May/Jun 2011
Arthur Schatzkin passed away on January 20 after a year-long battle with glioblastoma. After Yale, Art received an MD from the State University of New York, and an MPH and DrPH from Columbia University. From an online obituary: “Dr. Schatzkin was an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of nutrition and cancer. He came to NCI in 1984, and since 1999 served as the chief of the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch (NEB) in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG). Throughout his career, Dr. Schatzkin was an outstanding scientist, mentor, and leader in the field of nutritional epidemiology. He was a gifted public speaker and a man of personal and professional integrity who cared deeply about the impact of his work on public health.
“Dr. Schatzkin had great personal warmth and humor, tremendous intellectual curiosity and honesty, a genuine interest in all, and a passion for improving public health through exemplary science. He fundamentally understood the importance of his work in the minds of average citizens, and he steadfastly supported the responsible dissemination of his findings to the American public. Dr. Schatzkin is survived by his wife, Dr. Tamara Harris (chief, geriatric epidemiology section, National Institute on Aging), and their children, Rebecca and Eric.”
One of Art Schatzkin’s sophomore roommates was John Moore, who told your scribe that he had had no contact with Art since that year, but, “ironically, only three years ago I learned that he was at NIH. I am an NIH-funded medical researcher. I had planned to contact him about our strange parallel paths after starting out with such different ideas and backgrounds. Now it is too late. I have always told my students that today is the only day for action: yesterday is a memory and tomorrow is a figment of the imagination. Here I have failed to take my own advice.” Classmates spurred to action by these words can contact your scribe for help in tracking down long-lost Yale friends and roommates. “Time waits for no one, and he won’t wait for me.”
Your scribe has also been notified of the death of Robert Ferris, from stomach cancer, in Anchorage, Alaska, in November 2010. From Yale sources I have found only that he was in Durfee, then Trumbull, and was a French major. According to an online obituary, in his senior year, Bobby was a VISTA volunteer assigned to Stebbins, Alaska, where he met the love of his life, Jean. After their marriage they lived in Stebbins in a log cabin that he built. Bobby ran the Ferris General Store, and was also the mayor of the village. He also fought forest fires all over the state, and built homes and schools in Stebbins. He is survived by his wife, four children, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. “He was a good friend and a wonderful father.”
On a much happier note, Cleveland Morris (cmmmmix@gmail.com) checks in after a 40-year hiatus: “George Bernard Shaw wrote that youth is wasted on the young, to which I might add education is wasted on the ignorant. There’s not a single class from my undergraduate years that I wouldn’t love to do over. And yet, those wasted opportunities were not a waste altogether. I saw enough and absorbed enough as an undergraduate to provide the grounding for two careers, first as a stage director and now as a painter. I don’t think my years in graduate school added all that much, except a certain gloss and a chance to practice.
“Leaving my position as artistic director of the theater I had cofounded 20 years earlier was a difficult decision. There were unsettling adjustments, both financial and psychological, to be managed. To make the transition complete, I moved to a brand new city, where, excitingly, I knew no one. New beginnings are exhilarating, even at the age of 51. Suddenly, every day was challenging in a good way again, and they remain so 12 years later.
“I now live in Staunton, Virginia, in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. I am hoping for a third career in the arts before it’s all over. As for retirement: not if I can help it.” Thanks for writing, Cleveland, and let’s hear from the rest of you!
Joel Schiavone ’58 is trying to track down the demise of Desmos, an underground society which disappeared around 1969. If you were associated with Desmos, please contact him at joel_banjo@hotmail.com.
The mailbag is once again empty.
“If ever a man strives / With all his soul’s endeavour, sparing himself / Neither expense nor labour to attain / True excellence, then must we give to those / Who have achieved the goal, a proud tribute / Of lordly praise, and shun / All thoughts of envious jealousy.”—Pindar.