Summer doldrums, news-wise, but here are several upbeat items, all reflecting continuing affection for Yale and what seems to be an unending desire among many graduates to preserve and perpetuate the good times.
In May, all seven members of the WYBC executive board held their first mini-reunion in New Haven—the 60th anniversary, more or less, of their meeting one another while heeling Yale’s radio station. Charley Ellis and his wife (Linda Lorimer, the retired vice president and secretary of Yale) played hosts to Paul Horne, Dave Dworski, Ted Mollegen, Bob Schaefer, Phil Lieberman, John Tilson, and significant others for two days of discussion and reminiscing about a time when the group took Yale radio out of the university’s wiring system and started its new life as a full-fledged, FCC-approved commercial FM broadcasting station.
That all sounds rather quaint in the digital age, but it was a big deal at the time, and the station remains for me a source of music, news, and Carm Cozza announcing Yale football games. There was, at the end, an unexpressed hope that the group could meet again, as well the realization that friendships ignited that long ago can survive the test of time.
Jim Hinkle, a cofounder with Roy Hammer (Yale ’62) of the Yale Club of Cape Cod (yaleclubofcapecod@gmail.com), reports that the club’s first meeting on May 11 was a smash success, with over 40 members on hand. The results of a detailed survey has given Jim and Roy high hopes for future growth, with more than 85 percent of respondents favoring three or four meetings a year, both social and educational in nature, with most willing to pay annual dues and many expressing interest in conducting admissions interviews with prospective students. Further inquiries can be sent to Jim or Roy at hammer.hinkle@comcast.net. Hats off to both of them.
A long note from Tom Freiberg—who was a member with classmates Sandy Wiener, Jon Clark, and Ted Prince of two of the greatest tennis teams in Yale history—reports that he’s still playing tennis, though slowly, with friends from his days as a junior player in California who, like Tom, “have great fun trying to recreate the past and just hanging out together.” He also sees a lot of Bill Cutter. Tom retired in April after 52 years of law practice in Los Angeles, mostly in real estate litigation. Among his interests over the years has been the Inner City Law Center, a public-interest firm serving the homeless, and in retirement he will be helping young lawyers who are defending eviction cases. That is what is known as giving back.
This month’s roll call includes two valued classmates:
Tom Haines died of pancreatic cancer in June, surrounded by his wife Stephany and his two sons, Sam and Thomas. Tom was a marvelously likable (and elegant) guy, a graduate of St. Bernard’s, St. Paul’s, and Wall Street, where he spent the bulk of his career as an investment counselor at Spenser Trask, Manufacturer’s Hanover, and Scudder Stevens and Clark. A longtime resident of Brooklyn Heights, he and Stephany moved some years back to Salisbury, Connecticut, which served as a launching point for, among other destinations, the lakes of northwestern Connecticut for trout and bass, England, the British Virgin Islands, the Adirondacks, and, not least, the Yale Bowl, where Tom spent many a Saturday in good seasons and bad, accompanied by his wife and a succession of Jack Russell terriers. Donations in his memory can be sent to the Church of the Transfiguration in Norfolk, Connecticut.
We are regrettably late with the news that George Blumenschein, a pioneer in cancer research, died last year after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. George made successive stops at Cornell Medical College, the Navy, the Centers for Disease Control, Duke, and Northwestern, but his greatest work came after he jumped at an opportunity to join the faculty at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he and his colleagues developed new therapies for breast cancer, and later at the Arlington Cancer Center in Arlington, Texas, where he was a partner. He later wrote one of the definitive books on breast cancer. George loved skiing, squash, fly-fishing, hunting, and woodworking. He leaves his wife of 53 years, Sarah, a daughter, and two sons.
See you at the Bowl.