a good job of sustaining

themselves that Congress in the 1950s declared them ready to be

assimilated into the mainstream, white culture. As part of that

“termination,” the government took away the land that had provided

that self-sufficiency. Today, the poverty rate among tribal

members is three times that of surrounding Klamath County, the

poorest in Oregon. (The Klamath Tribes were recognized again

in 1986, and they have petitioned the U.S. government to get

back 690,000 acres of their original reservation.)

Since the tribe was terminated and the land put into private,

nontribal ownership, the land has gone to grazing, the hills have

gone to logging, most of the marsh has gone to farmland and the

fishing has gone to hell. Dams built early in the last century cut

off the coho and chinook salmon that came up from the ocean to

spawn. And the c’wam and qapdo are in such dire straits that in

1988 the tribes successfully petitioned the federal government to

list them as endangered species.

Upper Klamath Lake’s tributaries—the Sprague, the Sycan,

the Williamson—are all but dead, Miller says, and the lake itself

is dying. The water is thick with unbroken clouds of green algae—living—swirling

under clouds of brown algae—dead. Pea

soup is the usual analogy.

The tribal harvest has dwindled from 50,000 tons per year

to one or two individual fish, and it’s the biologists charged with

protecting the fish who catch them for tribal ceremonies and abundance

prayers.

AS MUCH WATER AS LAND

Twelve thousand years ago, all of this area was under water.

Lake Modoc inundated what are now the low hills for 1,000 miles,

one of the giant lakes that covered much of the interior West

during the last millennia of Ice Age.

The climate changed, the air warmed, and the land dried.

Other lakes in the dry interior West turned to salt as their waters

escaped by evaporation. Lake Modoc’s remnants stayed uniquely

sweet because the Klamath River drew off the water. Shallow and

full of nutrients, the lakes fed uncounted numbers of fish and

became the lushest stopping ground for birds migrating along

the Pacific Flyway, sometimes called the Everglades of the West.

Thousands of years later, the area drew the attention of white

settlers. Armed with the dream of the yeoman farmer spreading

across the continent and feeding the hungry nation, they looked

at the abundant desert lakes and wooded hills, and decided there

was good farmland under the lakes if only they could drain off

some of the desert’s excess water. On a 1905 federal map, words

across the blue circles of Lower Klamath and Tule lakes read: “To

be reclaimed.”

4 ECF and the Environment

And “reclaim” it the government did. The shallow marshes

along the edge of Upper Klamath Lake were diked and ditched

and drained. The nascent Bureau of Reclamation began a complicated

process of moving water around.

Between 1900 and 1990, engineers and farmers eliminated

79 percent of the wetlands and marsh in the basin—dropping

the total from 350,000 acres to less than 75,000.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Among the unintended consequences of human engineering

was a major disruption in natural cycles that kept the waters

clean. Grazing and logging along the rivers feeding the lakes began

feeding a new and potentially toxic algae cycle.

Aphanizomenon flos-aquae, a blue-green alga that produces

its own nitrogen, first attracted biologists’ interest in the 1940s.

Core samples of the lake show no evidence of the algae before the

basin’s systems were disrupted, although Larson says it was probably

present in small amounts, awaiting its chance. What held it

back, researchers suspect, were insufficient phosphorus and the

tannins released by decaying marsh vegetation.

With the marshes substantially reduced and the phosphorous

coming into the lake from upstream, Aphanizomenon erupted.

The tiny individual algae cluster into what look like blades of

mown grass. Those clusters multiply to fill the top 3 to 4 feet of

the lake’s surface, swirling in clouds that eventually darken the

water enough to kill the algae growing below. It stinks as it dies,

and sucks oxygen out of the lake—the same oxygen needed by

resident fish.

In the 2001 drought, there wasn’t enough water for both

farms and fish. So the Endangered Species Act drew the line—in

this case, a lake-level line—and for the first time told the farmers

they couldn’t have their water in the desert that once was considered

wastefully flooded.

OREGAS AND RLI RQ

At the mouth of the Klamath River, two rocks stand on the

wide, redwood-flanked shores. The Yurok tribe say Oregas and

Rli Rq are two women, sometimes sisters, sometimes twins. Every

year, the river punches through a different spot in the sand

spit stretching a mile and a half between Oregas on the north side

and Rli Rq on the south.

In 2001, freshwater didn’t set its course—straight down the

middle—until the end of September. Ocean currents affect that

opening, but mostly the Klamath River didn’t cut through the

spit sooner because of the drought.

“For the Yurok Tribe, this is it,” says Troy Fletcher of the

Yurok Tribe. “The Klamath River is our big issue. The mouth of

the Klamath River is impacted by everything that happens in the

asin.” The gravel bar at the river’s mouth teems with wildlife.

Despite the abundance, the Klamath River’s mouth has no official

designation—unlike the upper-basin refuges that hog the

media limelight. On weekends the spit is filled with fishing families.

Like Elwood Miller upriver, Fletcher says that fishing is important

to the social makeup of the tribe, one of the poorest in

the country.

The Yuroks have had to fight for their right to salmon. In

1933, California shut them out of the salmon fishery. When a

tribal gillnetter was caught fishing in the river in the 1960s, the

tribe took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court and, in

1993, won. “But,” Fletcher says, “we realized all along that the

right to fish is meaningless unless there’s fish.”

Forty percent of the water at the mouth of the river comes

from the upper basin, much of it the polluted runoff from farms

or the algae-ridden stuff that kills the suckers upstream. Yurok

biologist Monica Hiner said water temperatures in the estuary

averaged a fish-killing 79 degrees in August 2001. There won’t be

fish without more water, in better shape, at the right time of year.

The tribe supported listing coho as threatened under the federal

Endangered Species Act, because of the law’s ability to force

changes in recalcitrant and deleterious practices.

Federal courts have affirmed the tribe’s water rights, quantified

as “the amount necessary to protect and restore our fisheries

resources,” Fletcher explains. “That’s why we have so many scientists

working on flow-study issues to identify how much water

fish need at different times of the year.” The tribes have water

rights only because their treaties give them the right to fish; as

with fishing rights, water rights mean nothing, Fletcher says, if

there are no fish left in the water. “All this is so important,” he

says. “That’s why we’re fighting, to continue to fish, (and to continue)

the life Yurok people have been living since the beginning

of time.”

Award-winning environmental reporter Orna Izakson ’83 has

covered natural resource fights for newspapers and magazines

around the country since 1993, despite missing out on earth science

courses at Fieldston or Wesleyan. Drawn to the field by a 1990

publication by Columbia’s Gannett Center on environmental

reporting, she got her M.A. at the University of Missouri Graduate

School of Journalism and headed west.

Izakson is now freelancing in Oregon, where her extracurricular

activities include coordinating the Society of Environmental

Journalists’ mentor program.

In February 2004, her work will appear in Feeling the Heat:

Reports from the Frontlines of Climate Change (Routledge). She

is now working to expand this story on the Klamath Basin into a

book on this intriguing and emblematic Western battle. See

http://www.eugeneweekly.com/archive/11_01_01/coverstory.html.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL READING LIST

classics

■ Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

■ A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

■ Encounters with the Archdruid by

John McPhee

environmental journalism

■ Return to Spirit Lake: Journey through a Lost

Landscape by Christine Colasurdo

■ Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by

Susan Griffin

■ A River Lost: The Life and Death of the

Columbia by Blaine Harden

■ The War Against the Greens by David Helvarg

(A new edition is about to come out.)

■ Blue Frontier: Saving America’s Living Seas by

David Helvarg

■ Media and the Environment, Craig L. LaMay

and Everette E. Dennis, eds.

■ Salmon Without Rivers: A History of the Pacific

Salmon Crisis by Jim Lichatowich

■ Last Stand: A Riveting Expose of Environmental

Pillage and a Lone Journalist’s Struggle to Keep

Faith by Richard Manning

■ One Round River: The Curse of Gold and the

Fight for the Big Blackfoot by Richard Manning

■ Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and

Place by Terry Tempest Williams

■ Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! And the

Environmental Movement by Susan Zakin

fiction

■ Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

■ The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk

■ The River Why by David James Duncan

■ Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

■ Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

ECF and the Environment 5

Trees First

A short look at the long, inspiring life of Martha Munzer,

alumna, Fieldston teacher, and lifelong conservationist

by Melissa Roberson

It all started with a tree. In the 1930s, building developers

were hungrily eying open space in Riverdale. Martha Eiseman

Munzer ’18, who was teaching chemistry at Fieldston at the time,

joined forces with two other women and tried to stop them from

taking a buzz saw to a beech tree. In the short-term, they failed.

In the long-term, they won. Big.

“Mardie” Munzer, along with Hannah Williams and Lillian

Weber went on to lead the battle in the ’50s that won protective

zoning for the town. And they pioneered what is now a common

educational approach of using the local landscape to teach school

children about the natural environment.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The remarkable story

of this pioneering environmentalist begins even earlier. She was

born in 1899, the daughter of a Manhattan silk merchant. After

graduating from Fieldston, it was on to MIT, where she became

the first woman there to earn a degree in electrochemical engineering,

class of ’22. Shortly after graduation, she married Edward

Munzer, one of her father’s employees. They would have

three children.

After teaching more than 25 years at Fieldston, she joined

the Conservation Foundation. Then, in 1965, she was recruited

for Wave Hill’s science center, eventually becoming director of

Wave Hill’s ecology and education programs.

Martha Munzer with her Fieldston chemistry students, 1952.

6 ECF and the Environment

In the 1960s, she began to focus on issues of town and city

planning with the publication of Planning Our Town and Pockets

of Hope: Studies of Land and People. She published the first of her

11 books at age 52, most of them about ecological issues and

planning.

At age 79, she published a memoir, Full Circle: Rounding

Out a Life, which led to her being reunited with her World War I

sweetheart, Isaac Corkland, after a 60-year separation. Both were

widowed, and she and “Corky” were married in 1980. She was

80. He was 84.

The couple moved to Florida where she joined the Friends

of the Everglades and became an outspoken critic of South Florida’s

uncontrolled growth. At 89, she launched a one-woman crusade

to prevent anyone from cutting down a tree in her town of Fort

Lauderdale without a permit. She received the Teddy Roosevelt

Conservation Award in a White House ceremony in 1993.

“Every day I swim in an unheated pool and read a book,”

Munzer told The Miami Herald when she was 93. “Some people

choose to stop being active when they get old, but I’m not one of

them.”

She died on September 13, 1999, just nine days shy of her

100 th birthday.

Martha Munzer ’18 with Edward Munzer ’48

and Mark Lawrence Munzer ’82.

The Shaping of

an Environmentalist

One Fieldston alumnus

recalls his activist beginnings

by Roger Davis ’73

I can

credit my early interest in conservation, ecology, and

environmental concerns to several events that took place in my

life in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. These events served

as a major influence for bringing me to ECF in the fall of 1971.

