Fresh data from the Griffiths, whose energy level seems equal to the rest of us combined. For starters, Bobbi and Charles have agreed to re-up with their splendid fall pregame tailgates in Parking Lot F at the Bowl, beginning with the Holy Cross game on September 20 and followed by Cornell on September 27. The Yale Athletics website has the complete schedule. Charles himself has re-upped for a third year as our delegate to the Yale Alumni Association’s annual meeting in November, also good news. All this on top of a challenging Griffith family expedition to Utah and Colorado in two four-wheel-drive vehicles with Griff’s 41-year-old son, his wife, and their four children ages 2, 4, 6, and 8, often on vertiginous one-lane roads with dropoffs and switchbacks. “Maximum beauty,” writes Charles, “with maximum adventure.” There’s more about this courageous journey, which Griff says could be his last wild road trip, on our website.
Not to be outclassed in the rugged outdoors department is Dyer Wadsworth, an unlikely woodsman given his writerly career, nevertheless the proud owner of a Beretta center-fire shotgun, which last year felled a 900-pound moose in the Maine woods not far from Dyer’s summer abode in Hancock. Dyer says a friend to whom he loaned the weapon did the deed, and that he himself uses it mainly for trapshooting. His relationship with the Beretta is now a matter of broad public knowledge. Not long ago the Wall Street Journal asked its readers to name their most expensive accessory. Dyer sent in a note about his Beretta, which the Journal published. Dyer concedes his letter was no match for the brave soul who said the most expensive accessory is his wife.
I called Dick Maltby, who reports, happily, that About Time, the musical revue he and David Shire previewed at our 65th reunion, now enlarged by several new songs, came together with “dazzling good speed” during a three-week summer engagement in Chester, Connecticut, earlier in the summer. Charley Ellis said the audience reception was terrific. Richard and David are now looking for a theater to bring the show to New York and seeking the obligatory money to do it.
Two surviving roommates (along with me) appeared at Doug Banker’s memorial in June in Cold Spring, New York: Dick Lightfoot, with two of his daughters, and Rowland Stebbins, with Carla. Also two of Doug’s fellow Whiffs, Jim Cowperthwait, with Chris, and Al Atherton, with Peggy. Also Petr Thorson. Lots of singing and warm reminiscences, all arranged by Sarah—a lovely service for a lovely guy whose passing we recorded in the last issue.
Several departures. John Jay Huss of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, died in May after a brief illness. A native of New York and Old Lyme (Connecticut), a graduate of Pomfret and a member of Zeta Psi and the Yale Record editorial board at Yale, John spent his professional career in the life insurance industry, first with Connecticut Mutual in Hartford and later with New England Life in Boston, a posting that made Manchester-by-the-Sea what he called his “forever home.” There and in Gloucester he enjoyed an active civic, cultural, and sporting life, occasionally solo lobstering in his Boston Whaler before his commute to work. He is survived by two sons and Sally, his wife of 54 years.
Michael Mayor had a unique undergraduate career, thanks to a brutal piece of bad luck and Mike’s determination in coping with it. While Mike was at Deerfield, from which he graduated in 1955, x-rays revealed a tumor on his femur, which required an above-the-knee amputation of one leg. After strenuous rehab, Mike became the only student at Yale allowed a vehicle on campus—a scooter with a sidecar. Mike—who was elected to a particularly rarified senior society—earned his BS in electrical engineering on time, married in 1961, went to medical school, interned in Cleveland, and moved in 1971 to New Hampshire, where he joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School. For the next 30 or so years he became an educator and highly regarded orthopedic surgeon—replacing an estimated 3,000 hips and 4,000 knees. An athlete in high school, he taught himself to ski on one leg with outrigger poles and was a lifelong hiker. He is survived by his wife Lili and four children.
From David Michel, Dick Michel’s eldest son (who as it happens graduated with my son Kirk in the class of ’88), comes the sad news that Dick passed away quietly at home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, having suffered with courage and remarkable good humor from an intractable foe known as pulmonary fibrosis. Dick came to Yale as part of the New Trier, Chicago, gang, and after law school at Michigan became part of an even larger mob of ’59ers in Cleveland. There he practiced law, mostly as a corporate counsel and vice president at Leaseway Transportation Corp. Retiring from active practice in 1993, he taught adult education courses and got involved in book collecting, the restoration of antique cars, and a host of Yale-related alumni activities. A modest man, polite and unassuming to a fault, Dick is remembered thusly by his Davenport roommate and our recent reunion cochair, Charlie Nolan: “Regardless of how long it had been since our last contact, in our conversations his humor was irrepressible, he was always eager to discuss the issues of the day, and he never failed to be interested in my family. And in the last two years, when his world was shrinking, he never dwelt on his malady.” Dick is survived by his wife of 61 years, Carol, and three sons.
One half of our talented and famous twin brother duo of classical pianists is gone. John Contiguglia, brother of Richard, died in New York in March of unknown causes. The brothers appeared on April 1, 1937, in Auburn, New York, the second set of twins born to their parents. They began playing the piano at age 5, performed their first program together in Syracuse in 1950, and were soon off to the races with concerts in America (Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Cleveland Symphony, etc., etc.) and abroad, not to mention one of our reunions when Tom Maxey persuaded them to return to New Haven. There’s some amazing stuff in the obit on our class website, but one thing I did not know about was that their twin-ness, to coin a word for the occasion, went beyond the piano to include identical grade point averages at high school, a feat repeated at Yale, where they shared the Seymour Prize for highest grade point average in Berkeley with 99 percent. Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa were pieces of cake.