Class Notes

May 2000

by Tony Lee

Last month's class notes mentioned that the first 1964 mini-reunion will take place in Washington, DC in the Spring of 2001. A groundswell is stirring across the ocean to host our second class mini-reunion in London. It will give many of us an opportunity to combine a visit with old friends with a long overdue tour of the British Isles. A picture of our potential hosts enjoying themselves at PJ's is on our Web site.

I recently had a nice exchange of emails with David Sherman, who is practicing law with Boodle Hatfield in London. David wrote to thank Sam Francis and me for the data on our Web site. He visited it for the first time and spent two emotional hours remembering Brian Rapp and Jack Cirie. The experience gave him a renewed sense of appreciation for his own life, 30-year marriage, and raising and helping his three children find their own paths. David's own journey includes a continuing, perhaps increasing, curiosity about other cultures, and seeing relative merit in some of those cultures in their ability to harmonize and simplify daily existence. In his professional life, he has enjoyed helping clients create projects in exotic locations and involving complicated combinations of national interests.

I saw Peter Rice and his wife, Nancy, at the Yale-Boston University hockey game this winter. Peter is a professor at the BU School of Medicine, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Boston Medical Center and director of an infectious diseases research laboratory that mostly focuses on human host response to infection, bacterial and fungal. Sounds pretty intense, but Peter tells me he enjoys it, although his attention to scholarship is now obtained more indirectly through students and trainees. Nancy is an attorney whose work centers on health law and their daughter Nicole (Yale '95) is a graduate student at Columbia in the English department where she is becoming an expert medievalist.

Bill Lear is currently Executive VP of BioSafe Medical Technologies, a small biotech company specializing in providing accurate and convenient medical diagnostics without the need for conventional blood work. His Web site www.ebiosafe.com is the only Internet site in the world where one can order a diagnostic test. Bill invites people to visit it to check their cholesterol.

Rick Heyke wrote a nice note: "After spending my first 6 years after getting a law degree from the University of Chicago at the Federal Reserve bank in Washington, I have moved back to Chicago and joined Winston & Strawn as Of Counsel. The Fed is a nice place, and I collected some nice promotions, but I wanted to do securities and merger work rather than continue with bank work. I love Chicago. I clerked at Winston & Strawn in law school and enjoy the people. So far, it seems like a good start."

A press release from Orillion USA announced that Allan Port has joined the company as Executive Vice President in charge of corporate development. Allan practiced law in Houston for 33 years and was a partner of Gardere Wynne Sewell & Riggs, and served as legal counsel to Orillion since its founding in 1995. Houston-based Orillion provides advanced systems and engineering for telecommunications networks.

Mac Deford wrote that Frank Fowlkes died of lung cancer in February. Mac stayed in close contact with Frank during his last year, and thought that his impending death never seemed to faze him. "He remained as always, casual, slightly detached, and with his sense of humor and irony firmly intact." A very nice obituary and letter from Mac are on our Web site.