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CLASS NOTES
Robert Hardt Jr. So much has been written about the awful events of September 11 that I don't think it would be appropriate for me to weigh in here with my own thoughts and reflections. I just hope everyone out there — in our class and everywhere else — is all right. For those of you who have directly suffered or are having trouble soldiering on, I salute you. Understandably, the mail bag wasn't bulging because the issue came out in September, but I would urge everyone to please e-mail me. This is an important time to stay in touch and a good time to send me something if you haven't before. I knew Damian Hey through mutual friends when we were little boys in upstate New York, and then he moved away before we could became friends. But we became reacquainted at Columbia as fellow freshmen in 1987. Damian sent in a nice e-mail, saying he was sorry he missed the reunion but that he was busy getting married that weekend "to a beautiful woman named Melanie" whose family lives near me in the Rockaways. After Damian graduated, he got a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stony Brook ('96). Damian, now an assistant professor of media studies at Hofstra, and Melanie live in South Hempstead on Long Island. Margie Kim gets the MVP award this issue because without her, the column would be painfully skinny. She sent in the following info: she and her husband, Dean, bought a home in McLean, Va., last year. Their daughters, Christa and Nicole, celebrated their first birthday in September. Margie is still working at the Air Transport Association in D.C., where she regularly sees Bob Cooper. Bob, who is with Arnold & Porter, lives in Bethesda, Md., with his wife Debby Williams Cooper, Barnard '94. Elise Scheck gave birth to a third son, David, on July 25. Elise and her husband, Gil, live in Miami and moved into their new home at the end of September with their children, Joshua, Keith and David. Julie Levy and her husband, Matt, are still in Manhattan. They recently moved into a bigger apartment where their daughter, Katie, has more room for her toys! Julie continues to work at Simpson Thacher. Tara Kreidman Steinberg and her husband, Mark, are still working at IMG in Cleveland. Tara is Tiger Woods' marketing manager and Mark is his agent. They both travel the globe regularly with Tiger. (No requests for autographs, please.) Their daughter, Jessica, celebrated her first birthday in September. Beth Shubin Stein began a fellowship in orthopedic sports medicine at The Hospital for Special Surgery this year. She will be there through the summer of 2002. Her brother, Ken Shubin Stein, is running a hedge fund at Long Shore LLC, in Manhattan. Jodi Williams and her husband, Scott Bienenfeld, will be celebrating their first anniversary on December 31. They are living in Manhattan, where Jodi is still a producer at the Today Show. Ann Giarratano and her husband, Chris Della Pietra '89, are doing well. Their daughter, Kate, celebrated her first birthday earlier this year and she keeps them very busy. Ann works at Lehman Brothers and was in the office when the September 11 attacks occurred. She was unharmed. Melanie Seidner took a leave of absence from her marketing position at The Gap and is spending some more time at home with her son, Oscar. Melanie and her husband, Jeff, live near San Francisco and are expecting their second child in December. Thank you, Margie and Damian. Everyone else, please send something in. Take care. Cheers.
Jeremy Feinberg If only every letter was like that from first-time correspondent Jennifer MikoLevine! After graduating Columbia, Jennifer "fled" New York with two girl friends and settled (temporarily) in Santa Fe, N.M. Moves to Puebla, Mexico (where she was an ESL teacher and newspaper photographer), and Boston followed. In 1996, she traveled to Southern California to begin graduate studies at the Brooks Institute of Photography, and she also began work as a volunteer at the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center. This became a full-time career — Jennifer left her studies at Brooks to become SBRCC's Training Coordinator for 312 years. This work ultimately inspired her to attend Loyola Law School in Los Angeles as a public interest scholar. Jennifer met her husband, architect Alex MikoLevine, in Santa Barbara in 1998. The two were engaged in 1999 as the sun rose over Machu Pichu on the Inca Trail in Peru. They were married in Santa Barbara in June 2000 and subsequently honeymooned in China and Tibet. Those '92ers at the wedding included Jake Martin and Jasmine Benyamin. Stephanie Doyle, Thalassa Curtis, Alexandra Besser (nee Gilmore) and Tina Andreadis — all Barnard '92 — also were in attendance. Jennifer reported that Jasmine attended architecture school at Yale from 1993-96 and subsequently worked at small design firms for three years. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in architecture at Princeton, with plans to teach, write and curate. Jennifer also wrote that Jordan Davis married Anna Malmude, Barnard '92, in Woods Hole, Mass. in 1997. Their son, James Malmude Davis, was born November 23, 2000. According to Jennifer, Jordan edits the Web site at TIAA-CREF and is a poet. Anna teaches English Literature at Hunter College. A thought for the rest of you. The September 2001 issue of CCT contains a spectacular picture from the 10th reunion of the Class of '91 — a great turnout and lots of smiling faces. My challenge for all of you is to get so many of us to attend our 10th reunion (scarily just a few months away now), that we have an even better picture running in CCT in September 2002. In the meantime, keep the mail coming. Especially if it has lots of news in it. Beats the heck out of bills...
