Classmates,

Our classmate, Bernie Steinberg, died Sunday, January 14, 2024, age 78. Bernie grew up in St. Louis and majored in English literature at Wesleyan. After Wesleyan he went on to receive an MA from Brandeis and a PhD in Jewish philosophy from Hebrew University. He lived in Israel for 13 years and then worked at Harvard as the director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010. In 2012 he moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. According to one article that I read after he died, “Most recently, he lived in Chicago, where his son Avi is an author and lecturer in nonfiction writing at the University of Chicago. He is also survived by his wife, Roz; a daughter, Adena; and a granddaughter.”

In one obituary, a former student is quoted saying the following about Bernie: “I have rarely if ever met anyone so committed to the sacred art of nurturing young adults and encouraging them to blossom. Over and above the hundreds and hundreds of undergraduate students he guided and counseled . . . when I worked at Hillel there was always a steady stream of young Jewish professionals who would come to see Bernie—to get his advice, to receive his assurance, to be challenged to think differently and more deeply about whatever was on their mind. The list of people Bernie mentored is like a who’s who of Jewish communal leadership.”

I got a nice email from Tony Gaeta. He is now, as he puts it, “long retired.” He and his partner are living by the water in Southport, North Carolina.  Here is some of what he wrote: “On a wonderful trip to the great state of Maine this past summer, my partner and I enjoyed dinner with Ed ‘Big Ed’ Simmons in Freeport, as well as seeing Billy Congleton at Bill’s brother Jake’s (’56) 90th-birthday celebration. As for me, I’ve been long retired from the legal profession and teaching at UNC Law and Campbell Law, sold my farm and horses in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and moved to Southport, North Carolina, to live on the water and be closer to my boat docked here in a nearby marina.” 

Tony also wrote that he had hoped to see his Chi Psi friend, Len “Bergy” Bergstein, when he went to San Francisco to see Tony Conte, who was recovering from a bad accident in April 2022. Here is his account: “I was deeply sorry to learn of Lenny ‘Bergy’ Bergstein’s passing. He and I became great friends at The Lodge and I had planned on seeing him last year on a trip to San Francisco, when I visited our other great fraternity brother and friend Tony Conte, as he recovered from a horrific automobile accident where he was literally run over twice on the sidewalk as he returned home from dinner one night in April 2022!  He’s recovering nicely and his accident has reunited us.” 

When I reached out to Tony Conte, he wrote back with the horrifying details of his accident (elderly driver, driving an old and silent Prius, and, alarmingly, not wearing the glasses she was required to wear). He wrote that “I have shed the wheelchair; I have shed the walker; and I still use a cane for balance and support…. Both Tony Gaeta and Tony Caprio have been fantastically supportive to me from the first minute. They are in part responsible for my recovery. I don’t think I could have made it through the trauma center, the ICU, the two hospitals, and the care facility without their constant contact and encouragement.” And Tony also had this to say: “I am lucky to be alive and savor each day.”

When I saw that there was new info on the JFK assassination, I wrote to Bill Klaber to ask him what he thought. Bill, as those of you who read these class notes assiduously well know, is the coauthor of Shadow Play: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy (originally published in 1998, with an updated paperback edition in 2018)and also the producer of a 14-episode podcast called The MLK Tapes that challenges the official story of how Dr. King was murdered. It won a Webby, which is a big deal in podcast land. Bill said about this: “Of greater satisfaction to us was the request from the American Civil Rights Museum in Memphis for the rights (the legal work now underway) to use portions of The MLK Tapes in their wing of the museum devoted to the murder of Dr. King, which is now closed until Juneteenth 2025 while they ‘rethink’ their exhibits and incorporate evidence that we were able to bring forward in our podcast. If you are ever in Memphis, be sure to visit this stunning museum.”

