Class Correspondent

In May, our family celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday in Florida, with her children, grandchildren and all significant others, including my 92-year-old father, attending. We do not take these special occasions for granted. Please keep sending your notes and sharing your latest news. If you’re not receiving email reminders from me, let me know.

Liz Attardo Greenberger is working to establish a community boathouse in Los Angeles. The mother of three grown children, she says her position as the founding director of RowLA, an outreach rowing and college-access program, should help her launch the rowing center before the 2028 Summer Olympics open in LA. Marian Bass, P’26, reports that she and Linda Schwartzstein ’73 enjoyed a far-too-brief visit in early June; Linda and her husband, Lee Goodwin, stopped for lunch on the way back to the D.C. area after a trip to New Jersey. Marian also spent time with Dale Morse in July and with Jane Kaufman and her husband, Ken Sacks, in August. Larry Beck writes that he is still married to Anna and continues as the partner-in-charge of the trusts and estates department at Haas & Najarian, a San Francisco law firm where he’s worked for almost 35 years. He finds the work challenging and has no desire to retire anytime soon. In May, his 22-year-old twins, Zachary and Christina, graduated from NYU (politics) and UC Berkeley (psychology), respectively. Kathy Bell entered Brandeis with the Class of ’75 but graduated with the Class of ’74. She writes, “For the past three years, I have been trying to improve the jobs of the minimally paid certified and geriatric nursing assistants at the memory-care facilities where my husband, who is 16 years my senior, has resided. These human resources are essential as our generation ages and need to be taken care of.” Michael Brooks is in his 18th year as an associate justice of the Massachusetts District Court. A resident of Methuen, he sits mostly in the Lawrence District Court. Bob Creo renewed his friendship with Glenn Wong when they both attended the Sports Lawyers Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in May. Bob was there as an arbitrator on behalf of the Court of Arbitration for Sports, and Glenn is active in the SLA, having served recently as its president. In May, Bob received the Sir Francis Bacon Award at an annual luncheon held by the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Denise Dill Bell was looking forward to full-time retirement before her husband launched a non-emergency transportation service that provides ambulettes to people in need in the metro D.C. area. They have worked together in business for the past 38 years. Denise is writing a book about her life as an entrepreneur. She also enjoys lazy afternoons boating on the Chesapeake Bay, spending time with family and friends, and traveling. In August, for their biyearly week together, Joel Fiedler met up with Michael Kusevitsky Gould, Gary Zellerbach, Carl Sealove, Steve Bober, David Katzen ’75, and their spouses in Vermont. Mark Gershenson has a family law practice in Palm Springs, where he was named a Super Lawyer and included on Palm Springs Life magazine’s annual Top Lawyers list. His wife, Elaine, teaches in a local continuation high school. Daughter Chloe, 24, plans to manage social media for a music company in Los Angeles. Daughter Gwynne, 22, received a BA from the University of Maryland, College Park, in December 2017; hopes to pursue an MA in museum administration; and is working on her art and her baking (see her creations on Instagram at gwynne_makes_things). Michael Goldenkranz’s son, David, is getting married in India on Jan. 1 to Chinmayi Bhavanishankar. Michael’s son-in-law, Jesse Salomon, won the midterm November election for Washington state senator in the 32nd District. Before attending his niece’s wedding in Pescadero, California, Michael discovered his freshman residence-hall adviser, Fran Rosenblatt Samuels ’72, was the groom’s mother. Steve “Buddy” Greene’s article “Where Do I Find My Leadership?” was published on firehouse.com in June, and another article, “A Passion for the Fire Service,” was published in the September issue of Fire Engineering magazine. He was a presenter at the Great Florida Fire School in October; his topic was “The Elephant in the Firehouse: When Ego Gets in the Way of Passion.” In the spring, Kathryn Hellerstein was a Stroock Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. In June, she co-organized a conference on China and Ashkenazic Jewry at Nanjing University with colleague Lihong Song. This fall, she returned to teaching and directing the Jewish studies program at the University of Pennsylvania as well as to commuting with her husband, David Stern, between Penn and Harvard. In August, Bob Jaffe played Hunter John in the play “Hunter John and Jane” at the Jack theater, in Brooklyn. He can also be seen as Sam, the substitute bartender, in Episode 5 of “Sweetbitter” on the Starz network. Over the summer, he and wife Jill celebrated the third birthday of granddaughter Riley and the first birthday of granddaughter Parker. Rabbi Ellen Jaffe-Gill says she keeps busy with “rabbi stuff” and a ghostwriting project. She and her husband, Spencer Gill, are making some improvements to their Virginia Beach home, including installing solar panels as well as new flooring in three rooms. They’re excited about visiting Cuba in January as part of a humanitarian mission sponsored by the American Conference of Cantors. In August, Dan Klein and his wife spent three weeks on safari in Cape Town (South Africa), Livingstone (Zambia), the Serengeti (Tanzania) and Maasai Mara (Kenya). He reports they saw lots of animals (although no rhinos) on this trip of a lifetime. Michael Krasnow writes, “In November, I was grateful to be re-elected (without PAC money) to my 12th two-year term as a Vermont justice of the peace. I am still running the local K-8 ski and