Stephen J. Trachtenberg ’59 planned to deliver this address at his 60th Reunion celebration; he was unable to attend, but he submitted his remarks with CCT to share:

Good evening. It is nice to be among you.

Reunions are celebratory gatherings: times for reacquaintance with classmates; times for recollections about our youth, our innocence; times to reflect on the passion we felt to pursue every dream, every opportunity the world put before us. Back in the 1950s, we were filled with a healthy dose of hubris and humility. On the good days a higher quotient of humility and on the other days, more hubris.

Today we understand those expectations of youth were, in great measure, an illusion. Over the decades, life presented us with a more complex palette than we envisioned in 1959, and our destiny has been to make the most of the shades of gray before us.

A recent version of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities begins with the U.S. Justice Department’s redacted first sentence, “It was the best of times “… period. Those of us with a Columbia College education know that life is a series of intertwining, concentric circles of hard work, friendship, love, good fortune, near-misses, sadness, elation and boredom. It is rare to catch the brass ring every time the carousel goes around. Dickens knew that when he wrote his original unredacted opening line. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

Over the last 60 years many of us found professions, pastimes, loves and lovers that fired our passions, and gave us a steady glow of gratification. Each of us worked the trail that best suited our personalities, talents and circumstances. On many occasions we raised glasses together and toasted moments of joy and good fortune.

Along with this satisfaction, however, we also felt the pain of loss and disappointment — personal and professional. We suffered illnesses, death, tragedies and shared episodes of great sadness. In other words, we’ve led normal lives, with exuberant moments and sorrowful seasons.

I need not remind those here tonight that the road map we are presently following is coming to a new arrival point: we’re taxiing to the gate. Memories are often stronger than aspirations.

I’ve watched the spheres of technology swirl around. In my basement I have the Remington portable typewriter on which I hunted and pecked my term papers for Jim Shenton and Walter Metzger. I’ve saved them for years and years in a cardboard box — those crinkly carbon paper copies of double-spaced prose now faded and brittle and of little use to any purpose other than to assuage my ego which still believes those B/B+s should be A-s and one day I’m going to prove that to someone.

My grandfather carried a laundry scale on his back from the lower East Side to the Bronx; I lugged my suitcases on the BMT from Brighton Beach to Morningside Heights; today my kids get everything delivered by Amazon Prime. The journey remains the same, however — to get from point to point with a sense of purpose and direction.

Those of you who studied mathematics will recall this as the Transportation Problem — the distribution of resources in a cost and time-efficient manner, taking into account as many variables as are documented. To those of us in the career building business — teaching and advising the next generation of students (whether our own children or the children of strangers) — it is how best to engage their minds and the talents they bring along the road, as well as to take into account the nature of the road itself. Whether the paths are narrow or wide, rocky or smooth, steep or level; whether the talents are latent or finely honed, we progress from marker to marker, sometimes reaching the summit, and other times just getting to the base camp at the end of a weary day. Even Edmund Hillary rested along the way.

My father divided the world into two camps: those people with money and those with less money. Jobs were considered better or worse by the salary and raises earned. The more eggs one put into the basket, the better a provider one was judged to be. My dad sold insurance for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He was driven by external validation, he worked hard, and he had little personal time to think about enjoying himself. Work was work. Free time was an oxymoron.

For our generation, the markers have been internal as well as external. Sure, the money is important but so is inner satisfaction. We strived to do well in order to do good. We succeed as best we can so that success can be bestowed upon others. Lest any of you forget that fact, Columbia College has sent members of the Development Office to monitor our every step this weekend, and inside their pockets are Irrevocable Trust Agreements and Charitable Gift Annuity forms so that we may leave a parcel of our fortunes to the dean’s discretionary fund.

We are in our waning years. Moses lives until 120. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t see another 38 strong years on the horizon. Eighteen, perhaps, reaching age 90, but not 38 more to climb to the pinnacle of Moses’ 120.

We’ve reached the age of contemplation. We’ve passed through the stage of anxiety – deciding where to go to college, choosing a field of study, selecting a profession, meeting a mate. We’ve traversed through the decades of competition moving along the professional ladder – gaining tenure, making partner, publishing books — Jay Neugeboren ’59 alone has published 22; being inducted into professional societies; designing meaningful and beautiful objects; and, winning a Nobel prize — okay, only one of us did that. Hats off to Roald Hoffman ’59!

