Discussing Documentary; Visiting Elqui Valley

Dear Classmates,

Two internet postings you may want to visit.

First, the filmmaker Errol Morris and I discusses Walker Evans' documentary ethics:

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-5/

Second, my wife, Irene, her daughter, Nettie, and I visit Chile's New Age Elqui Valley with Brooke Gregory, with whom Irene and I visited it in 2007 (see http://billstott.blogspot.com/search/label/Elqui%20Valley*), and Angela Harnish, a U.S. "Elf" (English-language fellow) assigned to teach preparing English-teachers here in Santiago. Brooke works for the Tololo telescope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Tololo_Inter-American_Observatory), and among Angela's wonderful pictures you'll see some of the installation and of the memorable international lunch we had with Tololo astronomers--would that we had a recording of it!

http://picasaweb.google.com/harnish614/20091026PiscoElqui?authkey=Gv1sRgCLqex7bA-fycDw&feat=email#

Love, Bill Stott

Bill Richardson Writes:

Dear Friends,

As many of you are aware, my wife, Vania, was diagnosed with ALS in February, 2008. While we were aware something was wrong, the news, after extensive testing, was devastating and we have been on an emotional roller coaster ever since.

I will be joining our daughter Danielle who walked last year, and her team for the The ALS Association, Rhode Island Chapter's Walk to Defeat ALS to be held on September 20. Our group will be larger this year as more will join us to help support the effort.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, is a fatal neuromuscular disease that can strike anyone without warning. Every 90 minutes someone in this country will be diagnosed with ALS and every 90 minutes someone will lose their battle. These past 18 months have been months of great change, as well as a challenge, for us----and we are trying hard not to let ALS rule, but it is harder than one can imagine.

The Walk to Defeat ALS is The ALS Association's national signature event. Each year over 120,000 patients, men, women, children and corporations join together to raise funds in support of internationally driven cutting-edge ALS research and community-based patient services programs. Now in its ninth year, approximately 150 Walks will be held around the country.

As a participant of the Warwick, RI Walk, I am asking for your support by making a gift to The ALS Association or by joinng me as a participant on Walk Day.

I will be walking in support and honor of Vania, who will also be joining us, who amazes me every day with her courage and fortitude in her battle with ALS. During her daily struggle with the debilitating effects of ALS, she inspires all with her determination and bravery.

Supporting and joining the Walk to Defeat ALS is easy. Simply visit one of the links below to donate directly online. You may also choose to send your contribution in the form of a check. Please make checks payable to The ALS Association and mail to me at the following address:

WF Richardson

4 Seawinds Terrace

Westerly, RI 02891

401-596-8919

Thank you for supporting me in the fight against ALS. I know money is tight for everyone these days, but any amount will help. Vania and I appreciate your thoughts, prayers and generosity.

Gratefully yours,

Bill Richardson

wfr3@verizon.net

Here's the URL for my personal page.
http://web.alsa.org/site/TR/Walks/RhodeIslandWalk?px=2351326&pg=personal&fr_id=5832&et=pNGYT38oRoTuGNFKHsEeHQ..&s_tafId=90952

Here's the URL for the team page for Vava's Voyage
http://web.alsa.org/site/TR/Walks/RhodeIslandWalk?team_id=127160&pg=team&fr_id=5832&et=alwDpobQ1kybG4o1MNhQrA..&s_tafId=90952

John Cone Dies

Dear Classmates,

I regret to announce the death of John Cone, unforgettable English teacher, drama coach, grammarian, opera lover, spontaneous singer, life of the party, flamboyant ham.

His friend and executor, Bruce Sherrill, told me of his death in the letter below. The memorial service Bruce mentions will take place, in New Jersey, in late September or October. Bruce hopes that those of us with "brief written remembrace[s]" of Mr. Cone we want to share will send them to me to send to him. When I told him that a classmate (John Phillips, but I named no names) had told me that Mr. Cone's training in writing had helped him advance in the DEA, Bruce said, "Wonderful. That's just what we want."

Our giants are passing.

Love,
Bill Stott



Re: John F. Cone

Dear William,

I received your letter to John Cone and I regret to tell you that John passed away on May 30, 2009. My name is Bruce Sherrill. I was a friend of John; I'm also the executor of his estate.

In summer 2006, John fell down the staircase in his apartment and broke his neck. Major surgery repaired the injury but John never recovered sufficiently to live independently. For almost 3 years, he lived in a nursing home in Middletown, NJ.

John requested cremation and no funeral. However, we will have a memorial service for John either later this summer or after Labor Day. When planned, I will let you know the date. If you like you may send me a brief written remembrance about your friendship with John to be read at the service. I enclose John's obituary as it appeared in The Scarsdale Inquirer, June 5, 2009.

You are most welcome to call me if you would like to discuss any of this. My telephone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx. If you get my voice mail, please leave your telephone number and the best time to call.

I'm so sorry to send you this news. I know that John would have loved to receive your letter and renew an old friendship.

With warmest regards,
Bruce Sherrill



The Scarsdale Inquirer

June 5, 2009

John Frederick Cone

John Frederick Cone, 82, died May 30 at the Care One King James Nursing Home in New Jersey. A former SHS English teacher, Dr. Cone had lived in Highlands, N.J. since the mid-'70s. He was a 1944 graduate of Salem High School in Ohio, received his A.B. and A.M. degrees at Rutgers University and in 1964, his Ph.D. degree from NYU. He taught at Montclair Academy (1949-52), then at SHS (1952-69).

A student of his, Kenneth Wallach, said, "John was a demanding teacher but the got the most out of his pupils. He inspired a lasting love of literature."

Eric Rothschild recalls that his colleague "insisted once a week that the boys in his class wear jackets and ties, and the girls wear long skirts or dresses. And the kids went along with it."

At Red Bank Regional High School (1970-88), Dr. Cone attained the position of departmental supervisor of English, art, music and foreign languages. He was the former academic dean of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and for many years adjunct associate professor English at Fordham University's Ignatius College, where he received the Teacher of the Year Award for 1992-93. He had a lifelong interest in opera, and wrote several books on related topics, including "Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company," "First Revival of the Metropolitan Opera" and "Adelina Patti, Queen of Hearts." He was also associate editor of "The World's Love Poetry," and contributed to "Melba: A Contemporary Review," "Magnum Shakespearean Series," the "New Grove Dictionary of American Music" and "The New Grove Dictionary of Opera."

A memorial service is planned.



The Salem (Ohio) News

POSTED: June 2, 2009

John Frederick Cone

HIGHLANDS, N.J.-John Frederick Cone, 82, died on May 30, 2009, after a long period of declining health at the Care One King James Nursing Home in New Jersey.

Dr. Cone was a resident of Highlands, N. J., from the mid 1970s. He was a graduate of Salem High School in Ohio in 1944, received his AB and AM degrees at Rutgers University and his PhD degree from New York University in 1964. He taught at Montclair Academy in New Jersey from 1949 to 1952, Scarsdale High School from 1952 to 1969, and Red Bank Regional High School from 1970 to 1988 where he attained the position of departmental supervisor of English, Art, Music and Foreign Languages.

Dr. Cone was the former academic dean of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and for many years adjunct associate professor of English at Fordham University's Ignatius College where he received the Teacher of the Year award for 1992-1993. He had a life long interest in opera, regularly attended the Metropolitan Opera at both its old and current venues and was a weekly listener to its radio broadcasts. He authored several books on opera related topics including "Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company" (University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), "First Rival of the Metropolitan Opera" (Columbia University Press, 1983), and "Adelina Patti, Queen of Hearts" (Amadeus Press, 1993). He also was associate editor of "The World's Love Poetry" (Bantam Press, 1960), contributor to "Melba: A Contemporary Review" (Greenwood Press, 1985), contributing editor and commentator of "Magnum Shakespearean Series" (Lancer Books, 1968), and contributor to the "New Grove Dictionary of American Music" (Macmillan, 1986) and "The New Grove Dictionary of Opera" (Macmillan, 1992).

It was Dr. Cone's request that no funeral service be held; however a memorial service will be planned. Family, friends, and former colleagues will be informed of the date when the plans are finalized.

Arrangements were handled by Thompson Memorial Home in Red Bank.

NYT profile of Richard Holbrooke

Back on World Stage, a Larger-Than-Life Holbrooke

By JODI KANTOR

[This article appeared on page A1 of the February 8, 2009, New York Times]

[Richard Holbrooke on tank; his wife, Kati Marton, is sitting beneath him.]

Stashed in a drawer in his Manhattan apartment between snapshots of family vacations, a photograph shows Richard C. Holbrooke on a private visit to Afghanistan in 2006. He is mugging atop an abandoned Russian tank, flashing a sardonic V-for-victory sign and his best Nixon-style grin. The pose is a little like Mr. Holbrooke himself: looming, theatrical, passionate, indignant.

