Class Notes September/October 2004

Class Notes September/October 2004

Class Dinner. Friday, October 29 at the Yale Club of New York City, chaired by Bob Leich. By popular demand, our guest speaker will be Professor John Gaddis, who teaches Grand Strategy, one of the most popular undergraduate courses at Yale. In March, D.J. and Bob Dodds traveled to England, joined George Michas at the one hundred fiftieth Oxford-Cambridge crew race, round-tripped to France via the Chunnel, and reconvened in London with George for an hour “at the back bar at the Ritz (now sadly, called The Hemingway Bar). The last time GM and I had a drink there was 1965. The bill this time with tip – one hour, plain vanilla beer, vodka and wine – was $350.” Congratulations to Karen and Mal Harris, parents of Stephanie, who, with her crewmates from the Lakeside School in Seattle, won the National Junior Rowing Championship in the lightweight coxed four in June in Cincinnati. Beginning with a “power ten,” they “rowed the race of their lives,” Mal reported proudly. Stephanie is now a freshman at Bard College. Larry Houghteling has pointed out that I haven’t reminded classmates recently how to subscribe to Listserv, our 1965 email bulletin board. Just email aya@yale.edu and ask to be added to the 1965 list. Let me know if a problem arises. In June, Seth Hoyt’s daughter, Jessie, and two friends embarked on a bicycle trip across the country as part of Bike the Vote, an effort to increase voter registration. Zick Rubin celebrated his sixtieth birthday in May by producing and staging “A Little Night MuZick,” a musical cabaret that featured about two dozen of the songs that Zick has composed for various occasions over the years. For example, when his son, Elihu, was circumcised 27 years ago, Zick wrote, “You must remember this/ A bris is just a bris…” to the tune of “As Time Goes By.” Zick’s audience included Mike Lydon and Bill Torbert, and the performance received great reviews. A real musical’s next. Bravo! Page Stockwell was a major contributor to, and co-curator of, “Charting the World: a History of Cartography, 1475-1860” in June at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, OR. Page’s exhibition illustrated the evolution of maps from depictions of gods, empires, fanciful creatures and imaginary continents to records of exploration and aids to navigation. Page collects and deals in maps at Page Stockwell Imprints and Old Maps in Portland. Book corner. Bob Leich’s novel, Not My Father’s War, was described by Dave Martin, our CBS National Security Correspondent, as follows: “For the men and women who had the Vietnam War come steamrolling through their lives, and for the 58,000 who died in that awful war, this deeply felt book delivers as good an epitaph as there ever will be.” (I enjoyed it, too.) Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack is the tenth of his titles to reach first place on The New York Times best seller list, “an epiphenomenon” (above a phenomenon?) and his “best book in years,” according to the May 10 issue of The New Yorker. Required reading. Sadly, I report Dave Hamlin’s death on June 10. After Yale, Dave was commissioned a Marine lieutenant and commanded a rifle platoon in Vietnam. After that, he completed flight school, earned his gold wings, and served a second combat tour in the Western Pacific. He left active duty in 1975 to take over operation of the 1,000 acre farm that had been in his family for 212 years in East Bloomfield, NY. Dave remained in the Air National Guard and commanded the 174th Fighter Wing in Desert Storm, flying 52 combat missions. He was active in business and civic affairs in his community. He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Jane, two children and four grandchildren. Colonel David Hamlin, semper fidelis.