In retrospect, the process that led me to attend Fieldston

started during my last year of junior high school, John Philip

Sousa in the Bronx. While attending Sousa J.H.S. I enrolled in a

Saturday morning course at the Bronx Zoo that taught concepts

in conservation and ecology. I was so inspired by the things I was

learning about ecology that I became increasingly concerned about

a small park near my junior high school. The park, named after

Elizabeth Seton, was called Seton Falls Park. It served as a local

hangout for drug dealers and addicts at the time, and also became

a dumping station for all kinds of trash. But, the park had a

wonderful balanced ecosystem with a diverse range of plant life,

trees, animals, and even fish. In 1970, in association with Earth

Day I proposed that my school sponsor a park clean-up. The

event was a tremendous success — local newspapers took photos

of the garbage being hauled away by trucks as over 500 students

worked in the hot springtime sun.

In the summer of 1970 after Earth Day, I was accepted into

a leadership building camp under the auspices of the New York

Society for Ethical Culture, called the Encampment for Citizenship.

The summer camp program was held near White Plains,

New York. I joined the Environment Workshop, which was offered

during the camp and began learning even more about the

seriousness of environmental pollution. After that experience, I

founded a non-profit organization called the Bronx Environmental

Society, Inc., in September of 1970. The Encampment director,

Douglas Kelley, was gracious enough to let us use part of their

offices at 2 West 64th Street for our fledgling group. It was there

that I met the lovely conservationist and environmental activist

Martha Munzer [see profile of Martha Munzer on page 6].

That fall, I entered Evander Childs High School and immediately

formed a chapter of the Bronx Environmental Society at

the school. In early 1971, I wrote a controversial article,“Black

Ecology,” which was published in the school’s black student newspaper

and challenged the largely white middle-class nature of the

environmental movement.

The article spoke

about the rats, roaches,

lead paint, and other

conditions of ghetto life

that make the environment

of the inner city a

habitat for an “endangered

species”—the urban

residents themselves.

The article sparked a furor

and even made the

New York Daily News

(July 4, 1971) and

caused the principal of

Evander Childs to censor

my writing under threat

Roger Davis ’73 in his senior

yearbook photo

of suspension. I was clearly outraged by what transpired that year,

and it was then that I sought a haven of political freedom. That

haven would become my new high school, Fieldston. In the fall

of 1971 I was able to obtain admission and a scholarship. During

my two brief years at Fieldston, my ideas and work in the environmental

movement flourished. I remember being excused from

class quite often to do extracurricular activities, such as being

interviewed on a channel 13 series or Fox Channel 5 news shows,

and even to attend conferences in Washington, D.C. Sometimes

I wonder how I kept up my grades because daily I would run

down the hill to catch the subway to 64 th Street and then come

home in the evening to my home—a public housing project in

the northeast Bronx.

I was personally tutored throughout this time by Martha

Munzer, who was an alumna of ECF and a teacher at the school

for years. She helped to guide my early interest in environmental

studies, and even introduced me to Pete Seeger, the famous folk

singer and environmentalist. In fact, she loaned me my first book

on the subject, which I still treasure to this day: Rachel Carson’s

classic book, Silent Spring.

Roger Davis has a long record of service in the environmental

movement, which includes serving as a consultant to the Isaac

Walton league, Keep America Beautiful, and the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency. He is currently a visiting lecturer/faculty

member in the Liberal Arts School, Department of International

Studies, Keimyung University, Dageu, South Korea. In 1972 he

received a Presidential Citation for dedicated service to the nation

for environmental protection. After graduation from Fieldston,

Davis attended Cornell University; he is also a graduate of the

Indian Institute of Yoga in Patna, India and the author of

numerous books, including the bestseller Ultimate Mental Power.

ECF and the Environment 7

1

BIRD-WATCHING WITH PETER MOTT

Open a door off the auditorium, climb 50 steps up, and

you’re surrounded by open sky, with a good view on a clear

day of the Chrysler building to the south and an easy view

of Manhattan College to the east. This is the HawkWatch,

a little-known place on campus, where every fall science

teacher Peter Mott brings up a new section of students to

track the fall migration of birds and butterflies.

On October 9 th , two hours of observations yielded the

following sightings: turkey vulture (3); osprey (9); sharpshinned

hawk (3); Cooper’s hawk (1); red-tailed hawk (1);

American kestrel (5); merlin (4); peregrine falcon (1); tree

swallow (22); chimney swift (1); blue jay (20); American

robin (1); dragonfly (35); cabbage butterfly (3); and

monarch butterfly (4).

Mott, tall and elegant, came to Fieldston in 1984 as a

science teacher, served as head of the science department

for five years, and now, in addition to teaching, serves as

special assistant for environmental planning and programs.

When the new all-weather field and track was built last

year, Mott was instrumental in getting the landfill donated

to grateful neighbors, Wave Hill and Van Cortlandt Park.

When ECF’s architect selection

subcommittee convened last

year, Mott was a vital member,

asking about environmental

considerations.

He prompted the

change to

8 ECF and the Environment

Earthwatch at ECF

by Ginger Curwen

2

fair trade coffee in the cafeterias. Once director of the Florida

Audubon Society, Mott now serves on the board of the

New York Audubon Society. He is working on a book about

the Society’s annual Christmas bird count.

In Ethical Issues in Science, an elective for juniors and

seniors, Mott covers such topics as the use of barrier islands,

genetic engineering, pollution of air and water resources,

land management in New York City, and global

warming. Suggested reading in his conservation courses

include: Storm Surge by William Sargent; Sudden Sea:

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 by R. A. Scott;

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro; Prize by Daniel Yergin;

and The Environmental Debate: A Documentary History

edited by Penina Neimark and Peter Mott.

FAIR TRADE COFFEE NOW BEING SERVED

Attention, java lovers: fair trade coffee is now being served

in all three cafeterias. The ethical, economic, and environmental

issues around coffee came up for discussion at last

spring’s biannual FAD (Fieldston Awareness Day) and

prompted the change. Students learned that small-scale

coffee farmers in Latin America typically get a tiny share of

the profits; for additional revenue, farmers are being induced

to cut down trees to grow coffee in the sun, rather

than the shade, an act that results in loss of vital wildlife

habitat for migratory birds. Serving fair trade coffee, which

ECF purchases from Equal Exchange, helps support smallscale

farms with a guaranteed fair price and preserves wildlife

habitats in Latin America. And the connection to Equal

Exchange came through Isaac Grody-Patinkin ’00. Not bad

work for a cup of coffee!

3

4

FIELDSTON LOWER BRANCHES OUT

How tall is a tree? Why do leaves change color? How do

trees reproduce? These are just a few of the questions that

FL third graders are asking this year as they and their teachers,

Dorothy Brady, Harry Sunshine, and Karen Tang embark

on the study of trees. It’s all part of a new science

curriculum that provides many opportunities for learning,

from art and writing to math and science. To read more,

see the full story on page 3 of the December issue of

FieldNotes, available for viewing at www.ecfs.org.

SOLAR SOON?

Last year students Melina Healey ’03 and Seth Silverman

’04, presidents of the Environmental Club, wrote the application

of their lives and successfully won a solar energy

grant for the school from School Power Naturally, an innovative

program from the New York State Energy Research

& Development Authority. ECF is one of 50 schools in

the state to receive a grant. The $20,000 grant will enable

the school to install a two-kilowatt photovoltaic array, probably

on the dining hall roof at Fieldston, and then use solar

power for curricular uses as well as energy efficiency. When?

Maybe in the spring; we’re waiting for the installers. Stay

tuned!

5

6

WHAT ABOUT THOSE DEAD FISH, MS. MAYOR?

In Erin Martin’s fourth grade ethics class at EC, environmental

issues are center stage. Students learn about garbage

and where it goes; they learn about global warming,

the rain forest, and the effects of deforestation. Then they

put learning to the test through a role-playing game that

puts them in the middle of a local pollution crisis. When

the fish in a popular local pond start to die, the mayor is

forced to close the pond. Many community members blame

the town dump and the town’s biggest employer, a mining

company, but a mayoral election is fast approaching. What

will the class, in the role of mayor, do to improve the environment

and maintain the economy? The game takes three

to four weeks to complete, says Martin. “The students

take on the roles passionately defending their beliefs and

persuading others to see the situation as they do. It’s a

great lesson in the complicated interconnectedness of the

environment, politics, and economics.”

JUST HOW COLD IS IT?

Check out the real-time Fieldston campus weather station,

posted on the multimedia and interactive page of the school

web site—http://www.ecfs.org/mi. While you’re there, you

can also view student art, hear excerpts from a school performance,

and even send an ecard with a view of the Quad.

ECF and the Environment 9

The Trouble with Rankings

Why “The Best” College May Not Be Good Enough for Your Child

by Laura Clark

I can’t

count the times I have had a

parent say in the first college meeting

that she wants her child to “go to the best

college she can get into.” I recognize from

the start that this statement probably

comes from the right place: The parent

loves her child and wants her to have the

best of what life and the world have to

offer. However, this statement has implications

for both the student and the college

process that parents often don’t recognize.

“Best” implies a universal scale of

value that everyone agrees upon and which

can be measured in fairly simple and

widely recognized terms. “The best college

she can get into” also implies that

quality is based on the competitiveness of

the selection process, and that if admission

is hard to attain, the college is a better

place for the student. Nowhere in this

statement is there a reference to the individuality

of the child, her learning style,

or what she enjoys in her social peers and

activities.

US News and World Report would tell

you that the universal scale is theirs, and

that they are best able to “value” colleges.

After some intricate and allowably exhaustive

research and ingenious marketing of

their own publication, US News has created

lists that parents can supposedly use

to easily locate “the best” college. Reassuring

if you believe the research and the list:

US News seems to simplify the college process

for everybody. Colleges recognize that

not only do the rankings sell magazines,

they also sell colleges, and while they claim

that the rankings are an inaccurate and

misleading shorthand for what they offer,

at the same time they brag about their

10 ECF Reporter

positions on the very lists they condemn.

Many base recruitment and marketing

schemes on the rankings and so validate

the premise of the rankings. Students respond

to the marketing, and soon the top

colleges on the lists have become the most

selective, since the marketing schemes have

generated thousands more applications

and the selection processes have become

that much more difficult. At this point in

time, the lists that matter seem to be the

ones in major news magazines, though I

would argue that any general list, intended

for the public, is misleading to parents and

teenagers in the college process no matter

how it is compiled. Faith in any universal

scale suggests that a student who cannot

attain admission to the top colleges on the

scale will not receive a good education.

Long experience in this field has proven

to me over and over again that this is not

the case.

