Class Notes

January/February 2021

Note: Classmates' names in gold font are links to a pre-addressed email form (if your browser is properly configured). Other links (underlined) take you to more information about the topic. A shorter version of these Notes is published in the Yale Alumni Magazine. If you would like to write a guest column, please let me know.

This issue is closing before the Presidential election on November 3, which will insulate me from any political remarks in either direction. In recent months, many classmates were energized by getting out the vote and voting themselves. So, I begin this column by sending wishes to all classmates and their families for joyful year-end holidays and hopes for more sociable days in 2021. If you are not receiving monthly all-classmate emails from me, please confirm your current email address to me. Also, please send news about yourself and/or any classmate gatherings.

Travel continues to be an uncertain endeavor, but Zoom calls among classmates reached an all-time high in October. By my count, there were 18 Zoom calls in October that involved 127 classmates. It was such a remarkable record, that we posted it as an article on our Class website. Regional virtual luncheons occurred in Boston (hosted by Jerry Flannelly), Mory’s (hosted by Don Edwards), NYC/Yale Club (hosted by Pete Putzel), and San Francisco (hosted by Owen O’Donnell). These Zoom meetings will continue to occur monthly, until social gatherings are advisable. In addition to classmate Zoom calls, Yale sponsored many events which some classmates attended. Yale Alumni Association held Zoom calls with themes like “Food Matters” and “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.” YAA held a series of Zoom calls organized around the 2020 Assembly. Similarly, the Yale Alumni Fund held a series of Zoom calls around the 2020 Convocation. Our Class YAA Delegate, Bill Morse, joined me on these calls as did Kai Lassen, a fellow Yale Alumni Fund board member. In addition to the Yale Climate Change Zoom events sponsored by Yale Climate Connections, Tony Lee and Margie extended their Zoominars series, “Can We Stop Climate Change,” with more classmates attending. Contact Tony Lee if you would like to join a future Zoominar. Finally, Peter Salovey continued his quarterly Zoom webinars and Head of Branford College Enrique Da La Cruz invited me to his October Fellows meeting. Students on campus were enjoying being back together, if somewhat constrained by COVID-19 guidelines.

Looking towards future events, we have decided to use Zoom for our annual Class Council meeting in February 2021. There is still a possibility that the Spring golf outing could held be in May 2021. Ted Jones is monitoring conditions. Recently, Chris Getman played a round on the Yale Course and so did Butch Hetherington. Both reported that the course was in reasonably good shape considering the dormancy. Nether spoke about their own game!

Classmates continue to be in the news. Since the previous issue of Class Notes, there have been 37 articles posted on Class News. Space constraints prevent me from mentioning all of them here, but the eleven articles in October include the following:

Mike Austin, who attended several Climate Change Zoominars in the fall, recovered from a lumbar epidural. Many classmates commented on the wildfires in California this fall. Len Baker said: “We have lots of smoke, but no fires nearby, as least so far.” Tom Barnard, my Georgia “neighbor” down the interstate in Savannah, has been very involved in climate change issues, too. Tom reflected on his business career, “Perkin-Elmer was not well known. Sometimes when arriving at an airport, you would be greeted by a sign ‘Perkin Who?’ I switched from the aerospace / custom optical group to the commercial scientific instrument group a few years before the Hubble project got started.” Frank Basler, another climate change advocate, is very involved in the Poor People’s Campaign. Frank emailed: “What helps me when I despair for our country and our world is to reflect on the millions upon millions of people of good will who are working hard to create a just and sustainable society.” Steve Bingham, upon reading the news that a Yale student was killed in an auto-bicycle accident this fall, emailed: “Heart-breaking. Exactly how my daughter Sylvia was killed at the same age. I put the Yale Daily News journalist in touch with a public housing group in New Haven that Sylvia had consulted with on her final Sociology major paper.” Bill Bowe, a student of Chicago history and architecture, posted: “In 1979, I proposed to my wife Cathy at Chez Paul, the former Robert Hall McCormick home on Rush Street that was built in 1875. In 2005, the building was bought and renovated into an office and residence by the new owner of my employer, Encyclopedia Britannica.” Pat Caviness posted from Thailand: “We are in Surathani on our way to The National Park of Kaosok Lake.” Later, he posted, “We stumbled upon a herd of wild elephants looking for a place to bathe. We were in our long boat watching these beautiful animals in the wild.” Later, back in Koh Samui, Pat posted: “Sad day today. We took our Soi dog, Coco, to a dog sanctuary to live. She had been abandoned by her owner, and we tried to care for her.” Jim Currie emailed: “Thank you for the recent email with Class Notes. This one is an unbelievable treasure trove. I was very touched by the piece on Gail Sheehy and Larry Pratt’s obituary.”

