By Arthur Greenwald
Memo to the folks at Yale’s Office of Development: Please stop cutting off the coupon portion of class dues and donation forms! Alumni often use the backs of those forms to continue writing messages for the class notes. This bizarre practice results in missives like the following from Faith Dornbrand: “I recently joined a law firm in Bethesda, Maryland called Pasternak & Fidis, where I continue my practice in domestic relations (aka divorce) law. My two sons are at U. of Michigan and my oldest graduates this spring. In the last few months I’ve been in constant touch with my ex-roommate, Virginia Boulet, as she — ” Alas, the remainder was lost to Faith’s dues coupon.
Fortunately I can guess the rest. Virginia is running for mayor of New Orleans! The contentious primary will be decided by the time you read this. Nevertheless, check out www.virginiabouletformayor.com.
Speaking of the Internet, a Class of ’75 website was voted the second most popular new activity in our recent class poll. Number one? “A class dinner in your hometown.” Both of those are going to require a lot of volunteer help, so Mike Greenwald and I were delighted that so many of you volunteered to join our class council. Watch for details in the next class notes.
In the meantime, you can visit our preliminary site, a rough work in progress, at http://web.mac.com/yale1975. It features the first of our class podcasts — audio interviews with classmates. First up: Christopher Buckley talks about life since graduation and shares the hilarious inside story of how his Thank You For Smoking made it to the silver screen. Listen and tell us what else you’d like to see and hear and from whom.
Art Keefe reminds me that at reunion, he penned the following paean to Chris: “There once was a wordsmith named Buckley/ Who with the LA crowd became suckley/ When they Thurber’d his prize/ He, with schadenfreude eyes/ Wrote, ‘Y’ain’t seen nothin’ yet, luckily.'” Art also reports that Blair Levin is now the top telecom analyst at Legg Mason in Baltimore.
Last Fall Eugenia Wheelwright took advantage of husband Nat’s sabbatical to join him for “a glorious year in Palmerston, North New Zealand, where Nat wrote up some of his Savannah sparrow research.” The couple also “managed to squeeze in five weeks exploring Australia and three weeks in Malaysia.” During our presidential election, “It was a challenge explaining U.S. politics to New Zealanders, who were most perplexed by the emergence of religion as such an important factor in what they thought was a secular country.”
I’m looking forward to a visit from Trudy Bialic, who’s scouting SoCal colleges with her son, a talented bass player. (Anyone with advice about the LA studio or scoring scene, please contact Trudy at trudyjb@msn.com.) As I recently became head of Slow Food of the San Fernando Valley (see slowfoodusa.org), I’m especially eager to hear all about Trudy’s forthcoming book, which answers consumer questions about natural foods.
Last year, Alex Twining became a member of the Yale School of Architecture’s dean’s council, and no wonder! This June the first Twining Properties development opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next door to MIT. “It’s a 24-story 321-unit apartment tower, overseen by our classmate Howard Kielley.” In Manhattan, Alex “bought a block at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue to develop a 68-story tower with 800 apartments, retail, theaters, and a new subway station.” (More at www.twiningproperties.com.)
New York real estate is David Dunlap’s beat at the New York Times. He’s also become the Times’s go-to guy on rebuilding the site of the former World Trade Center. But David’s been coping with even more serious news at home: “After almost a year of caring for my partner Scott, who is recovering from a rare presentation of Hodgkin’s disease that immobilized him, I learned that I have colon cancer. The tumor was removed in January but a biopsy revealed that the cancer had already spread a bit. I began six months of chemotherapy on March 8. I’m told that the five-year survival rate for people with my stage of cancer and my form of chemotherapy is 78 percent, which means I just may live long enough to report that something has actually been built at Ground Zero.” Don’t be fooled by David’s sardonic wit! He was looking well and sounded upbeat when we met for breakfast at the Yale Club of NYC.
Jean McCoubrey’s daughter Kate “has settled in happily to the Yale Class of 2009.” And it must be spring because love’s abloom among our classmates. From Cambridge, Charles Leiserson wants to make sure we know that wasn’t just any lovely woman with him at reunion. “I married Wendy L. Irvine on August 7, 2005. We’re living a life of connubial bliss.”
Douglas Buxton writes, “I was married to the beautiful Irish princess, Diana Margaret Butler, in New York City on March 19, 2005.” And James Dempsey was “persuaded to move to San Francisco by a wonderful woman I met some years ago (Joan Williams ’74.)” They live with Joan’s son Nick (16), and “marvel that daughter Rachel, Davenport ’09, is taking much more advantage of Yale’s wonders than either of us ever did.”
Make sure you keep pace with Yale’s wonders. Update your e-mail address right now at http://www.alumniconnections.com/yale/, and to subscribe to our listserv, go to www.aya.yale.edu/lists. And please note our new e-mail address for class notes and correspondence: yale1975@aya.yale.edu.