Here is what he wrote back: “Hey, Richie. Yes, we were freshmen when the president was murdered, and I was in law school when Bobby and Dr. King were killed. I’ve just returned from Dallas where I spoke at a conference marking the 60th anniversary. As far as Peter Landis, the Secret Service agent who recently revealed that he found a bullet in the president’s limo— his account is way more likely than the official story that has the first bullet traveling downward and striking Kennedy’s back before somehow traveling up to exit his throat, then moving over to shatter Governor Connolly’s rib before leaving his chest and destroying Connolly’s wrist, and then striking his leg. This slug, found at the hospital, is called the ‘magic bullet,’ because it not only merrily defies the laws of Newton, but emerges in perfect condition, which is impossible after striking so many bones. Landis says that his bullet was probably pushed out from the wound in Kennedy’s back, in line with the doctor’s assertion that Kennedy’s back wound had no path out of the body and no spent bullet in the wound. But however logical, Landis’ account requires an additional bullet, exceeding the three-bullet limit for a single gunman and proving the official account is a clumsy lie. And it’s not just this bullet, the lies are all over the place, like underwear in a burglarized apartment. I would love to come to Wesleyan and give a talk on these three, rather important, historical events. I’m a graduate of the CSS and have asked them for an invite to speak at their weekly luncheon. So far, no invitation. Still hoping. Bill.”

In early November 2023, my wife, Lisa, and I spent a day with Steve Sellers, my old roomie (from freshman and sophomore years), in Chapel Hill. He and his wife, Martha Julia, were visiting the Tarheel State from their home in Guatemala. It was a rare treat to spend a day together, wandering around Franklin Street, the site of many a raucous scene after various Tarheel athletic victories, and the Chapel Hill Botanical Garden. After earning a PhD in anthropology and teaching for a while, Steve, now retired, worked in what we call artificial intelligence (he was the first person to tell me about “the cloud”). Martha Julia, a developmental psychologist, was in Chapel Hill to organize a conference for Jerome Kagan, her graduate school mentor, who died in 2021. 

Ironically, or maybe just interestingly, or maybe just interestingly to me, two weeks earlier my wife and I spent a day with her freshman roomie from Mt. Holyoke. What, I wonder, are the odds of two old (and getting older) married folks at our advanced ages still being in close touch with their freshman year college roomies, and then getting to see them within a two-week period?  

Having spent part of the year in Florida and part of it in Westport, Massachusetts, for eight years, Tom Drew and his wife Carolyn Benedict-Drew decided to sell their place in Florida and buy a place in Manhattan. They are now still sharing their Westport time, but they share it with the Big Apple instead of DeSantis- and Trump-land. Children (four of them, including Joshua ’89 and Jacob ’98) and grands (nine of them) are all within striking distance of the Apple. Tom, a cardiologist, and Carolyn both retired in 2015, celebrating by sailing a boat from Westport to Sarasota. Now, they are into a new urban adventure.

After he read about Len “Bergy” Bergstein’s death in a recent set of notes, Rick Nicita emailed me. Bergy, he told me, was his temporary roommate sophomore year (“I can still hear his cackling laugh”) before they went their separate fraternal ways—Bergy to Chi Psi and Rick to Psi U. Rick enjoyed his career as a movie talent agent for 40 years and then was a “personal manager” for a few years. Now he is involved in producing movies. As he explained it: “I am producing a movie which filmed in Dublin starring my former client Anthony Hopkins, titled Freud’s Last Session that will be in theaters on Christmas Day, and I have a few other movies that might happen with former clients like Al Pacino, etc.  However, I’m not 24/7/365 like I was back in the day. Instead, I spend my life with my wife of 38 years, fellow producer Paula Wagner, play bad golf, and read good books. That suits me better now.”

Our classmate Jim Kates emailed to inform me that he now has a website (as he put it, “I’ve finally entered the very beginning of the 21st century with a website”). It has information about Jim (on the website he describes himself as “a minor poet, a literary translator, and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press”).  It also has lots of great visuals, lots of information about books Jim has written and translated, and much more (including a letter he wrote to his draft board in October 1967). I encourage you to check it out at https://www.jkates.net/about.

