Class Correspondent

Hello again, Class of 1953. Although I recently sent out an email message to our class, the response was very small. For septua/octo/genarians, we apparently have remained so active that we don’t have time to respond to a call for details. I had even prompted a reply by posing a question about the results of the recent election.

Marshall Sterman
was the first to answer: “My write-in candidates were Adlai Stevenson for president and Eleanor Roosevelt for vice president,” he said, adding, “I’m hoping that Max Lerner will be the secretary of state.” Marshall was recently named chair of the board of ThermaFreeze, a maker of patented refrigerant products designed for consumer and commercial use; he was also chosen to serve on the board of directors of Converted Organics, a company dedicated to producing high-quality, all-natural, organic soil amendment and fertilizer products through food-waste recycling.

Carole Kessner responded to Marshall that she voted the same way, except that she wanted Roosevelt for president and Stevenson for vice president, and, in this age of globalization, was hoping for former economics professor Svend Laursen for treasury secretary. She also said that she was proud of the election results in her state, New York.

Leslie Small Paul
wrote, “I, too, am proud of my (adopted) state and my birth state. I am originally from Massachusetts, but my adopted state (for the last 32 years) has been California, and we did quite well this year. I really have many qualms about the next two years when so many people from the other (states) didn’t vote their own interests but opted for change that certainly doesn’t augur well for their benefits or their future. I was a Stevenson activist in ’52 and haven’t seen any reason to change since then!”

Natalie Hittner Coch replied, “I am very proud of my state (New York),” and she noted, “I am in touch all the time with Richie Silverman ’54 and every once in a while with Leah Mainzer. I’m doing well and enjoying my sons and my grandchildren.”

Al Zadig contributed this: “After several years serving parishes in North and South Carolina, it’s lovely to be back in New England. I’m the parish priest at Grace Episcopal Church in Oxford, Mass. It’s a wonderful parish in a Norman Rockwell kind of town. I just celebrated the 49th anniversary of my ordination and my 79th birthday, but I feel like a youngster, enjoying life and work so much. As for the recent elections, I find myself too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals, but was able to rejoice in the victory by Democrats in most of the election results in Massachusetts.”

As class correspondent, I will add that 
I hope the rest of you will send some personal news along to me for the next issue of the magazine. I have a feeling that some of our classmates may even have great-grandchildren now applying to Brandeis. Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? (from a poem by François Villon studied in a class taught by former professor Claude Andre Strauss-Vigée.) 
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