Class Notes

by Alexander Nichols Gunn II, MD, Corresponding Secretary
366 Horse Pond Road
Madison, CT 06443

Alex's e-mail

I have some very sad news to share with you: Jack Embersits died in Madison, CT of a massive heart attack last Sunday while he was out playing golf alone. There will be a service for him at Battell Chapel at some point although plans are not yet complete.

After his lovely wife Lucinda and family there was nothing more dear to Jack than Yale and particularly our class. He worked tirelessly on our behalf. Tim Hogen and I both had a similar conversation with Jack less than two weeks ago in which he was encouraging us to organize more mini reunions around the country. He was insistent that five years was too long to wait to get together because we would lose too many classmates.How ironic and clairvoyant!

Jack’s passing means also that we lose the man who has been the sole occupant of the position of Secretary of our Class since we graduated. We obviously need to think about replacing him. I would solicit your ideas as to who should replace Jack, how we should make that determination; and also, what kind of a class structure we want. Some classes have regional chairmen in addition to the Secretary in order to get more local involvement and foster more regional mini-reunions which was what Jack had in mind. Please let us hear from you. I can be reached via E-mail at skog@optonline.net.

 The April mini reunion at the Yale Club in NYC attracted what Alex Gunn described as a cordial group of ten classmates: Bob Ascheim, Tim Brown, Al Ferguson, Tim Hogan, Ron Lamey, Phil Ness, Steve Riker, David Schiff and Hoyt Spelman. More importantly Alex also reported that the week of March 20 through March 28th was an especially good one for those of our classmates who truly love singing. Linus Travers, whom Alex describes as “our fearless class organizer”, has been putting on a singing weekend at this time of year since 1998 starting  at Concord Academy in Massachusetts and soon thereafter at Milton Academy, where Linus and Margaret live on the edge of the campus.  It has in effect become an extension of the Yale Alumni Chorus, although on paper it is under the aegis of the Yale Club of Boston. The group begins singing late Friday afternoon and evening, and then continues singing all day Saturday.  Linus and Margaret provide cocktails and a lovely dinner Saturday evening.  Once the short hitters left, a group of die-hards sang on late into Saturday evening.  On Sunday morning the group rehearsed and then gave a concert on Sunday afternoon.  Lending their voices in addition to Linus and Alex were Job Emerson, Fritz Kinzel, Bart Miller, Larry Minear and Bill Opsahl (from Minneapolis).

On Saturday March 28th, Alex, Bart, Fritz, Linus, and Terry Rogers (from Seattle) sang at the memorial service for Fenno Heath which had been especially planned to coincide with the annual “Singing Dinner.”  Starting at 10:00 AM the singers congregated at Hendrie Hall and spent two wonderful hours singing all of Fenno’s compositions and arrangements that they could dig up just for the fun of it and to pre-honor the incredible Fenno.  Lunch, with lots of good talk, was followed by a rehearsal and then the service at Battell Chapel. The singers, who included the Yale Alumni Chorus, the current Glee Club, the current Whiffs, lots of “older” whiffs and the University Glee Club, filled most of the main floor of the Chapel, and the singing nearly blew its roof off.  Several members of the Heath family participated in the service and Linus served as a reader.   Our classmates all agreed that they wanted memorial services just like the one for Fenno when their times come. After the service, everyone adjourned to Hendrie Hall for a reception and then the singers moved on to the Lawn Club for an extended cocktail hour and more singing, mostly Yale songs.  Finally a very long dinner, interspersed with more singing, some by the 2009 Whiffs (who Alex magnanimously reports are almost as good as the 1958 Whiffs), completed the program, after which the participants drifted back to their beds with slightly depleted vocal chords and a VERY happy glow. . . 

