Class of ’59 – November/December 2009

Cornell’s final numbers for Fiscal Year 2009 were posted in mid-summer, and our class shone! Of the total raised by reunion classes, $63,284,923—54% of the total—was given by 59ers. There were 539 donors from our class (43% participation). And we had 69 Tower Club members, a class best (our previous best Tower Club effort was 51 members at the 45^th reunion). Thanks to Bill Day and everyone else for this incredibly successful effort.

Our last column covered reunion highlights through Saturday morning. That day we gathered for a box lunch in a tent on the Ag Quad, where President Emeritus Frank Rhodes and his wife Rosa were our delightful guests. A short walk over to the steps of Bailey for the traditional class photograph—not an easy task for the photographer!

This year’s panel discussions, at the Schwartz Center in Collegetown, featured Joel Birnbaum, Rachel Rudin Blechman, Dave Dunlop, and Carl Leubsdorf. Following their enlightening and inspiring comments there was a memorial reading of the names of more than 275 deceased classmates. The readers were Eleanor Applewaite, Chuck Brown, Deloyce Timmons Conrad, Bill Day, Marian Fay Levitt, Barbara Benioff Friedman, Sally Schwartz Muzii, Alan Newhouse, Bob Paul, Mimi Petermann Merrill, and Gwen Woodson Fraze, with music performed by Paddy Hurley and Carroll Olton Labarthe.

Lots of reminiscing throughout the day and evening about Dragon Day, Sunday services at Sage Chapel, Zinck’s, Nabokov’s European novel course, sliding down Libe Slope on trays, ice skating on Beebe, autumn colors in the gorges, late night feasts from Obie’s Diner. And myriad conversations about the here and now: what we’re studying, where we’re traveling, how we’re coping with aging, how we’re contributing to our communities. Everyone had an interesting tale to tell. (Question from John Fickling: “Does anyone recall the names of the four or five books read in Nabokov’s course?” Send answers to me—addresses at the end of this column.)

Saturday evening was highlighted by a reception and buffet dinner, at which President David Skorton (NC) spoke and Cayuga’s Waiters performed. The group recently expanded to include its first “waitress”—the inimitable, ever-delightful Liz Fuchs Fillo ’58. On Sunday morning there was a brief class meeting at which our officers for the 2009-14 years were introduced: Presidents Barbara Hirsch Kaplan and Steve Fillo, Vice President for Class Scholarship Marian Fay Levitt, Affinity Chair Fred Harwood, Webmaster Alan Newhouse, Secretary Bill Kingston, Treasurer Diane Dogan Hilliard, and Cornell Annual Fund Representative Bill Day. Yes, I’ll continue to be your class correspondent, so keep that news flowing to me! In addition to this column I’ll continue occasional Twitter posts, which you can read at our class website.

Sidney Wolfe, acting president of Public Citizen and long-time director of the organization’s Health Research Group is also a member of the FDA’s Drug Safety & Risk Management Advisory Committee, with a term that runs through May 2012. Just before reunion he appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal, where the evening’s discussion focused on single-payer health care. Joseph “Woody” Glenn of Oyster Bay, NY, is a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He supports the local community sailing center and sails in match team and fleet racing—in everything from dinghies to keelboats. John Imre of Seattle teaches basic sciences to medical students. He has also taught skiing for 35 years.

Eleanor Seelert Lee of South Windsor, CT coaches people with handicaps. Her extra-curricular activities include golf, painting, reading, and walking. Kim Mitchell of Southbury, CT is retired but helps his son on the form—selling vegetables and wood and putting up 12,000 bales of hay. Cutting timber has also been a recent activity for Doug Dedrick, a retired veterinarian in East Aurora, NY who is helping his son build a new house. Doug also volunteers part-time as a Methodist pastor. Rochelle Leffert Spergel of NYC is a docent at the Jewish Heritage Museum. She also paints and travels, most recently to Spain, France and Mexico. Harriet Benjamin of Forest Hills, NY is an opera buff who’s frequently at the Metropolitan Opera. She’s also a member of the Cornell Club of NY and Worldship Society. Alfred Holden of NYC spent only one year at Cornell before going on to the Naval Academy (and later to Syracuse for a PhD). He’s marketing area chair and a professor of marketing at Fordham University. Recent publications include the essay “Putting pricing experience in perspective: A satirical view from Victorian America” in Pricing Perspectives: Marketing and Management Implications of New Theories and Applications (2008).

Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Inherent Vice, is a mystery set in LA at the end of the 1960s, with pot-smoking private eye Doc Sportello drawn into a bizarre mix of characters by an ex-girlfriend. “His most reader-friendly book,” said Arawind Adiga in the London Times. “Pynchon’s capacity for goofball invention is limitless,” noted Louis Menand (NC) in the New Yorker. “The rock & roll fanboy love on every page is a feast for Pynchon obsessives, since we’ve always wondered what the man listens to,” commented Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Might this be Pynchon’s first novel to be turned into a film? • Jenny Tesar, 97A Chestnut Hill Village, Bethel, CT 06801; tel., (203) 792-8237; e-mail, jet24@cornell.edu.