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CLASS NOTES
Everett Weinberger You guys have come through! I e-mailed for updates and the response was incredible.
Thanks We heard from some of the artists in our class, such as Paul
Vercesi, whom you can catch nightly in the orchestra pit at
The Full Monty on Broadway. He’s a member of Monty
composer David Yazbek’s band and does studio work as well.
Before the Broadway gig, Paul toured Europe for two years with a
hardcore/funk band, taught woodwinds at Holy Cross High in Queens,
did more weddings on Long Island and in Westchester than he’d
care to remember and was an original member of NYC’s seminal
funky-reggae band, Urban Blight, until ’95 when the band
broke up. He and his partner live in the East Village with their
one-year-old daughter, who takes up most of Paul’s
non-working time. On the West Coast, Jeffrey Sick works as an independent
record producer and electric violinist in Seattle. He’s part
of a duo, The Guarneri Underground (www.guarneriunderground.com),
and has a new CD coming out this spring and a back catalog of six
releases. The duo plays a mix of world music, jazz, funk, new age,
rock and blues that can only be described as “new
world” music. The Guarneri Underground has played hundreds of
concerts at Pacific Northwest festivals and is a staple of the
Seattle music scene. Jeff also has played on-stage violin and
percussion in the Broadway and road productions of M. Butterfly
with Tony Randall. He’s shared stages with Buddy Miles and
Jimmy Buffett. And as a session violin soloist, Jeff’s work
has been featured on the soundtrack to the Paramount pictures
release The Gift. Tom Yanni has had an interesting journey. After earning a
master’s in American studies at GW in ’94, he worked in
public relations at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philly, a
rare book and manuscript museum. Then, in ’97, well,
I’ll let Tom tell this one: “On a lark, I wrote Sex
Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man — under the pen
name Dan Anderson — which was published by Judith Regan at
HarperCollins. The book has gone through 30 U.S. printings, been
published in the United Kingdom and Australia and translated into
Dutch, German and Japanese. In Fall 1998, I moved to L.A. to work
on a screenplay adaptation of the book and to continue writing ...
In 2001, my follow-up book, Sex Tips for Gay Guys, was
published by St. Martin’s Press ... A few months ago my
screenplay adaptation of Sex Tips was optioned, so we’re
hoping it makes it into production sometime before we all start
collecting Social Security.” Online privacy is being protected in no small part by people
like John Featherman. After an M.B.A. from Columbia,
John’s work on privacy protection attracted national
attention and he appeared in The Wall Street Journal and
USA Today and served as a correspondent for WPSG-TV 57 in
Philly. John even ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2000
as a third-party candidate at the behest of consumer advocates
familiar with his pro-civil libertarian stances. He came in third
of five candidates. John’s now president of featherman.com, a
consumer privacy protection firm, as well as privacy manager for
Reynolds & Reynolds in Dayton, Ohio. John’s work involves
writing those privacy statements you see at the bottom of many Web
sites and developing internal privacy policies. John deeply mourns
the passing of our classmate Seilai Khoo, who’d taken
several computer science and economics classes with him. “She
was one of the sweetest people you’d ever meet, and I feel
honored that she was my friend.” No one can accuse Alon Mogilner of taking the shortcut to
success! After 14 years, Alon completed the M.D.-Ph.D. program at
NYU followed by a neurosurgery residency at NYU. He’s
assistant professor of neurosurgery at New York Medical College in
Valhalla, N.Y., specializing in functional neurosurgery, which
involves the neurosurgical treatment of movement disorders, chronic
pain, epilepsy and psychiatry disorders. He lives in New Rochelle
with his wife, Myra, an executive recruiter; daughter, Shoshana;
and sons, Josh and Joseph. Morris Hartstein is an assistant professor and a director
of ophthalmic plastic surgery at St. Louis University. He and his
wife, Elisa (’94 Business), have three kids: Eliana, Dalia
and Zack. Elisa’s business, Expressiva, makes contemporary
nursing wear for women who breastfeed. Laurie Rosen Herman and her husband, Gideon, live in
southern Israel on a kibbutz 50 km from Eilat. Gideon was one of
the founders of Kibbutz Lotan, which is how they ended up there
after spending six years in Riverdale while Laurie finished her
residency at Montefiore. They have 5-year-old triplets, Noa, Eden
and Gabriel, and a 3-year-old, Nadav. They’ll probably head
to the center of the country next year. Victor Pardi is an orthodontist in private practice in
Greenwich, Conn., and for the past eight years has been an
assistant clinical professor in the division of orthodontics at the
School of Dental and Oral Surgery. Our classmates also are achieving in the worlds of nonprofit and
academia. Like Barry Whittle, who gets the long distance
award. He lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, having recently moved from
Vientiane, Laos, where he had been living for the last few years.