The luncheon on the first Thursday of each month at the Yale Club in NYC continues to draw a good and boisterous crowd.  On January 8, 2009, Ben Gertz, Tim Hogen, Mal Holderness, Ron Lamey, Ken McAdams, Bob Morgan, Phil Ness, David Schiff, Pete Spelman, Bill Stubenbord, Bill Williams and your humble scribe gathered well before the announced 12:30 commencement hour in very comfortable new chairs around a whole row of new tables. Dave Richardson made what he described as a fleeting appearance which did allow him to stay long enough to down a hearty lunch. Steve Riker ate on the run (not literally of course) and departed before most of us were half way finished. Al Ferguson had planned to attend but elected in a grand humanitarian gesture to stay home with his bad cold rather than subject his classmates’ immune systems, which he described as being run-down due to the lack of abstinence and general high living (my translation), to whatever communicable disease he had. If your travel plans bring you to NYC, try to arrange your schedule so you can join the group. You are guaranteed a good time. Mini-reunions are also taking place in more distant realms. Nancy and Art Bober had lunch with Randy Kwei last Valentine’s Day in Hong Kong. The Bobers had stopped for one night in Hong Kong on an extended trip to Southeast Asia which featured stops in Vietnam, from where they had E-mailed me the news, Cambodia and Laos.  This has been my winter of attending Yale sports events. At the behest of Myles Alderman I drove at a snail’s pace along gorgeous I-95 late on a Friday afternoon last February to New Haven to watch the Yale- Harvard hockey game. Seated nearby were Harriet and Richie Case and Cinda and Jack Embersits. The game can only be described by saying that Yale slaughtered Harvard 5 to 1.  Two weeks later Cinda and Jack and I watched Yale, which had won the ECAC, lose to Colgate 3-2 in overtime. The following weekend Phil Ness chauffeured me again up I-95 to the John J. Lee Amphitheater where we met Drew and Harry Harlow and watched the Yale basketball team lose to Harvard. Steve Wilson has alerted me to the fact that Mort Downey, who served as Deputy Secretary of Transportation under Bill Clinton for 8 years, and whom the Washington Post included in a group it described as “some seriously heavy hitters”, is the head of the 15-person transition team for the Department of Transportation, charged with evaluating the department’s readiness to implement the Obama administration’s programs. Phil Ness, espousing the use of the telephone over a more modern means of communication, called me to report on a momentous gathering of classmates for lunch at the Venetian Restaurant, no not in Venice but in Torrington, CT. In attendance were Phil, Richie Case, Ed Etkind, Harry Harlow and Tom Schoenemann. The main catalyst for the mini reunion was a fight to the finish tennis match between Phil and Ed. I did not have the nerve to ask Phil who won. The primary topic of conversation was not business but rather initial planning for our 55^th reunion! In discussing his educational experience at Yale Basil Carmody reports that it turns out 50 years later that the class he took in the Philosophy of Physics was one of the two courses that had the greatest impact on him. It provided him with the keys to understand developments in physics, quantum mechanics, astronomy and cosmology. From that base, he was able 20 years ago to venture into the new frontier of molecular biology and it is still taking him for an intellectual roller coaster ride. Herb Triplett reports that he has retired for the third time (he did not say from what) and has sold his house which he has spent the last six years remodeling.  In fact he ended up totally rebuilding the house. Herb and his partner of 8 years, Norma Benedict, are happy bird hunting, fishing, gardening and travelling. I have received word of the passing of Bruce Tuttle early last December in Lebanon, NH from Parkinson’s. After Yale Bruce graduated from the Harvard Law School and then practiced corporate law at Royall Koegel and Rogers and later maritime law at Hill Betts and Nash, both in New York City. He is survived by his wife, Nancy, and two daughters. Charlie Goodyear sent me news of the death of his brother, David Goodyear, last January from cancer. Three of David’s Yale roommates, David Goodman, David McKenzie and Darley Randall, attended his memorial service. After Yale David spent three years as an officer in the Navy and then moved to New Orleans where he worked for a bank and then for his family’s company in the tung oil business. David was very active in land conservation and in 2008 won a prize for “Best Attention to the Environment” from the local home builders association. He is survived by his wife, Sally, three daughters and six grandchildren. David Schiff sent me an E-mail to report that sadly he had read in the current issue of Autoweek that Teddy Mayer had died. I received additional news from Terry Rogers concerning his Yale roommate, Vern Bacher, whose passing I reported in the last volume. Terry and his other roommates, Bob Karper, Mike Uihlein and Paul Hannah, had numerous mini-reunions in such venues as the San Juan Islands,  Arizona to watch spring training, and Milwaukee for Octoberfest.