(Poaching again, this time from ’64.) When the story broke, I heard from one of my ’66 sources (actually, Smith College ’66, not Wesleyan ’66) that Rusty Hardin ’64, considered a “Texas legal titan” by the Austin American-Statesman and a “legal icon” who is a “Texas legal legend” by the Texas Tribune, was named as one of the lead lawyers working with the Republicans in the Texas Senate to impeach Ken Paxton, the suspended Texas Attorney General (also a Republican). Rusty has been the lead attorney in many high-profile cases. He represented the estate of Texas millionaire J. Howard Marshall in the dispute with former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith (she, memorably, responded to one of his questions in court by saying “Screw you, Rusty!”, a comment that has continued to reverberate as Rusty moves through life).  He also represented the accounting firm Arthur Anderson in the Enron case, and he has represented many professional athletes, including Rudy Tomjanovich, Roger Clemens, Calvin Murphy, Warren Moon, Scottie Pippen, and Wade Boggs. Rusty had this to say about the Paxton case: “This is not about a one-time misuse of office. This is not about a two-time misuse of office. It’s about a pattern of misconduct. I promise you it is 10 times worse than what has been public.”  (However, after a 10-day trial, the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton. According to the Texas Tribune, this was “his most artful escape in a career spent courting controversy and skirting consequences of scandal.”)

(More poaching, from further afield.) A retired guy with time on my hands, I have been reading (in, not all of) a 1,460-page book by David Garrow ’75 titled Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. Published in 2017 (to mixed reviews), it is a prodigious work, based on over nine years of research that included more than 1,000 interviews, all conducted by Garrow himself. Garrow, who was in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan, with a subsequent PhD in history from Duke, has written extensively, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. There is much to quarrel with and much to admire in this enormous and ambitious volume.

This leads me to today’s quiz. Who is your favorite Wesleyan author, and why? Two categories. First, those who were Wesleyan undergraduates (e.g., Amy Bloom ’75, Robin Cook ’62, Jennifer Finney Boylan ’80) and second, those who taught at Wesleyan or had other affiliations with the school (e.g., Paul Horgan, William Manchester, Phyllis Rose). Prizes to be announced.

Around the time of MLK Jr. Day, The New York Times published a front-page article about the likely effects on colleges if, as expected, the Supreme Court overturns affirmative action. Before I read the article, I saw the accompanying photo, a familiar view—the back of Olin Library, from the football field, scene of many a commencement (and many a walk across campus). The article focused on Wesleyan because it had been one of the first of the elite colleges that sought to diversify its all-male and almost all-white student body, an effort that really began during our sophomore year when Jack Hoy ’55, became dean of admissions. Almost as soon as I had read the article, I received an email from Ted Smith asking if I had seen it, an email that he sent to a bunch of classmates and that led to a series of shared, nostalgia-filled emails written by Harry Shallcross, Joseph Brooks Smith, Karl Furstenburg, Dave Garrison, Wayne Diesel, and Jim Kates. Some recalled Martin Luther King Jr.’s visits to the campus (King spoke at Wesleyan four times in a seven-year period, including a talk in the chapel in 1963 and another in McConaughy in 1966). I remember that when King spoke in 1963, Ron Young ’65 gave a fiery and eloquent introduction of King (actually Young introduced John McGuire, then an assistant professor of religion, and McGuire introduced King).

I was glad to be on Ted’s email list. My guess, and my hope, is that periodically there are similar exchanges about many topics among small groups of our classmates (the brothers at Chi Psi or EQV, baseball players, the guys who rowed crew, thespians, ethnomusicologists, or those who wrote for The Argus. . .).  An article in a current psychology journal is titled “Reliving the Good Old Days: Nostalgia Increases Psychological Wellbeing Through Collective Effervescence”; you’ll have to read it to see what they mean by “collective effervescence.” These reminiscences of King’s talk in McConaughy confirm what the title of a 2017 article in The Wesleyan Argus claimed after McConaughy was torn down: “Gone but Not Forgotten: A MoCon Retrospective.”

More from the nostalgia department: I had a phone call from Don Stone, and we talked about Jewological matters (unlike me, a Jew who had no choice, Don, after growing up gentile and flirting with Quakerism and various other goyish denominations, became a “Jew by choice”; he is a member of a progressive synagogue in the Bay Area). We also reminisced about things Wesleyan, including how we came to choose it. Among the things I learned, or once knew and forgot, were: 1) Don roomed with Reuben (Johnny) Johnson freshman year; 2) he was in CSS; 3) his older sister, like mine, went to Mt. Holyoke (his sister became the president of Sarah Lawrence; mine won a Pulitzer Prize). Don claims that he is having trouble remembering nouns (join the club) but that he does fine with adjectives (and expletives).