Barry’s married to Elke, an architect, and is the proud
father of 3-year-old Anna. He works as a country director for PSI,
a nonprofit social marketing group focusing on improving global
health primarily in developing countries by developing and
marketing branded, quality, affordable basic health products and
doing advertising and promotions. “If we have any Internet
billionaires in our class looking for a good cause, contributions
are always welcome!” Joel Berg served for eight years in the Clinton
administration, where he helped start the AmeriCorps national
service program and helped coordinate federal hunger policy. He
returned to NYC in 2001 to become executive director of the New
York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents 1,013 food
pantries and soup kitchens in the city, as well as the more than
one million low-income New Yorkers who depend upon them. Adam Cohen received a Ph.D. in medieval art history at
Johns Hopkins, and after working at the Getty Museum in L.A. moved
to D.C., where he lives with his wife, Linda Saffran, another art
historian, and their 3-year-old son, Josiah Raphael. He’s
done some teaching stints at Texas and UC Berkeley and is now in
his second year at William and Mary in historic Williamsburg,
Va. Kevin McIvor is back in the Bronx where he teaches high
school, while his wife, Mary Garcia ’87E, works as an oil
market analyst. Kevin recently visited College roommate Rodolfo
de la Rosa in San Antonio, where he works as an architect and
lives with his wife, Toni, and children, Marina and Rudy. Also on
the trip was Matt Reddick ’87, who’s a lawyer working
on appeals for inmates at Rikers Island. Joshua Roth has been teaching anthropology at Mount
Holyoke College since ’98 and has a book coming out later
this year, Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in
Japan. J.D. Scrimgeour is a tenured assistant professor
at Salem State College in Salem, Mass., and runs the creative
writing program there. He published a short memoir last year,
SPIN MOVES. J.D. is married to Eileen Fitzgerald, and they
have two boys. You can reach J.D. at jscrimge@salemstate.edu. Of course, we still have our fair share of lawyers and
financiers! Frank Napolitano is associate counsel at the
Archdiocese of New York. He and his wife, Moira Moynihan, live in
Greenwich, Conn., where he also serves as a volunteer firefighter.
As fate would have it, his fire company was deployed to Ground Zero
on a digging detail. “The extent of the devastation from the
attack was overwhelming. Hieronymus Bosch could not have envisioned
a more macabre sight ... The scope of devastation was matched only
by the awe-inspiring site of hundreds of rescue and recovery
workers silently working around the clock trying to save lives. I
was never prouder to be an American. Anyone who doubts the resolve
and courage of Americans should have been there in those early
weeks after the attack. In December I was promoted to the rank of
first lieutenant.” Steven Soren has come full circle. After an M.S. from the
School of Architecture, Steve worked in residential and developer
real estate, got his law degree from California Western School of
Law in San Diego, met his future wife, Karen Beth Snyder, moved
back to NYC, and opened a law practice with Karen. Based on Staten
Island, Soren & Soren concentrates on real estate, personal
injury and matrimonial matters. They’re also kept busy with
son James, Class of 2020. Steve has an impressive 14 golf handicap
and is seeking single digits. Harry Lipman wed Julie Ann Roth and was named a member of
the law firm Anderson & Rottenberg, where he practices
commercial litigation. He soon will be leaving Manhattan to live in
a Brooklyn brownstone. Steve Huskey and his wife, Brigid,
had their first child, Evan Alexander, in January. Steve is at the
L.A. law firm of Epport & Richman, where he’s been a
partner for the past four years practicing real estate and
corporate law. Also on the West Coast, John Kirkland lives
in Pacific Palisades, where he’s a shareholder with the L.A.
office of Greenberg Traurig, practicing corporate and securities
law with an emphasis on entertainment and technology. He married
Angela Erin Boone last summer at Francis Ford Coppola’s
Blancaneaux Lodge in the rainforest of Belize and honeymooned near
the barrier reef in Placencia, Belize, where Angela caught five
fish! Since leaving Columbia, Steve Trevor has worked for two
companies, Time, Inc., and then Goldman Sachs after graduating from
Harvard B-school. We last left him and his wife, Ronnie Planalp,
and their bulldog, Sydney, in Hong Kong in ’95. Steve worked
in principal investing for Goldman in Hong Kong, while shuttling to
Korea and Thailand. After nearly five years there, they moved to
London, where they live across from Regent’s Park. They now
enjoy the company of their son, Jackson Smith. Ronnie is SVP of New
Media for EMI Recorded Music. Their roots to N.Y. have not been
severed, though, as they are constructing an ultra-modern glass
weekend house in Millbrook, N.Y. Goran Puljic recently moved back to the States from
Frankfurt and is happily living in Darien, Conn., with his wife,
Melinda, and boys, Nicky and Tucker. He’s one of the few
still at the same firm since graduation, Goldman Sachs, and is now
doing credit derivatives in N.Y. Wei In is a director in the
technology equity research group at UBS Warburg, where he covers
the global technology universe. Before that, he was a managing
director at MSI Consulting in Seattle and a director of
Asia-Pacific for the IT Group at McGraw-Hill Companies and
BYT. Rob Casper is a managing director at Morgan
Stanley in the Institutional Securities Group. He lives with his
wife, Laurie, and kids, Maxwell and Haley, in Armonk, N.Y. Bill
Teichner continues as a small-cap value manager at Frontier
Capital Management in Boston. John Chachas is a managing director
in media investment banking at Merrill Lynch, following 13 years at
CSFB. He and his wife, Diane Dougherty ’84 Barnard, who works
at ABC-TV, just had their third child, John Jr., who joins daughter
Anne and son Christopher. Rob Cea completed Columbia’s Executive M.B.A.