Mo Dean blogged: “Well into the sixth of Earth’s major extinction events, David Attenborough believes it is still possible for mankind to save itself. You must watch ‘A Life on Our Planet’ on Netflix!” Neil Hoffmann circulated the link to many classmates. Sam Deloria posted: “Voted and got my flu shot, both in the same day. Taking the rest of the week off.” Later, Sam posted one of his word themes: “For a long time, I felt that the English language was somewhat barren. Since a certain class of Americans have popularized the term ‘wheelhouse,’ I feel downright vocabularily empowered.” Dick Devens emailed: “I'm learning how to play pickleball. The scoring keeps one busy mentally. I still play tennis once a week when weather permits. My friend Mimi comes up on long weekends, and that's nice. We both get tested periodically for COVID-19, to stay safe. The one restaurant in our little town, a great old building, is struggling to survive. Know any benevolent billionaires?” Bill Drennen emailed: “Tony, I’m heading your way tomorrow for grand-twins birthday next Wednesday in Athens GA. Then, I’ll be back in Shepherdstown WV until Christmas.” Celeste Finn, spouse of Eric Fossel, posted: “This bleak Halloween night is a fitting occasion for me to release my top picks for movie watching. Each speaks to extreme decadence and decay.” Frank Franklin posted: “After canceling seven fun trips since February, it is time to escape to the beach. Hope Delta Force winds do not find us!” Later, Frank posted over an article titled, “Half of Americans Take Pictures of Their Food”: “With this photo from lunch after visiting the Uffizi Gallery five years ago, we joined the majority with our ‘one and done’ food picture. We are proud members from childhood of the clean-plate club. As adults, we added membership in the empty-wine-glass club.” Howard Gillette emailed: “My wife Margaret, who teaches at Rutgers, has found Jonathan Holloway a delight to work with and is greatly encouraged by his presence at Rutgers. She has read and recommended his book, Jim Crow Wisdom, and I am just about to pick it up.”

Stephen Greenblatt has written a review on Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and is waiting for a publication date in the New York Review of Books. Stephen emailed about the cancellation of the Yale Art History course: “The interest, I suppose, is what has happened to what used to be the old Western Civilization course. The changes are sometimes the object of jeremiads, but I think on the whole that the transformation is interesting and leads to unexpected links.” Reacting to the announcement of the reopening of the Yale Art Gallery in September, Marya Holcombe posted: “Yay and double yay. Let us know if you are going.” Similarly, when Mory’s reopened, Marya posted, “Terry and I will be there tonight with Steve Floman and Susan. If you reserve a table in the back, outdoors, you can surround yourself with numerous Class of 1964 bricks, which always trigger good memories.” Tony Jones serves on the board of International College, Beirut, as does Mac Deford. Waldo Johnston and Candy spent the summer in Cooperstown, NY. Candy posted: “Waldo is amazing. He repaints the Lanai floor every season, so that we can sit outside and enjoy the fabulous views.” Later, Candy documented Waldo’s handiwork: “Difficult to know what some of our family and friends would do without Waldo. It’s a good thing he likes to cut and split wood, because our friends and relatives use all of it each winter.” Candy also posted photos of some of her fabulous quilts, including one designed by her 6-year-old grandson. Douglass Lea posted: “Yesterday, I slid a year deeper into the quicksand of dotage, so it’s time to offer some wisdom: The only antidote for human stupidity, most obvious at the commanding heights of wealth and power, is humility. (That’s all I got.)”. Tony Lee emailed between Climate Change Zoominars, ”Life is good. We’re having wonderful fall weather. Everyone is outside doing stuff. I mountain-biked yesterday in Hampstead NH. Margie and I mountain-biked at Bear Brook State Park in NH today. We’re leaving tomorrow for two nights in Chatham Cape Cod with my sister and will be mountain biking with friends on Tuesday.” Unfortunately, on a recent mountain biking trip Tony had an encounter with a large boulder, and the boulder won. Happy to say that Tony is recuperating quickly. In September, Tony Lee wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, Wayland (MA) Town Crier, supporting actions to mitigate climate change. One climate denier tried to challenge Tony’s assertions, but he was overwhelmed with other letters from the community. Margie Lee posted a YouTube tribute to RBG from the NYC Central Synagogue: “One of the most beautiful tributes I have seen.”

