Just in time for these notes, and culminating a three-year effort that included a preliminary performance at our 65th reunion in 2024, Richard Maltby and David Shire’s latest stroke of theatrical genius, a lively musical revue called About Time, made it to the Big Apple in early March. The official opening was Sunday, March 8, at the cozy Marjorie Deane Theater near Lincoln Center, the house packed, the audience beyond enthusiastic. The show is essentially the third in a trilogy written over the years at stages in Dick and David’s lives, this one inevitably about aging, with moments of regret and reminiscing, but upbeat and uplifting all the same.
The show will probably have run its course by the time you read these words, but it’s all on the class website—the origin, the runup, the reviews, plus a couple of pages from the theater’s Playbill, where the class of 1959 is listed as a presenter and as a co-producer under “Who’s Who in the Cast,” with the names of classmates whose generosity and enthusiasm had much to do with underwriting the show at its various stages—Art Kelly, Ed Greenberg, Charley Ellis, Al Atherton, Alex Boyle, Alex Ercklentz, Paul Horne, Don Loucheim, Jim Pender, Don Watson, and your scribe.
Several of this group attended the opening: Art Kelly flew in from Chicago; Ed and Sue Greenberg and Al and Peggy Atherton came down from Connecticut; Alex Boyle came up from Washington. Though he was not listed, another member of ’59 merits a shout-out: David Martin, who organized a special showing the day before the official opening for Mr. Maltby’s admiring Exeter classmates, including Jim Ottaway, Yale ’60, preceded by a brunch and remarks by Richard about the show’s history. As David said in a note to me: “We should be proud of the fact that so many of us in this very late 80s category are still fully functioning.” Not just functioning, as it turns out, but also hitting the Broadway boards.
Harvey Applebaum would almost surely have been there had he not succumbed in January in Bethesda, Maryland, after a brave battle with cognitive decline. A somewhat nervous lad from Alabama at the outset, Harvey quickly found his footing at Yale, later describing his years in New Haven as “transformative”—Phi Beta Kappa in history, participant in the Yale band and intramural sports, president of Hillel—a trajectory that gave him the confidence to win high marks at Harvard Law School and enjoy a long career until his retirement in 2022 at that most prestigious of DC law firms, Covington and Burling. Harvey returned the favor: chairman of the Association of Yale Alumni, member and then president of the Yale Club of Washington, member and then chairman of the board of the Yale Alumni Magazine, and recipient, for all these efforts, of the Yale Medal, the highest honor awarded to a Yale graduate. Harvey is survived by Betsy, his wife of more than 60 years, and three daughters—Kathy Lowy, Julie Flynn, and Anne Applebaum, the Atlantic writer and foreign policy expert whose panel discussion about Ukraine, Putin, and the future of Europe was among the highlights of our 65th.
Three more departures, in brief (more about each on our website).
A note from Alicia Muhm alerts us to the death of her husband, H. Yale Muhm, last September near his birthplace in St. Charles, Missouri. After Yale, he completed a medical degree at Columbia and served as a major in the Army before returning to St. Charles to open a surgical practice that treated thousands of patients. A part-time farmer, seasoned traveler, passionate conservationist, and fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, he is survived by Alicia and four children.
Horace “Monty” Montague died last Christmas Eve in Chatham, New Jersey, after a five-year struggle with dementia. Born in Bryn Mawr and schooled in Wilmington, he earned two degrees from Yale, in science and engineering, and a master’s from Rutgers, then joined AT&T, for whom he traveled widely and where he spent much of his business career. Active in all manner of community and civic enterprises in central New Jersey, Monty was married to Barbara Montague for 62 years and is survived by her and two daughters.
Another New Jersey resident, David Sias, passed away last October. After Yale, David earned an MBA at NYU and served as a tank commander in the army in Germany where, having learned the culture and language, he later returned to help in the acquisition of Deutsche Union Bank. David spent much of his career at Bankers Trust in New York, with a second act in venture capital. An avid fly fisherman and gourmet cook, he is survived by his wife of 58 years, Patricia, and two children.
Summer is coming and, with it, a dearth of news when people tend not to write. Give me a hand here and send me news about yourself. I can’t keep asking Shire and Maltby to write more musicals.