By Gregory A. Weiss
Pat Randolph was presented the Chinese National Great Wall Friendship Prize in three days of ceremonies in Beijing at the end of October. This is the highest award China gives to foreigners, and Premier Wen Jiabao presided at the presentation ceremony. The prize acknowledges Pat’s 15 years in China contributing to the development of law in the real estate area. His activities include lecturing to practicing law groups and government groups in every major Chinese city, and at more than 25 Chinese law schools. Most of his work has been carried out through the Peking University Center for Real Estate Law, co-founded by Pat seven years ago.
Our “replacement body parts” competition described in our most recent class notes has generated one response so far—from Tim Wollaeger, who writes: “Following your theme of modern medical miracles, I had a coronary event more than four years ago but have been doing fine. This summer, I competed in three one-mile ocean swimming events and won medals in my age group in each of them. The combination of coronary events and ocean swimming led to my being in an ad for the J&J heart stent. (See www.cypherstent.com.) My swimming successes were helped by my moving up into the 65-69 age group. Cindy and I were very pleased to be able to celebrate my 65th birthday, in August, with all three of our children and seven grandchildren in attendance. I hope you and our classmates are healing and getting ready for the ‘Yale ’66 WinterFest’ in Beaver Creek, Colorado, from Sunday, January 25 through Wednesday, January 28.”
An article in the Aspen Daily News in August described “Howie Mallory’s ‘last hurrah’ at Community Banks”: “Howie Mallory’s last day as executive vice president of Community Banks of Colorado was in June. But on Friday, his co-workers, bank co-founders, and friends hosted a party, and a roast, in his honor.
”Someone joked that Mallory was too tight with a dollar to spring for a party while still at the bank. John McBride, an old friend, ribbed Mallory that his retirement party was being held in a bank parking lot. Aspen mayor Mick Ireland immediately pointed out that parking lots in Aspen are worth millions of dollars. Nearly everyone who spoke acknowledged Mallory’s intelligence, creativity, civic pride, and casual approach to preppy fashion.” The article goes on to say that Howie is planning to take his family to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and then to return to Aspen where he has been and is expected to continue to be an active member of the community. Howie moved to Aspen in 1973 and, among his community activities, has been a board member and president of the Aspen Valley Land Trust and the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.
We read all the time about Fred Smith in his capacity as founder and chairman of Federal Express, but a recent article in the New York Times describes another side of Fred: movie mogul. Apparently he is the principal backer of Alcon Entertainment, a small movie production company run by two young Princeton guys whose films include The Sisters of the Traveling Pants, Dude, Where’s My Car? and My Dog Skip.