program and then joined Microsoft’s N.Y. sales office. As a
sales manager, he leads a team that calls on large enterprise
accounts in the N.Y. metro area. He lives with his wife, Rizza, in
Hoboken. Gregg Tobias finished his M.B.A. at Columbia a year
ago and is a consultant at Bain & Company. He lives in Pelham,
N.Y., with his wife, Heather, and two sons, Simon and Aron. Tom
Giordano and his wife, Anna, live in New Rochelle and are
enjoying their 1-year-old, Francesco Felix, who was born
prematurely at 212 lbs but is now a “roly-poly
12-pounder” and doing well.
Sarah A. Kass I am so excited to be able to report news in this issue from many people who have never submitted information to Class Notes, as well as updates from some other old friends! I’ll let them speak in their own words. David Skolnick wrote: “For 15 years, I have read
the class notes of ’87 but never submitted even the smallest
hello. In the last issue of CCT, Anne Marie Coffman
submitted a long note and at the end asked why I had been so
silent. She did not call me by name but wondered what happened to
all the other ‘orgo nerds’ of our class. I was sure
that she was referring to me and perhaps a few others.
Natalie Nielson Riep wrote: “I have never submitted
anything to Class Notes, but I guess now is a good time to do so.
After graduation, I went to Britain for about two years. Then I
returned and worked in Los Angeles where I met my husband, Steve
Riep. We have been married for almost 10 years. After I completed
an M.Ed, we went to Taiwan for a year so Steve could do research
for his dissertation on modern Chinese literature. We went for one
year and stayed for five. I taught as a lecturer in the English
department at National Chengchi University. We returned to the
States in 1999. Our time in Taiwan was fantastic. I became fluent
in Chinese and developed an interest in Chinese calligraphy. We
also traveled throughout Asia. One of the most interesting places
we went was Mongolia, where we rode horses and ate mare’s
milk cheese. After returning to California, I taught high school
for a year and decided I needed to do something different. I am the
marketing manager for JQ American Corporation, which supplies
medical, industrial and chemical products to the Middle East. I
love my job and am thinking about learning Arabic.” Writing from Lithuania, Herb Block says: “I am married to Judith Greenberg (we married in June 1996) and we live in White Plains, N.Y., with our 2-year-old son, Joseph. I am assistant executive vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the overseas humanitarian relief agency of the U.S. Jewish community. I handle issues of compensation for Holocaust survivors and restitution of Jewish property in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.” Jennifer Bensko wrote to say: “I am the editor of Fortune.com, Fortune magazine’s Web site. Before that, I was at Newsweek for about 10 years. At Newsweek, I was the senior editor of the Web site and a technology writer and reporter for the magazine. I am engaged to Alex Ha, the managing art director at Newsweek. We live in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with two overfed but constantly ‘hungry’ cats.” Donna Pacicca sent news from Boston: “I’m on maternity leave after Dominic Giovanni was born on January 31, weighing 712 lbs and measuring 20 inches. The name Dominic is not after husband Dom ’84E but after his grandfather, as Giovanni is after mine. We now have two boys; our older son, Dante, is 3. We had a great time tailgating at Homecoming, although it was a far cry from memories of hanging with Bill Flick on the Low steps. I’m still doing pediatric orthopaedics at Boston Medical Center and keeping busy in the lab as well.” Chris Lasch wrote: “After graduating, I went to work for the Elias Sports Bureau, where I was a computer programmer for about six years. Then I went to law school, graduating from Yale in ’96. I then became a public defender in Louisville, Ky., ultimately becoming a member of the capital trial unit, until my involvement with unionizing attorneys led to an early resignation (if you know what I mean!). “Since January 2000, I have been in private practice. My law firm (Goodwin & Lasch) focuses principally on criminal defense and civil rights practice. In December 2001, we won a $30,000 jury verdict after we proved that two police officers used used excessive force against our client. We are involved in lawsuits involving racial profiling, denial of medical care to prisoners and correctional officer brutality. While this is difficult work, we find it very rewarding. “My wife, Elizabeth Stovall, also is an attorney, representing inmates on Kentucky’s death row. She has a 10-year-old daughter, Grace, and together we have an 18-month-old son, Rain.” From David Eisenman: “My wife, Mindy ’90 Barnard, and our three boys — Judah, Rami and Eli— moved to the Washington, D.C., area a year and a half ago after living in Ann Arbor, Mich., for two years while I completed my fellowship. I am chief of otology and neurotology at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In July, I will be leaving Walter Reed and joining the Washington ENT Group as the sole ear specialist in a group of five ENT physicians in D.C.” Greg Fondran is living in Slovenia this school year as a graduate exchange student at the University of Ljubljana. “My degree, hopefully soon, will be an M.A. in communication from the University of Oklahoma. In