By Bob Semple
I am back at the Mighty Wurlitzer (actually a humble HP desktop), coming your way from NYC in the middle of a heatwave, with J.D. Vance new on the scene, with old Joe having been ushered into retirement and with me not having the slightest idea of what will happen this fall. What I do know is that I will be back at the Bowl in October to watch Yale in what promises to be another productive season, either the opener on Oct. 5 against Central Connecticut or Oct. 12 against Dartmouth. Bobbi and Charles Griffith have decided to re-up with their splendid fall tailgates in Parking Lot F. Charles, by the way, was one of four recipients at our May reunion of the awards given out at 5-year intervals for service to the class and to Yale: Charles for representing us on the alumni association, Al Atherton for his splendid job as treasurer, Bill Cutter for his spiritual guidance and eloquent memorials, and Jim Sheffield for his longtime stewardship of the class agents. On that score, congrats to him and to our fundraising co-chairs, Ed Greenberg and Charles Ellis, for reaching the $50 million goal they had set for our 65th reunion gift, and for achieving an 87 percent participation rate.This puts us in the top tier, historically, of 65h reunion classes.
As you should all know by now, one reason why we have done so well in the fundraising department has been the extraordinary generosity of Steve Adams, who died in March after a long struggle with Parkinson’s. Steve, an amazingly successful entrepreneur and investor, distributed his wealth to many places, but none were so blessed as Yale, the beneficiary of his astonishing $100 million gift to the music school (announced at our 50th) and a more recent cornerstone gift to a new neurological center at Yale New Haven Hospital. You can see Dick Lightfoot’s tribute to Steve on our website. Which reminds me: thanks to our excellent webmaster, Jean McKillop, the entire reunion is yours for the watching. Give it a look, even if you were there. It’s quite a production.
The website is also where you will find (in case you missed it) Alex Boyle’s excellent Zoom talk earlier this year on his efforts to persuade the Internal Revenue Service to tighten up its campaign against tax evasion, which costs the country at least $700 billion a year. We first mentioned Alex’s new career as an opinion writer back in 2021, and since then he has written several pieces about tax evasion in the Baltimore Sun, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News, the latter co-written with Mr. Ellis. His campaign, joined by many others, may be paying off. The 2023 Inflation Reduction Act included new funding for beefed-up IRS enforcement, and a recent story in the Times disclosed that the agency’s crackdown on delinquents has already yielded one billion dollars. Check out Alex’s presentation, which is replete with power point slides.
Steve Adams is but one on a depressingly long list of recent departures, including that of Tom Molumphy, who died in Burlingame, CA just over a year ago. I don’t know how we missed his passing at the time, given the wide swath he cut at Yale, but we did. Born in West Hartford, Tom was a dual sport athlete at Yale, captain of the baseball team and point guard on the basketball team, including an NCAA tournament game alongside Johnny (Red) Lee against a team that included Jerry West. After business school in Chicago, Tom and his wife Elizabeth, whom he met at Yale, moved to California, where he worked for Standard and Poors before starting his own firm, Molumphy Capital Management, advising clients until his final days. Tom is survived by Elizabeth, two sons and two daughters.
Also unreported here last year was the death of John Strong Macauley Smith, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s in May, 2023. A truly remarkable character, he lived a life that was as fluid as his Kentucky upbringing was solid — journalist (in Louisville and Middletown, NY, where he worked for his good friend Jim Ottaway ’60), teacher (UCLA), cable TV entrepreneur (Woody Creek Co., made famous by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson), sailor, halfway house counselor, bartender (Santa Barbara). After a burnout and failed marriage, he moved, finally, to a small farm near Eugene, OR, where with second wife Catherine, he lived and worked for the next 35 years. According to the Eugene Register-Guard, John was most proud of what he called a Celestial Phone Booth, a backyard retreat with neither a telephone nor a booth where he could sit quietly, entertain friends, and from which, he insisted, one could dispatch messages to the afterlife. Catherine survives him, as do a son and two daughters.
We have lost two doctors. Bill Casarella died in Febuuary in Atlanta. The son of Italian immigrants, Bill prepped at Lawenceville courtesy of what he called life-changing scholarship, went to Harvard Medical School and spent 11 years as a cardiovascular radiologist at Columbia Presbyterian in New York before being recruited by Emory University to run its cardiology department. A big name in his field, he remained at Emory for the rest of his professional life, and is survived by his wife Kay and two children. Dennis Berk died last September in Concord, MA, where he had practiced internal medicine, with a specialty in gastroenterology, for nearly half a century. A graduate of Cornell medical school and a passionate skier on Vermont’s slopes, he is survived by his wife Elizabeth, a son and a daughter.
Mark Gordon confessed in our 50th Reunion book that his high-powered education at Andover had lulled him into coasting for his first couple of years at Yale and it was not until his senior year that he got his act together. But then it was all systems go: Mark made the Dean’s list, got a doctorate in astrophysics at Colorado, worked for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory until his retirement in 2003, published research papers, wrote books, mentored graduate students, chaired professional societies, and took up flying at age 70. Mark died in April in Tucson of complications from a brain tumor, leaving his wife Julia, two daughters and four stepdaughters.
In the next issue we will have details on the following classmates about whom we are still gathering information: Jim Hinkle, Gary Burgard, John Pierre Ameer and Mike Schumann. The website may have posted their obituaries, but they will not be overlooked here.