A casual inquiry from David Sternberg about my ability to speak Swedish has led to an exchange of ideas which those of you interested in languages may find interesting.  David’s sortie into the land of foreign languages began in the summer of 1961 when right after David finished Harvard Law School he married a Swedish girl from Stockholm, The wedding took place on an island suburb of Stan, called Lidingo, which David describes as being very beautiful.  The centuries-old church was packed with the island neighbors out to see the American, probably one of the few occasions that it had been packed before then and forever since!  David notes that the U.S. was much more popular then than from Vietnam hence.  David subsequently spent 2-3 years in the 60s in Sweden, travelling back and forth from NYC when he was doing his doctorate in sociology, and practicing law part-time. David says he learned Swedish very well, being so immersed in it with his wife’s family and their Swedish friends.  He actually ended up giving sociology lectures in Swedish to students at the University of Stockholm; but he took no questions after the lecture! He rationalizes that omission by remembering that our Yale professors took few questions themselves in those days.  David remembers that a foreign student once “dared” to ask Prof. Samuel Flagg Bemis a question during his American diplomacy lecture.  Bemis didn’t like the tone of the question and there was a short curt reply from him. David describes Prof. Bemis as being pompous just like he was at the UN.  He hated students coming in late (like the Mad Baumer in European Intellectual History). One day when David and his co-students were seated in his big lecture hall (David has forgotten which building it was, but it was off the Old Campus), a student came in from one of the back entrances beside Bemis’s stage. Bemis saw him and yelled at him, “out, out, sir,” at the top of his voice while pointing, like he was our representative at the UN. The guy protested a bit, but finally shrugged his shoulders, turned and exited. A few minutes later, after this impassioned exchange, a bunch of students got up and left the lecture. Bemis had kicked out the attendance taker who had left taking his seating chart with him!

 

Even though David is now living one of his very different later nine lives and counting, he has kept up to a pretty good extent with his Swedish, and continue all these years to be influenced in his thinking and doing sociology by svenska samhallet’s  (the Swedish Society’s) political social organization and social welfare values. 

 

David also acquired Spanish later on, spending considerable time in the Caribbean and South America, and has the interesting, perhaps peculiar, habit of reading both svenska el castellano (Swedish and Castilian Spanish) aloud at the same time. For example, one of Sweden’s famed novelists of the early 20th century was Hjalmar Soederberg who wrote around 1903 a very strong and psychologically very sophisticated novel, Doktor Glas.  The book echoes Crime and Punishment and Zola’s Therese L., in examining murderers plagued and tortured by their crimes, but it has its own powerful voice.  Anyway, in some used bookstore years ago, he stumbled on El Doctor Glas, a Spanish translation. 

 

Currently, David first reads the Swedish pages aloud, and then reads the identical pages in Spanish aloud which he finds very fascinating and fulfilling, using 3 languages, because of course both have to be mediated through one’s English. Anyway, in a world where mass culture, media and computer technology make “old school” values and individuality difficult to access or maintain, David likes the feeling (egocentric as David believes it undoubtedly is) that he may be the only person in the world currently carrying out this regular exercise (although there may be a  Swede or two reading aloud English (with the English version) and Spanish together, and a Latino reading English and Swedish at the same time).

 

David also reports that in 1976, about the time he started reading simultaneously in the Spanish and Swedish, he was vacationing in San Juan on some package deal, and the hotel had a welcome drink in the bar. Sitting there, he suddenly heard a bit of a commotion in svenska [Swedish]! It turned out that the hotel was hosting the annual international convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses which a contingent of young Swedes was attending. Those guys and gals didn’t drink in Sweden (against the religious rules), but they wanted to let loose in San Juan! Anyway, they didn’t speak a word of Spanish, and David ended up hanging out with them and being their simultaneous interpreter and mediator between Spanish and Swedish for an entire week. There was one hairy incident when one of the Swedish young men became dangerously drunk out on a balcony of his hotel room on a high floor. Willy nilly David became the “hostage negotiator” working with the hotel people and his friends to talk him off the balcony, which they did.