Elena Cabral First, if you have tried unsuccessfully to send email to mec9@columbia.edu, please resend to elenacabral@yahoo.com. I apologize that mec9 was down. As I write this I am in the process of setting it back up. I had planned to fill this column with wonderful news of new jobs and marriages and births. The events of September 11 changed everything, and I find myself, for now at least, unable to write about those milestones when there is still so much uncertainty in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. I do plan to share all of the news you sent in a future column, and I hope you will continue to mail whatever news from your lives you'd like to share. Like many of you, I watched the horror in New York unfold from somewhere else, and like a lot of you I could never shake that dull ache that stayed with me day after day. Apart from the sheer human loss of those attacks, the people who took out those two buildings seemed to take a piece of all of us who spent a crucial part of our lives in that remarkable city. It's the kind of place you go to when you're 18 — like I was in September of 1989 — and never come back the same. It's the kind of place where you meet friends that change you and stay with you forever, if only in a memory of your youth. It's where most of us abandoned those things we thought we knew when we were growing up and learned to care about things and people we didn't know existed. Being on the streets of that city taught me more about the world than I ever learned in a classroom. And when something happened in the world, whether it was rioting in some other city or a war thousands of miles away, that's where many of you pulled together and sometimes took to the streets yourselves, hoping to make a difference. New York is where we searched for that first real job, and perhaps the second and the third, until we knew what we wanted to do with our lives. It's where a lot of us met the people we plan to spend the rest of our lives with. No matter where you're from, or where you go when you leave New York, it stays your home. I pray that all of you receive only good news in the days and months to come. Please keep writing. God bless.
Leyla Kokmen As I write this, just a couple of weeks after the tragedies of September 11, it seems a little odd to write about the lives of our classmates with any degree of normalcy. But at the same time, I'm realizing that just as my first instinct after that horrible morning was to reconnect with friends and family, it's important that we classmates stay connected with each other. Anything that creates that bond between us as humans now seems more important than ever. It is with great sadness that I have to report that our classmate, Brian Williams, was lost in the World Trade Center, where he worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. Those who wrote me about him described him as a "great guy, friendly disposition," and "a wonderful person." Anne Kornblut tells me that his parents are starting a memorial fund through his high school in Kentucky, in honor of Brian and his brother Kenny, who died in an accident while we were in college. Anyone who wishes to contribute can write to: The Kenny and Brian Williams Fund, c/o Covington Catholic High School, 1600 Dixie Highway, Park Hills, KY 41011. Also, Anne says Brian's parents would love to hear any funny or meaningful anecdotes about their son. Here is their address, if you'd like to contact them: Mr. & Mrs. Ken Williams, 3116 Lindsey Dr., Edgewood, KY 41017. Thanks Anne, for passing that information along. Chris Schmidt, a police officer in the Bronx, was in downtown Manhattan the morning of September 11 and emerged from the subway as the second tower was falling. He worked at Ground Zero for several days and nights after the attacks. Most of the following notes were received prior to the attacks, so I hope they are still relevant. Amanda Falick Ascher dropped me a note explaining that while Chris Schmidt was correct that she is finishing up her residency at NYU/Bellevue, she is focusing on internal medicine, not OB/GYN. Amanda and her husband, Craig Ascher, a lawyer, are planning to take the next year off to volunteer in Honduras for six months and then to travel before settling down in New York. Amanda writes that Eva Flores and Lydia Kang also are finishing up their residencies at NYU, and Phil Greenspan is finishing his internal medicine residency at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. Thanks for the update, Amanda, and many apologies for the previous error. Also on the medical front, Lisa Kessler graduated from medical school at San Francisco in June 2000, then took a year off to get involved in international health. She plans to begin a residency in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women's Hospital. Danicia Ambron is living in New York with her husband,