ride program, which includes night skiing and snowboarding, and an open gym with pickup basketball. I had a visit from Kenny Raskin, and keep in touch with Karl Frieden, Stanley Wakshlag and Jeff Alexander ’73. Our new grandson, ‘Sweet Baby’ James, was born in January. He and our grand­daughter, Logan (6), attended a Krasnow reunion (56 of us) in Maine in July.” Judith Karp Kurnick returned to Philadelphia after five years in Houston to open Judith Kurnick Coaching, focused on helping people who want to prepare for retirement but are not sure what they want or how to go about it. In 2019, her daughter, Susanna, will finish a postdoc fellowship in comparative medicine at MIT and will marry fellow veterinarian Caleb Alexander. Judith’s son, Daniel, plans to apply to business school and go into health-care management. In June, Ilene Miller, P’13, retired from her jobs as medical director of the Waldbaum Dialysis Center at New York’s North Shore University Hospital and medical director of acute dialysis services at North Shore-LIJ Health System (now known as Northwell Health). She joined North Shore in 1994 and worked at New York Hospital from 1978-94. At the end of July, Ilene and Don Friedman, P’13, hosted Henry Stancato and Rich Silver, along with their significant others, on Martha’s Vineyard. In August, Cathy Morris Chernoff enjoyed a 10-day vacation in Spain. In September, she attended the opening night in Chicago of “Tootsie,” a musical in which she is an investor. It will open on Broadway in March. In October, Cathy visited with her son and grandson in California. In April, Oxford University Press launched the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, a peer-reviewed digital resource for which Paula Rabinowitz serves as editor-in-chief. It contains more than 500 original scholarly articles on topics as wide-ranging as Finnish publishing during the Middle Ages, the history of chapters, animals in literature, networks, Japanese responses to Beat poetry, and much more. Hjálmar Ragnarsson, a former Wien scholar, has lived in Iceland full time since 1980. He became the first principal director of the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 1998, serving three consecutive five-year terms. Since retiring from that position, Hjálmar conducts research and works as a freelance music composer, with pieces ranging from solo compositions and larger symphonic works, to lieder and choir music, to musicals and opera. He has also composed extensively for dance, theater and films. He is active in cultural politics and has been an elected leader in various artists’ associations. Hjálmar is married and has three grown children. Ernie Rubinstein does freelance research and writes for Cordoba House, a Muslim nonprofit in New York City. He also teaches adult-ed classes in philosophy and religion at NYU. In July, Betsy Sarason Pfau joined Christie Hefner for a reunion at the Interlochen Arts Camp, where they first met as 12-year-olds. In August, Betsy and Dan Pfau ’73 had a mini-reunion lunch on Martha’s Vineyard with Don Friedman and Ilene Miller, P’13; Rich Silver; and Francine Ladd Sohn. Betsy and Dan’s son, David, came from London to visit them on the Vineyard, and they were able to see him again in London while attending a wedding in October. Gail Shister reports her daughter, Elizabeth Coleman, a couples therapist in Charleston, South Carolina, was married in September to Trevor Chichester, a professional translator. Elizabeth, who got her PhD from the University of Virginia, recently completed a postdoc at the VA Medical Center in Charleston. Stephen Simons writes, “I am 65 and loving it! I stand on my lanai overlooking the lake and love to paint. I submitted an article to Yiddish Moment and am now thinking about the next one. I am itching to get back to Israel soon and somehow participate in the defensive battle against Hamas.” Laurie Slater Albert lives in Malibu, California, with her Brookline-native husband, Steve. They’ve run their small Los Angeles architectural practice, Albert Group Architects, for almost 40 years and have three happy, healthy kids: Sandy, 37, who has a Master of Science in real estate development and has announced his engagement to Charlotte Roy, a physician; Mimi, 34, who has an MPH and works at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford (“Contact me if you have an eligible son in Silicon Valley,” Laurie writes); and Todd, 26, who has a master’s in architecture and plans to work in that field. Steve and Laurie spent Yom Kippur in Israel with Victor Friedman and his wife, Nurit. Jill Stavenhagen is an adjunct instructor at Blinn College, in Bryan, Texas. She writes, “I teach art history as my part-time day job while I make deathless art in my spare time. My youngest daughter went to the preschool in Usen Castle while I attended class. It is hard for me to believe now, but I held two part-time jobs while I was at Brandeis, and it was fun!” Shelly Stein and Barbara Brickman Stein ’73 have three sons and are expecting their seventh granddaughter (who will be their eighth grandchild). In August, the couple celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary. Shelly is president of Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, the largest distributor of alcohol products in North America. David Tracy’s daughter, Kim, a Vanderbilt grad, married her college sweetheart in June at a destination wedding in Iceland. David’s son, Jeffrey, a Bryant University accounting graduate working at PwC in Boston, was married in November 2017. High-end wine flowed at both weddings, David reports. Khan Zahid, who moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in November 2017, teaches part time at High Point University. His wife, Samia, teaches at a local Montessori school. Daughter Sarina started medical school in Virginia, and son Fayyad is a sophomore at the University of Maryland.

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