CLASS OF 1961 | 2016 | ISSUE 1
Richard Corson sends word: “Having retired from my library directorship at SUNY Maritime College in 2001, I continue to live at my house in Forest Hills. After years of avoidance, I finally got a smartphone. I also activated my long dormant Facebook account. As a consequence, I am taking more photographs and exercising more care in their composition, and posting them. Once I had the smartphone, I figured why not get an activity tracker to keep me honest, so I waddle around Forest Hills on a four-mile circuit almost every day. From 2002–2010 I was a three-day-a-week volunteer at the office of the NYC Habitat for Humanity affiliate, first in Brooklyn Heights, then on John Street in the financial district.”
Following Richard’s wife’s death three days after their 49th anniversary, he became more active in his Congregational Church-in-the-Gardens, located in Forest Hills. He also attended theater events, encouraged by his participation in the Theater Development Fund (TDF)
“This past winter,” Richard continues, “I transcribed my maternal grandmother’s five-year diary from 1933–37, which resulted in connecting with my 88-year-old cousin, Joy, whom I had never met. It turns out that Joy and her husband, Michael, gave Harper Lee the means to take a year off from her work as an airline reservation clerk in New York to finish To Kill a Mockingbird. Who knew?”
More news from New York State by Tom Seward: “In July, on their way to Chautauqua Lake for a couple of weeks, Carol and Dave Denny stopped by Eve and Tom Seward’s cottage on Keuka Lake (N.Y.). Joyce Barney and her new husband, Kim Milling, joined them. We enjoyed meeting Kim. Over dinner we told some great John Barney stories. It was a bit like a mini Delta Sig reunion.
Last fall, Paul Boynton was reflecting about our 50th Reunion celebration: “Occasionally I think back fondly to that gathering. Then I leap further back to sort through memories from those years when we all got to know each other. (I just now paused to review the two sentences I wrote, which strike me as the musing of a verifiably old man. No matter, those were verifiably great times.)”He also sends updates: “I taught my last class at the UW in the fall of 2013, and miss that constant contact with students, but keep busy analyzing data and writing papers reporting the experimental gravitation program that my research group carried out over the past two decades. Barbara and I spent a few weeks with grandchildren in Europe in ’12, and a few more in China two years ago where I spoke at a conference in Shanghai, at university in Wuhan, and as we relaxed as guests of Beijing U through the longstanding academic connections of our oldest son. We take great joy in our growing family of six “kids,” 12 grandkids, and recently a spectacular great-granddaughter.”
Following their daughter’s June wedding last summer, Ernie Hildner and his wife, Sandy, anticipated traveling to the Galapagos Islands. “I walked into Machu Picchu on the Inca Trail 36 years ago (!), acclimating to altitude at the beginning of a month-long climbing trip, which culminated with a successful ascent of 22,200 feet. Standing on the summit of Huascaran, one is almost the farthest from the center of Earth as one can get and still have your feet on the ground. (Second only to the summit of Chimborazo, in Ecuador.) It will be interesting to see what changes have occurred in 36 years to a ruin about 600 years old. In late January, we go to Chamonix, France, for a week, to ski the great variety of areas on the north, east, and, south slopes of Mont Blanc. We’re very grateful that our health has held up—with the frequent aid of modern medicine—as well as it has.”
Your class secretary always appreciates a word from his former roommates. Emil Frankel writes: “Still active in transportation policy matters, serving as Interim President & CEO of Eno Center for Transportation, a small DC-based transportation policy think tank, ’til a new President is selected by the Board of Directors; serving on a couple of boards; and writing on transportation policy topics for various periodicals and organizations. Also, just completed service on a panel for Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, making recommendations on transportation funding for the State.”
Jack Mitchell sends his update: “Our family is very blessed—we are all are healthy and in harmony. Linda and I will celebrate our 55th wedding anniversary in June. My grandson, Lyle ’16, is graduating from Wesleyan in June and my granddaughter, Dana ’18, is a sophomore at Wesleyan. They both play lacrosse. I have three other grandchildren in college and two in high school.
We now have eight men’s and women’s clothing stores, coast-to-coast: Westport, Greenwich, Huntington Long Island, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle, and Portland, Ore. I continue to travel and speak, and have done more than 225 motivational speeches on my Hug Your Customer and Hug Your People books, in addition to working on our selling floor as the chairman of our family’s men’s and women’s clothing business. I continue on the faculty of Columbia Business School, guest lecturing in family business and luxury retail, and am playing lots of tennis and loving it! Finally, I am proud to be on the Presidents Council at Wesleyan!”
Sandy McCurdy submitted a few words as follows: “Heard from Howard Morgan that he and Dick Arnold hang out with their families in Florida somewhere (no doubt not a slum area!) and things are well with them all. My thoughts have drifted back to some of our deceased classmates, Hank Hilles and Pete Odell in particular. What wonderful creatures they each were as we knew them, and remembering especially how Hank loved the lyrics (which I believe someone in our class made up) to that old spiritual: “He’s got the whole world, in his hands ….” redoing it as: “He’s got a great big banana—in his ear, he’s got a great big banana—in his ear…” Ah, the carefree days of fine nonsense.
Another classmate, Bob Folley, died a few months ago following an extended period of cancer therapy and treatment. Bob, a dental colleague, a graduate school roommate, a gross anatomy teammate, and Best Man at Jon Magendanz’s wedding, was an avid golfer who, much to Magendanz’s amazement, would compete in tournaments held days after the snow melted and would finish as the winner. He practiced general dentistry in the Navy for two years and then for 33 years in his Glens Falls, N.Y., office. A unique follow-through for Bob’s golfing experience and expertise was that after retiring from dentistry, he joined the New York State Golf Association as a course rater. This position required his evaluation of golf courses throughout the nation. As he would say, with a grin: “It’s tough work, but somebody’s got to do it!”
Coming up in the next Class Notes edition: Words from Bob Carey, guest preacher for the Martin Luther King Jr. service at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and some philosophical thoughts from Foster Morrison and Ed McClellan. Stay tuned! Respectfully submitted,
Jon K. Magendanz, DDS | jon@magendanz.com
902 39th Avenue West, Bradenton, FL 34205