By Tommy Bourgeois
Congratulations to composer Lori Laitman, honored at this year’s Yale Music School graduation ceremony as recipient of YMS’s Ian Mininberg Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. You’ve made us proud once again, Lori!
While we’re on the subject of operatic music, I note Eric Castro’s impressive string of late: On June 16, Eric joined Renee Burkett in a performance of “Make Our Garden Grow,” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, at Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Music Hall, under the auspices of L.A. Lawyers Phil (#LawyersinConcert). As I file this column, Eric is wrapping up a three-weekend, six-performance run in the title role of the Archway Theater Company’s production of Faustus, adapted (from Marlowe’s Faust) and directed by Steven Sabel, and staged in Burbank’s Woodbury University Library. One reviewer described his performance as “mesmerizing.” I suggest Eric’s business card should read, “Lawyer by Day, Tenor by Night.” Then again, I’m not an actual publicist; I only play one from time to time on these pages.
Shifting from the arts section to the society page, it’s been quite a spring and summer on the “wedding bells are ringing” front. I can only surmise that the trend reflects the early-twenty-first-century version of sexagenarians acting their age.
Russell Leavitt, our class delegate to the AYA, celebrated his engagement to Cilla Kellert ’74 at a party in April hosted by his cousins Wyndham and Julian Robertson at their Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park. The betrothed were originally classmates, but Russell has recently defected to our ranks. Guests at the soiree included Treasurer Nancy Young, accompanied by husband Paul Ford, and 45th reunion chair Javade Chaudhri.
On May 20 my predecessor Arthur Greenwald and Wendy Garen were married at the elegant two-story Art Deco eatery Cicada in downtown Los Angeles, with a reception and dinner following at the restaurant. Preceding the ceremony was a production-number performance of “You Can’t Hurry Love,” fittingly chosen to acknowledge the couple’s ten-year courtship. I’ll leave you, dear readers, to guess the identity of the producer. Michael Greenwald and your faithful reporter lent harmonic and antiphonal support to Arthur’s spirited vocal rendition of the Supremes’ classic. The rest of the Yalie guests from our undergrad cohort: Diana Hamlet-Cox, Tom Marcus and Susan Jarolim, William and Nancy Oppenheimer, Phil Recht and Helenann Hirsch, Rob Watson and Dana Cairns, 2017 Yale Medal recipient Ken Inadomi ’76 and Melinda Wolfe, and writer-raconteur MG Lord ’77. Other Old Blues (except for the notably young one) present: SOM alum Rosita Thomas, Nike Irvin ’89, Arthur’s niece Elizabeth Fulton ’09, and former L.A. arts commissioner Laura Zucker and husband Allan Miller, an actor and director, who met at the Drama School. With the important exception of Arthur’s sister (and Elizabeth’s mom), Cathy Fulton, I determined the hands-down winner of the Arthur Endurance Award: fellow Pittsburgher Phil Recht, whose association with the groom began on the not-so-mean streets of Squirrel Hill and spanned preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, summer camp, Hebrew school, high school, and Yale College. I’m surprised Arthur didn’t follow Phil to law school.
Michael Greenwald and Denise Scully were married on July 6 at the Bayville Beach Club, a few miles up the road from their Garden City, Long Island, home. Officiating at the outdoor ceremony, held under a dramatic early evening sky across the sound from Greenwich, was the very recently mentioned Arthur Greenwald. Bill Oppenheimer (also recently mentioned, and there’s more on him in a moment) accompanied me in serenading the bride down the aisle to the strains of “Fly Me to the Moon.” Attendees included David Ziemer, Nancy Oppenheimer, Tim Kalliches, Paul Baumgartel and Mona Kosseim ’86, Elizabeth Moore, Richard and Ellen Lincer, and Chris Kee ’77. More attentive readers may sense something of a pattern here. Messrs. Kee, Baumgartel, Kalliches, Oppenheimer, and I comprise Diamond Reo 75, which provided part of the evening’s musical entertainment. Joining us during the after-dinner set to perform Wilson Pickett’s “Midnight Hour” was guest vocalist—and star of stage, big screen, and the newfound variety of smaller screens—Robert Picardo. Bob, by the way, was on his way to Scotland, where a dramatic role at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival awaited. Aside from Michael’s dad Alan and sister Emily, first cousin Richard Lincer reigns as the undisputed winner of the Michael Endurance Award. Rich and I enjoyed a leisurely conversation at Roanoke Vineyards, where Denise and Mike hosted a day-after tasting party for guests who still had something left in the tank after the night before.
Notes from here and there: this spring Ed Pepe, Steve Vogel, and Steven Charnovitz held a Berkeley mini-reunion while visiting Dan Roebuck in Los Angeles.
Kudos to Eric Freedman, Siggi B. Wilzig Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Rights at Hofstra’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law, on the recent publication of Making Habeas Work: A Legal History, available from the NYU Press at law.hofstra.edu/FreedmanBook. Attaching news of the book release, Eric e-mailed this message in June: “I figure since the world had to wait 200 years or so before most of the documents underlying the enclosed were published, it can wait a few more months to accommodate the publication schedule of the ’75 class notes.” Well said, Eric!
Overdue props to John Levine, who now enjoys the august title of Secretary of the Internet Society. After narrowly missing Ann Toler and me in Prague last summer, John made it to Los Angeles last September for the society’s 25th anniversary convocation at UCLA. He diverted from the formalities long enough to join Arthur and me for dumplings at Din Tai Fung in Glendale.
Thanks to Charles Aker, director of the Center for Forestry Studies at Nicaragua’s Autonomous National University in Leon, for keeping classmates active on the listserv informed about Nicaragua’s recent political and civil unrest. We send our best wishes for his and his family’s continued safety and for the peaceful resolution of his adopted country’s political strife.
As always, I encourage you to send news, and to connect via the Yale Class of 1975 “secret” Facebook page and the listserv.