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CLASS NOTES
Michael Hausig Tony Adler's son, Erik, was married on October 2 at their vacation home in Maine. Tony says it was a big surprise (at least to him) but he and Donna now have a wonderful daughter-in law. George Gehrman retired from the Department of Energy on April 3. George plans to do some consulting work for the Department of Defense and "clean out his basement." He believes it may be simpler to go back to work than to clean the basement! Robert Trelstad M.D. stepped down as chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J. in 1998 after 17 years at the helm, and into the creation of the new Child Health Institute of New Jersey, a $55 million project that will focus on molecular genetics and development. Bob was appointed to the newly endowed chair in development biology. Bob and his wife, Barbara, have four sons, Graham '89 and Jeremy '97, who both graduated from the College; Derek, who graduated with a master's in preservation from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 1991; and Brian, who graduated from Harvard, also in 1991. Arnold Klipstein M.D. has been in the private practice of gastroenterology in Manchester and Rockville, Conn., for 30 years. He is the chief of the section of gastroenterology at Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital and was the past chairman of the department of medicine at Manchester. Arnold has two children. Bill, a physics Ph.D., is an atomic physics researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and is married with two sons. His daughter, Linda, has an MBA and works for Sprint PCS in Kansas City. She was married in March. Arnold's main nonprofessional hobby is travel, with his most exciting trip being an African Safari.
Ed Pressman Congratulations to John Chinkel, who has finally tied the knot after a lifetime of bachelorhood. He has married his sweetheart, Rosalie Rubin, after a long and glorious courtship. John and Rosalie have moved to Great Neck, N.Y., where John is active in the cooperative in which he lives. Couldn't have picked a better town in which to reside, although I admit I'm a little partial. John is presently a financial planner with The Mony Group in Uniondale, N.Y. Dr. Gary Roxland continues to work and practice in Bayside, N.Y. Gary's practice is devoted to internal medicine. He is a dedicated doctor who has always made himself available to his patients at any time of the day or night. Gary is especially proud of his daughter, Beth Roxland '98, who graduated with honors and is attending law school. Dick Hansen is living in Pearl River, N.Y. with his wife, Julie, and daughter, Jane, who is matriculating at Evergreen State College. Dick has had a long career with New York Life Insurance and is now a senior vice president with the company. I had a wonderful conversation with Allen Young, our talented editor of Spectator. Allen is "semi-retired" but continues to commit himself to social change, focusing primarily on environmental and gay issues. Also, he has been able to travel more and was recently present at a reunion of Liberation News Service, an organization with which he was involved from 1967-71. On the same trip, Allen met with his sophomore roommate, Michael Freedman, who has been a longtime professor of anthropology at Syracuse University. He also recently visited Bernard Oxman on a visit to south Florida. Bernie is a professor of law at the University of Miami, whose views are often sought on issues dealing with the law of the sea. Allen frequently sees Tony Wolf, who has a practice in child psychology in nearby Longmeadow, Mass. Tony has written books on teen and parenting issues and is the author of Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Cheryl and Me to the Mall. Allen has lived in the "backwoods" of Massachusetts since 1973 and has no intention of moving in the near future. He continues to write and is a member of the board of directors of the Mount Graceland Conservation Trust, an organization devoted to preserving farmland and forests in his home region.
Sidney P. Kadish The Bush years have begun, and many of us are at the point in our lives where the prospect of retirement looms. Some of us have retired, and some plod on in our chosen professions. I urge you to send me your individual stories of how you have wrestled with this issue and how you have resolved it. Peter Gollon writes that he and his wife, Abby Pariser, Barnard '67, spent two weeks in Provence in September, 2000, sampling the local cuisine, brushing up on college French, and visiting Roman ruins. "Such are the things one is compelled to do by a Columbia education," Peter notes wistfully. Ah, Provence. I hope to see you soon on one of those inviting Mediterranean cruises for which we are frequently solicited by the Columbia U. Alumni Federation. Our time has come.