“The best” in this context also implies,

for some, prestige: That mysterious

designer label “zing” that has become

shorthand for quality in our society. Somewhere

along the line clothing designers

were valued for the quality, originality, and

durability of their designs; the name of the

designer meant something. In the same

way, one could assume at one point that a

well-known college had some qualities that

were desirable. However, if the suit does

not fit, it does not really matter how durable

and high quality it is, or who designed

it; it is still uncomfortable and perhaps

even unwearable. True, one can lose

weight and perhaps squeeze into the size

six Chanel suit, suffering at worst a split

seam, but the poor student who tries to

make herself fit the admissions standards

and program at the wrong college may be

deeply unhappy. I don’t want to be too

dramatic about this. I am a great believer

in the transfer process; students often move

happily from a bad match to a good one,

but we start the process hoping that this

won’t be necessary. I have discovered over

and over that what seems to determine

success in life, as far as education can affect

it, is how well a student performs at

the college she attends, and how well it

met her needs. This indicates that it is

match and not prestige that matters.

I would argue that what the parent

often means to say in that first college

meeting is, “I would like my child to go

to the best college for her, the one that

best meets her needs.” The intention of

the college office is to find out what those

needs are. The student should attend the

institution that is the best match, one

where she can be socially happy, intellectually

stimulated and challenged, well

cared for, and ultimately successful in as

many ways as success can be interpreted.

This matching is obviously a complicated

process and one that requires continually

expanding and often intuitive knowledge

on our part of both the colleges and the

student, and detailed research of many

sorts on the part of the student and family.

Some of this involves Internet and book

research, some entails speaking to students

at the colleges, some requires visiting, and

some of it requires some soul-searching

about oneself, family relationships, and

ambitions. Not all colleges are good for

all students even if they are highly ranked,

highly selective, richly endowed, and have

Nobel laureates as professors. Usually it is

other factors that determine a student’s

satisfaction with her education and success

after it. It is important to recognize

that the process is complex but manageable,

and that abandoning the lists and

listening to your child can be both simplifying

and liberating.

Laura Clark is the director of college

counseling for Fieldston. This article

was reprinted from the October 2003

issue of FieldNotes.

My Son the College Shopper

Checking out colleges has become a modern rite of passage

by Carl P. Leubsdorf ’55

It seems like only yesterday when Ben

was pretending to be a Teenage Mutant

Ninja Turtle or looking for Woody Woodpecker

in the big tree behind our house.

Now, like many other families of high

school juniors, we were off with him on a

traditional spring break venture, looking

at a string of Northeastern colleges on the

first of several such outings.

The trip brought back memories of

similar expeditions with my older children,

as well as the very different process in my

own time. I recall visiting several schools,

none of which I got into, before discovering

in August—after my high school

graduation—that I was going to attend

one I never had seen, Cornell.

Fortunately, the experience turned

out to be positive—I studied government

and minored in The Cornell Daily Sun.

That convinced me one can worry too

much about a decision that is as much

guesswork and good luck as rational analysis.

Add to this the experience of my wife,

Susan Page. She applied to one college

(Northwestern), got in, and did well—

further reason to be low-key about this.

Ben, however, has spent hours poring

over collegiate Web sites on the

Internet, debating the merits of schools

with his friends, and reading piles of unsolicited

brochures he got in the mail. The

itinerary, for the most part, consisted of

small liberal arts schools that seemed like

collegiate versions of his high school.

While Ben was eager, his ninth-grade

brother, Will, was a somewhat unwilling

participant in this FFO (Fun Family Outing).

We headed off open rebellion by bribing

him with at least one book or T-shirt

Ben and Carl Leubsdorf

at every college bookstore on our itinerary;

it is hard to complain when the main

thing your child wants is another book.

Ben is a good student with good test

scores, but the first stop underscored the

environment he will face. It was

Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia,

a beautiful and excellent school that

showed poor judgment 48 years ago in

putting me on its waiting list. There, we

encountered a classmate (there are only 54

in his class), Ben’s eighth-grade science

teacher and her son, and at least two others

from Washington schools, underscoring

the fevered competition for places in

these colleges. The young woman who

showed us around was so positive about

Swarthmore that I felt compelled to break

my rule that parents should be seen and

not heard to ask what, if anything, was

wrong with Swarthmore. Citing her

family’s Republican roots, she said it perhaps

was a little too liberal.

Later that day, at nearby Haverford

College, we encountered another classmate

and someone from Ben’s driver education

class. At Connecticut’s Wesleyan University,

we ran into a prominent Democratic

politician, shepherding his 11th-grade

daughter. By Thursday, the schools were

blending together. So was our negative

reaction to student guides, who all seemed

to have studied the art of positive spin at

the Bush White House. At both Wesleyan

and Tufts, we were told how terrific the

food was. Surely, things haven’t changed

that much. All teachers were described as

accessible to students. All campus life was

fun. All experiences were stimulating. No

one had much difficulty in getting desired

courses.

Still, we made progress in trimming

the list. At Brandeis, in the Boston suburbs,

we were turned off by crowded living

conditions and the way the guide

boasted about the ease of avoiding academic

requirements. At Tufts, we learned

that, for our $35,000-plus per year, Ben

could take a course about the White House

press office, taught by a midlevel Clinton

press aide. And as we drove west toward

Hampshire College, a re-reading of its literature

prompted us to drop the visit and

instead check out Amherst.

Though Ben steadfastly has ruled out

any school attended by a parent or sibling,

he seemed interested in Brown, where

my cousin teaches French history. Later

we will visit the Midwestern versions of

the schools we saw this week.

Ultimately, Ben will decide where to

go—or the schools will decide for him. If

he doesn’t like his choice, he can transfer.

Fortunately, we have no doubt: He will

do well wherever he goes. Which is all a

parent can hope for.

Carl P. Leubsdorf '55 has been the

Washington bureau chief of The Dallas

Morning News since 1981. Previously, he

worked for The Associated Press,where he

was chief political writer, and The

(Baltimore) Sun, where he was White

House correspondent. After graduating

from Fieldston, he received a B.A. from

Cornell University and an M.S. from

Columbia University's Graduate

School of Journalism. This article first

appeared in The Dallas Morning News.

ECF Reporter 11

Remembering Madame Spodheim

by Michael A. Glass ’57

The following was delivered at a

Fieldston memorial service for

Renée Spodheim last spring. She

taught at ECF from 1952 to 1990.

Miss Spodheim used to tell me regularly—as

I’m sure she used to tell all

her other students—that I attended

Fieldston in its Golden Age. I then replied

that I must have been a student of baser

metal who allowed the amalgam to be

more easily molded into a shape.

By Fieldston standards, I was a moderately

untalented French student. In Fifth

Form, I was in Miss Spodheim’s class, located

above the middle school, and whatever

impression I made upon her must

have been for the following. One late

spring afternoon, the class found itself

locked inside the classroom, by accident

or design, I never discovered. As students

from the class next door were leaving, Miss

Spodheim rapped on the small pane in the

door and repeated in a heightened but not

strident voice, “Au secours!” When the last

student disappeared down the stairs, she

turned to us and exclaimed in a certain

tone of voice, “Spanish students.”

I rose to the occasion, literally, and

with the suppleness that comes with being

16, I leaped from the classroom window

to a small landing eight feet below,

then to a parapet and a sill of an open corridor

window and returned to unlock the

door from the outside.

Leaping forward, 25 years later, at a

class reunion, I saw Miss Spodheim for the

first time since graduating, and I accrued

one of the benefits of being an alumnus.

Not only did she remember me, but she

remembered me as having been a far better

student than I actually was, in consequence

of which, Renée—no longer Miss

Spodheim—invited me to cocktails with

12 ECF Reporter

faculty members and other former students.

It’s another and different story, but

just a few years before that reunion, Mr.

Lenrow and I discovered we shared a birthday.

When he was no longer mobile

enough to traverse the February weather

to go out for the celebratory dinner, Renée

catered a joint birthday party.

Fieldston was Renée’s extended family—“family”

in the essential sense of

people you care about and who care about

you. This web of connection spun wider

and longer. Renée was my gazette of what

former teachers and fellow alumni were

accomplishing. She always asked about my

sister,’66—who lives in San Francisco—

and about her two boys whom Naomi has

raised to speak French as their first language.

That especially pleased Renée.

In retrospect, that was the ethos at

Fieldston, which might set it apart from

most other educational institutions—the

commitment of the faculty was to more

than the student in the classroom; it was

to the whole person.

One very summery day six or seven

years ago, Renée rang up my office.

“Michael,” she said, “this is serious. You

must come and take me to the doctor.”

There was a taxi strike, and I assumed she

was having trouble regulating her sugar

level. I drove into the city, took her crosstown

to the doctor’s office, circled for a

while and doubleparked to pick her up. I

asked the doctor whether there were any

special instructions, and he replied, “She’ll

be all right now, but I’m amazed that over

the past few weeks how many people have

dropped everything to get her here.” I

wasn’t amazed.

Learning at Fieldston occurred for me

in several modes. There was the stuff you

learned for Renée’s exam and then

promptly forgot, like the redundant ne and

how to form the subjunctive imperfect.

There were things that stuck, surprisingly,

The legendary French teacher

at different stages in her life.

like how Zani and Zano in Georges

Duhamel’s Les Jumeaux de Vallengoujard

thwarted scientific determinism. There

were also questions the answers to which

you discovered for yourself later, even years

later, like the answer to Mr. Lenrow’s question,

about what changed in the Middle

Ages between two readings in Sixth Form

English, Tristan and Iseult and Le Jongleur

de Notre Dame; or the question Mr. Brown

posed in one of our advisories and on

which he irritatingly refused to give hints,

“Why did the Lady of Shalott look in the

mirror?”

Most profoundly, there were realizations

the very existence of which came to

the surface years later. Renée was for me a

direct, living contact with the major historical

event of my childhood in the 1940s

and ’50s: the enormity of the human dislocation

of the Second World War. As we

all know, Renée came from an upper

middle-class family in Rumania, a family

whose station and education provided assimilation

into the pan-European enlightenment.

Renée’s immediate family was

nimble and lucky enough to escape the

deadly consequences of the continental

collapse under the pressure of the technologically

enhanced blood hatreds of fascism.

Talking with Renée was a course in

continuing education. In our last conversation,

I learned she escaped to the United

States via Baghdad; and she provided some

views of that time and place beyond what

any embedded reporter has filed.

Renée left the established, mature

high culture of Europe to find in the

United States something different, an adolescent

sort of culture: a rough-andtumble,

non-deferential, somewhat classless

society—another way of saying in one

word, democratic. I believe she adjusted

to the culture shock and thrived, all the

while maintaining a polite continental distance.

What she brought with her from

Mittl Europ and maintained was an expectation

of personal excellence and quality.

High quality, certainly to be found in the

classroom and as the standard to which

her students should aspire, but also she

expected quality in all aspects of life and

personal interactions. These are important

and lofty considerations, but several levels

beneath the “workshop for a thoughtful

mind,” I was glad to be occasionally called

upon by her to obtain a quality response

from tradesmen and landlords by means

of a lawyer’s letter, that great American

crowbar.