addition to studying, I’m chasing down my family roots, as my mother is of Slovenian descent (Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time her grandparents immigrated). I left the Coast Guard last June after about 11 years.” His last job was as a public affairs officer for the Coast Guard in Hawaii. He said he “liked it so much (public relations, not just Hawaii!) that I intend to get a ‘real’ job in public relations when I get back to the states this summer. “I will be coaching football this fall at Harvard Westlake School in Los Angeles with Greg Gonzalez, and I’m looking forward to building a powerhouse football program there with him as head coach.” Christine (Jamgochian) Koobatian notes: “After nine years with Procter and Gamble and three years with Kraft Foods in brand management, I have decided to put my career on hold for a few years to focus on raising my two children. Daniel is 212 and can sing ‘Roar Lion Roar’ from beginning to end. My daughter, Nina, just turned 1 and keeps me on my toes. “We recently had a mini-reunion at our house in Connecticut. Kerry (Russell) Hutson ’87E and Dan Hutson ’87E brought their three sons, Paul (15), Christopher (7) and Kieran (5). Dan designs satellite communications systems for Boeing in D.C., and Kerry does PC training. By the way, Dan and Kerry are my son Daniel’s godparents! Lauren Alter Baumann came with her husband, Philippe, and 1-year-old daughter, Amelia, who is bilingual (French and English). Lauren is an attorney on Wall Street. Michelle Estilo Kaiser attended with her husband, Michael, and their two adorable daughters Nicole (4) and Cindy (2). Michelle practices internal medicine at Columbia Presbyterian. Donna Pacicca and her husband, Dominic DeCicco ’84E, came with their son, Dante. It was fun to get together, although the kids are now outnumbering the parents!” I received an e-mail from Gwendolyn Smith Dunaif: “I am the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Dance, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the research and preservation of indigenous dances from around the world. As part of an initiative to provide expert instruction to a new generation of dancers, we will launch an Escuela Bolera (classical Spanish dance) program for 8–12 year olds. The class is scheduled to start in September at a studio in Brooklyn. I am also the mother of Anya (412) and Griffin (10 months). Susan Kraham, my neighbor on Carman 5, wrote: “This is my first alumni-related communication since graduation! In the years that have passed, I have completed a master’s in urban planning at NYU, my law degree at Columbia, and, after clerking and fellowships, am a clinical professor in environmental and land use law at Rutgers. I am married to a wonderful man, Adam, and have two boys.” Tom Duval sent an update to his last Class Notes entry: “It looks like I will be recording and co-producing (and playing guitar and singing on) the next album to be made by legendary singer-songwriter Jack Hardy. We’ll be recording at least pre-production versions of the songs, if not the finished product, at my studio in Westborough, Mass.” From Israel, Alissa Burstein writes: “I am senior editor for the Global Development Division (that’s a euphemism for fundraising!) at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Anyone who’d like to be in touch with me is welcome! I live in Raanana with my husband, Itzik, and kids.” Descartes Li and his wife, Leah Karliner M.D. ’88, now have two children, Pearl (5) and Isaac (1). Descartes is assistant professor in psychiatry at UC San Francisco. Leah will start a fellowship in clinical research, also at UCSF, in July. Margaret McCarthy wrote: “I continue to live in Ithaca, N.Y., with my partner, Kate Chason, and our two children, Hannah (7) and Rebecca (3). I am the city prosecutor, and am also on the board of a local drug treatment agency, Cornerstone Recovery Services. Raising our children is a wonderful experience. Hannah is learning to read and loves math. Rebecca is full of wonder and trying to learn how the world works. I am taking a class at Cornell to see if I want to go back to graduate school. I also started interviewing applicants to Columbia through the ARC program this year.” Peter Parlow graduated from Nova Southeastern Law School in May 1995 and was admitted to the Florida Bar and Massachusetts Bar in June 1997. He was married in April 1997 and has two daughters, Kirsten (2) and Katelyn (eight months). Peter lives in Merrimack, N.H., and has a law practice in Lowell, Mass., concentrating in criminal defense, real estate, with an emphasis in landlord-tenant and family law. Arthur Small writes: “Believe it or not, I’m back at Columbia, as assistant professor at SIPA in a joint appointment with the Columbia Earth Institute. I teach and do research in environmental economics and environmental finance. There is an emerging group of faculty and students at Columbia focused on integrating natural and social sciences to address real-world environmental problems. It’s very fun and satisfying to Be a Part of It, back in New York, New York. “Dawn Amsberry and I married while I was pursuing my Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics at Berkeley. Our daughter Zoe is 3.” Jon Nelson sent in the following news: “Chris Noble’s wife, Susannah Patton, gave birth to their second child, Thomas. Chris now has two children; his older son, Sam, is 4. Chris works for Reuters in Boston