Class of ’59 – March/April
“On November 14 our Carol Hardy drew deafening cheers from 4,000 members of the Newman Nation, the fan club of Cornell men's basketball, which plays its home games in the Newman Arena in Bartels Hall,” writes Ron Demer. “The sellout crowd was there for the men's season opening game against South Dakota (a 79-69 Cornell victory) and the unveiling of the Ivy Basketball Championship banners awarded to the Big Red 2008 men's and women's basketball teams for their Ivy Champion seasons. Carol, a retired Biological Sciences Senior Lecturer, has been the academic advisor for the men's basketball team for years, and was honored by the team when they asked her to drop the curtain and unveil their new championship banner.
Ron also notes that Carol has agreed to be the Reunion Chair for her sorority, Alpha Phi, and to call her sisters to encourage them to come to our 50th reunion on June 4-7. She is among dozens of chairs that have been recruited to help ensure that our gathering will be a record-breaker. Interested in who’s coming? Check the list at our class website, http://classof59.alumni.cornell.edu And if you would personally like to contact classmates but do not know where they are, Ron has agreed to respond to such inquiries; contact him at rd43@cornell.edu
Some classmates are planning to arrive on the Hill several days ahead of time to attend the Pre-Reunion seminar, “The Middle East: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (May 31-June 3). Information is at http://www.sce.cornell.edu/cau/off_campus/courses.php?action=class&f=CLASSID&v=12958 Among 59ers who attended CAU’s biennial election-eve gathering at Mohonk Mountain in New Paltz (October 31-November 2)—where faculty Glenn Altschuler and Joel Silbey assessed the state of national politics and analyzed candidate prospects—were Ellie Applewhaite, Rachel Rudin Blechman, Lucy Tuve Comly, Sue Rollins Fried, Marian Fay Levitt, and Alan Rosenthal.
In 2007 Ratan Tata was named one of the 30 most respected CEOs in the world by Barron’s magazine. Tata is chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, which, also in 2007, was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. This past October it was announced that the Tata Education and Development Trust, a philanthropic entity of Tata Group, has given Cornell an endowment of $50 million—“one of the most generous endowments ever received from an international benefactor by an American university,” said Cornell President David Skorton (NC). The endowment consists of $25 million to establish the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition, which will contribute to advances in nutrition and agriculture for India; and $25 million for the Tata Scholarship Fund for Students from India, to help attract more of the best and brightest students to Cornell from India.
Mary (Mimi) Nagle Wessling of Watsonville, CA is a medical writer, translator and historian. Her translation of a German medical ethics text from 1797 was published by BookSurge Publishing in 2007 under the title The Physician: The Cultivation, Education, Duties, Standards of Behavior, and Judiciousness of the Physician: Der Arzt (1797) by Wilhelm Gottfried Ploucquet. Gastroenterologist Joel Levinson of Mountainside, NJ continues to practice full time and enjoys running, hiking and tennis. He and his wife, Barbara Fineman Levinson ’60, bought a get-away home on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.
Dotty Isaacs Winick and her husband Paul moved to an apartment on the ocean. Their new address: 3501 N. Ocean Drive, Hollywood, FL. Dotty, a retired mental health counselor, enjoys watercolor painting and participating in book clubs. Mary Ella Harman Feinleib of Cambridge, MA, Professor Emerita at Tufts, works as a travel consultant with Tzell New England. Recently she traveled to Ukraine and Russia, and to South Africa. She also is secretary of the board of directors of Revels, Inc., which links the music, dances, and seasonal rituals from an older world to today’s world. The organization has production companies in ten cities, where it is famed for such events as SummersDay Revels and Christmas Revels.
What do we remember most fondly from our time at Cornell? Folks answering this question on the class news form provide a trip down memory lane for all of us. Paula Millenthal Cantor: “The lilacs in Balch Courtyard.” Harvey Weissbard: “Excitement of the first rush night in University Halls.” Celinda Cass Scott: “The people I met.” Jonathan Meigs: “Climbing Libe Slope for breakfast at the Straight.” Eleanor Ross Levieux: “Getting into concerts (David Oistrakh! Elisabeth Schwarzkopf!) free by being an usher.” Richard Horwich: “Taking a course with Vladimir Nabokov.” Marianne Smith Hubbard: “I met my husband, Hank.” Phil Dewey: “The bell tower chimes.” Pearl Woody Karrer: “Singing Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Cornell chorus in New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.” Anne Carpenter Robertson: “Teachers and students helping each other learn.” Ed Tavlin: “Seeing every movie that Ithaca movie houses showed.” Philip Yarnell: “Studying in the music room.” Mimi Nagle Wessling: “Going horseback riding in the forest near campus.” W. Hardy Eshbaugh: “Some amazing professors that cared about their students.” Steven Wolfe: “Bill’s in Collegetown, where I dissipated many hours.” Joel Levinson: “Romp & Stomp!”• Jenny Tesar, 97A Chestnut Hill Village, Bethel, CT 06801; tel., (203) 792-8237; e-mail, jet24@cornell.edu.