At the outset, I mentioned how Renée

made a family of her colleagues and students.

I’ll conclude by referring to Mr.

Lenrow’s assignment to write in

Chaucerian couplets a word-picture of a

memorable teacher. Renée cut a memorable

figure, and one evening my sister

brought home a draft of her poem in case

I could suggest an iamb here or there. Here

are a few of the lines she wrote about

Renée, and I’m sure that her students from

the period will recognize Renée’s locutions.

A Teacher once by fortune did I meet,

Whose students as it happened she’d entreat

To study nouns and conjugate at ease

Each verb in French and warned us,

“in Chinese

You will repeat at least ten times over,

Lest you fail to please with each endeavor.”

To have us all speak perfectly was she bent,

And since she was so learned and eloquent

Dans la langue française, she insisted all

Learn to converse without Manhattan

drawl.

And then, as she would address her

students:

“To you, it’s ‘Madame Spodheim’ s’il vous

plaît,

For only my Good friends call me “Renée.’”

History does not record whether

Renée was pleased with the poem, which

Mr. Lenrow undoubtedly read to her. I am

sure, however, that she would be pleased

that everyone here today would call her

“Renée.”

Michael Glass was a member of the class of

’57 to whom Miss Spodheim taught Form

V French.

ECF Reporter 13

Journey of a Seeker

Q & A with Soul Singh Khalsa (Steven Singer ’68)

Steven Singer ’68 in his

senior yearbook photo

What are some of your most vivid

memories of Midtown or Fieldston?

Mr. Denslow’s snake escaped from the

school during spring break; a window

washer was doing the windows and he

looked up and there was Chuckles, this

huge snake. I just had a great time at Ethical.

I was president of the student council,

played second violin, performed in the

orchestra. Trick or treat for UNICEF was

really big then. I lived in the Hampshire

House on Central Park South, and everyone

wanted to go trick or treating with

me because our neighbors were Mickey

Rooney, David Niven, Anthony Quinn,

and Mary Martin. David Niven came to

Soul Singh Khalsa

today

14 Class ECF Reporter Notes

the door once in

his boxer shorts

and Oxford shirt.

I loved Ethical.

But my experience

at Fieldston

was What It’s Like

to Be Lost. Everyone

is lost during

high school, but I

was doubly lost.

For me, without a

spiritual path, my life didn’t make any

sense, but I didn’t know that was the reason

then. At Fieldston, I was very traditional—president

of the middle school,

member of the political club—not a rebel.

You were raised in a secular

Jewish environment. What led you

to choose the spiritual path your

life has taken?

My father was very ill at times when

I was growing up. When you have a father

who is very ill, you feel the precariousness

of life. The first part of the spiritual

path is feeling that whatever the world

has to offer is not enough. You feel a longing

for something more.

When I was at Columbia, I took my

first yoga class there. I remember distinctly

coming out into the night air after class,

feeling that I was breathing for the first

time. There are really only two components

to one’s spiritual practice. Breath,

which is the science of yoga and meditation.

And sound which is the science of

prayer and chanting. The practice of yoga

was crucial to me as a catalyst. I left Columbia

after my sophomore year and went

to Beloit where on work study, I spent a

semester down in a Christian community

in rural Georgia. After that, I became part

of a zen center in Northampton, Massachusetts.

When you feel a longing in your

soul, you are driven to satisfy it. So I became

a spiritual shopper.

But while running a vegetarian diner,

I began practicing kundalini yoga and

came into contact with my teacher, Yogi

Bhajan. There is a time to shop and a time

to buy. When I met Yogi Bhajan, I realized

that this was the spiritual path I was

looking for. I began rising each morning

before the dawn, chanting, meditating,

and praying with others. Later, I took on

the form of a Sikh, not cutting my hair

and wearing a turban. Around 26 years

ago I married my wife, who is also on this

path. It’s been a great marriage.

That’s the way my life is today. I get

up a little after 3:00 am and go across the

street and chant with others from our community.

It is a time when the angelic presence

is very strong and I find any problem

I put before me at that time gets resolved.

When did you change your name

and why?

I legally changed my name 30 years

ago. The idea of a spiritual name is that it

gives you the chance to create an identity

that will serve your soul. When we grow

up with a name, it has all the emotional

weight, the dramas and traumas of our

years lived. A spiritual name is fresh start,

a baptism of sorts. Male Sikhs take the

name “Singh” which means “lion of Truth”

and “Khalsa” means “brotherhood, sisterhood

of the pure ones.” My spiritual

teacher gave me my first name, “Soul.”

What are you doing now,

professionally and otherwise?

I have just published my first novel.

It is titled Devil and the Divine, and it’s

about a dynastic curse that hovers over a

great American family (Kennedyesque).

The protagonist is haunted and hunted by

this curse and flees to India, where he starts

to learn about the darkness within him and

the spiritual energy to battle it. I feel very

strongly about the need to bring spiritual

energy into our popular culture. We need

our souls to be fed just like our minds and

bodies, and stories and myths can give us

that experience of feeling connected to our

own infinity. That’s why I am writing

books. (Copies are available through

www.spiritvoyage.com or 888 -735-4800)

I would love to hear from all my

fellow Fieldstonites; my email is

soulkhalsa@cox.net.

Class Notes

1924

Madeleine Robbins Samuels is

over 97 years old but still remembers

Ethical, reports her son,

Alan. She lives in New York City.

1931

Mildred Kreeger Davidson

writes that her great-niece, Arden

Kreeger, is a student at ECF.

1933

Clara Steinhardt Rosenthal

writes, “Once again I spent a very

pleasant winter in Sarasota, FL. I

have lots of very nice friends

there. I work in a consignment

shop that helps women and play

lots of bridge. No complaints.”

1934

Ralph de Toledano writes, “ At

87, I am still writing a column,

publishing articles and poetry and

working on three books, Prelude

to Terror, Toledano on Music, and

Mark Twain on Practically Anything.”

Class of ’43—60th Reunion, May 2003

1935

Shirley Kane Freydberg writes,

“My happiest years were my four

wonderful years at Fieldston

which had me well-prepared for

college. I spoke to Dr. John Otvos

from my class. We had a very nice

conversation.” Herbert W. Ritter

lives in Sacramento, California,

and has retired from flying aircraft,

logging more than 12,000

accident-free hours.

1936

Rosalind Mindlin Elbaum of

San Francisco writes, “Have particularly

enjoyed the historical

stories in the last two issues of the

Reporter. Especially because my

brother, Rowland ’29, and

daughter Connie Elbaum Goldsmith

’65 were featured!”

1938

Please send your news to

Edward D. Gottlieb

68830 Victoria Drive

Cathedral City, CA 92234

1939

Please send your news to

Alice Kahn Ladas

1020 Bishops Lodge Road

Santa Fe, NM 87501

aladas@aol.com

Alice Kahn Ladas will give the

platform address at the New York

Society for Ethical Culture on

Sunday, March 14, 2004 at 11:30

am. Her topic is “The Sexual

Revolution: Phase Two.”

1942

Please send your news to

Elaine Wechsler Slater

150 Heath Street

West Toronto, ON M4V 2Y4

Canada

e@slater.net

Gloria Spector Sondheim of Los

Angeles writes, “Attention! I’m

searching for a mentor to help me

write a fictionalized version of a

murder tale for which I was the

prime suspect 35 years ago in

N.Y.C. Next year I’ll be 80 years

old, and I am running out of energy.

Call me at 310-398-9644.”

1943

Babbette Brandt Fromme writes,

“Allan died last January but lived

to enjoy our great-granddaughter,

Class of ’48—55th Reunion, May 2003

Olivia Kristin Formato, born last

November. I volunteer several

days a week at a consignment

shop doing computer intake for

an organization that helps women

to become emotionally and financially

independent. Fieldston

continues to mean a great deal to

me.”

1944

Joan Feldman Kron ’44 received

the Golden Triangle Award from

the American Academy of Dermatology

for her September 2002

article in Allure magazine on liquid

silicone injections. Kenneth

Marantz and his wife, Sylvia,

were featured in The Columbus

(Ohio) Dispatch (3/19/03) for

their donation of 20,000 volumes

of picture books to establish The

Center for the Art of the

Picturebook at the Columbus

College of Art & Design. For

more information, please visit

www.ccad.edu.

1947

Isabelle Miller Hyman retired at

the end of academic year 2002-

03 from teaching art history at

New York University. She was on

the faculty for 40 years, 22 as full

professor. Her book, Marcel

Breuer, Architect: The Career and

the Buildings, was given the Alice

Class Notes 15

Class of ’53—50th Reunion, June 2003 Class of ’68—35th Reunion, June 2003

Davis Hitchcock prize for “the

most distinguished work of scholarship

in the history of architecture”

by the Society of Architectural

Historians. Also published

was the 2nd edition of Architecture

from Prehistory to

Postmodernity, co-authored with

Marvin Trachtenberg. During her

career, Isabelle received a

Guggenheim Fellowship, a Kress

Fellowship at Harvard’s Villa I

Tatti in Florence and was Robert

Sterling Clark Visiting Professor

at Williams College. She plans to

continue her research and writing.

1953

Ellen Fogelson Liman is working

on a series of cityscape paintings.

She completed an impressionistic

view of the Grand Beekman

tower, working from her nearby

terrace at The River House. That

painting now hangs in the

building’s sales and information

center. Robert Rosenstock was

elected chairman of the U.N.’s International

Law Commission in

2002. He retired from the U.S.

government in 2001.

16 Class Notes

1954

Ann McEwen Standridge writes,

“This year’s gift is in memory of

Mrs. Hirzler, my gym teacher,

and her daughter, Liz, my classmate—two

wonderful people.

I’m still teaching 2 nd grade. (I was

National Board Certified in

2000.) Trying to transmit a

Fieldston Lower education in our

test-driven public school environment

is a challenge.”

1956

Henry Bienen writes, “On a biking

trip to Portugal, one of our

bike members was Linda Price

Vitti, who I had not seen since

Form I!” Doris Wimpfheimer

Finkel writes, “My family is well.

Our granddaughter will be starting

ECF in the fall! In pre-k!” Tay

Weinman says he’s still an eye

surgeon in sunny California, and

there’s “no retirement in sight.

(Pun intended!)”

1959

Ruth Galanter writes, “As of June

30, I have retired from the Los

Angeles City Council after 16

tumultuous years. Am taking the

summer off before deciding what

to do next.” Ruth Neubauer

writes, “As many of you know, my

colleague, Karen, and I have been

facilitating weekend workshops

and discussion groups for women

over 50, called ‘Retirement’ or

What Next. We are available

to come to New York City to

work with a group of women

who prefer to gather locally.

