Class Correspondent

50th Reunion
June 9-11, 2017

Judy Allen has spent the past couple of years working to support and expand the Tompkins Corners Cultural Center. In December 2015, she and 10 other protesters were arrested at the Indian Point nuclear facility, in Buchanan, New York, on the day Unit 3’s license expired. She pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, paid the fine, and continues to fight to close the plant as well as stop the nearby Algonquin pipeline. Peter Gould, MA’00, PhD’02, lives and works in Brattleboro, Vermont, directing two performances a year at the New England Youth Theatre. He also operates several youth Shakespeare camps around Vermont and has written a new novel, “Marly.” Peter has been married for many years to painter Mollie Burke, a progressive who represents Brattleboro in the Vermont House of Representatives. Bob Greenberg’s retirement has been somewhat compromised by his surprising string of successes as chair of his county Democratic Party in southeast Utah — 10 victories against one defeat for the endorsed candidate. To fill a gap in agency staffing, he also spent 90 days back at Four Corners Community Behavioral Health, serving as county supervisor and clinical consultant. Bob traveled to Mozambique over the winter to visit his oldest grandchild. Elsa Hinojosa retired from the university in Monterrey, Mexico. She enjoys volunteering at museums, taking watercolor classes and belonging to a garden club. She has two daughters and two grandchildren. Elise Feingold Jackendoff lives with her standard poodle in Oro Valley, Arizona, where she teaches and performs. She taught for 26 years at the Longy School of Music, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then spent 10 years as an adjunct faculty member in UMass Amherst’s piano department. She has two daughters and three grandchildren. She says she is grateful for the excellent music education she received at Brandeis as well as for the university’s role in her getting a fellowship to study music in Germany. Since retiring as a new-teacher developer at the Boston Public Schools in 2009, Amika Kemmler-Ernst (she went by the name Barbara Ernst at Brandeis) has traveled extensively with her sweetheart, Gustaf Berger. She also volunteers regularly at a local public school and contributes a monthly photo essay for the Boston Teachers Union newspaper and its website. Chet Kessler retired after 40 years as a family physician at Inova Fairfax Hospital, in Virginia. He was chair of the family practice department and served as tour physician for the National Symphony Orchestra. He also helped found and served as president of the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. Ralph Propper retired from a research career at the California Air Resources Board after authoring a paper that showed California saw hundreds of thousands fewer cancer cases following the 1983 state legislation that controlled the amount of cancer-causing substances emitted into the air. He writes, “I first came to Sacramento in 1983 to lobby for passage of that legislation while working for an environmental group, so I feel proud of this achievement.” Howard Scher was elected secretary of international relations at the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and will assume the presidency of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project in January 2017. He practices trial law at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in Philadelphia. Two sons live in New York City, and his stepdaughter and another son live in Minneapolis. Susan Schulak Katcher, who retired from the University of Wisconsin Law School, is enjoying having more time to travel and read. Alan Sheinbaum is associate clinical professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and site director of the UCLA Fellowship Program in Digestive Diseases at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He enjoys time with his wife, Michele; daughters Jessica and Rachael, and their husbands, Aaron and Ed; and grandchildren Fern and Iris. In 2012, Robert Zweben retired from his private law practice in Northern California. He served as the elected city attorney in Albany for 34 years. He writes, “My jobs gave me the freedom to be a good father to my wonderful children. I got divorced in the early ’90s and remarried in the late ’90s. I am fortunate to be relatively healthy and active. I am thinking about our 50th Reunion and reacquainting with classmates.”

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