Three years later, he has inherited responsibility for the terrain he surveyed from that tank. As President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr. Holbrooke will help reformulate and carry out American policy in what many call the most problematic region on earth.

Between them, the two countries contain unstable governments, insurgencies, corruption and a narcotics trade, nuclear material, refugees, resentment of American power, a resurgent Taliban, and in the shadows of the tribal region that joins the two countries, Al Qaeda and presumably Osama bin Laden.

“You have a problem that is larger than life,” said Christopher R. Hill, a longtime colleague expected to be named as the new ambassador to Iraq. “To deal with it you need someone who’s larger than life.”

Few other diplomats can boast of the accomplishments of Mr. Holbrooke, 67, who negotiated the Dayton peace accords to end the war in Bosnia. But as he lands in Pakistan on Monday, back on duty after eight years of a Republican administration, he is still an outsider in the Obama circle, having only recently developed a relationship with the new president. His longtime foreign policy pupil, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has the secretary of state job he has always wanted. And he has taken on a task so difficult that merely averting disaster may be the only triumph.

“We are still in the process of digging our way into the debris,” Mr. Holbrooke said in an interview. “We’ve inherited an extraordinarily dysfunctional situation in which the very objectives have to be reviewed.” Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton chose Mr. Holbrooke because of his ability to twist arms as well as hold hands, work closely with the military and improvise inventive solutions to what others write off as insoluble problems. But no one yet knows how his often pyrotechnical style — he whispers, but also pesters, bluffs, threatens, stages fits and publicizes — will work in an administration that prizes low-key competence or in a region that is dangerously unstable.

“Richard C. Holbrooke is the diplomatic equivalent of a hydrogen bomb,” said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state and a friend.

Return to Washington

Already, Mr. Holbrooke’s return to Washington has caused tremors. His arrival at the State Department has rattled colleagues who remember him as someone who cultivates the powerful and tramples those with less to offer. Others worry about his assiduous courtship of the news media. Judging from interviews with several officials, there seems to be confusion about whether the American Embassies in Pakistan and Afghanistan will be controlled by Mr. Holbrooke or the regular State Department overseers.

And even friends acknowledge that Mr. Holbrooke is intently focused on his own legend. (Many people have personal trainers; Mr. Holbrooke has a personal archivist.)

For now, Mr. Holbrooke is both raising expectations and lowering them. He is talking about Afpak — Washington shorthand for his assignment — as his last and toughest mission. But along with the rest of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy staff, he is also trying to redefine success in the region, shifting away from former President Bush’s grand, transformative goals and toward something more achievable.

On Monday, Mr. Holbrooke begins a 10-day tour of the region, where he will try to vacuum up as much information as possible, he said, visiting high-level officials and local ones, women who serve in the Afghan National Assembly, military bases, nongovernmental organizations, antinarcotics programs, refugee camps and the perilous tribal region.

There is a reason for this wide-ranging tour: because official Afghan and Pakistani leaders are seen as weak, Mr. Holbrooke may have to seek alternative partners, a task to which he is naturally suited, according to Wesley K. Clark, the retired Army general.

“Richard Holbrooke sees power the way an artist sees color,” General Clark said.

Studying Afghanistan

Until a few years ago, Mr. Holbrooke had been to Afghanistan exactly once: in 1971, when he wandered around with a backpack, he said in the interview last week as he frowned at television reports of a kidnapping in Pakistan. The setting of the interview, Perseus LLC, a Manhattan private equity firm where he worked as vice chairman until recently, was an elegant one, at least until he began clipping his fingernails with office shears.

During the Bush years, Perseus was Mr. Holbrooke’s base, providing him with what friends say was a relatively undemanding job and lavish compensation as he bounced from topic to topic, almost as if seeking a problem tough enough to rivet all of his attention. He founded the American Academy in Berlin, which promotes cultural relations, and used a formerly quiet nonprofit called the Global Business Coalition to match corporate leaders with public health issues. He became chairman of the Asia Society, an institution mostly known for art exhibits, and pushed it toward more policy discussions.

At night, he retreated to his softly lighted, wood-paneled apartment in the Beresford, the grand Central Park West building, or to the homes in Colorado or the Hamptons that he shares with his wife, Kati Marton, a journalist and human rights advocate.

But with a Republican president, Mr. Holbrooke’s nose was pressed to the glass of the statecraft window. On the morning of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the greatest foreign policy challenge in generations came crashing into his own city, Mr. Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, sat in traffic like any other New Yorker.

Few New Yorkers, though, decide to inspect Afghanistan for themselves. By 2006, alarmed at the deteriorating conditions there and lured by a relative working for the United Nations, Mr. Holbrooke traveled privately around the country, returning for another visit in 2008. He went to a police training center in Herat, near the Iranian border, where he watched retired policemen from Alabama try to train Afghans. In Khost, Mr. Holbrooke slept on a cot at a reconstruction project office and met with madrasa students and former Taliban fighters, pouring the tea himself to convey respect, according to Kael Weston, a State Department political officer who served as his guide.

At another stop, Mr. Holbrooke met with newly elected female leaders who barely seemed to know the basics of legislation. Everywhere, Mr. Holbrooke passed enormous new villas built by narcotics smugglers.

At a maximum-security prison north of Kabul, the capital, Mr. Holbrooke fell into a long conversation with a senior Taliban operative, a mullah who patiently answered questions and then asked one of his own:

“When will you and the Americans be leaving?”

Mr. Holbrooke told him he did not know. “The more you think about it, the more it highlights the dilemma,” he said in the interview: the United States cannot say it is leaving, nor can it say it is staying forever.

At home, Mr. Holbrooke used the Asia Society to assemble his own personal think tank on Afghanistan. The group, which included Gen. James L. Jones until he became national security adviser, will soon release a study recommending that the United States declare an end to President Bush’s “war on terror” and negotiate with Taliban members willing to separate from Al Qaeda. Mr. Holbrooke has now left the group, but thanks to him, some of the regional experts who wrote the study are now briefing Mrs. Clinton.

Cultivating the Powerful

Every December, Mrs. Clinton can be found in Mr. Holbrooke and Ms. Marton’s apartment, laughing through an annual dinner they hold in her honor. The guests and the entertainment have varied — Glenn Close has sung carols, Robert De Niro and Matt Damon have sat alongside business figures and writers, and one of the tamer toasters called Mrs. Clinton the nation’s “first shiksa,” or gentile. But Mr. Holbrooke and Ms. Marton always give Mrs. Clinton laudatory toasts of their own.

Mr. Holbrooke served as a foreign policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton from the beginning of her Senate career, contributing ideas for major speeches and weighing in on crises. Sometimes, Mrs. Clinton or her staff reached out to him, aides said. But Mr. Holbrooke was not exactly shy about calling or sending e-mail messages on his own. The moment the Democratic primaries ended, Obama aides say, Mr. Holbrooke showered them with ideas as well.

“I did not cross the DMZ until a cease-fire was declared,” he now says jokingly.

By the time Mr. Obama sat down for a sustained conversation with Mr. Holbrooke, he was president-elect, and Mrs. Clinton was already the leading candidate for secretary of state. Once she took the job, Mr. Holbrooke was considered for the deputy post, but the idea was quickly rejected: he was a negotiator, not an administrator, and the secretary and the president wanted to put a powerful person in charge of dealings with Afghanistan and Pakistan, State Department officials said.

“Richard represents the kind of robust, persistent, determined diplomacy the president intends to pursue,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview. “I admire deeply his ability to shoulder the most vexing and difficult challenges.”

Thanks to Mr. Holbrooke’s negotiating skills, he won himself an unusual title: representative rather than envoy, meaning that his responsibilities extend beyond the State Department and that he will report to the president, but through Mrs. Clinton. It is a bit of Washingtonese whose precise meaning will become clear only with time.

His first task is to help lead a total review of American policy in the region, an assignment on which Mr. Obama has imposed a 60-day deadline. Another is to learn as much about Pakistan as Mr. Holbrooke has about Afghanistan; he is hiring staff members to fill some of the gaps in his knowledge, according to colleagues.

Asked about Mr. Holbrooke’s sometimes overbearing qualities, Mrs. Clinton replied with mock innocence. “Gee, I’d never heard that he could be any of those things before,” she said. Then she turned serious. “Occasionally he has to be, you know, brought down to earth and reined in.”

Ms. Marton, in defending her hard-driving husband, said, “Richard is all about outcome.” She described him and the new president as “kindred spirits” in their views on diplomacy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Both Ms. Marton and Mr. Holbrooke sounded relieved, even a little surprised, that he found a place in the Obama administration. Now, she said, “he won’t be able to look back and say he didn’t get a shot.”