One day an employee once came to my office to let me know he was resigning his position. When I asked why, he responded that the job was only a B+. Only a B+! My sense of a good job is at least three days a week of interest, pleasure and satisfaction. Anything more is icing on the cake. Anything less calls for introspection and an email to a head hunter.

More often than not, the personal satisfaction quotient is made up of two parts: the positive minus the negative. Those of us blessed with an A+ job might eat too much, drink too heavily and sleep poorly. Those of us who run marathons or compete in regattas might endure an uncomfortable commute. Finding a terrific “significant other” (I no longer use the word ‘spouse’) adds at least a full letter grade to the contentment calculation, however, living near difficult in-laws can lower the overall score. Life is a series of trade-offs and compromises. Anyone who tells you differently isn’t facing up to the facts. This group is familiar with grading systems: we understand the concept of a GPA — an A in History offsets a B- in Biology.

Many in the room have bucket lists: to secure one more great victory in court, to end a ravaging disease, to come upon a wonder on the other side of the world, to sing in an opera at La Scala, or to parachute out of a plane.

I confess to never wanting to parachute out of a plane. Though I must say, on two different excursions it was a thrill to paddle a raft down the Colorado River as well as watch the elk migration near the Artic. I’ve come to appreciate Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest more than before. Standing on the crest of a ridge above a Canadian river and seeing a large brown bear reach out, grab a salmon, eat it across like an ear of corn and throw the remainder back into the water so that a little bear can reach out and grab it and eat the head and tail was like being on the set of the PBS program “Nature.” There was a time I thought ice-skating in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park was just about all the nature a boy needed!

Our class grew up as a sandwich generation. Born after the great depression, by the time we were youngsters there was food on most Americans’ tables. While some in the room served in the military, we were too young to fight in the Second World War and most were not engaged in active combat. We came of age after the development of the Atomic Bomb and the start of the Cold War, both of which sent shivers down our backs and throughout the world.

Born in a trough of demography, when we left Morningside Heights, there were jobs to be found all across the country, in almost every field of choice. Most of us left college with little debt and with a solid sense of ambition that would shortly thereafter be fulfilled.

We studied with many of the finest minds of a generation. You know the names of the eminent professoriate who stood in front of our classrooms. But one person, one in particular, is worth mentioning tonight — in part because of his recent death: Charles Van Doren GSAS’59, one of the most notable scholars of our era. He, too, left Columbia in 1959 — not with a B.A. or B.S. degree but with a Ph.D in Literature, along with a shroud of humiliation that swirled around his head.

Although the story is well known, let me recount a summary in a few brief sentences for those less familiar with this Greek tragedy. In 1956, our sophomore year, Charles Van Doren, the son of the more famous professor Mark Van Doren GSAS 1920, was an English instructor here at Columbia when he was also engaged to appear on the NBC television quiz show — “21” — the premise of which had contestants – two at a time — answering challenging questions of general knowledge for the reward of cash money when the answers were correct.

With brains, and a chiseled face similar to Charlton Heston, Van Doren competed successfully for 14 weeks, charming his audience, shown on air at times agonizing over his responses, and earning thousands of dollars.

As undergraduates, we sat in the lounges of Livingston and John Jay Halls watching one of our own “make good” before a national audience. Some in the news media called him a symbol of the eastern elite establishment, but to most Columbia men his success was our success, his persona our persona, we rose in glory with each correct response. This was the core curriculum taken to the ultimate level, or so we believed.

Then came the moment when we learned it was all a hoax; the answers had been fed to the contestants by NBC staff and Van Doren was an actor, a shill, as well as a scholar. He played his part in a national scheme of fraud and disillusion. We were stunned, knocked off our pedestals, thrown for a loop. When he admitted to the deceit, Van Doren lost his job on the network and at Columbia, and he left the college in disgrace: that historical episode was his lode stone for years to come.

Twenty years ago, in 1999, forty years after that public humiliation, members of our class invited Van Doren back to the university to speak at our 40th reunion. It was the second of only two appearances he ever made on campus since 1959; the other being the 1984 graduation of his son from the college. He gave us no public apology; he offered up no personal statement of what had occurred years ago; no chest beating; no asking for forgiveness. Instead, he chose to speak to us about the journey of life.

He talked of the mortal nature of man, of the struggle to define “a good life.” As our classmate Michael Messer ’59 wrote in Columbia College Today a few months after Van Doren’s 1999 reunion speech, the professor told the story of one who “plunges to Hell and must return with great difficulty along a torturous path to Heaven.” Van Doren reminded us that “to achieve celebratory status was analogous to fame without honor.”

