Mar 2000
Hello, everyone. The winter apparently has kept us inside long enough to dash off some communications. Cyberspace has been filled with messages from the class. For example, Rick Platt wrote to report on a fall gathering of classmates who currently have children at Yale. The event, the brainchild of brainy George Chopivsky, was held during parents’ weekend last fall in Anne Platt’s “Beach Club” Silliman room, one entryway from Rick’s former “attic” party room. (Believe me, all of the characterizations and quoted phrases are Rick’s.) Rick says he was not able to attend but listed this admittedly incomplete roll:Jim, Sharon, and Jeff Seymour; Howard, Maryann, and Lizzy Newman; Larry and JudyWeiss; Paul, Susan, and Alex Henry; Jackie Levinson and Ira Berkower; and PeterSandra and Tim Jacobi. Although Anne (’01) reported that she enjoyed hosting the event and meeting other offspring of ’69, this seems to set a dangerous precedent in which our children are able to compare the stories told by their fathers about each other. Bad potential.
Andrew Wechsler wrote to describe a dinner engagement with my esteemed (steamed?) predecessor William Bogaty, who, with wife Helen and rugrats by now should have returned to Japan for a new position with the merged Exxon-Mobil company. We’ll let Bogaty report on himself, but Andrew also related that he and wife Christine are in the process of adopting a second child from Siberia. His letter, written in the last century, said: “We will pass the millennium on a hike on the South Island of New Zealand, a trip that will include three weeks in New Zealand with relatives, friends, and a client or two (listening, IRS?), followed by a one-week escape to Fiji. Sometime after our return, we will have all the salutary effects frozen out on a Kras Air excursion six hours east from Moscow. These late ventures into fatherhood have many advantages, including the elimination of potentially perplexing questions about what to do when I grow up and after I retire. (The first is apparently accomplished, and the latter will never happen.)”
Tom Earley reported from Alexandria, Virginia, that he is “living the solitary life this year, as my wife Jane is in London for a couple of years as CEO of the Marine Stewardship Council, a nonprofit promoting fisheries. Son Nick is doing his junior year of high school at the American School in London. Daughter Caitlin turned down Yale for Williams College and is having entirely too much fun there. Needless to say, lots of bed space available in Alexandria, Virginia.” Uh, Tom, you probably ought to be alerting some of the more recent classes, if you know what I mean.
Congratulations are due John Bay, now living in Silver Spring, Maryland, who reported the birth of his first child, Nolan, July 22, 1999. When you say first, John, are we to expect more, and if so, why?
Harold R. Mancusi-Ungaro Jr. wrote: “I am happy and proud to announce that my daughter Marianna will be a member of the Class of ’04. My best wishes for any of the class who are still waiting to hear about their kids. At the same time, I would like to hear from any of you who will have incoming freshmen. Meanwhile, my son Temy is in Ezra Stiles, ’02. That Yankee’s son is a native-born Texan and is a founding member of the Yale Texas Club. Interestingly, he really put the hard sell on his sister to come to Yale. For all the changes, some things do not change, especially the sense of being there. Well, Jimmy Schweitzer, Howard Newman, and Lee Walker are going to have to look somewhere else for the next four years. (FYI, it’s $15,970 a semester, compared to $2,700 a year our freshman year.)”
Other quickies: Christian Floyd wrote from Lexington, Massachusetts, to note that he is just beginning his third (and last) term as president of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, the oldest club of its kind in the New World. Peter Lacouture wrote from Exeter, Rhode Island, to admit that he is now a grandfather, daughter Katie (Yale ’89) having delivered a son, Henry, last October. Katie is a landscape architect with her husband Tony and his son in San Francisco. Carl Lazarus has responded from West Newton, Massachusetts, to the Mancusi call. His son Michael has been admitted to the Yale Class of ’04. He also reported that his wife Joyce Block Lazarus has published a book titled Strangers and Sojourners: Jewish Identity in Contemporary Francophone Fiction. (I checked, and it’s available from Amazon.com for $41.95 with a three-to-five week shipping date.) He’s VP of operations at Connected Corporation, an Internet software start-up.
Finally, in some very late returns, David Tufaro noted his defeat as the Republican candidate for mayor of Baltimore last November.
Thanks for all the material. Keep it coming, and beware the Ides and odes of March.