Recent Email Exchange

Having read that the legendary CIA man Larry Devlin disobeyed direct orders to kill Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and instead, after Lumumba died of other causes, threw the tube of poisoned toothpaste meant to do the job in the river, John Austin wrote, his neuropathic hands fluttering on the keys:

commendjable decdisomn on debvlkin's part. but followimnhg lumumnba's derath, doid jhe habve to toss thie posion ttokhpaste in the ribver? pronbaluy wipred out quiyte a few xcongolese dowin ribver. jiohn

To which retired CIA man Brad Handley responded:

john,
you have way too much free time
brad

To which John:

asctually, brad, i am keiopt quite busuy truyimnjg to decifde each day whuikch wiondow i wuill stare blankly out of amnd drool behimnd. jiohn

To which Brad:

laughing. i have a buddy who says he can make a whole days task out of doing a load of laundry

Betsy Reese Bommer's Brother Comes Home

Our classmate Betsy Reese Bommer lost her younger brother, pilot Gomer David Reese (SHS '61), in the Vietnam War. His remains have been found, and there will be a memorial and burial on April 23, 2009 in Arlington National Cemetery. "So far 40+ family are coming," Betsy writes,"as well as former Ravens (the covert reconnaissance unit he was in) and friends. Everyone is welcome." The bracketed correction in the second article below is by her.




Remains of Pilot Bring a Sense of Closure
By Sarah M. Rivette
Watertown Daily Times
September 26, 2008

CANTON — Elizabeth R. Bommer, Canton, has waited 38 1/2 years for her brother to come home. Next spring, that will be a reality.

"Initially it's a shock and you can't quite believe that it's so real," Mrs. Bommer said. "It's a wonderful sense of relief and gratefulness that somehow all of it is closed."

Mrs. Bommer's brother, Capt. Gomer David Reese III, was shot down April 24, 1970, while flying a covert operation over Xiangkhoang Province, Laos. Capt. Reese was 28 years old and was a member of The Ravens of the 56th Special Operations Wing of the Air Force.

Capt. Reese enlisted in 1966 and worked toward becoming a pilot, a career his sister said suited him because "he would have felt as free as a bird up there."

Mrs. Bommer said she remembers her brother as a fun-loving person who was always on the move. She recalled his patriotism that drove him to enlist in the armed forces, despite the turbulent times that came with the Vietnam era, and attributed that to their father, who served in World War II. She said she also understands why he would have gone on covert missions: "He would have been excited by it and felt it was something that he needed to."

Over the past four decades, Mrs. Bommer has not known what happened to her brother and did not even know he had been flying over Laos. It wasn't until a book, "The Ravens: The Men who Flew in America's Secret War in Laos" by Christopher Robbins, came out that she had an inkling of what her brother was doing.

Her brother's remains were identified by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, which works to bring back remains of soldiers from all 20th century conflicts. There are approximately 1,200 people, including soldiers and civilians, from the Vietnam War who are still missing.

The organization, with laboratories in Hawaii and Maryland, runs DNA tests on bone fragments and teeth to determine whether the remains match a family member of a missing soldier. To do so, families must submit DNA tests for comparison, which Mrs. Bommer did — but she found out the bone fragments the scientists had were too small to be tested.

After almost four decades of waiting, Mrs. Bommer found out Sept. 8 that remains were identified as her brother's. She received the phone call from her cousin, retired Army Col. William Reese.

"He is six years younger than my brother and idolized him," she said. "I think Bill spurred things on because every couple of years that was more and more data coming back. I think my cousin was really the spark in all of this."

The remains were found in early 2007 and fully collected in 2008, according to a Department of Defense press release. Among the remains, there were also items belonging to Capt. Reese and the other pilot identified, Capt. James E. Cross of Warren, Ohio.

"They found the lens of Air Force sunglasses that matched his prescription," Mrs. Bommer said. "I think it's really remarkable."

Services for her brother will be held at Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C., this spring. Mrs. Bommer said she hopes it will be on the same day that he was shot down 39 years ago.

"It's not like I felt like I lost him forever," she said. "But I never thought I would have a concrete way to honor him. The saddest part is that if he had lived he would have been a part of all this — there would have been other children and grandchildren. That's the thread that goes through your life and it's not something you dwell on, but it's like losing a whole connection that could have been there."



Gomer David Reese III




Vietnam War pilot's remains found in Laos
By HEATHER MURRAY
The Scarsdale Inquirer
October 3, 2008

Nancy Palazzo of Pelham knew just what would help her grandson Oscar get over his first day of kindergarten jitters: her brother's Air Force wings. On Sept. 8, three days after she dug through memorabilia in a family drawer and regaled her grandson with stories of Capt. Gomer David Reese III's bravery, she got a call that dramatized her brother's sacrifice and rekindled her feelings of pride and loss.

The military had found her brother's remains and would give him a proper burial at Arlington Cemetery around the anniversary of his plane crash. Scarsdale High School graduate Reese was a member of "The Ravens," a group of Vietnam War pilots who volunteered to fly covert missions. His plane was shot down over Laos on April 24, 1970, presumably killing Reese and co-pilot Capt. James E. Cross. But since their remains were not recovered immediately, the Department of Defense classified the pair as missing in action and kept them on a list of over 88,000 men missing from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Funding for all Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs programs, including the personnel office, joint accounting command, Armed Forces DNA identification laboratory and Air Force life sciences equipment laboratory was approximately $86 million in 2007.

Reese's other sister Betsy Bommer, who now lives upstate in Canton, credited her cousin, retired Army Col. Bill Reese, with jumpstarting the search for Gomer Reese's remains. Bommer said her cousin was flying back from a meeting in Hawaii one day in the 1990s when he discovered the pilot of the plane was a Raven who had known her brother.

Bommer started receiving notification from the Department of Defense's POW/Missing Personnel Office every couple of years from 1994 on updating her on findings out in the field. Joint U.S. and Lao People's Democratic Republic teams conducted six separate investigations of the crash site between 1994 and the spring of 2008, and interviewed people claiming to have witnessed the crash. In 2004, a team uncovered a seat belt buckle and three years later the crash site was excavated.

Bommer said the military would fly only one family member out to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii in April and she felt her sister was the one who should make the trip. "Nancy's really the one to go. He was a year apart from her in school and her best friend. They were really close," she said. Bommer graduated from SHS in 1958, Reese in 1961 and Palazzo in 1962.

"My first response when I got the call was, 'Oh, I wish my dad was here,' but as my son says, he'll be leading the procession that day. It's another opportunity to grieve that I didn't realize I had and a wonderful opportunity to celebrate," Bommer said.

Her father, also named Gomer David Reese, was a machine gunner during World War II who got shot while in Germany and came back with a Purple Heart. He died in 2000, three years after his wife. Her father never talked about the war and that part of his life died with him.

Not so with her brother, who she's come to learn more and more about through the military in recent years. She found out he was a Raven around 2000 and said, "It didn't surprise me. The thing about David, he was a very curious, exploratory kind of guy who cared about people, but he was also a risk taker."

Palazzo said she wasn't with her parents when they got the call that their son was missing, but she remembers her mother taking it remarkably well. "She was just grateful he made it to the pinnacle of his dream and glad he wasn't able to suffer any more struggles," she said.

Scarsdale schools had been difficult for her brother, who had dyslexia, Palazzo said. Reese was put in remedial reading. By eighth grade, he was reading on a third-grade level. He spent a year at a reading institute and came back to Scarsdale for high school. At SHS he worked hard in school and participated in sports, but he never was a standout. "He ran track and was always the second fastest. He always just almost made it," she said.

Palazzo said, "It made him very sensitive and caring of other people." Becoming a pilot meant so much to him, she said, remembering what a scare he had when he thought he might not pass the eye exam. Palazzo and her husband Mike attended gold star mothers' ceremonies in Eastchester and Tuckahoe Sunday, honoring mothers who have lost a child in the war. Other family members are also invited.

Palazzo said Sunday evening, "It was really touching. I've had a belly full of tears all afternoon. I don't even know if it was for me. There is a whole beautiful world of vets out there and hearing their stories, well, sometimes it's difficult to sit through," she said. A poem written by Eastchester Veterans of Foreign War Commander Bob Foster brought tears to her eyes, reminding her of poetry her mom wrote about her brother shortly after his death.

Scarsdale American Legion Post 52 invited Palazzo and her husband to lunch Wednesday. Gene Rogliano, chairman of Post 52's Memorial Committee, said legion members have visited Reese's gravesite in Elmsford every Memorial Day since his death. [Neither Nancy nor I are aware of this gravesite. The Arlington National Cemetery site set for April will be the only one we pay attention to.] Although the Reese family couldn't officially bury their son back in 1970, they still held a funeral at the Scarsdale Congregational Church, allowing the community to grieve the loss of a son, brother and friend.