Two items from the Wesleyan Blurb Department (or maybe the Wesleyan Old Boys’ Blurb Network, or maybe the Wesleyan as Social Capital Archives).  #1. I wrote a blurb for Claude (“Bud”) Smith’s ’66 new book, Gauntlet in the Gulf: The 1925 Marine Log and Mexican Prison Journal of William F. Lorenz, MD. The book is based on the experiences of a prominent early-20th century psychiatrist who, in 1925, sailed a boat that capsized in the Gulf of Mexico. He and his crew subsequently spent time in a Mexican prison and he kept a journal based on this experience, which Bud explains, analyzes, and reproduces in this book (Shanti Arts, 2023).  Among other things, I said in my blurb that it “reveals an insightful and engaging storyteller as Claude Smith recounts and deconstructs this fascinating story.”

#2. Larry Carver ’66, wrote a blurb for my new book, Guilford College, 1974–2020:  Sort of a Memoir in Two Parts (Half Court Press, in cooperation with Scuppernong Books, 2023). Larry actually wrote a real review of the book for a real academic journal, and I chose some of it for the blurb, including the following: “In remarkably engaging, well-written prose laced with wit, good humor, and insight, Zweigenhaft also contributes importantly to our understanding of how the increased attention on the campus to Middle East politics, especially the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, affected Guilford and higher education in general, 1974 to the present, and to the challenges currently confronting small, liberal arts colleges.”

Full disclosure: My blurb for Bud was not my first blurb for a Wesleyan friend. For the late great Jim McEnteer’s 2006 book, Shooting the Truth: The Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger, 2006), I blurbed: “McEnteer has written a lively, insightful and much-needed analysis of the re-emerging genre of American political documentaries.” I meant every word of it, for Mac’s book and for Bud’s book.

Classmates,
Sad news.  Len “Bergy” Bergstein died Monday, October 17. His sudden death was apparently caused by a heart attack.
In 2002, after attending our 35th Reunion, I wrote my first set of class notes. A week or so later, I got an email from Bergy that began, “Richie—somehow, during the weekend I missed the point where Pat Dwyer and you did a body exchange . . . well they say miracles happen at events like this. I truly enjoyed the chance to get re-connected.”
He then caught me up on what he had been up to since our graduation: “As for me—I moved to Oregon in ’72 after completing NYU Law School. I joined Legal Aid and got involved with an urban political crowd . . . this led to political involvement as a campaign manager for two Democratic candidates for statewide office. When my candidate for governor won in 1974, I went to work for him in the statehouse—probably due to poor staff work, he only lasted one term. Five years later I was working for the Portland mayor, Neil Goldschmidt, when he was asked to join the Carter cabinet as U.S. secretary of transportation—so I joined his staff in Washington, D.C. In 1981, I headed back to Portland and set up my own public affairs company, called Northwest Strategies, which I have been doing ever since. It’s a nice mixture of government, media, and community relations for clients with complex issues. No two clients are the same . . . I have helped site large scale projects with challenging environmental issues [modern landfills, gravel mining reclamation project, etc.]; helped a Native American tribe establish a positive image to offset the negatives of casino gambling; have gained public approval of development projects and ballot measures; and currently am assisting a large-scale agriculture and dairy enterprise become established on 93,000 acres of land in Eastern Oregon. Oregon’s relatively small population and reputation for livability/quality of life issues makes this an attractive place for me to practice . . . .”
When I learned that Bergy had died, I looked online and found that he had become very well known in Oregon, not only for the active role he had played in political life throughout the state, but also because he was a frequent commentator on local television in Portland, known for, as one article put it, his “wit and wisdom.”
The accolades rolled in, from both senators (one, Ron Wyden, said, “Len was instrumental with my start in public life”) and from various other prominent Oregonians (if that is what they call themselves). He clearly was well loved and well respected. One of Len’s obituaries, with photos, appears here: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/10/longtime-oregon-political-strategist-len-bergstein-dies-at-76.html.
He is survived by Betsy, his wife of 38 years, two brothers, three children, and four grandchildren.

