By Gregory A. Weiss
Jeff and Diana Hill were unhurt physically, but the October fires in northern California caused them devastating damage, burning their house to the ground. Showing his true grit, Jeff wrote shortly afterwards: “We’re considering this the first week of ‘lifetime #2.’ Life goes on.” The good news is that the homes of our two other northern California winemaker resident couples, Ted and Peggy Elliott and Chris and Lorna Strotz, were spared from damage.
A November obituary in the New York Times reported on the death of Henry (“Terry”) Christensen III from lung cancer. Terry had an outstanding career as a trusts and estates partner with NYC’s prestigious Sullivan & Cromwell, which he left in 2007 to join McDermott Will & Emery. His interests outside the practice of law were many and broad. He was a founder and chairman of the Prospect Park Alliance, which helped rejuvenate the once forlorn Brooklyn park; a trustee of the Vincent Astor Foundation, the philanthropy that NYC society doyenne Brooke Astor ran until 2002; and the chairman of the nonprofit Theater for a New Audience. The author of International Estate Planning, he was the president of the International Academy of Trust and Estate Law, taught at New York University, and advised the treasury department and other agencies on tax provisions related to offshore trusts and combating the financing of terrorism.
Bob Smallridge has notified us of the death in September of his good friend, Charlie Jester. Charlie had a long career as an architect in Memphis, Tennessee. An avid devotee of all things Scottish, Charlie was a bagpipe enthusiast who played on all sorts of festive and solemn occasions.
Tom Maher and his partner Lisa moved about a year ago from Vermont to Denver—“bigger mountains and less humidity.” Among the highlights of their past year was a trip to South Africa—the first time Tom had visited since he lived there in the mid-’70s—which included a classic animal safari.
Robin Reid is proud to announce the publication of his new book, Renaissance Psychologies: Spenser and Shakespeare, “too expensive to purchase, too many footnotes to allow pleasurable reading, but a real pageturner if you love Elizabeth I’s two best poets!”
Don Bickford reports that he and Rob Ulery “recently spent three days and two nights exploring parts of New Hampshire’s White Mountains” and included an impressive photo of the two of them besides a picturesque mountain stream.