Allen Matlins: "Our Highest Values"

The question of our highest values is always personal. And there are many who may question the relevance of the following lofty ideals to the life any of us have lived over the past fifty years. Yet I confess that I cried last night, as I practiced the bass part of the following wonderful hymn, which our director Mindy Edwards selected for your choir to perform at the reunion. Please read the words:

"O brother man! fold to they heart thy brother. Where pity dwells the peace of God is there. To worship rightly is to love each other, each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example of Him whose holy work was doing good. So shall the wide earth seem our Fathers temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall, the stormy clangor of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease, Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, and in its ashes, plant the tree of peace." John Greenleaf Whittier

This hymn (and others), touched me then, and continues to touch me now. Bravo Mindy Edwards and Walter Ehret.

I've wondered why the young often confuse us with sixties people. Many barely remember fifties folk ever existed. Certainly we were less clamerous. Yet we shared a passion for high values. Did we provide part of the foundation for the rampant idealism of later decades?

We haven't fixed civilization yet Great '58, but if we apply the sentiment expressed in O Brother Man to our three shared days, don't you agree that we will experience one of the warmest and most memorable class reunions in human history. Let's go for it!

Remembering Valerie Griffin Mould

[Tom Griffin, SHS '56, memorializes his sister, Valerie, first in an obituary notice, then in notes of personal remembrance.]


Valerie Griffin Mould died peacefully October 27th [2006] in Homewood at Plum Creek in Hanover, PA, at the age of 66 after a long illness.

Valerie’s life, although too short, was filled with bubbling enthusiasm and many friends. Born in Minneapolis, MN July 10th 1940, the daughter of Dorothy and Lloyd Griffin, she was raised in Scarsdale, NY, graduating from Scarsdale High School in 1958. She followed her parents and brother, Tom, to Northwestern University where she earned her BS in Speech Pathology in 1962. After graduation, she married her first husband, Michael Riccardelli and moved to Roseland, NJ where she lived for over 35 years. She was a teacher in the Harrison Avenue School until 1986 when she became Office Manager for Griffin Bacal Inc, an advertising agency in New York. In 1984 she met NU graduate Robert G. (Jerry) Mould, the love of her life, who she married in 1994. Together they opened a business in Livingston, NJ, which they operated until retirement in 2003. In 2004 they moved to Hanover, PA.

Valerie was an active member of the Union Congregational Church in Montclair, NJ where she sang in the choir for 20 years. She was a strong supporter of her Pi Beta Phi sorority and as a NU alumni served as Director of the Northwestern Alumni Admissions Council in northern NJ for over 15 years. Passionate Northwestern sports fans, Val and Jerry loved their road trips together. They traveled across the country to visit friends, family and attend NU Football games in every Big Ten stadium.

She is survived by her loving husband, Jerry; her three children: Steven Riccardelli, Julie Riccardelli Breschi and Carolyn Riccardelli; her stepsons: Robert Rockwell Mould and Christopher MacGregor Mould; and her brother, Tom Griffin of Scarsdale, NY. She also had six loving grandchildren: Laura, Katrina, Michael, Samantha, Abigail and Lucy.

A Memorial service was held on Monday, November 13th at 11:00am in the Scarsdale Congregational Church, One Heathcote Rd. Scarsdale, NY followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, the family asks contributions in her memory be sent to Northwestern University, School of Communication, 2020 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208-4308, (877) 467-2003, giving@northwestern.edu, or the Union Congregational Church, 176 Cooper Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07043, (973) 744-7424. Condolences, pictures and stories can be shared at the family website: rememberingval.com.



Valerie! Boy, was I lucky to have Val as my sister.

Of course, there were lots of early years when I didn’t really think so.

Yes, we were competitive (she did want all the attention after all) – And as the big brother, I think I contributed my share of “kid sister distress.” But she really seemed to have mastered the “big Brother thing.”

She was our cheerleader - From the day she was born, Val bubbled – enthusiasm was her middle name. (Didn’t have one)

When we moved here 1951 – I was reluctant to leave Illinois – but as always, Val was excited about what lay ahead.

Great years in Scarsdale. Fox Meadow and the High School – Cheerleading, Sports, - even dating one of my best friends. We could walk to school together most mornings.

When I went to Northwestern, she approved (our parents both were NU graduates). And she came right behind me. We had two years together at NU - and not sure who was looking out for who. Seemed to me she was always around. When I dated a Pi Phi – I could always be sure that there would be a report waiting if I did anything the girls thought was out of line. But I don’t really think that she thought it was a disadvantage to have a brother on campus, but she was happy when I graduated and she had the run of the campus on her own.

Always loved Northwestern. “To the memories” seemed to be written for her.
Val had kids first – at least Steve. She always loved kids. Carolyn, Steven, and Julie were a great source of joy to her – as were all the seven of her grandkids – It is sad that they won’t be able to “catch the full spirit” of their grandmother first hand. Besides her own, Val loved everyone else’s kids too – and always wanted to know “what new was going on.” (Probably why she became a teacher.)

Giraffes – Always loved and collected them (never understood why – Long Legs – maybe)– Lots of Dogs instead – Loved them – From Nip & Tuck – all the way to Tally Ho (actually my dog from college) - - - Couldn’t have Giraffe as pet in Roseland - Tiger, Albert, Henry.

It was a great day, when Val decided that she traded “kid talk” for adults and joined GBI as our Office Manager – Slash – Cheerleader. From Mailrooms, Supplies to Picnics to Office Moves she loved every minute of it. She found out that in advertising – we were all “big kids anyway.” One of her big moment was the cold January in 1990 when the city water pipe outside our building burst – and washed away everything below our offices. Files, Artwork, (even elevators) all gone and no access to the offices.

While I was worried about the business – Val was worrying about our GBI and Sunbow people and there was lots to do. We even made, at her suggestion, an “I survived the Flood” shirt for everyone.

Somewhere in the mid 80’s we started hearing about the “great guy” Jerry – who she talked with on the phone for hours. He was an NU guy – so probably all right. Well, they fell in love, and as we all know, this was a wonderful, wonderful caring guy who loved Val will every ounce of his strength and being.

Val got a “kick” out of everything. We have a Family Christmas “Grab Bag” – the strangest – funniest gifts always made her laugh. She and Jerry became the permanent custodians of the blooper gift – the “New Kids on the Block” poster. No matter how we tried to hide it – she always found it.

As husband, friend, love-of-her-life and caregiver, Jerry brought that bright joyful light to Val’s life every day. They were married 12 years – Twelve wonderful, and exciting years together.

Before Jerry, Val was an NU fan – but teamed together – they became NU FANATICS. Cruising the country for Sporting Events – football, Lacrosse and Softball. Even as the illness slowed down her speech – she had her rousing cheers (cheerleading spirit) right to the end.

Val will always be our cheerleader. We’ll laugh with her, love her and miss her everyday.

She did what cheerleaders do – help us appreciate all the exciting things going on in the life around us.

Richard Holbrooke on War Criminals

The Face of Evil
By Richard Holbrooke


Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Washington Post

Standing with Slobodan Milosevic on the veranda of a government hunting lodge outside Belgrade, I saw two men in the distance. They got out of their twin Mercedeses and, in the fading light, started toward us. I felt a jolt go through my body; they were unmistakable. Ratko Mladic in combat fatigues, stocky, walking as though through a muddy field; and Radovan Karadzic, taller, wearing a suit, with his wild, but carefully coiffed, shock of white hair.

The capture of Karadzic on Monday took me back to a long night of confrontation, drama and negotiations almost 13 years ago -- the only time I ever met him. It was 5 p.m. on Sept. 13, 1995, the height of the war in Bosnia. Finally, after years of weak Western and U.N. response to Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, U.S.-led NATO bombing had put the Serbs on the defensive. Our small diplomatic negotiating team -- which included then-Lt. Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Christopher Hill (now the senior U.S. envoy to North Korea) -- was in Belgrade for the fifth time, trying to end a war that had already taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people.

These three men -- Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic -- were the primary reason for that war. Mladic and Karadzic had already been indicted as war criminals by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. (Milosevic was not to be indicted until 1999.) As leaders of the breakaway Bosnian Serb movement, they had met with many Western luminaries, including Jimmy Carter.

But, in a change of strategy, the negotiating team had decided to marginalize Karadzic and Mladic and to force Milosevic, as the senior Serb in the region, to take responsibility for the war and the negotiations we hoped would end it. Now Milosevic wanted to bring the two men back into the discussions, probably to take some of the pressure off himself.

We had anticipated this moment and agreed in advance that, while we would never ask to meet with Karadzic and Mladic, if Milosevic offered such a meeting, we would accept -- but only once, and only under strict guidelines that would require Milosevic to be responsible for their behavior.

