Class Correspondent

Charlie and I celebrated our 64th wedding anniversary. We feel very fortunate that our four children all live within a 45-minute drive — two are only a mile away — so family get-togethers are quite frequent. Grandson Jeremy (son of Mitchell and Carol Wolk, both ’83) will complete a master’s at Columbia next year; his wife, Paula, will receive a rabbinical degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary at the same time. Granddaughter Rebecca (Alan ’77) earned a master’s and is now a practicing physician assistant. Granddaughters Jenna (Alan) and Emily (Mitchell and Carol) are gainfully employed, while Batya (Susan ’75) just entered high school.

Bernard Bossom’s days in Seattle are filled with volunteer activities — small-business counseling; reading to 4-year-olds; and serving as director of the Soaring Eagle Foundation, which develops affordable housing in northwest Washington. Jeanette and Ike Goodman attended Commencement 2016 at Brandeis, celebrating their great-niece, who became an alum. The sixth member of the family to receive a degree from Brandeis, she’s heading to Cornell’s veterinary program. While in the area, Jeanette and Ike visited with classmates Sydney Abend, Dorothy (Saval) Levy, P’80, and Irma Napoleon. Ike still has his law practice in a San Francisco suburb. Jeanette pursues an active social agenda with a plethora of friends and volunteer activities. She still sings on occasion, to the delight of many. Bennett Gurian has resigned as medical director of mental health at Jewish Family and Children’s Service but is an active staff member at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, serving as the adult psychiatrist at the Bowdoin Street Health Center, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He does life drawing and watercolors of seascapes. Now retired after 23 years of running a small gallery in San Francisco, Judith Litvich plays mah-jongg, does water aerobics, travels and knits. She took a 17-day cruise from Copenhagen to New York City last year, and the visits to knit shops and the sitting and knitting with others in the lounge after dinner awakened a craft gene. She’s been lured once more by a January 2017 cruise itinerary that starts in Buenos Aires and travels around South America, dipping into Antarctica. She writes, “My wool stash will be replenished and will see me through many a foggy day.” Adrienne Gewirtzman Rockwood and herhusband, Bill, retired in 2013 to more fully enjoy and be part of the exciting lives of their five children, 16 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. In 2002, Adrienne and Bill opened Senior Hope, the first free-standing licensed addiction clinic for patients over age 50 in New York state. Adrienne keeps in touch with Pauli Lyon Guld, who has lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, since 1954. Adrienne writes, “There’s nothing like our two-hour phone conversations whenever nostalgia grabs us. Our years at Brandeis provided me with a lifelong enthusiasm for learning and forging close relationships, both inside and outside my world.” Richie Silverman writes that he has visited Asia each of the past three years to say goodbye but keeps going back. He plans to donate another group of netsuke to his gallery at the Toledo Museum of Art, pushing his gift to more than 300 pieces. Renowned developer Don Soffer received the South Florida Business Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The city of Aventura wasn’t much more than wetlands and a few houses when Don arrived in 1967 with a vision he sketched out on a napkin. Over the decades, he developed the Turnberry Isle Resort, the Aventura Mall, and many of the city’s first condominium towers and office buildings.

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