By Bob Semple
Hope all of you had a restorative summer. These notes will be unusually brief, partly because there is not much in the way of new stuff, mainly and thankfully because there have been very few departures. On that score, I would be remiss in not noting the death, in Louisiana, of Scott Sullivan, who composed elegant notes in an adjacent column for the class of 1958, was a friend to many of us in the class of 1959, preceded me at the Yale Daily News, and, with Larry Bensky, was one of my early mentors in the craft of journalism. RIP.
Bobbi Griffith writes that she and Charles will again be tenting and tailgating in Parking Lot F at the Yale Bowl, where the Bulldogs will play 7 home games,beginning with Holy Cross on Sept 16 and Cornell on Sept 23 and continuing on to Harvard on Nov. 18. Game times are at noon The complete schedule is on the Yale athletics website. The hospitable Griffiths have been doing this for years, despite one medical adventure after another (Griff has a new shoulder), and I, for one, will again drive the Merritt Parkway in whatever machine Avis gives me that morning to join them. The Yale team was fun to watch last year and should be even better this time.
We have lost two distinguished doctors. Robert Auchincloss Grummon died in June in Nashville. Educated at Mount Hermon, Yale, and Yale Medical School, he did his residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, took his surgical skills to the Navy aboard the carrier USS John F Kennedy, thence to practices in Cleveland, Houston, Wyomiung and, lastly, Lafayette,Tenn., which he called home,. Thrice married, he leaves two sons and two daughters.
Lee Goldberg, another graduate of the Yale Medical School, also class of 1963, also a Navy man who served aboard an aircraft carrier, died last fall in Miami, where he served with great distinction for almost 40 years as chief of endocrinology at Mount Sinai Medical Center. A pillar of the South Florida medical community, he kept in touch with Yale, serving on alumni committees and conducting interviews with prospective students. Twice married — to Lana Ditchek and, after her death, to Rhoda Kuperman — he leaves three daughters, a stepson, a considerable library of James Bond movies and Cole Porter show tunes and a universe of grateful patients.
Don Watson and his various co-workers continue their reunion planning for our 65th in 2024. We now have firm dates, May 23-26. More detail in the next issue. In the meantime, keep checking our class website, which is the best place to stay on top of things.