 David is sure that his roommate Al Dietrick and friend Tom Simons, both of whom are at least trilingual, will relate to this perhaps a bit esoteric but fantastic experience.  In fact Tom has just told David that at one time he (Tom) was quadralingual.

 

About the same time I started communicating with David, I got an E-mail from Basil Carmody which led to a further discussion about languages.  Basil is living in Paris and has a French wife.  Basil majored in French literature at Yale. Then as a French literature graduate student at Yale he discovered linguistics and transferred to Harvard for a Ph.D., which stills needs its thesis to be written.  While at Harvard, he was able to cross register at M.I.T. where the greatest linguistic theoretician of all time, Noam Chomsky, was still a young fairly unknown professor.  It was a fantastic opportunity. The chairman at Harvard was a great enthusiast of mathematical linguistics and Basil yielded to his pressure to take some courses.  One of his teachers was mainly a consultant at Arthur D. Little who hired Basil for a summer job at Arthur D. Little which led to one of the career threads of Basil’s life.

 

The question for this exercise is how many other classmates can relate to these experiences as well?   I am sure that our classmates who live abroad or have lived abroad must have similar stories.  You humble scribe went skiing in Austria some years ago whereupon he met a young Austrian girl; and then a few years later while living in Paris married her and subsequently brought her back to the U.S.  We speak German at home (my three years of German in high School followed by three years of German at Yale did little to help my spoken German) while my French gets rustier every day.  Then there was the one year of Swedish at Yale which was the catalyst for my recent exchange of views on multilingualism with David, not to mention my 100 hours of immersion in Portuguese at Berlitz.

 

Let us hear about your bi, tri, or quadri or multilingualism.   

 

DRL

 

At the behest of Myles Alderman your humble scribe drove at a snail’s pace along gorgeous I-95 late on Friday afternoon to New Haven to watch the Yale- Harvard hockey game. Seated nearby were Harriet and Richie Case and Cinda and Jack Embersits. The game can only be described by saying that Yale slaughtered Harvard 5 to 1.  It was the best Yale hockey game ever!! Yale had 50 shots on goal and Harvard had 15. Yale scored four power play goals out of six power play chances.  Yale really played well and there was a lot of physical play.  The following  night Yale beat Dartmouth 3-1. As a result of Princeton scoring two goals in the last 36 seconds and beating Cornell 2-1, Yale is now No. 1 in the ECAC.