(Poaching alert!)  Brian Frosh (Walter Johnson High School, ’64, Wesleyan, ’68) was in the news again, this time in an article that included his (stern but distinguished looking!) photo in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/us/baltimore-priest-sexual-abuse.html). The attorney general of Maryland—Brian—filed a request that a judge release a 456-page document based on a criminal investigation that Frosh’s office initiated in 2019. It details decades of sex abuse of more than 600 victims by clergy in Maryland. According to the filing, “The sexual abuse was so pervasive that victims were sometimes reporting sexual abuse to priests who were perpetrators themselves.”  The Times writes that the report “is one of the first major investigations completed by a state attorney general on sexual abuse in the Church since a scathing report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania shocked Catholics across the nation in 2018.”   Brian was scheduled to leave office in January 2023.

Classmates,

I did not make it to our 55th Reunion, but I sent a query out on the list serve to see who did, and what they could tell me about it. I did not get any emails about the reunion, so I conclude that either no one attended or that no one was willing to go public about the wild debauchery that took place. I did, however, get a cryptic email from Bob Dyer. For those of you unhappy where you are, and thinking of a nice place to retire, here is what Dyer wrote: “August issue of Kiplinger’s magazine lists Middletown, Connecticut, as one of seven great places to retire.”

Meanwhile, on the news front, I can tell you that Jim Kates, holed up in southwestern New Hampshire (“in idyllic seclusion”), published two books in the spring of 2022, one a translation of poems by the Russian poet Mikhail Yeryomin (Sixty Years: Black Widow Press), and the other a book of his own poems (Places of Permanent Shade: Accents).

And another Jim, Jim Cawse, wrote to tell me that he had retired at the beginning of 2022. He closed his consulting firm, Cawse and Effect (great name!). The company of 12 years worked with various other companies on a variety of problems, ranging, as Jim put it, “from plywood adhesives to passenger traffic through Gatwick Airport.” At the time he wrote (February 2022), he was waiting to have a knee replacement, but his local hospital was full of COVID patients, so he was not sure when he would be able to have the surgery. In fact, it took a while, but he now has had the knee replaced, and hopes to be cross-country skiing again soon.

George McKechnie, a retired clinical psychologist, has sold Axiom Home Tech in Monterey, California. Started 23 years ago, it specializes in custom audio and video design and installation (including home theaters). He now plans to devote his time to two new web-based businesses—one that helps consumers understand smart home technologies and how they can be custom-tailored to their needs, plus another business that matches people for friendship (not dating). He lives in Carmel with his wife Dee, who is also a retired clinical psychologist.

I saw the following in the Wesleyan Connection about Bill Klaber: “According to the Webby Awards, The MLK Tapes, a podcast written and hosted by William Klaber ’67, is the recipient of a 2022 Webby Award in the Best Limited Series category. For the past two years, Klaber has been working with Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Media on the podcast, which takes a deep dive into the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (May 1).”  I listened to this one-hour podcast. I recommend that you check it out. It is dynamite.

As those of you keeping close track are aware, in recent sets of class notes I have taken the liberty to write about some guys in the classes behind us (Bud Smith, Gary Conger, John Wilson, all ’66) and ahead of us (Brian Frosh ’68). The 1966 class secretary has accused me of poaching. Here I continue to poach by telling you that my wife (Lisa Young) and I spent four days at a beach in South Carolina with Rick Voigt ’68, and his wife Annemarie Riemer. Rick, now retired from practicing law, has been teaching classes at Wesleyan at the Wasch Center since 2015. Among the titles of the classes he has taught are The Effort to Build an Affordable American Middle Class Home: A Design and Social History, and Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Edsel Ford: Two Communists and a Titan of Capitalism Confront the Realities of the Modern Industrial Workplace and Make Great Art. Rick has published a novel, My Name on a Grain of Rice (Atmosphere Press, 2021), which draws among other things on his work as a labor lawyer who once worked for OSHA.

More poaching: Bill Dietz ’66 (aka Doctor Doctor Dietz) received an honorary degree from McGill University for his work on nutrition and obesity. You can see him on a YouTube video, decked out in fancy robes, giving his super honorary degree speech to the faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at McGill (his beaming family in the front row) if you Google “Dietz” and “McGill” (or go here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9V-LR9VxBy4).

And, finally, this just in from Ed Simmons: Ed, a resident of Yarmouth, Maine, became the new board chair of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. He succeeds Maria Gallace ’84, a resident of Yarmouth. Founded in 1959, the Natural Resources Council is the largest environmental advocacy organization in Maine, with more than 25,000 members and supporters. Its mission is to protect, restore and conserve the nature of Maine, now and for future generations.