Yale62.org

Two near–term events you should know about are the dedication in New Haven of Rosenkranz Hall on October 19th, and the New York City mini-reunion happening on the weekend October 16-18.

Thanks to the generosity of our classmate Robert Rosenkranz, a prominent philanthropist on many fronts, and member of the Class Council, Rosenkranz Hall opened this Fall on Prospect Avenue as the new home of Yale’s political science department. An April Yale Daily News feature covering the history of  Yale’s massive building program under President Levin  had this to say about Rosenkranz Hall (quote):

“Just a short walk down Prospect Street, on the block between the canal and Sachem Street, Levin is arguably having his greatest impact.  On the block’s east side, Fred Koetter, another former dean of the School of Architecture, has designed a stone-and-glass building for the social sciences that will be called Rosenkranz Hall. One or two other buildings will be added on this side of the street, where the existing School of Management campus currently lies. The red-brick residential colleges that Stern is currently designing will be built across the street. Asked if the varied styles on this block will conflict with each other, Koetter sounded hopeful.”There’s places on campus where you get brick buildings across from stone buildings and so forth,” he said. “The thing that holds them together is the question of scale.” Rosenkranz Hall is a large building that sits directly on Prospect Street. The best thing you can say about it, Yale administrators joke, is that it hides Luce Hall.”

If you’d like to read the Yale Daily News article in its entirety, find it here.

As for the mini-reunion, Steve Susman and Kirk MacDonald have joined forces to design a most lively weekend in Gotham, including Broadway theatre, private art gallery tours, a dinner cruise on the Hudson, and all the comforts of the Metropolitan Club. Rumor has it that 50th Reunion chair Bob Oliver will be among the attending luminaries, joined by Etra, Trotman, Holmes, Prince, Oliver, Murray, Mills, and Weil, in addition to hosts Susman and MacDonald (and spouses/partners one presumes, although Kirk provides last names only).

And speaking of Kirk MacD, he recently went calling on the West Coast and reports having a nice chat with Tony Brooks at the Bohemian Grove, who looked none the worse for wear living in the wilds of Wyoming. Also at the Grove was Clark Winslow, having just installed himself in Belvedere around the corner from Bill Wheeler. Kirk also spent an evening with Steve and Ellen Susman in their lovely Napa home, after which he paid a visit across the valley to John Livingston’s stunning new architectural statement high overlooking the vines. Stopped by Bill Hamilton’s place, as well, though he was in Kentucky. And Kirk expects to see Peter Sipple soon now that they are nearly next door to each other in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.

As noted in the current issue of YAM, Secretary Jim White and I have been putting our telephone skills to use by calling classmates in our respective geographies to dig out the missing e-mail addresses. Jim says he has come up with two and therefore is far behind CorSec, who has generated 12 out of 19 plus the below-noted Gair Tourtellot. Bottom line, about 20 more classmates will have the opportunity to see this Web posting.

The remaining email holdouts in Massachusetts are: Ed Dodd, Rolf McClellan, Michael Sola, Louis Simon, James Rouse, Michael Golden, and Chris Lydon. Anyone who has these addresses please send ASAP.

Apparently reading the YAM, Gair Tourtellot (Branford ’62) had sympathy for my plea for missing email addresses and sent in his email, plus word that he is “Retired from archaeology, I am applying my research skills to family history. I glean an occasional tidbit from YAM for the benefit of descendants of my six Y relatives. Apropos the co-ed issue, I’ve always thought I started the ball rolling by asking Pres. Griswold, in a Branford meeting, when we’d go co-ed? (He avoided my trap, replied that I had jumped the gun, the decision to do so — which of course was my point, vindicated by 1969, right?)”

Thank you, Gair, and we would also like to know where you are and what else you are doing.

Friends of  Tom Luckey will be glad to know he is as active as ever in the design and construction of climbing structures, for which he has become justly famous.  Currently he is prospecting for design funds to build one for the Guilford, Conn. YMCA.  Interested classmates can reach him at thomaswluckey@aol.com.

The film about Tom and family we have mentioned in earlier postings is scheduled to be shown by the Sundance Channel on October 26th at 9PM.  As far as we know this is the only national showing now scheduled so be sure to watch it then (or record to watch at your leisure).

Tom Williams, the new football coach and Will Porter, highly successful coach of the Yale women’s crew, were in Boston on September 9 with A.D. Tom Beckett to speak at a Yale Club of Boston event, and your Corresponding Secretary enjoyed attending. Read about it in the Corsec Column (click here).

A propos of Yale football, this happy bulletin just in from our Class Secretary Jim White:

“First, on a beautiful late summer day I went to the Yale-Georgetown football game, played at Georgetown on September 19. Lots of Yale fans were there. By the time you read this Yale will have played Cornell in the Bowl, but I’m happy to report that, for a first effort, despite some untimely fumbles (are there ever any “timely” ones?), against a team with two games under its belt, our Blue looked good in winning big (as the 31-10 score indicates). This is a good sign as just about everything -the coach, the QB, the principal runners and receivers, the O line- is new. The defense was impressive, especially sine the G’town QB was elusively quick, perhaps more so than most Ivy QBs will be. Second, I am contacting many classmates in the DC-MD-VA area (as Mike Kane is doing in the Boston area) to update contact information, as a way of generating interest both in our excellent website and in our 50th reunion. This is not a fundraising effort. One classmate I spoke with, Prof. Tad Kuroda, has retired from teaching history at Skidmore College, where my wife Catherine was a student of his. I’m not making that up. Catherine said Tad was the best prof she had. Last, but certainly not least, a personal note: my daughter Isabel, Yale College Class of 1996, gave birth June 19 to my first grandchild, a boy named Nico – Yale Class of 2031.”