I had told each member of our negotiating team to decide for himself or herself whether to shake hands with the mass murderers. I hated these men for what they had done. Their crimes included, indirectly, the deaths of three of our colleagues -- Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel and Nelson Drew, who had died when the armored personnel carrier they were in plunged down a ravine as we attempted to reach Sarajevo by the only route available, a dangerous dirt road that went through sniper-filled, Serbian-controlled territory.

I did not shake hands, although both Karadzic and Mladic tried to. Some of our team did; others did not. Mladic, not Karadzic, was the dominant figure that evening. He engaged in staring contests with some of our team as we sat across the table. Karadzic was silent at first. He had a large face with heavy jowls, a soft chin and surprisingly gentle eyes. Then, when he heard our demand that the siege of Sarajevo be lifted immediately, he exploded. Rising from the table, the American-educated Karadzic raged in passable English about the "humiliations" his people were suffering. I reminded Milosevic that he had promised that this sort of harangue would not occur.

Karadzic responded emotionally that he would call former president Carter, with whom he said he was in touch, and started to leave the table. For the only time that long night, I addressed Karadzic directly, telling him that we worked only for President Bill Clinton and that he could call President Carter if he wished but that we would leave and that the bombing would intensify. Milosevic said something to Karadzic in Serbian; he sat down again, and the meeting got down to business.

After 10 hours, we reached an agreement to lift the siege, after more than three years of war. The next day, we finally were able to fly into the reopened airfield in Sarajevo. The indomitable city was already beginning to come back to life. Two months later the war would end at Dayton, never to resume.

But while the Dayton agreement gave NATO the authority to capture Karadzic and Mladic, an arrest didn't occur for nearly 13 years. Finally, one of these dreadful murderers has begun the trip to The Hague. It is imperative that Mladic follow Karadzic on this one-way journey.

His capture is all the more important because it was accomplished by Serbian authorities. Serbian President Boris Tadic deserves great credit for this action, especially since his good friend Zoran Djindjic, then prime minister of Serbia, was assassinated in 2003 as a direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to The Hague in 2001. Karadzic's arrest is no mere historical footnote; it removes from the scene a man who was still undermining peace and progress in the Balkans and whose enthusiastic advocacy of ethnic cleansing merits a special place in history. It also moves Serbia closer to European Union membership.

Karadzic's capture is another reminder of the value of war crimes tribunals. Even though 12 years-plus is an inexcusably long time, the war crimes indictment kept Karadzic on the run and prevented him from resurfacing. In far-away Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted last week by the International Criminal Court, should be paying close attention.

Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, writes a monthly column for The Post.

John Austin Fights Fire

(John Austin wrote the following column for Chile's Santiago Times [www.santiagotimes.cl], which published it in the July 22, 2008 edition. An editor's note introduced the article thus, "Chile has earthquakes and volcanoes; California, our sister country in so many ways, has earthquakes and fires. The current fires in California -- more than 1,000 of them, most started by lightning strikes in dry grass and woodlands -- have produced news reports of firefighter heroism and sacrifice and startling photos of aircraft swooping down to drop fire retardant just above the rooftops of threatened houses. One photo reminded John Austin, retired writer and long-time California resident, of the remarkably foolhardy efforts he made to fight an earlier fire that endangered his house." The "Sue" John speaks about is of course our classmate Susan White Austin.)

PIDDLER ON THE ROOF
By John Austin

The picture of the plane dropping fire retardant just feet above a house brought to mind what happened when my wife, Sue, and I moved here to San Rafael. That summer of 1973, an arsonist set four fires in the bone-dry hills within a half-mile of our house.

Sue called me in the city and I rushed home from work, Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, I could see the smoke, which had climbed several thousand feet in the air, from 20 miles away. When I arrived home, there was an evacuation order in effect. Sue had already packed a few things and quickly gathered up our young daughter, Diana, and our cat and departed in our only car. She tried to persuade me to go with them, but I stupidly decided to stay on and try to save our house. I got up on the roof to soak down the wood shakes and surrounding trees. The garden hose I dragged up with me dribbled a pitifully weak stream of water.

As I watered, I could see firefighters slogging up a steep rise some 200 yards from our house in 100-degree-plus heat. A stand of eucalyptus trees planted close together as a windbreak probably 70 years earlier rose above the crest of the ridge. The trees stood some 80 feet high and stretched about 150 yards along the ridge line. Whiffs of white smoke appeared among the limbs and then BANG, a very loud explosion rocked the house. The whole stand of trees erupted in a 100-foot-high,150-yard-long sheet of flame. The firefighters were knocked over and sent rolling down the hill. I was blown back to the rear edge of the roof, my eyebrows singed off.

The wave of heat surging out from the ignited eucalyptus grove was so intense that I felt nauseated. I once toured a steel plant in Pennsylvania and when they tipped the huge buckets to pour off molten steel the air became sickeningly hot. This was hotter, and I realized fighting this blaze with a garden hose was maybe not such a good idea.

Just before Sue left, we had watched from our deck as three houses across the small valley below us went up. They first leaked little wisps of white smoke—just as the trees had—and then BOOM they were engulfed in flame. From the time the smoke first appeared to the time the houses were a smoldering pile of ash was no more than 90 seconds. As I got back up on my feet on the roof, I thought I might be about to experience the same thing.

Then, flying so low I could see the rivets in the wings, a WW II B-17 zoomed overhead. It came out of nowhere. I neither saw it nor heard it before it appeared right above my head. It dropped red fire retardant, which covered the roof and me in a thick blanket of gummy powder. The main target of the bomber and its load of retardant was the ridge line of burning eucalyptus. It scored a direct hit. Amazingly, the fire in the trees was snuffed out almost immediately, and the struggling firefighters began to regroup, heading back up the hill.

The plane was so low, 40 feet or less, and its trajectory so sharply downward, that I was sure it was about to crash as it passed out of view into the surrounding smoke, which had taken on a reddish hue. But there was no explosion. Instead, more quickly than seemed possible, the B-17 was back over my roof—lower than before, its engines shrieking as it tried to regain altitude. The backwash from the propellers blew the hose out of my hands, and again I tumbled down to the back of the roof. Fortunately, I didn’t fall off. I was stunned, but I would have kissed whoever was flying that plane, risking his or her life to save the valley’s houses. (I later learned the pilot was probably a woman, one of the two at the time flying fire control missions in northern California.)

I had had enough. I got off the roof, went to the front of the house, turned off the water to the hose, and walked away from our neighborhood, out of the immediate fire zone. The fires were brought under control some 12 hours later, and no houses on our side of the valley were lost. Even better, no one was killed or seriously injured, though some of the firefighters suffered minor burns and bruises.

This summer has been the worst for fires since Sue and I have been here. Thankfully, none has been very close to us. But a couple of weeks ago, the air was uncharacteristically hazy, smudged with the smoke of hundreds of fires—some several hundreds of miles away—which winds brought our way. The sun was an eerie red much of the day, and, because of the smoke, the temperatures stayed 10 degrees cooler than they normally would have been.

Though warnings were issued about the hazards to breathing posed by the smoke, I remained unconcerned and proved I had learned very little in the 35 years since that fiery day on the roof. I kept up my everyday pattern of exercising on one of our decks in the cool of the morning at six a.m. despite the warnings.

After about a week, the winds changed and the smoke dissipated.

Columnist Cohen Promotes Dick Holbrooke

---

July 10, 2008

The Mother of Friendships Lost
By Roger Cohen

PARIS — There are relationships for which a novel is a more adequate form than journalism. Their twists, and attendant psyches, demand an act of the imagination to render them. Into that category falls the recurrent charged drama of Anthony Lake and Richard Holbrooke.

Its latest subplot emerged last month when Barack Obama announced a 13-member Senior Working Group on National Security that includes Lake but omits Holbrooke, probably the most prominent Democratic foreign-policy luminary excluded from the inner circle.

Some may see no more than victors’ justice in this omission. Lake, who was national security adviser to Bill Clinton, sided with Obama from the outset. Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who bullied Bosnia’s warring factions into peace in 1995, supported Hillary Clinton.

But other prominent Hillary backers — including two former secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, and a former defense secretary, William Perry — glided into a top Obama team oddly weighted, for a professed change agent, toward veteran Washington insiders.

In this context, Holbrooke’s nonglide was conspicuous. Having known Lake and Holbrooke since I covered the Bosnian war, I asked Denis McDonough, the senior foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, if Lake closed the door on his former friend. “No, no, no,” McDonough said.

Doth he protest too much?

I don’t know, and Lake did not respond to attempts to reach him through McDonough and an e-mail message. But I do know this: If Obama is in his earnest about his admiration for the concept of a “team of rivals,” a phrase borrowed from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s so-named biography of Lincoln, he can find no better test of it than pairing Lake and Holbrooke.

(I applaud the team-of-rivals idea, practiced by Lincoln in bringing opposed Republicans into his cabinet. Nothing has been more damaging to the Bush administration than the president’s distaste for, and incapacity to absorb, vigorous dissent in the policy shaping process.)

