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CLASS NOTES
Columbia College Today Gustavo Osorio '28 is still very much alive and living in Barranquilla, Colombia, according to his devoted granddaughter, Victoria. Born in 1905, Gustavo came to the United States to study English in 1923. He earned his degree in geology in 1930, then returned to Colombia and worked in the Nare gold mines in Antoquia for more than 10 years. Unfortunately, given the harsh conditions within the mines as well as the high altitude (more than 10,000 feet above sea level), he was stricken with Paludism seven different times and was forced to leave mining and relocate to Barranquilla, a coastal city in Colombia with a more tropical climate, in 1940. There he founded a company, Osorio y Cia., which represented several U.S. companies with business activity in Colombia, including Alice Challmers, Yale and Volkswagen. He retired in 1980 and has remained in Barranquilla with his wife. Their three children have given the happy grandfather 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. At 96, Gustavo is still active with several hobbies including astronomy, physics, stamp collecting and poetry. He also does crossword puzzles in English, Spanish, Italian, French and German to keep up his fluency and practice his language skills. Arnold Beichman '34 has spent 20 years as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and columnist for The Washington Times. Beichman was credited in a November 18, 2001, editorial in The Washington Times commending President Bush's proclamation making November 9 — the day the Berlin Wall fell — World Freedom Day. The idea was first proposed by Beichman on that date in 1991. In a column titled, "A holiday for world freedom?" Beichman wrote: "That wall symbolized the Cold War as nothing else did. Suddenly, unexpectedly, on November 9, 1989, the wall came down. The day the wall came down is the day that should be declared an international holiday... Let us remember that this victory came without bloodshed, without marching armies, without loss of life, without nuclear fallout. Unprecedented in modern times, victor and vanquished together have acclaimed the end of the Cold War. Everybody won. Celebrating November 9 each year would be a warning to future tyrants that tyranny, whether military as in Burma or ideological as in China and Cuba, has no future." Beichman adds that he has created "quite a Columbia family: an ex-wife, son (undergrad), daughter (Ph.D.) and granddaughter (Barnard)."
Paul V. Nyden
Murray T. Bloom Ed Fischetti, who lives in Manhasset, Long Island, retired in 1990 from his post as chief of the law department of the New York State Supreme Court. He's still active in the Knights of Columbus and the American Legion even though he has some Parkinson's symptoms. He has two children and three grandchildren. Quentin Anderson retired in 1982 as a professor of English at Columbia but still lives on Claremont Avenue on Morningside Heights. He recently wrote a long article on Henry James, an old specialty. He has two sons.
Dr. A. Leonard Luhby Robert (Bob) Friou is still doing pro bono work in Tarrytown for some of his neighbors. Bob, who graduated from Columbia Law, is basking in the light of his composer wife, Elizabeth Bell, who had her work performed at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center and at Christ and St. Stephen's Churches in Manhattan. Edward (Ed) Menaker writes from Waynesboro, Va., that Betty and he are living in a continuing care retirement community created a few years ago by the rebuilding of a community hospital. He says they are fortunate to be able to live in a one-story townhouse in a facility appropriate for their stage in life but still in the city where they have lived since 1955.
Columbia College Today CCT is sad to report that former '39 class correspondent Ralph Staiger passed away in January. An obituary will appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine. In the future, member of the class may send notes to CCT at the above address.