Sam Low posted from Martha’s Vineyard, “Today is Indigenous People’s Day, gaining recognition.” Sam also posted about “The Navigators – Pathfinders of the Pacific:” “I served as documenter for four voyages, three aboard Hokule’a, and one on an escort boat.” Michelle Mead-Armor, surviving spouse of John Armor, posted, “Did you know that John had a very good singing voice? At one of the reunions that we attended together, I signed us up to sing with the Yale Alumni Chorus. We had a wonderful time.” John More is another classmate who splits his year between two places: summers in Cushings Island, Maine and the rest of the year in D.C. This summer, he emailed from Cushings Island: “Because of its configuration, Casco Bay and the Gulf of Maine stand to suffer worse sea-level rise than many other coastal areas. We have attended talks on our Island by an oceanographer who provided the scientific background. We also had to hire a consulting firm to correct NOAA maps that incorrectly measured the heights of parts of the Island that would have rendered a couple of houses as within the revised 100-year flood zone. The last couple of years I was a volunteer with the Casco Baykeepers monitoring high-tide marks, which are getting higher year by year. We also monitor other water-quality issues.” John also got back on the pitch as a soccer referee. He posted “First time in 2020. Continuing streak since 1991. But with a couple of bad knees, I can no longer streak!” Bob Musil reacted to my policy of not putting partisan political opinions into Class Notes unless they are published in a mainstream media outlet: “I am confused about the decision to ‘avoid partisan politics’ even though the class notes from folks like Joe Lieberman contain political plugs for candidates. Had I written you, my own class note might have said, ‘Bob Musil is the Chair of the Council for a Livable World, the oldest peace and disarmament PAC in the nation, founded by noted physicist Leo Szilard in 1962. Bob reports that the Council broke precedent and endorsed a presidential candidate this year … .” Bob continued, “Otherwise, I continue to keep doing environmentalism, peace, politics, writing, and trying not to get too cranky and keep some sense of humor.” Owen O’Donnell, who organizes the Northern California classmate Zoom calls, emailed: “California has hit the jackpot with every catastrophe currently known to man except for an earthquake, and that may be coming soon. It’s truly ugly here from the wildfires. Like being in Beijing or New Delhi.” Doane Perry and Karen Carmean have been creating virtual events for “Art in the Berkshires.” One event in September featured Doane’s photography. Dan Pollack has become a whiz at making ship replicas. Recently he broadened his interest to 3D puzzles. Nancy posted: “Danny is putting together another 3D puzzle. This one is the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. Intricate and beautiful!”

Jim Rogers declined a Zoom invitation to join the NYC group in October: “That time is midnight in Singapore. I will be in the disco so must pass.” Paul Ruden posted in October: “Lines at the early voting location in Lincoln Center went on for blocks and blocks this morning. People (like me and Dina) with absentee ballots were able to walk right in and drop our ballots in a box.” Rick Salomon posted Don Henley’s song from Long Island, “The summer’s out of reach.” But with a nod to Don Henley, “September may be the best time to be here!” Earlier, Rick was helping Ted Jones connect Rees Jones with Bruce Alexander as a resource for The Course at Yale. Gerry Shea kidded Jim Rogers about the singer Jimmy Rogers: “This is the real Jimmy Rogers, whose name always sounded so familiar to me. You could have been our fourth tenor!” To which Jim Rogers replied: “Ah, yes. I grew up 60 miles from his town. If I had been that Jimmy Rogers, Yale would not have taken me, even for the geographical distribution. And I would not have gone, even if I could have worked for you, Gerry.” Later, Gerry Shea posted the video of the 1965 Whiffenpoofs (selected by our guys) appearing on “To Tell the Truth.” It’s a classic, so we posted it on the Class website. Ron Sipherd, who is a regular on the Northern California Zoom calls, posted: “Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. We started the day with Dutch apple pancakes and finished with a dinner of fresh sea scallops. Tried to avoid doing anything useful in between!” Reacting to one of the college-ranking publications, Ron posted: “No disrespect to the WSJ and other college rankers, but I liked the story about the applicant who chose Yale because his visit there ‘made me happy’.” Russell Sunshine emailed: “It’s always stimulating and encouraging to read about our classmates’ thoughts, activities, relationships, and publications.” Jan Truebner emailed a message from Kris Klint (surviving spouse of Jim Klint): “Thanks for sending the Class Notes from Jim’s 1964 classmates. Since I dated Jim during college, I remember many of them.” Nancy Lindley (surviving spouse of Clarkson Lindley) emailed: “Thanks for sharing these Notes with us. Great piece!” When Chris Wallace moderated the first presidential debate, I was reminded of his brother, our departed classmate, Peter Wallace, the second youngest member of our class to die (in 1962). I posted his memory on the Yale Alumni private Facebook page and received over 300 comments from other Yale alumni.