Ed. Note: More good news on this front. Starting Yale QB, Patrick Witt, who threw 2 touchdown passes and led a 75 yard scoring drive against Georgetown, is a sophomore transfer from the University of Nebraska where they also play football and where he was a recruited player. On this same Saturday, sadly, Harvard lost to Holy Cross.

In my current YAM column I mention that Steve Rosenthal has a book of photography coming out on the architecture of rural New England churches, www.steverosenthalphoto.com is the web site to follow up. Classmate Corbey Finney noticed this YAM entry and sent in this fine compliment: “Steve is … one of the hidden gems of contemporary architectural photography, a modest genius who has quietly and over many years built a portfolio of stunning images. For those of us who frequented the haunts of Vince Scully and Paul Rudolph, Steve attests the power of a tradition learned early and well received.”  Thank you Corbey.

This incoming from Bill Weber: “Tony Giamei and Chuck Post and I just completed an ultra mini reunion at the Weber compound on Keuka Lake, NY. Tony lives in Conn. and is retired from United Technologies and Chuck lives in Ariz. and is retired from a variety of pursuits, the last one being Esperanza, an organization that helps people in Brazil. Weber and Giamei see each other (with wives) at least once a year, but Post is a new addition, having been November recently discovered in Prescott, AZ. We were roomies in Calhoun for our senior year.”

Karl Frank (Saybrook) helpfully sent me some information about Boston-area resident Rod Bronson, one of the email delinquents mentioned in my Sept/Oct YAM column. Rod was with us for three years before decamping to graduate from UCal Berkeley, subsequently becoming an accomplished veterinary pathologist and a Professor on the Harvard Medical School faculty. Karl’s report on Rod:  ”I last saw Rod around 1989, he and his wife were renovating a Victorian ‘painted lady’ near Porter Square station on the Red Line(one of the Boston subway routes) … Rod was at that time a senior veterinary scientist associated with the Tufts Medical school, working with primates, and one of the earliest researchers to discover the connection between human HIV and the viral infections of other primates.

Thanks to Karl’s initiative, CorSec reached Rod at his Waltham (Ma) home and had a fun chat, netting his email address in the process. Rod was with us for three years before decamping to graduate from UCal Berkeley (where, he said, the sex was much better), subsequently, after Peace Corps, becoming a veterinary pathologist and a Professor of Vet Medicine on the Harvard Medical School faculty.

As for Karl himself, a boatload of welcome news from him:

“Since early 2007, I’ve been working for Northrop-Grumman on a contract for NASA, doing independent model-based validation of the flight software for the Constellation Program. Constellation encompasses the Ares project, (the launch vehicle) and project Orion (building the crew exploration vehicle, which is to replace the Space Shuttle).

“NASA has a facility in Fairmont West Virginia for Independent Validation and Verification. That is the center I’m associated with, though I do most of my work from a one-man office, walking distance from my home, in Gloucester, MA.

“Before this, was many things — at least 3 careers, plus a period of creative underemployment in which I designed and built a house in Vermont. In one of those, I taught philosophy as an adjunct at Dartmouth until 1980. I married Joan Clark of West Haven, not long after graduation, while I was a grad student at NYU, and after some time in the East Village, we migrated thru many places to land here on the rock-bound coast of Cape Ann, 46 years later. [ed note: Karl lives in Gloucester, Mass.] Thanks to roommate Earl Staelin for introducing us! Son Maxwell, born when Eagle landed on the moon, is a staff psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston. Daughter Cynthia (Yale ‘88) whose marriage ceremony was performed by Bill Coffin, is a lawyer in the Minneapolis area. Two granddaughters by way of Cynthia, and one by way of Max.”

Probably Karl would have a lot in common with classmate Chip Neville, author of our feature article about the US space program and NASA, and also with Harvard researcher and fellow resident of Gloucester Peter Bell. Hope this sparks those contacts.

Phil Proctor continues a high volume of thespian activity on the West Coast, which you can follow by viewing his web site PlanetProctor.com. Perhaps more importantly he and wife Melinda have been named honorary Kentucky Colonels (first and only in our class??) as a reward for their successful performances in this summer’s Mystery Writer’s Festival that I reported in the YAM. Near future, Phil will be reading Don Quixote to Spanish guitar music in a production that will be at Northwestern Univ November 7, University of Richmond, November 9, and in New York City, November 11.

Steve Buck reports that his daughter Leila plays one of the Iraqi refugees in the off-Broadway production “Aftermath”, now running at the New York Theater Workshop (70 East 4th Street) through October 5th. The play, based on real interviews with Iraqi refugees living in Jordan, got strong coverage by NYT drama critic Ben Brantley on the first page of the September 16th Arts Section. You can see Leila’s name amongst the cast listed on page C2 of the Section.

Regrettably, there is news of mortality. Since we last met across these pages, we have lost classmates George Nickerson Clements (Silliman), and Christopher Blaisdell, both to cancer. George had been living in Paris as an executive with a French government research agency. Chris was with us only for freshman year and went on to become a highly successful lawyer in his home state of California after graduating from UCal Berkeley. His frosh roommates – Wright Hall – were Phil DeChabert and Craig Whitaker. Their obituaries will appear in due course, thanks to the volunteer work of Bob Oliver.  Classmates with any recollections that would help Bob in his work should email him at  oliver@moglaw.com.

Back to Yale ‘62