Class Correspondent

55th Reunion
June 9-11, 2017

Elena Lesser Bruun, a marriage and family therapist/mental-health counselor, wrote “Not on Speaking Terms: Clinical Strategies to Resolve Family and Friendship Cutoffs.” Linda Amiel Burns, director of The Singing Experience, received the Entrepreneur Award from Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) at a ceremony at Sardi’s, with friends, family and many from the theater community in attendance. Linda has been a member of TRU’s advisory board for many years and helped found the organization 25 years ago. She was recognized for “helping thousands of individuals find their voice, their confidence and their artistic identity for 38 years at The Singing Experience and being a TRU friend from the start.” Phyllis Cohen Gladstein retired after 42 years on the faculty of Yale’s Department of Child Psychiatry, where her focus was autism, trauma and early-childhood development. She served as vice president of the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Allied Professions, as well as the Eastern Mediterranean Association of Child Psychiatry. She was instrumental in translating a questionnaire into classical Arabic to better identify very young children on the autism spectrum. Her husband, Donald Cohen ’61, whom she met as a Brandeis sophomore, died of an ocular melanoma after 37 years of marriage. Five years ago, she married Gary Gladstein. They live in Greenwich, Connecticut, and spend winters in Boca Raton, Florida. Phyllis has four children and 11 grandchildren. Susan Plotnick Myers still teaches world-politics classes in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area, a career she finds somewhat surprising for an English literature major. She credits her English professors at Brandeis with teaching her how to absorb and analyze material, and John Roche and Max Lerner, specifically, with opening her eyes to political issues. Susan and her husband, Ken, have been married for 53 years. They enjoy interesting travel, summers at the Jersey Shore and spending as much time as they can with their five grandchildren. Alan Rubin, who has been retired from the practice of medicine for five years, continues to contribute to medical books in the “For Dummies” series. He and his wife, Enid, recently traveled to Rome, South Africa and Paris. They delight in their two granddaughters. Since retiring as a professor of early-childhood education, Claudia Shuster paints oil portraits in her studio. Her special interest in musicians leads her to paint them in the ecstasy of performing. She also co-leads a program in which seniors mentor community-college students. Judith Glatzer Wechsler completed her 28th documentary film, about art historian Aby Warburg. Her previous film, “The Passages of Walter Benjamin,” was shown in New York, Paris, London, Berlin and Jerusalem. She is retired from Tufts, where she was the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Art History.

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