The two men have known each other since Vietnam. They were “best friends, without a doubt,” in Holbrooke’s words. He named a son Anthony for Lake. Lake made Holbrooke godfather to his second child. Idealism, restlessness and brilliance united them. Temperament and ambition divided them.

Lake, 69, is controlled, measured, elusive, a man whose fierce competitiveness is dressed in the elaborate constructs of a probing intelligence. His energy and determination are no less apparent for being introverted.

Holbrooke, 67, by contrast, is sprawling, relentless, candid, a man of devouring appetites and extrovert energy, at once ingratiating and loyal, cajoling and ruthless — the doer to Lake’s thinker. If you want somebody to pull the trigger, or close a deal, think Holbrooke. He has compared diplomacy to jazz: improvisation upon a theme.

At some point, these differences became poison. The experiences of the first Clinton administration — when Lake got a top job and Holbrooke got nothing before becoming ambassador to Germany — turned poison to venom. Holbrooke’s Bosnia exploit, and Lake’s aborted nomination to head the C.I.A. in Clinton’s second term, deepened tensions.

Last year, a friend of mine now working on European issues for Obama, met with Lake. “So, it’s the duel of the consiglieri,” he said, referring to Lake’s backing of Obama and Holbrooke’s of Hillary Clinton. Lake laughed. When asked if he wanted to be secretary of state, he waved away the notion, but said he wanted to make sure Holbrooke didn’t get the job.

McDonough didn’t comment when I recounted this. Lake framed a negatives-laden rhetorical question about Holbrooke to Time magazine earlier this year: “Would I say Dick can play no role? Absolutely not.” There are others, including Warren Christopher, who are no Holbrooke fans.

I, like others who witnessed his Bosnian diplomacy, am a fan, however maddening the Holbrooke ego. It was impossible, having watched mass Balkan slaughter over years, not to marvel at his ability to forge enduring peace against all odds. He deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.

At a ceremony in Berlin this month, President George W. Bush’s father, the 41st president, described Holbrooke as “the most persistent advocate I’ve ever run into.” Translate as: Don’t get between this bull and what he wants.

That can be useful, put to the service of the nation he loves, at a time when America, enmeshed in two wars, needs to cut deals in Iraq, with Iraq’s neighbors, and in Afghanistan. Lake has called himself a “pragmatic neo-Wilsonian.” I’d call Holbrooke an “idealistic neo-Kissingerian” — a man for a rough world.

McDonough, in an e-mail, suggested Holbrooke would get an invitation. “Others we are eager to include in the group — and whom we have told we are going to work into the group — were also formerly with Clinton, including Wendy Sherman and Richard Holbrooke,” he wrote. Sherman is a former assistant secretary of state.

Get Holbrooke in, rejuvenate a too-traditional inner circle with some fresh talent like Christopher Hill and the ousted Samantha Power, and forge a true “team of rivals” boasting the mother of all rivalries. America’s huge foreign policy challenges demand no less.

Blog: www.iht.com/passages

John Austin on the Values Scarsdale Gave Him

Last night, I caught an interview of the late Tim Russert done two years ago by -- of all people -- Bill O'Reilly. They weren't talking about politics or reporting as much as they were discussing the values their fathers had instilled in them, and which of those values they were attempting to instill in their own kids. It was uncanny. I agreed with every single thing Russert said his father believed. Every word. I found it quite interesting. I have the same values as a man from Buffalo who did manual labor and struggled to put food on the family table. I grew up in an affluent suburb, am incapable of making a living working with my hands (if a light bulb needs changing, I have to call 911) and as an adult have been spared the the financial struggles the Russerts endured.

What I learned from being a member of SHS 58--Susan Berger

What I learned from being a member of our class is..that others from other places viewed us as "privledged" (we were),spoiled (some of us were)well educated (yes, I think we were, at least by the standards I heard about when I entered a large university...lets just say that a term paper didn't throw me),that we were all snobs ( yes, some of us, no some of us) I had a friend from Great Neck who accused me of "living too close to Greenwich!" thats ok, I told her she lived too close to the "5 towns" nuff said. I think we did grow up in a somewhat protected place, although my dad, who was born in Coney Island, made sure to show us other parts of the world where nobody had a car,enough to eat and sometimes a roof over their heads. I think the pride I felt in coming from Scarsdale had more to do with my dad's overcoming the poverty of his childhood and being able to raise his family in a town that was to be aspired to by most of the world. For me it was and is just my hometown..the place I grew up in.As I wrote to Bill..I'm immune to the "Scarsdale Shuffle"..when the comment "oh you must be one of those rich kids" is uttered..my best response ..with a big smile is ...YES. that seems to end the discussion. I did live there when I was married..a million years ago..I love Westchester, its beautiful, historic and comfortable for me..but I'm glad I live in Mt. Kisco..its diverse in every way possible. As close as I am ..I don't think I've been in Scarsdale in 2 years..no reason to go. The memories are in my head and seeing the changes in the town is.....a bummer. See you soon, Susan

The Culture of 1958, and a Comment - Michael Fox

Just to get you in the mood for our reunion event later this year, try the following website: www.fiftiesweb.com where you will find items on 50s fads, fashions, slang, pop history, TV ratings, and more. If you're interested in the Billboard Top Rock 'n' Roll Hits of our senior year, scroll down to "Index," click on "Oldies Music," then, on the next screen, click on "Go directly to music of 1958." You can track the rest of the 50s in like manner. I'll bet you'll be surprised to (re-)learn what the number one hit of 1958 was... Amazon.com has at least one good CD compilation of 1958 hits.

My comment is on the article about Alzheimer's. I'm not sure what this is doing on our blog, which should be about our memories, experiences and lives, but since it is there, I guess I can add something. The reasons given for cutting down on meat and dairy in our diets (or eliminating them) are good, self-interested ones. But there are other, equally good ones. Nearly everyone now knows about the cruelties of animal agribusiness. This industry is also extremely resource consumptive (wasteful is a better word) and environmentally damaging to a high degree. A solid vegetarian diet gives you everything you need, as the article points out indirectly, and is kinder to the planet. Nuff said?

Richard Kostelanetz Comments

I was hoping we could create collectively something so special about ourselves, our school, and our times that it would be recognized in, say, The New York Times and become a model for future class reunion books at Scarsdale and perhaps elsewhere. My forte as an occasional writing teacher has been getting people to do what they'd not done before and, indeed, didn't expect to do.

Since collective autobiography probably won't happen before our reunion, unless everyone gets everyone else writing pronto, may I suggest keeping the blog open so that everyone can consider adding to it AFTER we get together, making the collective document yet richer for all of us?


¶Mike Fox's house I remember for its more bohemian appearance that distinguished it from others and later informed my own housekeeping. It looks like a place where someone was doing some serious cultural work. Books were scattered around. Among them was James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which I recall opening, discovering the errata sheet accompanying earlier editions, and soon came to study intensively. Nearly two decades later I was pleased to contribute some
visual/numerical art to a book honoring Mike's father, Milton, and designed by his
older sister, Robin, whom I remember as sophisticated.

¶Since contributing to modestly circulated literary magazines has been a major activity for me since 1962, I purchased from an antiquarian book dealer perhaps a decade ago a used ex-library copy of Frederick Hoffman's legendary The Little Magazine: a History and a Bibliography (1946). What a surprise it was for me to discover that the copy sent to me once belonged to the SHS library, which means that I could have read it by 1958, had I had then more knowledge of my future.

¶I recently recalled liking baseball until I turned fourteen or so, in the field that sloped down into a creek, I saw Art Paulin's curveball come at my head before swerving over the plate. No más.

¶Looking at Albie's incomplete list of fellow classmates, I noticed that none
currently reside in Scarsdale and that remarkably few live in New York City,
where so many of our parents worked, which I've always regarded as the center
of the world. Given that some of us could have inherited the houses in which we
grew up, I couldn't figure out why everyone went elsewhere. Does this moving
away reflect the sentiment behind the Scarsdale Shuffle? So I sent a circular
email to other SHS alumni, mostly literary, known to me. All of them replied
that they have classmates still residing in Scarsdale, sometimes to their
surprise, which means our class must be an aberration deserving no explanation.

¶A few weeks ago I shared drinks with the woman two years behind us whom I
took to our senior prom and had not seen in the fifty years since, and was
pleased to discover her as bright and attractive as she was then. May I be so
fortunate.

¶I'm relieved to read that others practice the Scarsdale Shuffle. I swear I
got the euphemism from Ken Gangemi, Don's older brother, who's a fellow
downtown (Manhattan) writer. He mentioned it as we were talking at an American PEN party to Victoria Redel, a writer who graduated from SHS a generation after us; but Ken insists that the coinage is mine. Why argue?

