By Gregory A. Weiss
First things first: Hold the dates for our gala 40th reunion, June 1-4, 2006. There will be plenty of details to follow, but remember that if you ask anyone who attended the 35th how it went they will rave with superlatives — and the 40th will be even better! Don’t miss it.
As the momentum builds for the 40th we should all be especially proud of what we have done for Yale on the fundraising front. Bob Brundige has been the main driver behind our recent success (with support from many others), and we are pleased to present several excerpts from his report on the fiscal year ending June 30, 2005. “I am so pleased to advise that we did it, we really did it. The results for the year just ended are spectacular. They far exceeded not only where we came out last year but also our goals for this year. We ended up with the incredible participation rate of 85.1 percent, with 701 of our classmates contributing. Awesome! Fantastic! On the dollar front, $407,506 was raised. This is 22 percent more than last year and 16 percent over our goal for this year. Special kudos go to Jim Munson, David Mette, and Lynn Harrison, each of whom came in at 100 percent. Pierson came out on top of the colleges with 91.2 percent, followed closely by Morse at 90.9 percent. Calhoun had the biggest jump from last year, going up 19 points from 61 percent to 80 percent. Trumbull and ES followed closely behind, increasing by 16 and 15 percentage points, respectively.”
Turning to some more somber news, Gerry Rosenberg’s note needs no elaboration: “I have the sad duty of reporting the death of my dear friend and classmate, Anwar (”Ali“) Fancy, who died in his sleep on July 20. A moving service was held at Frank E. Campbell’s, in Manhattan, two days later, at which Anwar’s Saybrook College roommate, Jim Knowles, and Anwar’s son, Hussein, spoke. Anwar leaves his lovely wife, Saeeda, who works for the United Nations, and his three wonderful and accomplished children. The children are Mahnaz, who is the director of Arts of the Islamic World and is a University of Chicago graduate; Khadijah, Yale [Saybrook] ’94, who is research director of Camfed in Cambridge, England; and Hussein, Yale [Saybrook] ’97, a graduate student in medieval history at Princeton. At the time of his death, Anwar was president of his own company, Oxus Partners, headquartered in New York. During his varied business career, he was among the first Western businessmen to successfully penetrate the Soviet Union, in the late 1980s. Anwar was warm, charming, sophisticated, adventurous, optimistic, a great friend, a wonderful husband, and a proud and loving father.”
New grandfather, Frank Carrington, sends the following note: “Carolyn and I are grandparents for the first time. Grandson Chase will be two at the end of April. He has been to several tailgates and Yale football games so far. We recently celebrated our 40th anniversary and look forward to at least as many more. We’ve had several mini-reunions at the Bowl with roommates McKee, McClelland, and Armstrong, as well as fellow DKE John Reid and even a cameo visit by Folberth.”
“After 37 years in the financial community,” writes Murph Levin, “I am changing gears to fund-raise full-time with Environmental Defense, one of America’s most influential environmental advocacy groups. This nonprofit, headed by Fred Krupp Y ’75, focuses on climate, ecosystems, oceans, and health — what could be more important than these issues! In family news, Nancy and I have celebrated our 36th anniversary. Our oldest, Tim, Y ’93, has built a flourishing NYC-based tutoring business. Duncan, Y ’97 and Yale Law ’02, is an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and was married this summer to Samantha Lazarus, Y ’02, daughter of George Lazarus, Y ’67. ‘Sam’ is a producer at Young and Rubicam. Our daughter Kelly, Y ’02 and master of environmental management from FES ’03, has returned to the forestry school to pursue her PhD. She was working in Boston with an NGO dedicated to clean air in New England.”
Tom Wollaeger is proud to report that on Labor Day, “I found the buoys in the fog faster than the others in my age group and managed to win the 1-Mile Ocean Pier Swim in Oceanside, California.” We’ve also learned that Tim “was able to squeeze in 50 days of skiing” last year, prompting the question as to whether he is more comfortable in his ski suit or his tank suit!
Our apologies to Patrick Wilmot for being remiss in not publishing earlier his following note: “Since I was retired at gunpoint from my job teaching sociology in Nigeria and dumped in London in 1988, I was too disillusioned to continue in academic work. I advised a civilian politician but he won elections in 1993, was arrested, and died in prison in 1998. I tried my hand at fiction and wrote three novels, the first of which, Seeing Double, will be published by Jonathan Cape (part of the Random House group) in May 2005. An American publisher has bought the rights and it should be out there later in the year. I also do some mentoring work with poor kids. Maybe I’ll try to attend the 40th reunion next year.” The accompanying press release describes Seeing Double as “a provocative contemporary tale of dictatorship, kleptocracy, globalization, and greed. It is a story of idealism, love, ganja, Sade, country & western music, Elvis, the art of sign painting, the war against terror, and the politics of haute couture.”