Class Notes, Jul-Aug 2026
From Calvin Mew: “Here is a note, maybe the second one I’ve submitted since 1969: I am ending my 2-year term as President of the Harvard Business School Club of New York on June 30. HBSCNY is the largest HBS alumni club in the world, about 15,000 alumni live and work in New York. It has been an interesting task to manage a volunteer driven nonprofit. (Some HBS alumni have significant egos.) I will continue as a Trustee (since 1984) of Union Theological Seminary and a Council member of the Yale Club of New York City. I am also Treasurer of James Lenox House Association which owns and manages two senior residences in Manhattan. One “non work” activity is that I am a member of a philosophy reading group which was organized by classmate Philipp von Turk. So, will still keep busy.”
Although your scribe asked Calvin for more details about his life and career, his nonresponse cannot stop your indefatigable detective from uncovering clues about another “partially hidden” gem of a classmate: “Mew is an independent management consultant. He previously was an Executive Vice President at Bozell Worldwide (Advertising), Inc., where the Chrysler Corporation was his primary client….He is an occasional guest preacher at Norfield Congregational Church (Weston, CT) and Rowayton United Methodist Church (Norwalk, CT).”—from the HBS Club website.
Reed Hundt and Avi Soifer have a new democracy reform project entitled “Refounding America.” This ambitious project’s stated and noble goal: “Our mission is to design better structures for the national government to fulfill the primary purpose of the Declaration of Independence. We focus specifically on the structure and function of government — rather than partisan policy proposals — to apply Lincoln’s simple but profound prescription that the legitimate object of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves.” We are certainly sailing on stormy political seas, and any beacon that can guide us to calmer waters is both a welcome and probably a dire necessity for a fracturing nation.
More memories of Bill Stanisich from Cleveland Morris:
“If many of you don’t remember ever having seen Bill on the Yale campus, it may be because he spent so much time in New York, watching operas at the Met, waiting in line for standing-room tickets for those operas or shuttling back and forth on that decrepit old New Haven RR. I met Bill in our freshman year and was swept away by his joyous enthusiasms (in a setting where so many freshmen seemed prematurely afflicted with world-weariness and wariness.) Bill and I shared apartments two summers in New York, and then went our separate ways after graduation. In those days before email, Facebook, and cheap long distance rates, it was easy to lose track. We reconnected about ten years ago, when I visited Bill and his husband, Jim, in their beautiful home in San Francisco (his passion for that city was as boundless as it was for opera.) Despite debilitating pain from a back injury and an ever-spiraling assortment of other health issues, he maintained an outlook as zesty and infectious as it was when we were both 18. In addition to Jim, Bill leaves behind a dazzling array of visionary watercolors and inspiring memories of a life well-lived for all who knew him.”
Although you will be reading this column in the middle of summer, the 2026 Ivy League football season will commence soon. Your scribe will be attending the Harvard-Yale game, (my 59th) and will be looking forward to meeting Yalies of a certain age at the game, especially 1969s. Yale has a new coach, who will inherit a program which has recovered its mojo, and has retained young Reno as quarterback. The Game will unfortunately be played in Fenway Park again, a beautiful and classic baseball park which is unsuited for football. But the seats are certainly softer than the unyielding concrete of Harvard Stadium. (Modesty and the Editor forbid a truly appropriate metaphor for those seats.) Hope to see you there!
“Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.” -Earl Warren