Please visit our new web site,

www.retirementorwhatnext.com.”

Allan Shedlin is president and

CEO of DADS Unlimited, dedicated

to demystifying parenting

by developing a comprehensive

range of services and resources.

For more information, visit

www.daddying.com.

1962

Please send your news to

Jim Kramon

2601 Old Court Road

Baltimore, MD 21208

jkramon@kg-law.com

1963

Diana Kinoy writes, “I am currently

represented by The Old

Print Shop in N.Y.C. I will be in

their group photography show

Feb.10-March 13, 2004. The

website is www.oldprintshop.com.”

1964

Thelma Boozer Baxter recently

retired as a superintendent from

the NYC Board of Education after

30 years of service. She is now

a professor of education at Manhattan

College in Riverdale, helping

to prepare the next generation

of secondary school teachers.

1965

Julie Schafler Dale celebrated the

30 th anniversary of her Madison

Avenue gallery, Julie: Artisans’

Gallery, in October. The gallery

presents the work of artists specializing

in wearable crafts.

1967

John A. Kalmus writes, “Greetings

from the prairie. Our boys

are 15 and 7 (!). I hear the first

40 years of parenthood are the

hardest. Linda is finishing her

training to be a bona fide psychoanalyst

at the Institute for Psychoanalysis

here in Chicago—still a

great town. Best to everyone.”

Class of ’73 with Edna Fuerth Lemle ’33—30th Reunion, June 2003

1968

Katrin Belenky Colamarino

writes, “Really enjoyed a minireunion

at Eric Weinberger ’68’s

play, Class Mothers ’68. Last

winter’s ECF night saw the following

’68ers: Dan Brown, Jamie

Katz, Deanne Lemle Bosnak,

Joyce Slochower, Craig Schiller,

Steve Blier, James Kann, Peter

Mitchell, Eric Post, Ruth Acker,

Ellen Kirschner Popper. The play

was great!”

1971

Tod Machover was profiled in

The New York Times (6/3/03) for

his Toy Symphony project, in

which children play easy-to-use

electronic instruments that

Machover developed at MIT.

1972

Jill Abramson was appointed one

of two managing editors of The

New York Times in August. It is

the second highest-ranking post

in the newsroom, reporting to the

paper’s executive editor. Previously,

Abramson ran The Times’s

60-person Washington bureau.

Janice A. Freedman just celebrated

10 years at the North

Carolina Healthy Start Founda-

tion, serving four years as its executive

director. She’s also trying

to keep up with her daughters’

(Adriana, 12, and Elena, 9) soccer

schedule!

1973

Andy Mayer reports that things

continue to go well for

becker&mayer, the company he

co-founded with Jim Becker. It’s

one of the largest book producers

in the U.S. They also have a

new venture called Everyday Wisdom

Press that publishes books

based on submissions from

people everywhere. Check out

www.beckermayer.com and

www.everydaywisdom.net.

Jill Abramson ’72

1974

Please send your news to

Ann Stuchiner

70 East 96 th Street, #1A

New York, NY 10128-0747

astuchiner@netzero.net

1975

Please send your news to

G. Angela Flemister Henry

The Phillips Oppenheim Group

521 Fifth Ave., Suite 1802

New York, NY 0175

ahenry@phillipsOppenheim.com

1976

Please send your news to

Debra Bradley Ruder

15 Hallron Road

Newton, MA 02462-1115

debra_ruder@dfci.harvard.edu

Susan Hinkson sang in John

Rutter’s Requiem at Christ

Church-Riverdale in May. Susan

said she was fortunate to be singing

with some of the best voices

in New York City at that concert.

Carl R. Howard reports that he,

Nick Shorr and Lloyd Lowy continue

to meet to climb the 46

peaks in the Adirondacks over

4,000 feet. Carl is a “46er,” Lloyd

should finish in a year or so, and

Nick soon thereafter. The catch:

They climb in winter! Paula Kay

Lazarus worked on a conference

held at NYU last June entitled

“The Certainty of Uncertainty:

Preserving Art and Culture in the

21 st Century. It dealt with the fallout

from many of the political

events post 9/11, she says. Jeffrey

Silber is now director of Financial

Research Administration at

Cornell University. Jeffrey began

his career at Cornell in 1983.

1977

Please send your news to

Scott Schiller

515 West End Avenue, Apt. 3B

New York, NY 10024-4345

scottyschiller@aol.com

1978

Please send your news to

William E. Beres

190 Newtown Avenue

Norwalk, CT 06851

williamberes@excite.com

or

Martha Dorn

515 East 85th St. , PHB

New York, NY 10028

mdorn1@nyc.rr.com

While many of us had an opportunity

to catch up in person at

our 25th Reunion in June, greetings

were sent by some who

couldn’t attend: Diana Barcelo

Arcentales, Margery Cooper,

Lisa Dabek, David Factor, Sheri

Lewis, and Doug Rediker. The

summer of 2003 brought some

of our classmates together from

Class of ’76 at a spring gathering at the home of Efraim Grinberg

Class Notes 17

near and far: Carl Flemister and

his family spent some time with

Tammy Weiss on Martha’s Vineyard.

Nancy Winkelstein saw

Marianne Neuman on the Cape.

Martha Dorn saw Abigail Esman

when she visited New York from

Holland where she is a freelance

writer. As fall got underway, Dana

Robin had a new movie credit

added to his resume: The Runaway

Jury, and Bill Beres joined

the global equity transaction team

at Reuters. Do let us hear from

you so we can keep everyone upto-date.

1979

Please send your news to

Charlie Minton

42 Raafenberg Road

Tarrytown, NY 10591

cminton@mammothcapital.com

Lewis Liman joined Cleary

Gottlieb, an 800-lawyer international

law firm, in June as a partner

in its New York office. Lewis

is experienced in complex securities-related

investigations. Jean

Korelitz writes, “Well, the big

news around our house isn’t precisely

mine, but I am basking in

the reflected glow of my

husband’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

(Moy Sand and Gravel by

Paul Muldoon; Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, October 2002). On a

more humble scale, my first book

for kids is coming out this fall, a

novel for ‘middle readers’ (that

translates to 7-12 years old, evidently)

called Interference Powder

(Marshall Cavendish Corp., September

2003). I’m also writing a

lot for Real Simple magazine and

Detail from a show of paintings by

Kevin Zucker ’94 at the

Mary Boone Gallery in N.Y.C.

See page 22 for more details.

18 Class Notes

hanging out with my kids, Dorothy,

11, and Asher, 4 (last seen

in utero at our 20 th reunion). Alan

Michaels is a visiting professor at

the University of Michigan Law

School this semester. He finished

his second year as assistant dean

for faculty at Ohio State Law

School. Cynthia Petterson-

Petrovani’s Bronx-based apparel

firm, New York Princess

Knitwear, Inc., was awarded a $4

million contract by the Defense

Department to produce up to

150,000 knit jerseys a year for

four years for the U.S. Navy, according

to Crain’s New York Business

(8/11/03). Cynthia came up

with the idea of sweaters for the

military in the aftermath of Sept.

11. Julia Schacter married Jon

Regardie in Los Angeles on Aug.

25, 2002. Guests included Laura

Silber and Amelia Wallace

Mendoza. Julia is a documentary

filmmaker. Her PBS film The

First Year won a Peabody Award

last year. Jon is a journalist.

1980

Please send your news to

Eric Berkeley

715 Park Ave. #5A

New York, NY 10021

ericberkeley@yahoo.com

1981

Please send your news to

Jill Graham Klein

215 East 68th St. #2S

New York, NY 10021

jillgraham@nyc.rr.com

Gregory Amos announces the

creation of NativeWords with his

wife Maribel. The business is a

translation, writing and editing

service with Gregory as the native

Engish speaker and Maribel

as the native Spanish speaker.

Eventually they plan to offer services

in multiple languages. They

can be reached by email at

nativewords@verizon.net.

1982

Please send your news to

Karin J. Bravin

74 Fifth Ave., #4C

New York, NY 10011-8006

karin@gblgallery.com

Liz Maraffi Michaud writes, “Although

Joe and I have been living

in New Hampshire for 11

years, we still feel like New Yorkers

living out of state. We celebrated

our 10 th wedding anniversary

this past May and will be

taking our first vacation without

the kids at the end of the month.

Our two beautiful daughters,

Madeline, 3 , and Charlotte, 2,

are our constant joy and

challenge. I never knew how

much I’d love being a Mom. I

work as a sales manager for

GovConnection, a direct marketer

of computer hardware and

software, managing a sales team

that sells to the federal government.

I’m sorry that I missed the

last reunion and would like to

connect with my old school buddies.

It’s easiest to reach me at

lmichaud@govconnection.com.”

1983

Please send your news to

Greg Astrachan

c/o Wilkie Farr & Gallagher

787 Seventh Avenue

New York, NY 10019-6018

gastrachan@wilkie.com

Eliza Law Garcia has started a

Montessori school, the Sagebrush

Montessori Academy, in

Edinburgh, Texas.

1984

Please send your news to

William W. Sahlman

40 W. 24th St. #9E

New York, NY 10010

wsahlman@lehman.com

or

Fred Moran

615 NW 12th St.

Delray Beach, FL 33444

freddymomania@hotmail.com

Paul Schiff Berman has been promoted

to full professor at the

University of Connecticut,

School of Law. He is the co-author

of Cyberlaw: Problems of

Policy and Jurisprudence in the

Information Age (West

Wadsworth, June 2003). Martin

Lewison ’84 has moved from

Arkansas back to New York after

a 15-year absence and is now a

ratings specialist with S&P.

Cynthia Friedberg Marvell has

just finished her ninth consecu-

tive road tour with Lazer Vaudeville

and will be covering the European

juggling convention in

Denmark for Spectacle, a circus

magazine. The tour resumes in

January ( for more information

see www.lazervaudeville.com ).

Charles Herman-Wurmfeld directed

Reese Witherspoon in

Legally Blonde 2 (July 2003,

MGM). He lives in Los Angeles

with his domestic partner of six

years, Jason Bushman. Life update:

Nick Roosevelt reports,

“Ellen and I are expecting our 4th

child in February!”

1985

Please send your news to

Jennifer Weiss Sobel

65 Greensboro Road

Hanover, NH 03755-3106

jsobel@vermontlaw.edu

Alan Gilbert was named to the

newly created post of music director

of the Santa Fe Opera. Alan

will conduct Mozart’s Don

Giovanni in 2004, two operas in

2005 and one in 2006. Anna Law

Rast has been elected an officer

of her regional P.T.A.

1986

Please send your news to

Lenora Ausbon-Odom

Deloitte & Touche, LLP

555 12 th St. NW, Suite 500

Washington, DC 20004

lausbon@deloitte.com

Justine Maurer married longtime

love, actor John Leguizamo, at

their lakefront home in upstate

New York. The wedding was featured

this summer in People

magazine. The couple’s daughter

Allegra, 3, was flower girl and

their son Ryder, 2, was ring

bearer.