Norman Olch Gene Meyer writes from Silver Springs, Md., "just barely inside the Beltway," that his first book was "reborn" in a new paperback edition as Maryland Lost and Found Again, and his second book, Chesapeake Country, went into its fourth printing. Gene is a reporter for the Washington Post, where he received the Distinguished Local Reporting award from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. This year marks a milestone-his oldest son turned 30. The National Law Journal ran a fine profile of Jim Alters, who has been senior vice president and associate general counsel of Marriott International since 1996. The article shows a hands-on in-house counsel who advises company executives on intellectual property and computer issues, and who supervises Marriott's significant litigation. Thanks to John Langbein, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School, for forwarding the article to me. More on the legal profession: Larry Kessler, law professor at Hofstra Law School, was chairman of the faculty's dean search committee. My son Alexander and I had dinner at the Columbia Club in New York with yet another lawyer, Gary Schonwald, who practices intellectual property law in New York City. Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Wallace has been named Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Finally, I am saddened to report the death of Ken Haas, a much admired and respected figure in the classical music world. From 1987 until 1996, when he was left disabled by a cardiac arrest, he was managing director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1998 this column reported on the benefit concert held for Ken with the participation of Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Itzhak Perlman, and the members of four major orchestras. Requiescat in pace.
Leonard B. Pack There being no recent class news, your ever-hungry correspondent resorted to a desperate stratagem: I enlisted my son Jesse, who has been traveling in West Africa, to look up our classmate Gary Engelberg. Shortly after our graduation, Gary joined the Peace Corps and was posted to Dakar, Senegal. Essentially, he never returned. In 1984, Gary and a partner formed Africa Consultation International, a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization headquartered in Dakar. My son's visit elicited the following fascinating report from Gary: "The main work of the part of ACI that I run is in reproductive health, and more particularly prevention of AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections. Most of our work is on the training advocacy side of the equation rather than the biomedical side - with lots of activities directed toward strengthening community-based organizations and informing decision-makers, opinion leaders and communicators (media, filmmakers, radio and press editors), in collaboration with the USAID-funded Population Reference Bureau in Washington. "ACI has been asked by a new Family Health International (FHI) AIDS program here to set up a support unit for the AIDS advocacy component of their project for the next two and possibly three years. We are still looking for other donors to support our other programs of strengthening community-based organizations called 'poles of excellence.' "We have an interesting three-pronged funding approach that allows us - unlike a lot of other NGOs - to support our activities at survival level when outside funding is not available. Like others, we go out for funding from traditional funding sources (USAID, European Union, Lutheran World Relief, World Bank, etc.). But when that does not come through, we draw on funds generated from health-related consultations we do and from the other half of ACI's training and support activities: language classes, cross-cultural orientations, introduction to colleagues, setting up offices, etc. for foreigners who come to live, work and study in Senegal. We also enter into partnerships with other reproductive health projects that are funded and need our assistance - and can cover part or all of the costs (YMCA adolescent reproductive health program, the Canadian-funded SIDA-2 program are examples). "In addition to our training and follow-up activities, we work on developing materials including advocacy and information documents and now have a good translation and desktop publishing capacity. We had a very successful experience a few years back working with CERPOD - a population and development research center in Mali - to produce a user-friendly summary of research results on adolescent reproductive health in the Sahel (countries just south of the Sahara), called "Youth in Danger" in English and designed to help opinion leaders and decision-makers understand youth-related problems and, hopefully, begin to put resources into developing local solutions. Upcoming contracts will be with CDC to do a booklet on the results of behavioral research on AIDS in Mali and with Academy for Educational Development to do a booklet on emergency obstetric care. Another British-based group called Strategies for Hope has asked us to translate and publish the French version of their latest publication: An Open Secret, about the response to AIDS in Uganda, and to help them write another book on the role of faith based organization in the fights against AIDS (a timely piece with George W. in the White House!). "In February we will send a sexologist to Mopti in Mali to work with Save the Children on developing learning materials for adolescent Peulh girls based on behavioral research. We also may be involved shortly in a survey of AIDS education materials for USAID. "Finally, not related to AIDS at all, we have been working for over a year with a group of Sierra Leonean refugees here in Dakar. Very moving. Very rewarding. We are supported by a limited grant form a group called FARE in Washington but the needs are enormous and we are constantly soliciting donations. If you have any ideas of groups we can tap in the United States or if you want to help us with fund-raising, I'll send you information."
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