covering the mutual fund industry and general news for New England. He was in Paris for several years working for Reuters and came back to the States a year or so ago. His wife also is a journalist; they met while attending the Journalism School. “Paul Verna moved to Kennebunk, Maine, with his wife, Ellen Dooley, and their 15-month-old daughter, Lily. Paul worked for Billboard magazine as a columnist in the field of professional audio recording equipment (pro audio) for several years, but has decided to pursue a career as a music producer. He is setting up his own recording studio in Maine and already has produced one album for Drew Weaver and the Alvarados, El Mirage. Ellen is a freelance photographer.” Ralph Falzone wrote: “After 12 years in the private sector, I’m turning a new leaf in my career and have joined the federal government, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service. I’ve always wanted to spend part of my career living and working overseas and seeing how the other half lives, and this is a great way to do it ... courtesy of Uncle Sam.” Nicole Belson Goluboff wrote: “I published my second book, The Law of Telecommuting (American Law Institute-American Bar Association Committee on Continuing Professional Education 2001), which addresses the legal implications of telecommuting for businesses and their employees. I’m hopeful that, with the increasing interest in telework (both before and after September 11), business lawyers, corporate general counsel, CEOs and human resource managers can use the book to develop profitable and legally sound telework programs.” Luis Duany is living happily in Puerto Rico with his wife, Sonia, and his 2-year-old son, Guillermo. He is teaching at his former high school, Colegio San Ignacio, where he heads the math department. Christina Musrey wrote “from Los Angeles where I have lived since graduating. I am directing another episode of The Practice, where I also serve as the supervising producer. My husband and I spend time with Juliet (Nezhad) Seymour and her husband and two children. We recently became godparents to her second son, William.” Gabriel Kaplan sent this note, which warmed my heart: “I have yet to send any significant news in for my classmates at Columbia College and doubted I ever would do something like this, but your e-mail goaded me into it so here goes. I am graduating from Harvard with my Ph.D. in public policy in June.” I hope more news follows! Paul Schimek wrote: “After a brief stint in the software industry, I am back in the transport biz. I am the bicycle program manager for the City of Boston, which means I get to talk about bikes most of the day. I also do neighborhood and public transit planning. I’d be happy to hear from other CC alums: schimek@alum.mit.edu.” Macky Alston (Wallace Alston on the diploma) sent an e-mail: “I am a documentary filmmaker in NYC and have a new film coming out on HBO and Cinemax in June, Questioning Faith, about what happens to people’s religious convictions when crisis strikes in their lives.” In other film news, Laurie Gershon tells us: “I produced a short film, Laurie Anderson — Life on a String, which was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival. The short opened for the new Wim Wenders’ rock documentary, Ode to Cologne. It was one of four American shorts to be shown in the competition category. I had a great time in Berlin, though it is a very strange city.” Richard Simonds wrote: “Our third child, Henry Spencer Simonds, was born on the palindromic date of February 20, 2002 (palindromic if you put the date before the month, making it 20 02 2002). Mom and baby are doing fine. This gives us three boys, Ricky, Charles and Henry. We’re still up in Scarsdale, and we just registered Ricky for kindergarten starting in the fall. I’m still an associate in the structured finance department of Thacher Proffitt & Wood. Our firm has moved to West 43rd Street, right across from the Columbia Club, which I joined — it’s an excellent place to take people for lunch. We’ve pretty much fully recovered from the destruction of our offices in the World Trade Center, Tower Two, on 9/11.” Suze Kim Villano sent this e-mail: “Since I have never contributed to our class notes, I guess now is a good time. I have been living just outside Boulder for the past five years, but have been following my husband, Michael, around the country since graduation. My daughter, Marisa, was born in Brooklyn, after which we moved to Long Island. My son Michael was born in Irvine, Calif., and the following month we moved to Minneapolis. My son Tony was born in Danbury, Conn. And a month before my son Rocky was born, we moved out to the foothills of the Rockies. I have been teaching music and movement classes for kids at the local children’s museum and performing with the a cappella choir Ars Nova Singers of Boulder. You also can find some of our CDs by searching on amazon.com under Bill Douglas. For even more fun, I have been teaching kids how to edit videos, and I have been studying aerial dance on a trapeze and fabric. “I love living out here (even though I spent most of my morning shoveling out from a foot of snow), and we are now in the process of finishing our basement, so I think we’ll stay put for a while.” Lance Hosey, who is an architect in Charlottesville, Va., received a grant from Chicago’s Graham Foundation for travel and research in Barcelona. Alix Gitelman wrote: “I haven’t chimed in since 