Seth Neugroschl I'm delighted that a few classmates have started using e-mail, in addition to snail mail, to send me assorted comments, newsworthy items about themselves, thoughts on our Class Legacy project and, at times, a thank you for the notes. On September 22, a cryptic e-note arrived: "Appreciate your extensive column. Best. George Jessop." Many thanks, George! Given its arrival date, the printout quickly was buried under my post-9/11 avalanche of paper as, working with our Class Legacy Committee, I tried to make sense of that event. Now that I've unburied myself, George's message reappeared in time for me to reference it here. I would enjoy hearing more from the man behind the note, George, if you're so inclined! In addition, given the pressure from the recently increased CCT publication schedule to six issues a year, might you, the reader, be equally inspired to share a piece of your life with us? I finally caught up with Charlie Webster, our peripatetic class president, with a long phone call and follow-up snail mail, after balky e-mail. Excerpts of his long, eloquent note: "Sixty years later, and still studying, but grounded in the Core Curriculum. WWII provided expansion of book learning and the great teachers. We depression kids couldn't afford travel, but if we survived, we saw segments of the real world ... After a medical career (in cardiology), my consuming interest is life — origins, from the Big Bang [to] pondering what evolved between Neanderthals and us. As I travel the world, often with University-sponsored tours, I become increasingly aware of the absolute necessity of all aspects of education in a free and legal society. What intrigues me the most is what I learn in Papua New Guinea, Sydney, Beijing, Florida's Everglades, Rome, Malta, Egypt, Cape Town and St. Petersburg, where I take every opportunity to talk with the people, wonderful citizens of the world." Charlie: L'Chaim, To Life, the wonderful Hebrew toast, so appropriate to your actively lived retirement life, in pursuit of your fascination with life in the broadest possible terms, including your activities at the College and P&S. Don Kursch's widow, Eleanor, contacted me to request corrections to his CCT obituary, which appeared in the November 2001 issue. In case any of their many Columbia friends would like to call or write her: After Don's death, she moved from Syosset to a house that Don and she had chosen shortly before, in East Hampton, near their daughter, Virginia. Eleanor also gave me an update on Don Jr.'s distinguished foreign service career. You'll recall that, for our 50th reunion in 1990, Don arranged for their son to fly back for a weekend from his post as U.S. Ambassador (acting) to Hungary. Don Jr. gave us a memorable, ringside view of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since then, he's had two stints in Brussels: first as deputy chief of mission to the U.S. Ambassador to the EU, then as deputy special coordinator for the SE Europe Stability Pact, which provides an ongoing focus on the Balkans, including making strong efforts at involving private resources to build economic stability in that area. John "Rip" Ripandelli sent a delightful write-up on a College meeting in Atlanta, "excellent, upbeat and refreshing." I'm taking the liberty, Rip, of quoting part of it verbatim. "There were about 65 present, including new members of the Class of 2006 and some aspirants. I had never paid too much attention to the lapse of time until those youngsters from the new Class of 2006 stood up and I suddenly realized that the spread between us is two-thirds of a century! Ye, gods! Class of 1940 was the oldest class (of one) there! "Dean Quigley gave a witty and eye-opening talk at the luncheon. I did not know that applications to Columbia have gone up 60 percent in the past six years compared to much lower figures for other Ivy League colleges. (We must be doing something right.) I managed to sit with the dean after the luncheon for a brief talk. He had mentioned that he is from Northumberland in England. I told him I had been stationed briefly in his neck of the woods during WWII. He asked me where; I said in a small village between Manchester and Liverpool called Cuddington. He said he knew the place. Was it an army camp? I said, no, it was the "park" of a Manor House set up to house five battalions. When the Bulge started, the park was emptied overnight and the troops sent to the front lines in France. The dean started smiling at this. I must have looked puzzled because he said right away that he was smiling because something of the same nature had happened to his father. His father had been with the RAF as a mobile radar specialist (a technician) when the airborne assault in Holland was launched. Since the paratroopers did not know how to handle the mobile radar, the dean's father was bundled into a glider with his equipment, towed over to Holland and dropped there among the front line paratroopers. As we know, Arnhem turned into a disaster for the elite British First Airborne Division. I said to the dean, ‘Obviously, your dad did not die since you are here; he must have been made prisoner.' So it was — he spent the rest of the war in a German Stalag. "We also had a good lecture on what happens in our body's cells through the interaction of DNA to RNA to the protein chains that do the work. The lecture was given by a young professor [Virginia Cornish '91, assistant professor of chemistry], who looks more like a teenager than an honored Columbia professor. She knew her stuff."
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