During his talk, Van Doren also said “that according to Aristotle happiness is not a feeling or sensation but instead is the quality of a whole life. The emphasis is on “whole” — a life from beginning to end. Especially the end. The last part, the part you’re now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.”

The whole life, from beginning to end. A balanced life, a fruitful life, a happy one. Does anyone here fully understand happiness? Van Doren was coming to terms with his own definition when he met with us in 1999.

That day he also spoke about Despair — “As we enter this last part of our time,” Van Doren said, “we mustn’t forget that bad things can happen. The failure of hopes, the death of friends, the venality of politicians, the manifest cruelty that stalks the world…”

It was a noble act to invite Charles Van Doren to campus; it was brave, possibly even bold — for him to appear before us. Like every man, he was reconciling the record of his pilgrimage.

Now, with a slightly different tone of voice, let me insert a short story:

One day a rabbi and a priest found themselves sitting together on an airplane flying from New York to California. A few hours into the flight the plane encountered serious turbulence. Everyone and everything rolled back and forth. Nervous energy was everywhere. Prayers were said silently and with voice.

When the plane finally landed, the priest raised his hand with the sign of the cross, thanking God for saving him. He then turned towards his companion, and he noticed that the rabbi was also making the sign of the cross.

“Rabbi,” said the priest, I didn’t know Jews had the same blessing as Christians.”

“What blessing?” asked the Rabbi. Now that we’re safe, I’m just checking: Spectacles, testicles, wallet, cigars.”

By the back door to our house, Fran has posted a small sign: It says — “SKIMP:
S-K-I-M-P” — Stick, Keys, ID, Meds, Phone.

I forget things — little things: I sometime ask what day of the week is it; or “when are we visiting the kids?” And fairly regularly, I say “Please call my phone” or “did you notice if I took my pills today?” Minor inconveniences to the person I ask, and frankly, to me — the person asking. An acquaintance in Washington, the writer Judith Viorst, put it this way: “It’s okay to find your missing keys in the pocket of your raincoat. It’s not so okay to find them in the freezer, which means as of now I am definitely okay.”

My sense of balance isn’t what it used to be. Getting in and out of a car is a slow, laborious process. Walking through an airport caused me to miss a flight or two so now I “use assistance” — also known as a wheelchair. I got over that stigma quickly when I realized I no longer had to pay extra to board with Group One.

Aging has made me more contemplative: I watch the world as much as I act in it. But I haven’t lost my sense of outrage at the thoughtless, cruel, mean spirited acts of our present government. Sometimes, I feel blessed that “that man” didn’t earn his degree at Columbia.

Someone once said, “I have lived to see strange days.”

• We have made momentous advances in medicine, but still we suffer from diseases.
• Modest progress has been achieved in Civil Rights, yet there are still too many Black Men in prison and too many children homeless and hungry.
• There are extremists roaming the world from Pittsburgh to Palestine from San Diego to Sri Lanka, and beyond – will we ever understand evil?
• We traveled to the Moon, searched around Mars and photographed a Black Hole. May adventure and discovery never end.

I’ve addressed this group before, and the evening’s format followed a similar structure: I talked, you listened — or maybe you did not. I evoked memories of the past, you nodded affirmatively — or maybe you nodded off to sleep. I’m pretty sure George Ashe once had tears in his eyes — was it a speck of dust or an emotion tug? Difficult to tell from up here.

Typically, when I ended the talks you smiled appreciatively — either at my overall message or the mere fact that I concluded the speech. Vanity always makes me believe the former but who is to say?

Some of us spend time thinking about the roads not taken; others ponder what it will be like when we reach the stop sign. We have fewer years ahead than we want. We’ve left much for our children and grandchildren to search for. Statistics will not predict our future; most of us have already beaten the odds.

At graduation in 1959 we were emboldened to conquer the dragons that lay ahead. At our 20th, 30th, 40th and 50th we were still sowing our oats — looking for that elusive happiness Charles Van Doren said was man’s quest.

Tonight, let me end with a quote our professor spoke in 1999, “The wind’s rising; we have to try to live!”

Blessings upon your heads, men of the Columbia Class of 1959, and on the women and men who surround us. Be brave, go forth, be strong – the most difficult challenge lies at the end of the road. Peace, my friends, peace.