1987, so I thought I’d send a hello from Corvallis, Ore. I try to enjoy the great outdoors as much as possible, despite the rain, and when I’m not doing that, I’m working at Oregon State University on some cool projects in agricultural, environmental and educational statistics.” Kurt Gantrish reports, “My wife, Jennifer, and I had our fourth boy, Nolan Kurt, on January 17. He was 7 lbs, 11 oz. His brothers are Keegan (9), Liam (7) and Benjamin (3). We live in Hanover, N.H., and I work at Red River Computer as a sales manager. We sell computer products and services to the federal government.” Philip Gold says: “I have been married for 4 1/2 years to Caryn. We have two sons, Adam (3) and Ethan (1). I am a medical oncologist and the program leader for the gastrointestinal oncology group at the Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle.” Dan Koller reports, “I am a member of the development group at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va. As I’m doing mostly electrical engineering now (having done pure physics all of my career), I’m pursuing a masters in EE for the fun of it. Charlottesville is a great place, so I bought a house and am settling here.” Dan added that Steve Bloom is a professor at Hampden-Sidney College in Farmville, Va., just down the road. I am so happy to be able to convey all this great news, but
please, please, please, keep the e-mails coming!
George Gianfrancisco I was thinking about the beauty of success and all the various
and sundry ways to define that simple word. Money. A prestigious
job. Philanthropic endeavors. That manse in Connecticut. A pair of
daughters. Being able to jog up the Pacific Coast each morning.
Good looks. Charm. A witty turn of phrase. Is any one a more valid
indicator of success than the others? Who can say? That’s why when Rob Maschio, late of the Lion
diamond (and abortively of the gridiron), sent word that after
years of down and dirty NYC theater and comedy, he had landed the
role of surgery resident High Five Todd on the sitcom Scrubs, I
smiled. It was his letter, the way the words stood next to each
other, the punctuation, the way it all leapt off the page. It was
something more than a coveted job on a network TV show, or fame,
fortune, sunglasses, autographs. It was joy. I think of Columbia, and I get that same feeling. And I hope,
very, very much, that all of you feel the same way. Because in some
way, small or large, intrinsically, Camp Columbia is for us all
part of the reason for the money, and the jobs, and the Connecticut
manse, the children, and (well, not necessarily the Pacific Coast),
but the knowledge that comes from being ready and able to take
pleasure from the world around you. And if that isn’t the best measure of success, then I can’t for the life of me tell you what is.
Amy Perkel Boy, do I have a treat for you. In fact, I have three treats:
the ever-charming Sarah Dunn, the ever-intriguing Peter
Ginsburg and the ever-mystifying Andrew Friedman. All
are up to wonderfully creative endeavors. What a delight to have
heard back from the three. The word “desperate,” albeit
used selectively, can be very powerful. Of late, I frequently find
myself in a groveling position, as I usually don’t begin
writing the class notes until the day or so prior to the deadline.
Usually, I already have a few tasty morsels that you have sent me,
but with the stepped up-publishing schedule of CCT, now
coming out every two months, sometimes I’m left high and dry.
So much thanks to the above and below noted crew who responded to
my desperate plea in record time. And to those of you who ignored
my request for an update, I harbor no ill will but instead
anxiously and graciously await arrival of your e-mail or phone
call. Now let’s get on with the show. Andrew Friedman, a
Columbian near and dear to my heart owing to our common birthplace
of Miami, replies to my e-mail with: “You mean you
don’t already know what I’m up to? I’m sure that
our classmates are well aware of my professional exploits, since
they’ve been described in cover stories in Time and
GQ. And you must have seen the coverage of my
around-the-world hot air balloon tour on the Discovery Channel. Or
my pre-Oscars fashion report on the E! network. Or the new magazine
about me, ‘A.’ No? None of it? Where have you
been?” But seriously, as he notes, Andrew is married to the
“lovely and talented” Caitlin Connelly, “adorable
native” of Amherst, Mass. They live on West 82nd Street in
New York City, with no kids “yet.” They have a
miniature Australian shepherd, Indy. After five years in the film
business and four in public relations, Andrew has settled into a
“fun and occasionally rewarding” career as a food
writer, collaborating on cookbooks with chefs and restaurateurs
such as Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar and Grill, Pino Luongo of Le
Madri and Coco Pazzo, and New York magazine cover boy Tom
Valenti of Ouest. Andrew is pleased to report to any old College
pals that, if nothing else, he has realized his childhood dream of
being able to score a table at any restaurant in town. Andrew’s days are spent writing, punctuated by visits to
the dog run behind the Museum of Natural History, Crunch Fitness on
83rd Street and Fairway Market, where he usually ends up in a
verbal bout of some kind with either a surly employee or a haughty
Ansonia-dweller. But they have great meats and cheese, so
it’s all worth it, claims Andrew. In his free time, Andrew