1987

Please send your news to

Natalie Ireland-Ward

429 Shortridge Drive

Wynnewood, PA 19096

nattyi@aol.com

Brian Hoffman is completing his

training in orthopaedic surgery at

Maimonides Medical Center in

New York, after which he will be

pursuing a one-year fellowship in

foot and ankle surgery at Duke

University Medical Center in

Durham, NC. His wife, Jennifer,

is administrator for outpatient

vascular services at St. Luke’s-

Roosevelt Hospital Center in

New York. He can be reached at

kabeyun@mac.com. Pamela

Schein Murphy and her husband

Marc, a chef, are opening a restaurant,

Landmarc at 179 W.

Broadway in Tribeca sometime in

December. Daniel Schacht

writes, “I just celebrated my second

wedding anniversary, love my

work as a psychotherapist and

continue to enjoy my studies in

psychoanalysis—all in the metro

Boston area.”

1988

Dana Baxter has started her own

PR and marketing company,

DIME Media, Inc., after graduating

from Columbia in May

2002 with an M.B.A. The new

company already has accounts

with MTV and Vanguarde Media,

Inc., publishers of Heart &

Soul, Honey and Savoy magazines.

Roger Falcon is currently program

director of ArtCorps, a part

of New England Biolabs Foundation,

whose mission is to send

volunteer artists to Central

America. There the artists use

their talents to help local nongovernmental

organizations improve

their communications and

involve communities. His wife,

Helene, is an art therapist working

with children. Email them at

falcon61@EcologyFund.net.

Ralina Cardona was named a

board member of the New York

Yankees Foundation. Rebecca

Gratz writes, “May 28, 2003, my

husband, Joe Callaghan, and I

celebrated our son Issac Samuel

Callaghan’s first birthday. We had

lots of fun and surprisingly good

weather. We live in New Haven,

where I am a high school history

teacher, and my husband runs his

own business, Invisible Chef. It

is a home meal delivery service.

He cooks meals from a weekly

menu and delivers directly to clients’

refrigerators. Life is exciting

and interesting as we race after

our little one and enjoy the outdoors

whenever it’s not raining. I

am looking forward to the end of

school when I can devote the

summer to being a mom.”

Maggie Law received her master’s

degree in information technology

at UC Berkeley. Evan Specter is

now general manager of the Traveling

Jewish Theater in San Francisco.

His son, Luka, is almost

two years old.

1989

Please send your news to

Heather Abrahams

153 Gaskill St.

Woonsocket, RI 02895

drhpa@aol.com

Gideon Bernstein and his wife,

Nancy, have a baby daughter,

June Turner Bernstein. He still

works at Merrill Lynch in European

Equity Sales. Meredith

Davis writes, “I have been teaching

3 rd grade here in NYC for the

last four years after teaching and

acting in Colorado for four. I am

starting a new teaching job in the

fall at Manhattan New School,

also 3 rd grade, and I am very excited

about it.”

1990

Please send your news to

Shali Ponti

1731 Whitley Avenue, #B16

Los Angeles, CA 90028

shaliemory@yahoo.com

Anice R. Cox writes, “I am currently

working at a foster care

agency, Harlem Dowling

Westside Center for Children and

Families, as a senior case planner

in the kinship unit. I have two

children, Tatiana D. Windley, 4,

and Amir R. Windley, 2.” Matthew

Farrauto is press secretary

and director of communications

in Washington, D.C., for U.S.

Congressman Brad Sherman of

California. Jenny Fielding, an investment

advisor with Morgan

Stanley and always surrounded by

computer screens on the trading

floor where she works, was mentioned

in Lisa Belkin’s “Life’s

Work” column in The New York

Times (4/13/03) about the omnipresence

of the Iraq war in the

workplace.

1991

Please send your news to

Wendi Newman

220 E. 63 rd St. #5C

New York, NY 10021

wendi@nyc.rr.com

Kristin Claeson writes that she

is still enjoying London life, after

two years there, working in investment

research with Goldman

Sachs. She is still maintaining her

connection to Bohemia (literally!)

via frequent trips to her “crumbling

farmhouse in the Czech

Republic.” Erik Egol and Jesse

Gibbon are still touring with jazz/

fusion band Schleigho and are

currently recording their 3 rd release

for Butch Trucks’ Flying

Frog records. Additionally, Erik

gives private drum lessons in

Westchester, NY, and Jesse tours

with several other bands including

his own quartet, Lucid, which

Class Notes 19

performed at JazzFest ’03 in New

Orleans. Catherine Topp writes,

“I recently was married to a great

guy, Michael Dorum, and am living

in the city, for the time being

anyway.”

1992

Please send your news to

Justin Sher

245 E. 19 th St. #2M

New York, NY 10003

jmsher2000@yahoo.com

David Bunzel continues to work

at WFAN as assistant news editor.

He’s also working with

Bonnie Shrut and Bruce Posner

at ECF on getting an Internet

radio station ready for Fieldston.

“We hope to have our first shows

soon,” says David. Nikki Willis

is getting ready for graduate

school in Texas.

1993

Please send your news to

Lauren Porosoff Mitchell

5500 Friendship Blvd., #1028

Chevy Chase, MD 20815

porosoff@yahoo.com

Suzanne Agins received her

M.F.A. degree in directing in May

from the University of California,

San Diego. She’s now back in

New York. Dawn Baxter is the

entertainment marketing manager

at Teen People magazine, having

been hired directly out of college

for the original staff. She is

responsible for securing all talent

for marketing programs as well as

brand development partnerships

with television and movie companies.

Gabrielle Moss is working

at USA network. She is also a

swing dancer with the team,

“Hip, Swing and a Jump,” which

has placed first in national competitions.

Kate Nemens is practicing

family law in Worcester,

MA. Elisabeth Rosenstock married

Italian-born Michael Siller in

Vienna. Michael is a soloist at

20 Class Notes

Vienna’s Volks Opera. Elisabeth

is working as a Foreign Service

officer at the U.S. Embassy there.

The couple will move to Washington,

D.C., in early 2004.

1994

Please send your news to

Daryl S. Freimark

11 President Street, #2

Brooklyn, NY 11231

dfreimark6@hotmail.com

Jenny Kronovet reports: “I am

the co-editor of Circumference, a

new journal of poetry in translation.

The first issue will be out

on November 20th and the web

site for the journal is

www.circumferencemag.com.” Go

check it out! Jared Margolis is

teaching underprivileged kids to

snowboard through “Chill,” a

program founded by Burton

Snowboards in Burlington, VT.

Jared runs the Burlington chapter

of this program which has

spread to eight cities in the U.S.

and one in Canada. Matt

McGowan has moved to the

U.K. for his M.B.A. studies at the

University of Oxford.

1995

Please send your news to

Ann Sharfstein

40 Coleman Road

Arlington, MA 02476

Alex Baum-Stein has left The

Riverdale Press as advertising production

manager to cook full

time at the Riverdale Yacht Club.

According to The Press, which was

founded by Alex’s grandfather

David Stein, yacht club members

and their guests are already lining

up for his carrot cake icecream

sandwiches! Sachi Feris

now teaches Spanish at Ethical

Culture. She also has started an

educational, nonprofit foundation,

Border Crossers, that brings

together young students from de

facto segregated neighborhoods

Class of ’98 —5th Reunion, June 2003

to explore issues of social justice

(www.bordercrossers.org).

Alexandra “Sasha” Zoueva

writes, “I’d love to hear from any

Fieldstonites who are in Europe

or are going to be in Europe since

I’m in Paris and will be here until

July or so. I was transferred here

by the law firm that I was working

for in NY and am working as

a paralegal here, not a very glamorous

job but working here is an

interesting experience. I studied

abroad in Paris a couple of years

ago and worked for a literary

agency one summer, so if anyone

is up for visiting Paris, I can show

them around. My email is

zoueva@aya.yale.edu.”

1996

Deb Nemens is working and living

in Seattle, Washington.

1997

Please send your news to

Amy Sulds

240 West 98 th St., #4A

New York, NY 10025

amysulds@yahoo.com

Oren M. Abeles just moved to

Chicago to work as a 3 rd grade

teacher in the Inner City Teaching

Corps. Gaspar Epstein is currently

into his third year of teaching

at Trinity-Pawling, an all-boy’s

boarding school in Pawling, NY.

He teaches Spanish and also an

elective on international relations.

Danielle Gordon married Sean

Gelb on May 24, 2003. The

bridal party consisted of Jocelyn

Gordon ’03, Katie Iger, and

Rebecca Gordon ’96. Other

Fieldston alums attended the

wedding including: Susie

Noselson Kolton ’84, Alison

Dworkin ’96, Alexis Green ’96,

Elinor McKay ’96, Alexia

Schapira ’96, Marc Velez and

Amanda Iger ’00. Danielle and

Sean reside in N.Y.C. where she

works for Cushman Wakefield.

1998

Please send your news to

Darren Martin

511 West Johnson Street, #201

Madison, WI 53703-1903

dmmartin@uwalumni.com

Sarah Gluckstern writes, “Me in

a nutshell: I’m currently living in

Los Angeles, working at a rape

treatment center and applying to

medical schools, mainly in L.A.,

San Francisco and New York.”

Caleb Hurst-Hiller writes, “I will

be teaching 8th grade social studies

at North Central Charter Essential

School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts,

as a participant in the

year-long New Teachers Collaborative

program.” Darren Martin

reports: “With my December

graduation coming ahead, I’m

currently looking into Ph.D. programs

in higher educational fields

Spring Reunion of 1998 Ivy League Champion Varsity Baseball Team.

and/or full time college academic

staff positions in the New York,

Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin/Illinois

areas. I went to the

five-year class of 1998 reunion in

June along with about 55 other

members of the class. It was a

great time, and my other classmates

have really begun to make

some serious moves with their

post-Fieldston lives.” Zach

McGowan appeared in Hazard of

the Game, part of the Vital Theatre

Company’s Vital Signs New

Works Festival staged in March

and May 2003 in New York.

Todd Muhlfelder reports that

Jesse Ellis and he worked together

for the past year at a real estate

property investment fund, a

newly created investment arm of

The Artery Group in Washington,

D.C. Jesse left mid-summer,

however, to begin studies at

Brooklyn Law School. Ben Weber

reports, “I have thoroughly

enjoyed my first year at International

Creative Management

(ICM) in New York, and the firm

has offered me the position of

junior agent in the fall. I just

moved into an apartment in

Murray Hill with some

Middlebury friends, and the river

view is beautiful. I had a great

time at the reunion with everyone

and especially enjoyed lying

in a rain puddle. I look forward

to running into people in the

city.” Lilly Sutton’s day job is

working at IMG Artists Manage-

ment. By night, she’s playing violin

in the Columbia University

Orchestra and in Stasis, a rock

band. Keep an eye out for the

band in New York at Don Hill’s,

Greenwich and Spring streets,

and Continental, Third Avenue

at St. Mark’s Place.

