Class Notes: September/October 2021

Class Notes: September/October 2021

With fingers crossed, I’m delighted to announce that the annual class dinner will be held in person at the Yale Club of New York City on October 29. You should already have received a letter from Bob Leich and Chris Kinney, noting that, thanks to the intercession of Jon Ingham (former president of the Yale Club), we were able to get a commitment from the club well before their original timeline of September. So, mark your calendars and encourage all your unvaccinated friends and acquaintances to get the shot so the current or a new variant doesn’t ruin our plans.

Our class Zoom program continues to draw large audiences with engaging speakers and discussion. We are the envy of many who hear about our program, as noted by David Martin: “I was telling one of my fellow CBSers about the Zoom session. She is an active University of Texas alum and she said she wished her UT class did something like that. We do it because we have class members who are willing to do the work of organizing. Thanks to you all.”

After the excellent presentation on aging by classmate Richard Hodes in May, the ’65 Zoom team of David Roscoe, Bob Hammond, and Dennis Mack delivered again on June 16 with a session featuring Nicholas Turk-Browne, the inaugural director of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. Gordon Bear and Kyle Pruett served as moderators for the highly relevant topic on human cognition. I hope you all will have joined the program on July 21 with John Lewis Gaddis. His topic “Teaching Time Travel” will explore his unique perspectives on how we experience history, and Tom Esslinger and David Ralph will serve as moderators. As noted before, the monthly Zoom sessions will continue indefinitely, and videos of all sessions to date are posted on yale1965.org. 

Brief notes: Joe Williams reported: “We’re still on Cape Cod, with a place in Boston. (We had to sell the townhouse when my wife’s knee started giving trouble; got a one-floor apartment in a building with an indoor swimming pool instead: luxury in the winter!) And so, life in emerging from COVID is watching changing patterns of behavior in an area regarded as vacation mecca.” Mike Hanson filed the following: “I have just returned from the US Seniors’ Golf Association’s annual tournament in which I played two rounds of golf with Fred Kneip, Heaton Robertson, and David Roscoe at the Bedford Golf & Tennis Club. Great fun—not so great golf. Roscoe notched a one-stroke victory in our foursome competition.” After receiving Mike’s note, we had an email exchange about whether “eked out” better described David’s margin of victory; Mike voted for eked out. Finally, Bill Rawn’s architectural firm William Rawn Associates received another award, this time the national American Institute of Architects 2021 Award for Interior Architecture for the Tanglewood Linde Center for Music and Learning. The announcement stated: “This award celebrates ‘the most innovative interior spaces’ that exemplify ‘sustainable, resilient and inclusive design.’ 

We have lost several classmates since the last edition of the magazine. Lee Lundy alerted me that Bill (William J.) Jones died in Washington, DC, on July 4. Bill’s wife Martha can be reached at marthacj@comcast.net. Mike Hanson wrote that he had received a long-delayed notice of the passing of Ted Hicks in May 2019. The YAA sent me the obituary for Eugene Strassburger who passed away on May 17, 2021, in Pittsburgh after a long career as a Pennsylvania state judge. I received a note from Bill Rands’s daughter Barbara that Bill died at home in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on June 20. Please visit our class website for further information and to post remembrances of these and other classmates. Finally, Susanne Miller wrote that the memorial service for Jeff Millerwill be held at 11 a.m. on September 17, at St. Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut. 

Please stay safe and be sure to put upcoming Zoom sessions and the class dinner on your calendars.

Third (or maybe fourth) and final reminder: please make sure your email address is up to date with Yale. Simply go to Yale.edu, click on Directories, click on Yale Alumni, and log in or open an account, and make sure your email address is current.