still is trying to write the Great American Novel, or maybe just a
Sellable American Novel. He also plays as much tennis as humanly
possible, often at the public courts near our old school at 120th
Street in Riverside Park. He usually meets his opponents at the top
of the steps from the 116th Street subway station, right in front
of the main gates to Columbia. Andrew, who has become
“something of a (tennis) junkie,” has been taking a
weekly lesson for almost three years. He claims to have a decent
game and is always looking to hit, so get in touch with him
(e-mail: andrewf@bway.net) if
you’re in the mood for tennis. I’d like to thank Andrew for his wonderful prose, as I
pretty much did the old copy-paste from his e-mail. Many moons ago,
Andrew was a proud member of the Varsity Show cast (1989 edition),
director of Play It Again, Sam and other Courtier
productions and a film critic for Spectator. As Andrew had
not written all this College stuff down since he applied for his
first job in 1989 (indeed, I did ask for it), he can’t say
for sure if it’s fully accurate, but he “thinks it all
really happened.” You may remember Peter Ginsburg as an English major,
member of Phi Epsilon Pi and dedicated employee of WKCR during his
first and second years. Additionally, he did color analysis on
men’s basketball and football and studied in London. As I
pestered Peter quite a bit (I believe his exact quote was
“now stop stalking me, or I’ll call my lawyer” in
e-mail three, which followed his “you’re killing
people, but I’ll give it a shot” in e-mail two when I
requested additional detail from his first e-mail), I told him he
had license to ignore subsequent e-mails from me. Anyway, Peter
effectively summed up 13 years in a few paragraphs. After
graduation, he worked in advertising for three years, where he met
his wife, Helene. In September 1999, Helene and Peter had their
first child, Adam. Helene is a consultant at Gundersen Partners, an
executive search firm in NYC. The family lives in Eastchester,
N.Y. Following his stint in advertising, Peter got a master’s
at the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn. Late in 1994, he
started working in television production for CBS Sports, where he
stayed until 1997. Since that time, he has been a staff writer at
NBA Entertainment, writing on-air scripts for NBA Inside
Stuff, a weekly show that airs on NBC on Saturdays and ESPN
during the week. Aimed at a younger audience, the show focuses on
the off-the-court lives of NBA players and is hosted by Ahmad
Rashad and Summer Sanders. Peter writes all of Ahmad and
Summer’s on-camera copy, now more than 250 shows. He has
worked with a number of NBA players who have come on the set, but
the most fun he had was being involved in a shoot with Shaquille
O’Neal in the Lakers star’s Beverly Hills
kitchen. Again, attention young Columbians interested in TV. Peter got
into sports TV by default, he claims. During grad school, he
interned at the Children’s Television Workshop, and after
school, attempted to get into kids TV (Nickelodeon, Henson
Productions and the like) but couldn’t find a job. So, rather
than temp, he pursued another area of interest that he knew
something about: sports. He started out at the bottom of the ladder
at CBS as a researcher who was called upon to do just about
anything to help a production. He was then promoted to broadcast
associate, responsible for on-air graphics. After traveling the
country for a year (every weekend!), he fell into script writing by
chance. The full-time writer left CBS after the network lost the
NFL, and they needed someone to write studio shows for host Pat
O’Brien. Peter asked the coordinating producer if he could
submit a test script; he submitted the script on a Monday, and by
Wednesday, Peter was writing Saturday’s show. He wrote a few shows for CBS at that time, and after leaving the
network he freelanced, writing for NCAA Basketball At the
Half, College Football Today and the U.S. Open. Peter
notes that it was great working the Final Four during those years,
and also working some big college football games. But the highlight
of his CBS experience was writing the Late Night show for hosts Al
Trautwig and Michele Tafoya during the 1998 Winter Olympics in
Nagano: “A lot of work, not a lot of sleep, but a very
rewarding experience.” Last, but not least, is an update from the lovely Sarah
Dunn. Two years ago, she started an architecture firm in
Chicago with Martin Felsen, her boyfriend, who she met at the
School of Architecture, after working with Rem Koolhaas/ OMA in
Rotterdam. They are working on several mixed-use, residential and
exhibition projects. Having almost given up on developers,
they’ve also started developing and contracting their
projects. Additionally, Sarah is teaching at a design studio at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. She claims to really miss NYC,
and she keeps threatening to visit Ashima Dayal and take up
residence in her spare bedroom. Sarah regrets having missed a
Junior Studio reunion with Jon Sturt, Anita Lin, Tina
Hatchl ’88 Barnard, Ann Goldhirsch ’89 Barnard and Amy
Routman ’89 Barnard, though she promises she will get back
soon. On a final note, classmates, writing this column, while one of the activities in which I take greatest pride, is not a bed of roses! I need your assistance. Please send in your updates, thereby assisting me in striking the word “desperate” from my vocabulary. Until the summer, yours truly, Amy.