1999

Please send your news to

Alix Steinfeld

1675 York Ave. #31B

New York, NY 10128

alix@mail.com

2000

Please send your news to

Jenny Sharfstein

Hinman Box 2582

Dartmouth College

Hanover, NH 03755

jenfs@dartmouth.edu

Damon Ginandes has been

nominated for membership in

Phi Sigma Tau, the national philosophy

honor society. Jeffrey

Lefcourt writes, “ I continue to

work in the restaurant business.

In 2001 I opened my first restaurant

called Jane (100 West Houston

St., 212-254-7000). In the

winter I plan to open another on

the Upper West Side.”

2001

Please send your news to

Patrick Monahan

3638 Oxford Ave.

Bronx, NY 10463

pm1014@aol.com

Patrick Monahan, your class recorder,

writes, “Since the last issue

of the Reporter, more than a

few of our classmates have written

and phoned to say how much

they would like to be included in

the class notes. One of the most

humorous calls came just as I had

finished my last final exam of the

year. I answered my cell phone,

and there was a little, but all-toofamiliar

voice on the other end

shrieking ’Patrick, it’s Alex

(Kendall). I just got the Reporter

and am reading the class notes in

Starbucks with Rachel and Duha.

I couldn’t wait to get home to call

you.’ ‘Ah, Scholar Kendall’ (to

quote the great Mr. Howard), my

class notes have clearly achieved

their purpose. Here’s another reaction

left on my answering machine:

’Hi, it’s me (Barrie

Handschu). People are going to

think I’m a snob when they read

these class notes!’ For your information,

Barrie’s hair is now a delightful

shade of dark brown.

Now, on to the news, kids. Our

class president, Sam Steinberg,

writes that she is spending part

of the summer working at the

New York Jets training camp and

hopes to study abroad in

Copenhagen next spring; clearly

Sam is having a ball. Misa

Dayson tells me that she, too, has

an exciting internship this summer

working in the productions

and acquisitions department of

United Artists and has appeared

in a play called Preface to the Alien

Garden, but says she was shocked

to hear that people believed her

portrayal of a Kansas City gang

member. Well, I certainly would

be shocked, especially since I

don’t even know where Kansas

City is. Misa also told me that

she’s been working with the National

Visionary Leadership

Project which seeks to preserve

the oral history of African Americans

both in New York City and

around the country. In addition

to that, Misa is doing a double

major in film and African American

studies at Wesleyan. I

dragged out the following from

Andrew Sullivan: He is majoring

in either International Relations

or English. He is a member of

two clubs, Penn Students for Animal

Rights and the Penn Environmental

Group. He is still a

vegetarian. Shera Resch is having

a wonderful time at Mount

Holyoke, where she is majoring

in studio art and possibly African

American studies. Incidentally, to

those who are reading this and are

feeling inferior because they have

only chosen a single course of

study at their institution of higher

learning, I can only say this: I’m

not double majoring, and already

I’ve been promoted to class scribe!

Well, back to Shera and her overachieving;

she has been working

with several unions for the past

two summers and has helped to

organize rallies and to investigate

the underground economy in

New York City. Like Misa, Shera

is on her way to stardom and was

featured in the October 2002 issue

of Cosmogirl. So, on to double

major #25. Jill Lubarsky is studying

political science and psychology

at Union and will study in

York, England, this fall. Jill also

plans to be an intern for a congressman

in Washington, D.C.,

next spring. Now let’s talk about

me. Chicago continues to be exciting,

especially since I’ve been

made chair of the University’s

Smart Museum Activities Committee

and have begun singing a

bit more seriously; I even gave a

small concert last spring. This

summer I was an intern at the

Frick Collection, which was

nothing less than heaven. I mean,

I wasn’t expecting to get a Fifth

Avenue mansion so soon!”

Class Notes 21

Awards, Openings,

Performances, Publications

James L. Weil ’47 has published

a new collection of poems, The

Barn Mother Loved to Paint, published

by Kelly-Winterton Press.

Linda Olenik Pastan ’50 won the

$100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

for 2003. Presented by the Poetry

Foundation, it is one of the largest

awards made to poets. “The

human heart—its complexity,

ambiguity, frequent anguish and

marvelous ability to cope and prevail—is

the principal matter of

her graceful, deeply moving art,”

said Joseph Parisi, editor of Poetry

Magazine. Pastan is the author

of 12 collections of poetry.

Clifford Alexander ’51 was honored

by the Studio Museum in

Harlem in October. The Studio

Museum has been an important

force in the promotion of artists

of African descent worldwide

since 1967.

George Litton ’52 was in the

news this fall in connection with

the gala 50th anniversary concert

in New Haven by the famed Yale

Russian Chorus, Litton was

founding president of the group;

the event was a highlight of Yale

University’s celebration of St.

Petersburg’s tercentenary.

Leslie Kandell ’54 contributed a

column to The New York Times

supplement, Education Life, last

August. In "A Reluctant Reunion,"

Kandell, a former

teacher, recounts the challenge of

tracking down the members of

her 1961 fifth grade class from PS

2 on the Lower East Side.

Tom Delbanco, MD, ’57 received

the Robert J. Glaser Award

from the Society of General Internal

Medicine at Harvard

Medical, Dental & Public Health

Schools. It is the Society’s highest

award.

22 Class Notes

Arthur Miller ’60 performed his

songs this summer at The Cutting

Room in New York City. His

latest CD is A. Miller at Rave’s.

Dan Rottenberg ’60 had his

ninth book, In the Kingdom of

Coal, published this fall.

Roy S. Neuberger ’61 has just

published a new book,

Worldstorm: Finding Meaning and

Direction Amidst Today’s World

Crisis. The book examines contemporary

issues from a Torah

perspective.

Constance Kheel ’63 exhibited

her paintings on paper at the

Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New

York City during May.

Jim Neuberger ’64 received a distinguished

service award from the

Bank Street College Alumni Association

this fall.

Danny Goldberg ’67, chair and

CEO of Artemis Records, has

written his first book, Dispatches

from the Culture Wars—How the

Left Lost Teen Spirit. The Rev.

Jesse Jackson calls it “required

reading for anyone concerned

with the state of democratic politics

in this country.”

Joshua M. Greene ’67 has written

an historical biography, Justice

at Dachau—The Trials of an

American Prosecutor. Greene reveals

the dramatic story of Alabama

lawyer William Denson

who led the prosecution in the

largest series of Nazi trials in history.

Shira Rosan ’67 (S. J. Rozan)

won the prestigious Edgar Award

for best crime novel with her Winter

and Night. This is her eighth

novel featuring New York PIs

Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, and

it also won the 2003 Nero Award

for best American novel. She runs

an ongoing series of panels on the

subject of “Crime Writing and

The American Imagination” at

New York’s 92nd Street Y.

Judy Barnett ’68 brought her

country/progressive rock/blues

band, Judy Barnett Band, to

Dillon’s, New York City, this fall.

Warren Leight ’73 was mentioned

in The New York Times

(9/17/03) as one of six writers

who participated in “The 24-

Hour Plays.” Staged on Broadway,

the six 10-minute plays were

written, cast and performed

within 24 hours! Leight was also

interviewed in a Wall Street Journal

article (9/12/03) about his

dual life as a playwright and TV

writer for the hit series, Law and

Order.

Steven B. Clark ’74 was among

six employees of the New York

State Unified Court System chosen

for the 2003 Bernard Botein

Awards, given for outstanding

contribution to the administration

of justice. Clark is a court

clerk specialist in the Bronx Supreme

Court, Criminal Division.

Eva Saks ’76 won a Student

Academy Award for her film

Family Values, which has been released

by Docurama on DVD.

Her new film, Confection,

screened at the Tribeca Film Festival,

is headed to the Rhode Island

International Film Festival

where another film, Colorforms,

will make its world premiere.

Susan Sternau ’76 had an exhibit

of her work this summer, “Structural

Views: Five Oil Paintings,”

at Fabrizio in Larkspur, California.

Gerald Cohen ’78 of Shaarei

Tikvelt Congregation in Scarsdale

was presented with the Max

Wohlberg Award for Composition

in May at the Convention

of the Cantors Assembly, Los

Angeles. His work has been recorded

on the Composers Recordings,

Inc., label.

Eve Troutt Powell ’79 was one

of 24 creative individuals awarded

a MacArthur “Genius” grant of

$500,000 this past fall. Troutt

Powell, an associate professor of

history at the University of Georgia,

writes and researches about

nationalism in the Middle East,

Arabic literature, and the area’s

slavery in the late 19th century.

Her most recent book, published

this year, is A Different Shade of

Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain

and the Mystery of the Sudan.

David Williamson Shaffer ’82

was selected by The National

Academy of Education to be a

2003-4 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.

The fellowship encourages

outstanding researchers to pursue

critical education projects.

India Hixon Radfar ’85 has completed

a book of poems, The Desire

to Meet with the Beautiful.

Jon Schapiro ’86 won the Charlie

Parker Jazz Composition Prize

presented by the BMI Foundation

in July. Schapiro was

awarded $3,000 for his piece, “A

Bounce in Her Step.”

Khary Lazarre-White ’91 has

editedVoices of the Brotherhood/

Sister Sol, a collection of writings

from youth in a Harlem-based

community organization.

Gabrielle Giattino ’94 curated a

group show, “Quixotic,” at the

SlingShot Project Gallery in New

York City this fall.

Jennifer Kronovet ’94 is co-editor

of a new poetry journal, Circumference,

dedicated to translations

of new poetry around the

globe. For more information, visit

www.circumferencemag.com.

Kevin Zucker ’94 had a show of

his paintings at the Mary Boone

Gallery in New York City, September

6th-October 18th . His subjects

included the “interior of a

stately country house and its oppressive

grandeur,” according to

New York magazine.

Alexandra Fiorillo ’99 received a

Fulbright Grant in May as a

graduating senior at Connecticut

College. Fiorillo, an economics

and Latin American Studies

double major and women’s studies

minor, will spend a year in

Ecuador studying the impact of

microfinance programs on local

communities.

Melinda Koster ’02 won the

Gilder Lehrman Prize in American

History for a paper she wrote

in her senior year at Fieldston on

Slave Motherhood. The prize acknowledges

exemplary historical

writing by high school students;

Koster won second place and

$3,000. The previous year

Marissa Goldman ’01 won honorable

mention for her paper,

“‘The Triumph of Burbopolis’:

The Transformation of the

American Suburb.”

Marriages

Alexander Grinberg ’81 married

Lisabeth Balshan on May 25,

2003.

Denise Mauzerall ’81 married

Kenneth Duell on June 28, 2003.

