By Arthur Greenwald
If this issue’s class notes strike you as old news, there’s a reason. Yale’s Alumni Records office just mailed me a handful of news-laden class dues forms bearing the date-stamp “November 2007.” And despite several complaint letters, they continue to distribute class dues forms that instruct alumni to use both sides for class notes news—even though they tear off half of the form before forwarding it to your class secretary. Either they get their act together or we should change their name to Harvard Alumni Records!
At any rate, last November, Dom Curatola MD wrote from Los Altos Hills, California, where he had recently been selected as medical director of El Camino Hospital’s Heart and Vascular Institute. “Nicole is a sophomore at Columbia College and has immersed herself in its academics and in New York’s vitality. Dominique is a freshman at Menlo School and threatens to rebel further by attending Harvard. My wife Valerie is The Great Stabilizer and—” (additional spousal praise torn off by Alumni Records).
From the southern tip of California in Bonita, neonatologist Marva Evans brags that her landscaper husband Mike Aziz “has been thinking green for years.” They needed those skills last year when they “survived the fire evacuations—we’re still unpacking. Our son Michael Cortsolia graduates from Yale Law School in May ’08 and daughter Mikaela Aziz is a freshman at Berkeley.” As for Marva herself, “I still work full time in the NICU and play for the children’s choir.” Marva adds she enjoyed Ben Yagoda’s latest book.
Robert Gooding-Williams also checked in last year from Chicago—Hyde Park to be exact, where his wife Sara and their son Julien “are enjoying our lives. Daughter Talia is a junior at Yale in Trumbull.” Robert’s a poli-sci professor at the U. of Chicago and at a recent meeting of the American Political Science Association he “had the pleasure of catching up with fellow ’75er Dan Deudney,” who is a professor at the U. of Pennsylvania.
Also writing from Chicago, but more recently and via e-mail, is Richard Sperling who reports, “All three of our children graduated from high school this past June: 18–year-old twins Michael and Rebecca will once again take separate journeys—Mike will live at home and attend Oakton Community College while figuring out what he wants to do. Becca will go to Temple University and plans to major in music therapy. Samantha, who is 21 and has autism and epilepsy, will move on to a sheltered care workshop. She also will move to an adult group home before her 22nd birthday next month. They are all great people and we are very proud of them.” Richard and wife Dianne just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary.
It’s been quite a while since we heard from former Yale Daily News editor Eli Spielman, so I was delighted to learn from OCD stalwart Philip Cheron ’74 that Eli’s latest book, Always By My Side: A Father’s Grace, co-authored with sportscaster Jim Nantz, “reached number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list in only six weeks.” As for Flip himself (“It’s been decades since most of the world has called me Flip”), he’s lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, for 29 years, where “I have been an observant Jew since the beginning of my married life.” Philip and his wife “have three children—a son (23), a daughter (22), and our 5-foot- 7-inch ‘baby’ (17). I have a failing computer consulting business. I am the super-sub at a local Jewish day school where I teach kindergarteners and seventh and eighth graders.”
And recently Newsweek‘s upfront Perspectives section labeled Rob Tauxe as “the CDC’s food safety chief” and quoted him on the recent salmonella scare: “We really, really got spoiled, if you will, with the spinach outbreak”—meaning the tomato-jalapeno mystery was much harder to solve. Rob shared the inside story with our class listserv including this good news: “No evidence this is related to nefarious bioterror. Good old bioignorance and biostupidity sufficeth 99.9 percent of the time.”
Finally, our thanks to Barbara Brooks and Jan Grossman for their kindness in alerting us to the sad news that our classmate Doug Crawford died on June 17 after years of diabetes-related illness. The longtime husband of our classmate Lynn Szwaja, Doug held a master’s from Yale’s School of Management, and was a VP of the global emerging markets division at JPMorgan Chase. Roy Carlson reminded the listserv that Doug, who had survived two renal transplants and a pancreas transplant, had “a wonderful sense of humor and a quick laugh, both of which accompanied a most thoughtful and considerate person.” And Hunt Helm remembers Doug as “a great guy” all the way back to freshman year. You can write to Lynn and her son Matthew Crawford at lszwaja@hluce.org. And please consider a memorial donation to the American Diabetes Association, PO Box 11454, Alexandria, VA 22312.
As always, we ask you to keep in touch and to help Yale to do the same. Update your email address and contact information at www.alumniconnections.com/yale. While you’re at it, we urge you to subscribe to our class listserv at www.aya.yale.edu/lists. And remember, we’re not too old to jump in a pile of freshly raked leaves.