Mike Cavallon reports that the weather prediction for the day of the Princeton game kept some faint-hearted classmates (including your humble scribe) inside, but a few watched the game in fine weather, until the last 3:42 minutes, when it rained.  In the stands in addition to Mike and his son Chel were Cinda and Jack Embersits with son Jeff, Alex Gunn, Ed Loughlin and Bill Opsahl. After watching Yale defeat Princeton handily (by the lopsided score of 10-0), that group retired to the home of Anne Marie and Carl Lindskog where they joined by Nancy and Art Bober, Harriet and Richie Case, Alan Davidson, Rhonda Gunn, Drew and Harry Harlow, Joel Schiavone, who was accompanied by some melt-in-the mouth spare ribs, and Joan and Tom Schoenemann.  The food was delicious and abundant, the wine flowed copiously, and the company was exceptional, until about 9:00 P.M., which Mike describes as being pretty late for a bunch of old fogies. Mike also points out that this was the first time Yale had blanked Princeton since 1934. Maybe the new football coach will do better!! Joe Sears reports that he and Margaret are living in Bedminster, NJ but travel back to Potomac, MD which is their primary residence. They saw Ann and Tony McCullough in Nantucket last summer. Bill Hewitt sent an E-mail praising the reunion and expressing his thanks to all our classmates who made it possible. Gordon Gerson also thoroughly enjoyed the reunion particularly seeing friends after such a long time.. Gordon is retired but has started consulting half time at Northrop Grumman Space Technology. Having realized at our great 50^th reunion how lucky he and Martie are to have such people as our classmates as “permanent” friends, John Fiske allowed as how he felt compelled to respond favorably to Terry Ryan’s letter soliciting contributions even though he thought he had maxed out his giving to Yale for the 50^th. Bob Child reports breathing a sigh of relief that he has survived covering candidates in another election. Bob missed the 50^th because the high school graduation of his grandson took precedence inasmuch as Bob is his grandson’s only living grandparent.  David Ehrlich, a self described reenergized quinquagenarian, reports from Washington D.C. that after reconnecting with his old friend, Fritz Kinzel at our 50^th, he decided to bring the ’58 Whiffs into his Washington concert series. Fritz sent several of his nostalgic arrangements to a lively bunch of not quite so old Blues, and helped them perform in front of a loudly cheering, mostly Yale Club audience. As part of the festivities, King Mallory and John Pierce and ’56 Whiff  Gib Durfee joined David and Fritz for a highly celebratory dinner (sans green cups – quel dommage). Emory Buck was sorry to have missed the reunion. He and his wife, Anne, spent nearly a month in Australia and New Zealand last fall. While they thoroughly enjoyed Sydney, Ayers Rock, Cairns and Brisbane, their drive along the south shore of New Zealand was the highlight of the trip.  I have received word of the death of Vernon Bacher last October in Edmonds, WA after a bout with lung cancer and finally from pulmonary complications following open heart surgery.  After Yale he returned to Stanwood, WA and worked for a local food company for 11 years. He then got an MBA in 1969 from Harvard and spent 27 years managing companies in the consumer products business in various parts of the country. He returned to Washington after retiring in 1992. He is survived by Glennis, his wife of 45 years. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal ran obituaries on December 10, 2008, reporting the sudden death of Harvey Mell. After Yale, Harvey enjoyed a long and distinguished career in investment banking specializing in Municipal Bonds. He headed Dillon Read’s Fixed Income Department and became a partner there under Nicholas F. Brady. In 1971 Harvey founded W.H. Mell Associates and remained Chairman of the Board until his death.  He had numerous business interests including The Sandpiper Inn of Spring Lake NJ which he owned and operated with his wife from 1994 to 2005. He is survived by his wife, Rosemary, three sons, four grandchildren, four stepchildren and four step grandchildren. Don’t be shy.  Send news. The well is dry.

 

The luncheon on the first Thursday of each month at the Yale Club in NYC continues to draw a good and boisterous crowd.  On January 8, 2009,  Ben Gertz, Tim Hogen, Mal Holderness, Ron Lamey, Ken McAdams, Bob Morgan, Phil Ness, David Schiff, Pete Spelman, Bill Stubenbord, Bill Williams and you humble scribe gathered well before the announced 12:30 commencement hour in very comfortable new chairs around a whole row of new tables which improved the ability of everyone to communicate with more members of the assembled classmates than in the past.  Dave Richardson made what he described as a fleeting appearance which did allow him to stay long enough to down a hearty lunch.  Steve Riker ate on the run (not literally of course) and departed before most of us were half way finished.  Al Ferguson had planned to attend but elected in a grand humanitarian gesture to stay home with his bad cold rather than subject his classmates’ immune systems, which he described as being run-down due to the lack of abstinence and general high living (my translation), to whatever communicable disease he had.  Bob Cushman and Victor Kovner were notable no-shows. If your travel plans bring you to NYC, try to arrange your schedule so you can join the group.  You are guaranteed a good time.

 

Tim Hogen reports that a marvelously animated group of classmates showed up for the November monthly luncheon at the Yale Club.  As Tim notes, what else would one expect from our class? At lunch Al Ferguson conducted an anonymous straw poll (by a show of hands?) to determine how those present had voted.  The results of the poll (which are about as reliable as asking about a participant’s private sex life) was 13 for Obama and 4 for McCain.

Hoyt Spelman reports having had the pleasure of reading David Burke’s book, Writers in Paris, just after it was published last July. Hoyt describes the book as a must-have for those of us who get to Paris two or three times a year; and Hoyt adds, “isn’t that all of us”? He recommends that we don’t go to Paris without having the book in our hands or in the basket of our rented bikes, as we walk or bike around the City of Lights. It is available on line at Barnes and Noble for a respectable $32.50. Besides, as I write this the U.S. Dollar is increasing in value against the Euro making the whole trip a lot cheaper.