Julia Pimsleur ’86 married

Darren Levine on June 21, 2003.

Laura Radel ’84 married Albert

Cruz last June.

Gary Wolf ’87 married Mary

Kemper on June 14, 2003.

Kirstin Been ’91 married James

Spielman on Sept. 6, 2003.

Amelia Cullinan ’93 was married

to David Morris ’93 on June 8,

2003.

Avitai (Ty) Gold ’94 married

Jocelyn Levick on June 26, 2003.

Sophia, daughter of

Wendy Feller ’81

Jacqueline Weiden ’72 and Marc

Maltz announce the birth of

Caroline Weiden Maltz on May

18, 2003.

Andrew Heffner ’77 and Carla

Freedman announce the birth of

a girl, Sophia, on April 5, 2003.

David Satin ’78 and Joanne welcome

Alexander’s brother,

Mitchell Robert, born Jan. 18,

2003.

Adam Paley ’79 and Rachel

Stenn welcome a baby boy,

Abraham Albert Paley, on March

30, 2003.

Wendy Feller ’81 and her husband

Allan Farkas announce the

birth of their daughter, Sophia

Feller Farkas, on August 19,

2003.

Stephen Brown ’83 and Aliza

Brown announce the birth of

their fourth son, Shmuel, born

May 25, 2003.

James Polsky ’83 and Bernedette

Perez welcome a boy, Harry James

Polsky, born March 10, 2003.

Josh Klaris ’86 and his wife Amy

welcomed twins, Gabriel Cooper

Klaris and Eloise May Klaris on

October 8th .

Jody Madell ’86 and James Davis

on the birth of their daughter, Eva

Davis Madell, born 4th of July.

Soren and Kiran, sons of Dylan

Hixon ’84

Births and Adoptions

Catherine Newman ’86 and her

husband Michael welcome their

second child, Abigail Shirley

Millner Newman, little sister to

Ben, 3. To read all her weekly

journal,” Bringing Up Ben,”visit

www.parentcenter.com/general/

82826.htm.

Zoe Balsam Biggs ’87 and her

husband Denis announce the

birth of a second child, Annie

Rose Biggs last March.

Susan Achtman ’88 and Tim

Bower announce the birth of

Anne Carolyn Bower, born May

4, 2003.

Zack Sullivan ’89 and Vivian

announce the birth of James

Terrence Sullivan, born on August

25, 2003.

Kim Butler ’92 and Favian Leon

Vazquez announced the birth of

their son, Aidan Leon, born September

9, 2003.

Deaths

ECF notes with sadness the deaths

of Fieldston alumni:

Dorothy Rasch Senie ’26; June

14, 2003. She was predeceased by

her husband, Bernard. She is survived

by her sons, Michael and

Stephen; her grandchildren,

David, Daniel, Laura, Brian and

Jeremy; and great-grandchild,

Cordelia.

Lucy Cores Kortchmar ’29; Aug.

6, 2003. Born in Moscow, she

came to the U.S. at age 9 and

made a career as a graphic designer

and later an author. She

was predeceased by her husband,

Emil. She is survived by her sons,

Michael and Daniel, and by her

grandchildren Grace, Samuel,

Sophia and Stella.

John E. Baer ’34; Aug. 17, 2003.

He was a pharmacologist and retired

executive with what is now

Merck & Co. Inc. He helped develop

a ground-breaking series of

drugs in the treatment of hypertension.

Edith Davis Siegel ’34; July 13,

2003. She was a founding board

member and assistant treasurer of

Supportive Children’s Advocacy

Network New York and a board

member of the Eisman Foundation

for Children, Inc.

Jeanette Guinzburg Bleier ’35;

April 11, 2003. She was a founding

member and president of

Temple Beth El in Chappaqua,

NY, and a past president of District

3, New York State, of the

National Federation of Temple

Sisterhoods. She is survived by

her sons Richard, Steven and

Ralph; her grandchildren Kenneth,

William, Kelly, Michael and

Jason; and her great-grandson,

Moses.

Arthur Kinoy ’37; Sept. 19,

2003. He was a lawyer for the

Chicago Seven and a founder of

the Center for Constitutional

Rights, a force in the civil rights

Class Notes 23

movement. According to The

New York Times, “He was involved

in many other controversial

cases and clients, including

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for

whom he filed the last appeal of

their death sentence, and Adam

Clayton Powell Jr., the Harlem

congressman in his fight against

expulsion from Congress.” He

also represented witnesses before

the House Un-American Activities

Committee. He retired from

Rutgers Law School in 1991 as

professor emeritus. He authored

a book, Rights on Trial: The Odyssey

of a People’s Lawyer (Harvard

University Press, 1983). He was

predeceased by his wife, Susan

Knopf Kinoy ’40. He is survived

by his brother Ernest ’42, son

Peter ’66, daughter Joanne ’67,

niece Judy Kinoy ’67 and nephew

Daniel Kinoy ’71.

Jane Wheeler Norman ’37; December

2002. She was predeceased

by her brother, Fred, and

her sister, Alice. Another sister,

Marion Wheeler, died in July

24 Class Notes

2003. Together Alice and Marion

managed the Fieldston Property

Owners Association for years.

Ruth Obler Mintz ’38; June

2003. She is survived by her children

William and Kathryn.

Adele Schulman Osherson ’38;

May 31, 2003. She was a fiction

writer and for many years a psychotherapist

at the Fifth Avenue

Center for Psychotherapy, New

York. She is survived by her husband,

Louis; her children and

their spouses, Sam and Julie, Dan

and Yolande; and her grandchildren,

Toby, Emily, Marc, Annette

and Benjamin.

Gladys Medalie Heldman ’39;

June 22, 2003. She was “an instrumental

figure in the formation

of women’s professional tennis,”

reported The New York

Times. She was the founder, publisher,

and editor of World Tennis

magazine. She took up tennis at

the age of 25 after her marriage

to Julius, a scientist and former

U.S. junior champion. She com-

T R A V E L W I T H U S

peted at the United States National

Championships four times

and at Wimbledon in 1954. In

1970, she helped nine of the top

women’s players, including Billie

Jean King and Rosie Casals, form

a pro tour, which evolved into the

Virginia Slims tour. In addition

to her husband, she is survived by

her daughters Julie M. and Trixie,

both accomplished players. She is

also survived by grandchildren

Amy, Seth and Darren Weiss and

by great-grandchildren Jason and

Jack Weiss.

Howard David Samuel ’42; June

19, 2003. He was a veteran

A.F.L.-C.I.O. leader and a labor

official in the Carter administration.

From 1979 to 1992, he was

the president of the A.F.L.-

C.I.O.’s Industrial Union Department.

“He promoted the recruitment

of women and minorities

as grass-roots organizers,” reported

The New York Times. “He

was a longtime campaigner for

improved working conditions

and take-home pay, and he

Education is a journey that engages all members of the ECF community

—students, parents, teachers, alumni, and friends. As ECF celebrates its

125 th year, please join us in supporting the vital work of the school.

This holiday season, we hope you will consider making a gift to the

Annual Fund by December 31 st . All gifts at every level are most

appreciated and will bring us one step closer to our goal of $2.25

million.

To make a gift by telephone or if you have questions about calendar

year-end contributions, please contact Emily Kasof, director of annual

giving, at (212)712-6286 or ekasof@ecfs.org. Please make checks payable

to ECFS.

sought to bolster labor’s standing

by forming alliances of mutual

interest, dealing with businessmen,

environmentalists and

members of Congress.” He is survived

by his wife, Ruth Zamkin

Samuel; three sons, Robert,

Donald and William; and 11

grandchildren.

Richard Wallach ’45; June 1,

2003. He was an associate justice

in the Appellate Division’s First

Judicial Department. He was appointed

to the appeals bench by

Gov. Mario Cuomo, reportedThe

New York Times, after serving on

New York City’s civil court and

as a justice of State Supreme

Court in Manhattan. He was the

valedictorian of his Fieldston

School class and graduated magna

cum laude from Harvard in

1949. He received his law degree

from Harvard in 1952. He is survived

by his partner Marli

Hinckley; two sons, Roger ’75

and Jon ’79; and five grandchildren.

Agnes Alexis Howard ’77; May

7, 2003. A graduate of the University

of Pennsylvania and University

of Virginia Law School,

Howard was admitted to the New

York and Virginia Bars and was

counsel for many years at the Legal

Division of the Federal Deposit

Insurance Corporation. She

is survived by her husband,

Kyland, and her son James,

among other family.

Jonathan Edgar Burchell ’91,

June 29, 2003. He died in the

crash of the bush plane he was

piloting in the Kenya outback;

Burchell, an accomplished concert

promoter, skier, fisherman,

musician, and pilot, was on the

staff of the Laikipia Predator

Project, tracking, capturing, and

collaring lions for conservation

and research purposes. Donations

may be made in his name to the

Laikipia Predator Project, c/o Africa

Program, International Programs,

Wildlife Conservation

Society, Bronx Zoo, 2300 Southern

Blvd., Bronx, NY 10460.

Fieldston Reunions 2004 - Save the Date!

❖ Saturday, May 22nd at Ethical Culture –

1944 and 1949

❖ Saturday, June 5th at Fieldston – 1954, 1959,

1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994

❖ Saturday, June 12th (venue TBA)—1999

— Check www.ecfs.org for Reunion News by Class

— Help us find the “lost” alumni in your class

(listed on the web site under your class year).

— To join the reunion committee, contact

Toby Himmel, alumni@ecfs.org

Regional Alumni Events

A L U M N I B U L L E T I N B O A R D

❖ San Francisco Bay Area, Thursday, January 22

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

Diane Arbus exhibit tour and wine reception

❖ Los Angeles Alumni Reception, TBA

Traveling west in the next few months?

Contact the alumni office for an invitation!

125th Anniversary Celebration Events,

Spring 2004, dates TBA

❖ Alumni Documentary Film Series

❖ Photo Exhibit at the

New-York Historical Society

❖ Gala Concert, April 12th

Wanted! Fieldston Alumni Class Recorders

If your class does not yet have a Recorder, you

could be the one! Be the first to find out what your

classmates have been up to and report the news.

To volunteer, contact Toby Himmel at

alumni@ecfs.org.

Alumni Classes 2000, ’01, ’02, ’03

Please send your email address to the alumni office

by writing to: alumni@ecfs.org

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not

a preparation for future living.

John Dewey

If you would like to make a gift to ECF through estate planning or would like more

information, please contact James Thompson, assistant head of school for institutional

advancement and alumni, at (212) 712–6260 or jthompson@ecfs.org.

Ethical Culture Fieldston School

33 Central Park West

New York, NY 10023-6001

change service requested

Parents of alumni: If your children are no longer

living with you, please notify the alumni office

of their correct addresses. Thank you.

H O M E C O M I N G 2 0 0 3

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