Rob Beers, and as of February is also the happy mom of Ginger
Alexandra Beers ("Yes, I know her name is Ginger Beers!" she
quips). Danicia owns and runs The Prana Studio, a midtown yoga
studio; she can be reached at danicia@thepranastudio.com
and invites classmates to drop by for a class. Melissa Feldman and her husband, Ariel Nelson '94E,
welcomed their second child, Molly Rebecca Nelson, on May 18. The
addition follows big brother Jacob (3). Melissa graduated with an
M.B.A. from Wharton this year, but missed her commencement because
she was in the hospital giving birth. Melissa plans to work as a
marketing manager at Kraft Foods. While in Philadelphia, Melissa spent some time with Sarah Sheffer, who has started a greeting card business called doc milo. Sarah's cards — which she designs, manufactures and markets herself — can be found all over the country. Shari Ness is practicing law with the firm Morgan Lewis, and Jen Brodie has written a book and is on the lecture circuit as a motivational speaker (she's also run several marathons this year and spent some time in New Zealand). Over the summer, Ayanna (Parish) Thompson made quite the cross-country move, from Boston to Santa Fe. After getting her Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard, Ayanna took a position as Shakespeare professor at New Mexico. Her husband, Derek, plans to join a small private practice of internists in Santa Fe. Jane Lee attended the wedding of Innessa Manning, Barnard '94, and Karthik Ramanathan on June 30 in Newton, Mass. They met at Columbia and have been together ever since. After having lived in London, they are now back in NYC — Innessa is responsible for business development at The Daily Deal and Karthik is at Goldman Sachs, where he has been since graduation, working in investment banking and currency trading. Other guests at the wedding included Sonia Kim, Barnard '94, as well as Gargi (Banerjee) '93 and Mike Jenkins '93, who also were recently married.
Janet Frankston Jen Ross delivers babies and can add M.D. to her name. She graduated from Cornell Medical School in the spring, and is an OB/GYN resident at New York Hospital. Dan Barash works for Pearl Industries, a New York-based internet company that outsources the production of fashion accessories. The company (www.pearlindustries.com) uses technology to streamline the product development supply chain. Dan, who has an MBA from Harvard, heads operations in the U.S. Axel Martinez works for Merrill Lynch in New York and jet sets to places like Miami and Kansas City. (I ran into Dan at the wedding of Dr. Phil Greenspan '94 and Monique Lions, a good friend of mine.) Also in New York is Arthur Kim, who is working at Liberty Capital Partners, a New York private equity firm. He married Christine Ku last year and has a son, Ethan Myles Kim. (His e-mail is akim@libertypartners.com.) After finishing business school at NYU, Shigenori Nakamura is an associate at SG Cowen in the private placements department. Dan Cooper is still living in California, but has switched law firms. He is now practicing in the intellectual property and technology department in the Century City office of Arnold & Porter. Finally, it's been a busy year for me here in Atlanta. After five years as a metro reporter, I moved across the newsroom to the business desk at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. My new beat is Atlanta's sprawl, and I'll be writing about trends in the region's growth. I spent the summer working with a team of three other reporters on a five-part series about the boom and bust of the technology industry. I also wrote about an interesting trip to Minsk in the former Soviet Union, where I led Passover Seders last spring. And I spent a great week in Paris this summer with Melissa Kagnoff '96, who started medical school at the UC-San Diego. Keep the news coming!
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