Bill Lund wrote last October that he and his wife, Colleen were about to embark on the popular train trip across Canada that everyone except they seems to have taken. Last year the Lunds visited friends in Lymington, England, and took a trip to Wales with Bill’s freshman and sophomore-year roommate, Buzz Ringe and his wife, Sally. They have also visited Portugal whose wild flowers Bill describes as unbelievably spectacular due to the first year of significant rain after several years of drought, and whose wine is undeservedly overlooked. Bill had delayed reporting the trip to Portugal as he states because at the time he may have feared starting a run on Portugal if he touted it so highly.

I have received from Linus Travers word of the death in San Francisco of Phil Bass after a series of strokes. After Yale, Phil earned his J.D. from the Univ. of Michigan Law School. He spent his early years in San Francisco at Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges and later helped build the law firm Titchell, Maltzman there, where he was a name partner and also served as managing partner for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Focusing his practice on complex litigation, Phil handled high-profile securities, antitrust, construction and labor cases for companies such as Spectra-Physics and Itel Corp. He is survived by his longtime partner, Meta Mertens, two children, two grandchildren and his former wife, Sharon Bass.

I would encourage those of you who have not communicated with me about what you are doing or what you have been doing to do so.  We need reports from new sources, not just the same old trusty sources.  Thanks.

 

David Sternberg wrote me shortly after our 50^th reunion that he had had extensive spinal surgery in Miami in January 2008, followed by months of physical therapy. Thus when he signed up for the reunion in late April, he had requested that a wheelchair be on hold. Much to everybody’s surprise, including his own, he arrived in New Haven totally cured and didn’t need it. He was delighted to renew/revive review/friendships with many classmates at the reunion, including: Kent Bales (David was Kent’s best man in August, 1958 in Groton, Connecticut, which David almost couldn’t find on his drive up from Buffalo), Olga and Al Dittrick (David’s roomate at JE), who now live in the south of Holland, Phil Holt, Woodie Howe, Dick Colbert, Tom Simons, Ron Cheney, Doc Crothers, Herb Yanowitz (David’s colleague in American Studies Honors, and classmate at HLS), and Damon Wells. To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, David says: “when I was a senior at Yale, I thought these guys were some of the dumbest sons of bitches I ever met. At 72, I was amazed how smart they were and how much they’d accomplished!” David missed not seeing: Arnie Buchman, ”Scholar” Steve Bier (David’s HLS first (awful) year roommate), Jerry Rosen, Herv Triplett, Dave Laventhol, Marty Klaman, Ev Fleischer (David’s suitemate), Roger Bailey and Roscoe Rudd. David also expressed his sorrow at the passing six years ago of his other roommate, Rick Pfeffer, who David says is also missed by millions of American workers, who benefited from Rick’s long-term efforts to improve their safety standards–that Rick drew up and pushed through at the Department of Labor.  David can be reached at 3001 Henry Hudson Pkwy, Apt. 2H, Bronx, New York, 10463; also cell: 917 803 9129 and e-mail: bedford55@aol.com.       

 

As many of you know, Harry Harlow has been fighting cancer for quite some time and especially beginning again just before our 50^th reunion.  He has received calls and cards form many of our classmates for which he is very thankful. As an expression of his appreciation, Harry has mailed the following letter to such classmates and I thought it appropriate to reproduce the letter here.  Harry writes as follows:

 

“Greetings at last! Formal etiquette recommends a prompt reply to all cards, notes, calls and other get well overtures. Believe it or not I’ve been trying to find some way to do this without being hunkered down writing notes in my illegible scrawl that most friends already admit they cannot read.  During these past months of treatments designed to get me back to a healthy life, it is the cards, notes and calls that are the true medicine that has kept me believing that I will truly succeed in my recovery.  Therefore, I want to share with you an ancient oriental poet’s poem that expresses my appreciation of your thoughtfulness toward me. Lao Tsu writes a four line form of poetry known as Haiku – here he is on “Generosity”

 

He who gathers

Has little

He who scatters

Has much.

 

You have demonstrated to me that you are a ‘scatterer’ and there can be no higher compliment and I thank you for those efforts on my behalf.

 

With warmest wishes.”