Rachel J. Cowan Last column’s word association might have been too obscure
for some of you, so this time, I’m picking a really easy one
for you: The Little Mermaid. If you need a hint — because
there is only one right answer to this — visit NPR’s
This American Life Web site. Go to www.thislife.org, click on
“02” in the left column, then click on
“Recordings for Someone, January 11, 2002, Episode
203.” The segment comes in at the end of the show, so to save
time you can just jump straight to minute 42, which is about when
the segment begins. Thanks go to Joel Tranter and Caryn
Shalita for letting me know the legend lives on. In fact, Caryn
and her husband, Rich Yaker ’90E, put together a Web site so
that all our Columbia classmates could have a fun place to relive
mermaid memories and drop each other a line: www.caryn.com/littlemermaid. Regina Ciccone MacAdam, who graduated from the Law School
in ’93, moved with her husband, Stephen, to her hometown of
Rochester, N.Y., a few years ago. Stephen is an assistant principal
at a middle school and a volunteer firefighter, and Regina is a
health care attorney at Nixon Peabody LLP. She’s on maternity
leave as of this writing because on November 24, 2001, she gave
birth to their first child, Margaret Aurora MacAdam. Margaret is
named after both her grandmothers and is called Maggie. She is the
first grandchild on one side and the second grandchild (but first
granddaughter) on the other, and is adored by all. Marian Wright gave birth to her first child on January
25, 2001. Cole Hunter Harris Boester is walking and talking and
entertaining his parents to no end. Marian and her husband, Greg
Boester, recently bought a house in Rye, N.Y., and will be leaving
the city after 12 years. Marian left her management consultant job
in strategy in April to take care of Cole and to focus on her love
of writing. She has taken several classes and has published a few
travel pieces. Marian has been in touch with a crowd of folks who live in
California. Gabriel Kra is doing well in Palo Alto. Anne
Hayes (attorney) and her husband, Theo Hartman (architect who
left after freshman year), live in Oakland. Jeff Rake and
Paulette Light live in Hollywood and have two young
children. Jeff was head writer for the short-lived Darren Starr
series The $treet. Many people remember Beta brother Ted
Acworth ’90E who, although an engineer, managed to make many
CC friends. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford two years ago and
has been traveling the world ever since with his gal, Lisa, and
sending e-mails with photos from all points of the globe. It was great to get a long e-mail from Emily Baldwin
Augustine, and I quote her directly: “After living in NYC
more or less since graduation (with brief interludes in L.A. and
Santa Cruz, Calif.) I have recently moved to N.H. (my home state)
and bought a country inn with my husband, John. John and I spent
the last year on a personal sabbatical, and spent two months in
Colorado and then spent four months this summer hiking 1,600 miles
of the Appalachian Trail (from Virginia to Maine). Our time
‘off’ helped us to re-evaluate our priorities, and with
my travel and hospitality background and his business experience,
we decided that buying an inn would be an ideal situation! Our inn
is Dexter’s Inn and is in Sunapee, N.H. — 90 minutes
from Boston and 4 1/2 hours from NYC. We opened in January, and so
far I am enjoying the life of an innkeeper, although it is not as
easy as Bob Newhart made it look. We are attracting lots of skiers,
but hope to hold family reunions, weddings and corporate retreats
here in the summer months. I would love to welcome any of my
Columbia classmates. Log on to our Web site (www.dextersnh.com) to check us out,
or e-mail us at dexters@tds.net.” Melissa Landau Steinman reports, “My husband, Bill,
and I are pleased to announce the birth of our second child, James
(Jamie) Herbert Landau Steinman, on January 10, 2002. Big brother
Charlie, now 312 , is pleased as punch and has yet to ask to
‘send him back.’ I’m on maternity leave from the
Venable law firm in Washington, D.C., where I have been practicing
antitrust and trade regulation law for the past eight (can it be?)
years, and still living in suburban bliss in Chevy Chase,
Md.” David Mandell is alive and well. He and his wife, Jamie,
whom he married in May 2001, are at Penn and living in West
Philadelphia in an old house they bought. He’s finishing up a
postdoctoral fellowship in the department of psychiatry where
he’s been studying children’s public mental health
services. And I have saved my most exciting news for last. I am thrilled
beyond words to announce that Judy Shampanier had a girl on
January 18, 2002. Anna Elizabeth Shampanier Bowen is the apple of
her parents’ eyes and is guaranteed to be spoiled rotten by
her godmother, yours truly. Judy mentions that Anna’s
favorite toy is a slightly sinister-looking bumblebee sent by
Meghan and Isaac Astrachan.
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