Slim pickings this month, so this column is grateful for two reliable newsmakers: the Yale Alumni Chorus and the first fall football tailgate at the Bowl. As to the latter, the following worthies were on hand Sept. 28 for Yale’s home debut, an impressive victory over Cornell that provides hope for the future (nearly a dozen freshmen were involved) and proof to the proposition that an injury-free team is a whole lot better off than one like last year’s that had zero healthy quarterbacks and only two creditable receivers: Al and Peggy Atherton, Tony dePaul, Ben Gertz, Charles and Bobbi Griffith, Herb and Barbara Hallas, Hank and Louise Hallas (Herb’s brother, class of ’64), Charlie Kingsley and George and Rose Piroumoff. George took some great pictures, all quite flattering, which I will ask him to post to the website. The group, I hope augmented by some more of you-reconvenes for Fordham on Oct. 19, COlumbia on Nov. 2, Brown on Nov. 9, and Harvard on Nov. 23. All games at noon.
Ed Greenberg sent regrets that he could not be there, but he has a perfect excuse:, the need to downshift from another smash international tour by the Yale Alumni Chorus, this time to the Baltics and, specifically, Tallinn, Riga, Kaunas and Vilnius . Classmates included, besides the Greenbergs, the Athertons, Corcorans and Krakoffs. One new wrinkle on this trip was the presence (among a total of 110 singers) of 12 young men and women from the classes of 2012 and 2013, most of whom had been in the Glee Club and all of whom had received scholarships funded by the the Alumni Chorus.
Three sad notes:
Richard Finnegan died in New York on June 14. He was 76. Richard lived quietly in the East 90’s and worked for years as a researcher and scholar in art history at the Adelson Galleries. He became an expert on John Singer Sargent, and made important contributions to a multi-volume series on Sargent’s figures and landscapes published by the Yale University Press.
Thanks to Dan Ward, the alert secretary of the class of 1955, I can report that Vern Carroll, who started with the class of 1955 but graduated with us, died in Clearwater Beach in August. Vern served as a pilot in the Marine Corps and received advanced degrees in anthropology from Cambridge and the University of Chicago. He served on the faculty of the University of Washington from 1966-1972 and the University of Michigan from 1972 until 1993. The author of several works on social anthropology, he is survived by his wife of 52 years, Raymonde, and four children, Tama, Blair, Rachel and Alison, and various new phews, nieces and in-laws.
I am regrettably late with the news of the passing in February of David Driscoll, in Basking Ridge, N.J. David worked for many years for Exxon, was married to Virginia Marie Driscoll and was the father of six children. Beyond that I have very little biographical information, and would appreciate recollections from any of his classmates who knew him.