When Daylight Savings Time ended this fall, Roger Webb posted: “My first job after getting my Ph.D. was in a lab that did mostly infant research. One of the rules of the lab was that you did not run babies in the week after a time change, because they were cranky. Now that I am old, I am also cranky every time we have a time change. I would love to see an end to Daylight Saving Time!” Robert Whitby posted: “Last night I was lying on the sofa in my living room, watching a webinar from The Explorers Club and simultaneously playing with my iPhone. It seems I inadvertently recorded and posted a video of myself lying there. If you got it, sorry!” On seeing the news of Anthony Fauci’s possible successor, Jon McBride emailed: “Dr. Perry Wilson is the son of Buck Wilson and Pam. Buck was in our Whiffenpoof group, aka ‘Jet Prop’.” John Witherspoon emailed: “l am still working on my screenplay writing, movie producing, newfound career, after years of medical practice. New interests include producing CDs and DVDs for the ever-present array of new country music talent showcasing at our Nashville Honky-Tonk. Showcases are giving the young talent engagingly a hand up. All this COVID-19 mayhem has resulted in massive medical doctor retirements. That, along with reimbursement for services uncertainties. So, I’m thankful about finding other things to do as l approach age 79.” Joe Wishcamper regretted for the NYC October Zoom: “I’ll be hunting in Nebraska, but I’ll see you in November.” David Wyles posted: After our son, Rio, was diagnosed with autism, the first book I read was An Anthropologist from Mars, by Oliver Sacks. Just reading those stories gave me a small glimmer of hope during those devastatingly dark early days.” Later, David posted: “I voted today! And my son Rio voted today! The Steelers won today! And the Lakers won the NBA Championship. All in all, today was a great day!” Nick Danforth and other classmates offered heartiest congratulations to Karl Ziegler and Jan Fuller on their recent wedding: “Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah! Big congrats to you and Jane, and especially to you, a first-time husband at age 78. We toasted you during our September Boston Zoom call.”

Classmates are still writing and publishing books. Since the previous issue, we added five books on medieval times by Andy Villalon. Tom Jones also published The Mosquito: An Insect Catechism. Tom emailed: “I began writing this book in the early days of COVID-19 while I was trying to isolate. I had fun writing it.” These two classmates brought our total number of classmate authors who have published books since 2000 to 80, and the number of books published and listed on our Class website's Publications page to 198. Stephen Greenblatt currently holds the class record with twelve books. When a Yale alumna saw one of my classmate-author posts on Facebook, she asked, “Has everyone in the Class of 1964 written a book? You and your classmates are prolific and must have set some sort of record!” Jim Rogers emailed: “I’ve had three #1 bestsellers in Japan in the past eighteen months. I have two more books coming out in Japan later this year.” Edward Massey emailed: “While my latest book, Founding Sheriff, languishes in COVID-19 lockdown until next February, Western Fictioneers accepted my favorite short story, ‘Cybil,’ for publication.” In the blogosphere, Bruce Driver continued his Senate race columns right into November and plans to cover the Georgia Senate runoff into January. A recent blog by Russell Sunshine reported on his return to their retirement community following an evacuation due to wildfires in their area; his September blog had reported on their evacuation. Harrowing, especially during COVID-19. Frank Basler continues his blog, “Helping clients find new ways to use their strength in a changing workplace.” Mo Dean blogged: “This week, I was reminded by a book review that my freshman year at Yale I wrote a paper for Philosophy on a book of essays by Wallace Stevens.”

Since the previous issue, Yale Records reported the death of Richard Mills on May 9, 2020. Richard earned an M.D. cum laude from Yale Medical School in 1968 and became a distinguished ophthalmologist. Richard’s obituary is posted on our Class website’s In Memoriam page. Terry Holcombe emailed “Will Elting and other oarspersons attended a memorial service for Bill Fink on October 17 in Bronxville, NY. Ed Trippe, Will Elting, and I read tributes. Harry Howell also attended. I want to remember Tim O’Connell ’63 who died in September. Tim was a talented and loyal teammate to many of us. Many classmates took classes from Harold Bloom. His last book was posthumously published this fall: Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind Over a Universe of Death. It captures his lifetime of poetry and interpretation.

Special thanks to honorary classmate Jan Truebner who sends our all-classmate emails to the 75 surviving spouses for whom we have email addresses. Many of them express their gratitude regularly.