¶A colleague planning to write about parallel literary lives mentioned Ezra
Pound and William Carlos Williams, who went to school together before pursuing
separate careers, as did George Orwell and Cyril Connolly in English and Lionel
Trilling and Clifton Fadiman in America, the work of each writer in the pair
contrasting the other's for as long as they lived.

A comparable pair would be Richard Foreman and me, he graduating from
both SHS and Brown (U.) three years ahead of me, and preceding me into Artists' SoHo, which gave everyone here an informal artistic education. Though we've
lived across the street from each other for over three decades now, we rarely
exchange messages, as he is resolutely nonsocial and I more available than I
should be. Nonetheless, may we suspect that at least one historian will pair us
as two Scarsdale boys succeeding in innovative arts.

¶The last time our class gathered together so much love was flowing through
the room that I hope some people took up with each other, perhaps to their
surprise. At least one couple did, I heard, and are still together. Something
similar should happen again during our 50th. There's only one classmate I'd rather
not see again, and I doubt if he'll come.

FROM: CAROLYN E. BARTEL

Time flies. This year the Brooklyn Bridge is celebrating its 125th birthday and although I wouldn’t exactly consider myself a historic landmark, the fleeting five decades that have passed since the SHS 1958 graduation are quite difficult to comprehend. Technology and politics have made this world a very different place. And I, too, am a very different person.

Here is the inside scoop on me. When it came to choosing a career, the lure of the home furnishings industry was the obvious choice. A magazine career seemed quite natural since my family subscribed to every home furnishings publication. Zealously, I awaited each new issues arrival. Yes, I was a confirmed magazine junkie. Unbeknownst to me, my monthly exposure to furniture, décor, color, style and decorative arts fueled my passion. And career followed passion. I consider myself fortunate to have spent the better part of my life surrounded with home furnishings products that influence the way we live. Being on the cutting edge of new trends, refining design statements with a fresh point of view and juxtaposing old with new offered me limitless opportunities to create and develop a special editorial style for a specific audience. Travel, both international and stateside, was just one of the many perks. Working hard yielded many personal rewards.

Presently, I am happily residing in both NYC and West Virginia with my darling, Henri. Urban me could never give up the culture and excitement of city life. However, the lure of country calm and nature combined with city living is surely the best of two worlds. And yes, wanderlust is still with me - we take every opportunity for discovery both here and abroad.

10 THINGS THAT MAKE
1. My Significant Other
2. Friends/Family
3. Time
4. Photography
5. A Good Nights Sleep
6. A Great Bike Ride
7. City Lights
8. Heirloom Tomatoes
9. Exercise
10. Shoes

MY LIFE SPECIAL GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT
Completing a 92 mile bike ride

Tyko Kihlstedt and Loft Apartment in Bronx

Tyko wrote me yesterday, May 26:


Bill: Thanks for the info on Bill Leland's house in California. What a tragedy, but at least he's safe.

In the blog entry that you posted for me last month I made a very brief reference to our buying a loft on 140th Street in the Bronx (Mott Haven). We just closed ten days ago and are now going to totally re-do it with plans from a great architect and friend.

I thought that one (or more) of our classmates might be interested in the building as I just heard that there is only one unit left of the 13 in this 5-story old industrial building. So here are a few details of that last unit in case someone is curious. Post it, unless you think it's somehow not kosher to do so.

Tyko


It's certain kosher to post Tyko's note, I think, and the view of the apartment looking north:




Looking south all one sees is what will be your kitchen. It's also kosher to say that the apartment's asking price is $555K and that Tyko's email, should you want more info, is tyko.kihlstedt@fandm.edu. BS

Bill Leland Loses House to Fire

SUMMIT FIRE: ON DOVE LANE, FIRE WAS HIT AND MISS
By. J.M. Brown
Santa Cruz Sentinel
05/24/2008

CORRALITOS -- Wearing green gardening gloves, Bill Leland sorts through the pile of ashes that used to be his study.

He's looking for 30-year-old wooden toys that once belonged to his four children, who he hoped would someday pass the cherished playthings along to his four grandchildren.

But little in his idyllic camp-style house on Dove Lane survived Thursday's raging Summit Fire, except for a wood-burning stove that once warmed his living room and the metal rings that formed the core of his redwood-encased hot tub. He mourns the loss of priceless family pictures and personal papers.

"I know we'll move on from that," he said Friday, which marked the first time he was able to fully survey the damage since the 3,200-acre fire sent him and hundreds of other mountain residents fleeing. "The challenge is staying with that sadness while knowing that I'm very fortunate."

A tiny cluster of homes about eight miles into Eureka Canyon from Corralitos, Dove Lane is a story of random misfortune reminiscent of tales told after a tornado rips through a Midwestern prairie. Some houses are destroyed, while others are untouched.

Several hundred feet above Leland's home sits the ranch-style house of Janice Chaplain, completely unscathed. Yet, down the lane, a 3,500-square-foot home and outbuildings were razed, leaving owner Hugo Van Zazzara with just rubble to show for the four years he spent building the three-story labor of love by hand.

Some residents had insurance, others didn't. Some had recently trimmed back dry vegetation that acts as fuel for wildfires, but others didn't. Still, the precautionary measures didn't seem to make a huge difference as the blaze tore up the hillside pushed by swirling wind gusting up to 45 mph. It seemed to be pure luck whether a house was saved.

Ormsby Cutoff Road was not as fortunate. Up to 15 high-priced homes with an ocean view along that partially paved road were destroyed. Authorities have yet to report on damage in the other hardest-hit area along Buzzard Lagoon Road.

When Rebecca Henson returned Friday morning to the small cabin on Dove Lane she shares with her 5-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback mix, Sheriff, she was stunned to see their cozy home intact. A line of blackened grass and brush stopped within feet of the house, where firefighters also had cut a fire line around her propane tank.

"They saved it," she said. "God, it's so cool."

All four of the neighbors escaped Thursday after the sunrise fire rolled through the mountains from its origin near Maymen's Flat, off Summit Road. While Leland said he and Chaplain fled about two hours after the 5:20 a.m. blaze started, Van Zazzara and his son tried to fight the encroaching flames with garden hoses for several hours before being forced out by firefighters.

Although 911 dispatchers told her Dove Lane was not under a mandatory evacuation order yet, the 45-year-old Henson decided she should go. But first she had to remove fertilizer from her truck to make room for her belongings.

"I spent an hour shoveling chicken poop out of the back of my truck," Henson said, laughing as she recalled the panicky exit.

But as the fire roared closer to her home, Henson said she threw down the shovel, put down her coffee cup and said, "I'm out of here."

On Friday, the handle of the shovel lay melted on the grass; her coffee cup sat untouched nearby.

Leland, 67, an agroecology and sustainable food expert at UC Santa Cruz, decided to split once he saw an orange glow emanating from the forest as redwoods shook in the wind just outside his deck.

"It was clear I had to go," he said.

The glass that used to make up the floor-to-ceiling windows in his bedroom lay among the charred ruins as a retaining wall separating his property from Chaplain's house was still smoldering.

"This must have been so hot," he said several times, failing to notice a dozen flame-kissed lemons that lay on the ground near what used to be his lemon tree -- another sign of the fire's selectivity.

Leland, who said he may rebuild, visited the site briefly Thursday night after riding into the canyon with a reporter, but didn't get a close look until riding in with another news team Friday. While gathered with other canyon residents at the Corralitos town square Thursday, he had heard his house was destroyed, but "I just knew I had to see it for me to be able to accept it and move on."

Though Van Zazzara's 33-year-old son, Nathon, saw the devastation after sneaking a ride into the canyon, Van Zazzara said he couldn't bear to see what was left of his Victorian home, which featured stained glass windows from 1893 that were handed down by his great-grandfather. The 54-year-old furniture maker, who carried no insurance on the beauty he modeled after the landmark Chart House restaurant in Los Gatos, said he will live in a trailer for the time being but didn't know where he would end up.

"The only thing worse than losing the house would be moving out of this county," he said.


Thanks to Susan Elting Hillyard and Anne Moskovitz Davis for bringing this story to my attention. Bill Leland's email address is bleland@cruzio.com. BS

Tyko Kihlstedt

I'm really not one for reunion partying, especially as I have not kept up or re-made friendships over the ensuing years; I suspect that I might wander about a bit like a fish out of water, being a first-timer to the reunion. However, that bug of curiosity has me thinking about driving in from NYC on Friday the 19th. and meeting and catching-up with a few folks at the cocktail party before the dinner; then drive back to the city and take my good wife out for a late dinner there.

So, if you all who are planning this event are will allow me this "quickie" and not be offended, I would love to attend. I would even be wiling to come a bit earlier if some setting-up help is needed.

