The good news: the mailbag is empty, so no bad news to report. The bad news: there is no good news to report. Your scribe has therefore raided the class website to report on the activities of Bruce Bolnick, who has written about his “second act” in tax preparation. A worthy undertaking, Bruce! Quoting Bruce: “Want an excellent mental challenge to hold off cerebral atrophy? Here’s one you might want to consider. First, a bit of…
Yale’s team fought to the end, but Harvard won. Your scribe will be in Cambridge next year, and will be happy to meet classmates there, virus willing, and the creek don’t rise.
Howard Newman directed me to this story: “George Chopivsky, a long-time Ukrainian-American business and philanthropic leader, was one of the recipients of
Your scribe is saddened to report that Bobby Haas passed away in September. I discovered his aerial photography long after Yale; my copy of Through the Eyes of the Vikings (National Geographic, 2010) has had a prominent place in our living room for a decade. The photographs are truly stunning. (National Geo reminds readers that “All of the royalties from his photographic work go to nonprofit foundations and wildlife conservation organizations throughout the world.”) Classmates…
News from Bruce Mazo, Brad Gascoigne, Felice Pace, Chris Hoffman, and Richard Seltzer and comments from your Class Scribe.
Lou Casagrande died on May 27th, 2021, from complications of pancreatic cancer. The following paragraphs are lightly-edited excerpts from his obituary in the Boston Globe. More information, and pictures, are available on the class website at yale1969.org. From the Globe: An anthropologist at heart, whether in Boston or on the road throughout the country, Lou Casagrande knew what he wanted to do when he arrived to become head of the Boston Children’s Museum. In his…
Guy Cooper writes, in what may be his first submission to the Class Notes, that “just wondering if any other member of the class of 1969 has survived a tornado? My wife Molly and I were at home on the night of October 20, 2019, half-asleep and half-watching the Dallas Cowboys on a Sunday night, when an E3 tornado zeroed in on our block. We have rebuilt the house and moved back in this month…
Cynthia Mariani of Yale has reported to us on Andrew Yang, the current recipient of the Class of 1969 Memorial Scholarship Fund. Andrew, a first-year student, says: “I am excited to meet people who are passionate for learning and making the world a better place.” Your scribe bets that he will, and if you want to contribute to the fund, please contact Don Galligan at djgalligan@msn.com. Cynthia also writes: “It is clear that Yale’s mission…
Tom Walsh died on September 22, 2020 of pancreatic cancer. A full obituary, with pictures and a memorial by Tom Hine, appears online on the class website, yale1969.org. Here is an excerpt from that memorial: “When he called one day last summer, his voice was as always, soft and even. ‘It looks as if you will be the last of us left,’ he said. I knew he was referring to the four of us who…
The Class Notes published prior to 1995 were never digitized by YAM. We wanted them available to you, so I drove down to the Reference Library at Sterling with my scanner and physically scanned back issues of YAM, from 1969 to 1995.
I then ran those scans through an optical character recognition (OCR) program to convert the images to searchable text. And then I converted all those pages to one, very large PDF file, available below!
From Tulsa World: “Gene Carson Buzzard passed away on July 21, 2020 from complications related to brain cancer. He will be remembered by his family and many friends for his intellect, humor, curiosity, generosity, loyalty, general gusto, and for living his life with joy. He loved sailing, baseball, fly fishing, the American West, photography, birding, cycling, the Blues, and almost anything that allowed him to be outside or with his family. He once ran the…
Your scribe has been notified of four more deaths of classmates: Jerry Schnitt, Gregory Kampalas, Morrison Bonpasse and Gene Buzzard.
Steve Bemis forwarded this New Haven Register obituary: “Jerome M. Schnitt, MD (“Jerry”), 73, of Guilford, CT passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning, June 9, 2020 after a decade-long battle with cancer….An academic by nature, Jerry graduated from Yale University (Trumbull College) in 1969 before attending Medical School at West Virginia University. He subsequently completed his psychiatric residency […]
Our class now has its own Class Colloquia on ZOOM! All classmates are welcome to attend the presentation, Q&A, and breakout sessions afterward. Our first presenter was Ken Davis, who gave us a full update on Covid-19 from Mt. Sinai Hospital. Our second presenter was John Yarmuth, (D-KY), who gave us his views on politics in Washington and the upcoming elections. Next up was Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman, who will talk about the “Future…
Three more times the bell has tolled: Dick MacKay, Jim Steffenburg, and Terry Miller are gone. Howard Newman reported Dick’s death on March 26: “Dr. Richard MacKay died today after a life of service to others and a cruelly unfair illness.” Howard and others are working on a full memorial of Dick’s life which will appear in my next column and, much sooner, on the class website. Jim Steffenburg died peacefully on February 27 at…
Ted Van Dyke remembers John Nelson: John Eric Nelson died of colorectal cancer on February 5, 2020. He fought it bravely, tenaciously and optimistically. When I last saw him on January 24, we parted with a long-held fist bump and his saying, “It’s not looking good, but I’m not giving up.” John was an excellent athlete, winning the class of 1969 intramural athlete of the year award and leading the JE Spiders football teams to…
Jim Grew writes: “I was inducted into the International Waterski & Wakeboard Hall of Fame this year, the International Governing Body of all Towed Water Sports recognized by the IOC to go along with my 2013 induction into the U.S. Water Ski & Wake Sports Hall of Fame, the national governing body recognized by the USOPC.” Related story. Mike Schonbrun (mks@balfourcare.com): “Loved seeing everyone at the 50th. My appreciation for Yale gets stronger every year,…
What follows is a large (245mb, 453 page) document holding the scanned copies of Class Notes columns for the Class of 1969 which have appeared in the Yale Alumni Magazine between the 1969 and 1994. Depending on your browser, either click or right-click and open a local copy of the .pdf file. Use page-search (control-F / command-F) to find the text you are interested in. Be patient: It might take a minute or two to…
