We’ll be brisk this time because the magazine needs room for the Reunion reports. For starters, it’s not too soon to mention that once again the Hallas/Piroumoff/Griffiths crowd will be gathering in Parking Lot B near the cage for all Yale home games this fall, beginning 9/22 with Cornell , 10/6 Dartmouth and 10/13 Lehigh. The more the merrier, as usual.
More book news: Steve Clarkson has a new book, Patriot’s Reward, a novel based on discoveries Steve made while researching his family history, including the revelation that some of Steve’s forbears owned an African slave. The slave, named Will Clarkson, was educated by the Clarksons, fought in the American revolution and eventually petitioned the New Hampshire legislature for his freedom. The book has a website, www.patriotsreward.com. Meanwhile, a book edited by Billl Cutter, “Healing and the Jewish Imagination,” has been published by Jewish Lights and, according to Google, is in their Spring catalogue.
An exceptionally nice note from Frank Hodsoll in Falls Church, Va. Proud parents of Francis (CFO of a company that generates electricity from methane) and Lisa ((an actress who recently played the lead in a Baltimore production of the Heidi Chronicles), Frank and Mimi recently returned from a six week tour of India. He made sure to touch base in Chennai, where (I learn for the first time) Elihu Yale made his fortune as a governor of the East India Company before being dismissed under a cloud of scandal, returning to England and, in due course, putting up the money that founded Yale. Frank has had a varied career full of top jobs, and remains busy as a management consultant and as a member of various quasi-government committees involving the global environment and the arts.
Ed Bloomberg, fully retired from a career teaching French literature, is enjoying life in California and, in an interesting change of direction, has started up a modest little investment advisory firm, where he is trying to keep 50 or so clients flush and happy. Dick Riseberg reports that he recently attended an impressive ceremony honoring Stuart Nightingale on his retirement after 36 years of service at the Department of Health and human services and the Food and Drug Administration. Many administration bigwigs and several former Ambassadors were in the audience to help celebrate what has clearly been a distinguished and productive career in public health.
Still on the subject of honorable retirement, Aldy Edwards reports that he, Bob Darling and Frank Lloyd were on hand (along with a ballroom full of medical and academic luminaries) to honor Fred Lovejoy, whose service to two distinguished Boston institutions (Children’s Hospital and Harvard) covered four decades. It was, by Aldy’s account, an extraordinary event that began in the afternoon and extended well into the evening in honor of singular educator/physician who, in addition to groundbreaking original research, personally trained over 1200 pediatricians and taught many more.
Sandy Wiener and Tom Freiberg, members of one of Yale’s greatest tennis teams and old pals, spent a bouyant nine days traveling around Costa Rica, whitewater rafting, staying in remote eco-lodges, practicing Qui Gong every morning. Austin Hoyt’s film on the last year of the war against Japan, “Victory in the Pacific,” was nominated last year for three Emmys. “No hardware,” he writes, “but an unusual honor to get three nominations.”
Two sadder notes: George Whitney–artist, architect, traveler and collector–died in March at the family home in New Orleans . Don Watson, in a letter recalling with great affection George’s “wry and gentle humor,” reminds us that George, who graduated from the school of architecture in 1962, was in the first group of architects to join the Peace Corps, serving in Tunisia between 1962 and 1964. He was the son of Marcus Linwood Whitney, the first architectural critic at the New Yorker, and in an early act of grace assigned his inheritance to restore a 1726 Spanish Colonial church in Picuris, New Mexico.
Alan Klein died in April, in Sandy Springs, Ga., not long after retiring from a successful career in the furniture business in Georgia. He is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Sheila, four married daughters and many grandchildren.
We reported in the last issue on Wallace (Toby) Tobin’s death, but since then have received a moving account of Toby’s memorial service in Topsham from Charles Hoyt. Not surprisingly, the church was filled to capacity with Toby’s many sailing friends, his siblings, children and classmates — among them the Hoyts, Clevengers, Bankers, Ammidons, Wilmerdings, Gerry Jones and Alice Vining . The ceremony was lovingly organized by Toby’s widow, Harriet. Lots of laughter, lots of tears.