So here is a very brief catch-up on me that you may post if you wish, and do let me know if I won't put too many noses out of joint if I don't attend the main events---->

From Dartmouth to U. Penn for an MA (Art History) to University of Cincinnati (my first teaching position) to Northwestern for my PhD (still Art History, but specializing in the history of architecture). Back to Cincinnati for a few more years and then accepted a position at Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA), from which I retired two years ago. I now am an artist (or an aspiring one) and have had several photographic shows, and am also an oil painter.

Have been married for 41 years and wife Andrea and I still live in Lancaster, PA, but also have a small pied-a-terre in Chelsea in Manhattan. By next year we will own a condo in Mott Haven (South Bronx) and probably will move there permanently--if I can ever find painting studio space that I can afford there.

We have 2 daughters:
Rya is (was) an actress but is now chiefly a mom; lives in LA with her husband, Gil Bellows (also an actor). Rya did a quite a few TV series, such as BBC's The Buccaneers (Edith Wharton), or the Civil War series on one of our networks, North and South. She also was the "bad gal" in Home Alone III. Gil was in things like Ally McBeal (Billy), and Shawshank Redemption, and still is in the business as actor, writer and producer.

Carla is a musician and plays and travels constantly from her home in Oakland, CA. She plays the violin and sings. Among her groups are:
Tin Hat (acoustic jazz; first known as Tin Hat Trio); 2 Foot Yard (art song, in which she sings and plays violin at the same time with a cellist and percussionist); and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (prog rock band out of Oakland). She performs in many other venues as well, but these are her continuing commitments.

So there you have it. Below is a picture, the only one I can find, of me in my painting studio. Feel free to pass it on to whomever is doing the blog entries. Hope to see you in September.

Michael Fox

First, thanks to those who’ve set up this blog for us all to use. And heartfelt greetings to all my former classmates. Some of us have had the good fortune to remain in close contact over the years, often for geographical reasons. Others, like myself, have had very limited contact with classmates, except at reunions. I missed the 10th, having decided at the time I wasn’t interested (I later regretted the decision). I was at the 25th, then living in Canada just over the border from Watertown, NY. That was a ball, and I especially remember meeting people who were familiar, yet strangers, whom I had the delightful experience of getting to meet again and catch up with. Was there a 35th? I can’t remember, but if so, I missed that for not having heard of it in time. The 45th I also missed because I had moved with my present wife (of 20 years now) to Australia. I was at the time shuttling back and forth to Canada to complete my teaching commitment before retiring, at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where I taught philosophy for many years. Anyway, the timing of my travels in 2003 was unfortunately out of synch with the reunion dates. Now I plan to make amends, so Scarsdale, watch out! I am coming (from Armidale, New South Wales, Australia) to the 50th, with my dancing shoes on.

Recently, I’ve become an Australian citizen, and now have three citizenships (that plus US and Canadian). My wife Louise is Australian, and our later-in-life daughter Zoé (now 19) has the same three citizenships (and passports) as I. I’m pretty much a citizen of the world. I don’t mean to sound pretentious; it's just that I’ve lived in a number of countries and don’t feel very deep roots in any. This has the advantage that I’m ready to pick up and go for an adventure in another part of the world even as an old fart; but the disadvantage is a certain restlessness and lack of solid identity with a particular place.

Louise and I plan to be in Kingston, Ontario during July-September of this year, visiting the US occasionally (as I have two sons from a former marriage and a granddaughter in New York, and a sister in Croton-on-Hudson).

If anyone’s interested, my most recent book is "The Remarkable Existentialists," an introduction to the subject and the main figures of the movement, to be published in July by Humanity/Prometheus Books; and I’m just starting work (with a co-author) on a new one called "Peace," which will be an overview of the subject, various concepts of peace, the conditions and underlying philosophy of peace, etc.

I’ll close with a memory or two. I moved from Eastchester, NY, where I’d done grades 5-9, entering SHS in grade 10. For me, SHS was a breath of fresh air. Eastchester High was a tough school (as was my elementary school), with lots of overt racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, and other forms of humiliation, and a pretty anti-intellectual environment among my peers. It was the kind of school system – and town – where it behooved you to be on the good side of bullies. You get the picture. So to me, SHS was a place to flourish. The school had much to offer: high standards, a well-run administration, good teachers (some great), good friends, many quality activities. I don’t remember ever being bored, as I joined the Printing Club, Projection Club, served on the G.O., worked for "Maroon" and "Jabberwock," played tennis and soccer for the school teams, and also extramural softball, baseball, and basketball, took violin lessons, and played table tennis, football, or whatever else was going on among my friends after school. Oh yes, there was a bit of time left over for studying, dating, raising hell late at night, going to cultural events in the City, and other things. I did (and still do) the “Scarsdale shuffle,” but am nonetheless ever grateful for having had the opportunity to attend SHS and have had no cause to regret any aspect of my education there.

I’m attaching a recent photo of Zoé at her high school graduation-year formal, and of Louise and me at the annual historic Geebung Race Club horse races (a classic Aussie event).

Tim Melchior and Susan Berger

A month gone, and none of you have come forward to add a post. With the permission of Tim Melchior and Susan Berger, I, Bill Stott, am adding comments they sent me. You may remember that I said I (stupidly) misspelled the name we're using (only you're not!) as our password. Tim writes:


Bill,

You had it right. It is spelled Melchior. Trust your memory. A story
that I remember is attending my first grade class, coming home, and telling my
parents that they spelled our name incorrectly because my teacher taught me the
correct spelling. She told me it was spelled Melchoir, and Dad laughed
and told me that I had it right and that I should correct the teacher. That
was a challenge at that time in my life. Dad was a good educator. I also
remember attending Hamilton College and having my anthropology professor ask me
if I was Danish. I told him that my heritage was German and that I had a
German name. He laughed and told me that I was Danish. I believe that he based
his thinking on Lauritz Melchior, who was a famous Danish basso opera
performer, especially Wagner. I was smarter than to challenge his point of view.
Actually our name, appropriately enough, is related to the holiday season.

Our name comes from the wise men in the Jesus story, and one of the wise men
was Melchior, allegedly the King of Saudi Arabia. The other two were Gaspar
and Bathazar. You will see the names often at this time of year and very
often in Europe from which Susan and I just returned visiting Austria, the
Czech Republic, and Germany. Our name originally was Melcher, a German name, and
the original family settled in Bucks County, PA. My great grandfather,
Oliver Hoffman Melcher, was a minister, and he thought that he was bright and a
king, so he changed our name. In Bucks County today, at the Durham Church in
Durham, our family is buried, and there the names read: Melcher, Melchor
(because the congregation could not spell Melchior correctly, so he eventually
modified it), and Melchior. My grandfather allegedly changed it back to the
Melchior spelling. The family history is one of saving souls through religion and
education, and I have a cousin who was the minister, now retired, of the
Universalist Chuch next to Lexington Green in Lexington, MA. Her daughter is now
a minister, too. And now you know how my dad received his name; he was named
for his grandfather.

Tim Melchior, or Melcher, or Melchor, but never Melchoir, which I see all of
the time



As for my wonderful explanation of how to add a post to this site, Susan wrote:


I don't think I understood one word of all that explanation. You'll need to
explain it in other words when I see you someday. Happy Holiday!!! Susan


When I asked Sue if I could post her comment here, she replied:


Hi Bill..do you think my response was so worthy of being included on the website? I actually am able to find my way around the internet but that entire "direction" was too much for me!!!!! My favorite word....WHATEVER!!!!


I'm sorry not to have a picture of Tim, but I have a wonderful one of Susan and her handsome sons. Susan, I'd ask you to log in and add their names but I know my directions didn't work for you. Please email me their names and I'll add them.

Pete Lyons, Christmas Eve

Merry holidays, classmates!
And thank you, Bill, for setting all this up (and for guiding me through the sign-in process...)

I often think back on the best single course I ever took at SHS: touch-typing. "Best" because that equipped me go on to make a career in automotive journalism. It's been a fun ride, and I'm still at it. Just a few days ago I was at Willow Springs raceway here in Southern California track-testing a new 2008 Dodge Viper ACR ("American Club Racer"): a winged monster making 600 horsepower and supposedly capable of 190-something mph—though I only glimpsed 140, once, on the straight. At that point it seemed like a good time to try the brakes. Hard.

If I can make this work, here's what I looked like that heady day:


I'm not supposed to show pictures of the car itself because ACR material is embargoed until the end of January. Shortly after that my story should be in AutoWeek with a longer version on autoweek.com

My wife Lorna and I are about to celebrate our 25th anniversary. We live in a small mountain community named Big Bear, near a lake of that name east of Los Angeles. She's from NY state too, but we met out here when we both worked for the same magazine. She was the managing editor and hired me to be editor. We married and she's still my boss. Here, with any luck, is a picture of Lorna at one of her favorite activities:


Ok, enough fun for now. Let's try posting this and see what happens.
Best to you all,

-- Pete