Brandeis Magazine

Winter 2024/2025

1950s

Class of 1952

Diana Siegal, who is 93, writes, “In the most recent issue of Brandeis Magazine, the photo of the 1948 program from Abram Sachar’s inauguration brought back memories of my mother and me watching the ceremonies from the Symphony Hall balcony. The tall, elegant English professor Osborne Earle was the marshal — just as he would be at our 1952 graduation (his full-page photo graced our yearbook). He, Ludwig Lewisohn, and Milton Hindus taught three different pronunciations for Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ in the three sections of the required freshman humanities course.”

Class of 1953

No Class Notes submissions this issue.

Class of 1954

No Class Notes submissions this issue.

Class of 1955

Herbert Lewis is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oromo Studies Association and delivered the keynote address at the organization’s 2024 national meeting. Herbert’s most recent book will be published in early 2025 by Berghahn Books.

Elaine Phillips Ostroff, P’80, G’13, received a Distinguished Alumni Award from B.M.C. Durfee High School, in Fall River, Massachusetts, in May 2024. A 1951 Durfee graduate, Elaine was recognized for her professional accomplishments in the field of universal design, and her advocacy in behalf of civil rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. She also belatedly received varsity letters for her athletic achievements during high school.

Class of 1956

No Class Notes submissions this issue.

Class of 1957

Janet Hentoff Krauss enjoys being a member of poetry groups, leading a poetry discussion group, attending poetry workshops, and having her poems published in Amethyst Review and her haiku in Cold Moon Journal. She and husband Bert are looking forward to the arrival of a second great-grandchild soon.

David Kline writes, “Enjoying living. Arthritic ankles, but the rest of me fully functional. Baking bread, pickling, making pasta. Learning at last to read contemporary poetry. Teaching Torah at the local synagogue. Proud of what my three kids are doing for the world, and in awe of what their kids do. Lunching regularly with Peter Sander. My dancer wife, Barbara, still does a weekly improv class.”

Art by Diana Kurz has been exhibited at NYC’s FORMah gallery and Heller Museum, and at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair. One of her paintings was selected by the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies office for display in the embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Diane Lindner, G’15, has moved from Miami, where she lived for 57 years, to an independent living campus in Boca Raton. She says she’s enjoying making new friends and exploring new learning opportunities, and she’d love to hear from Brandeis friends at dianerc@aol.com.

Class of 1958

In May 2024, actor Annette Miller, GSAS MFA’76, received a Special Citation at the Elliot Norton Awards ceremony, held annually by the Boston Theater Critics Association. In 2003, Annette was the recipient of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her work in “Golda’s Balcony,” a performance she reprised in 2023-24 at both Shakespeare & Co., in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Boston’s Emerson Paramount Center.

Gerald Segel lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, with his wife of 63 years. They have three children, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, and travel to Boston at least once a year. Two years ago, they spent time on the Brandeis campus, including a visit to the Rose Art Museum.

Class of 1959

David Cohen reports sad news: Judy ’60, his wife of 59 years, died in June 2024.

Shepard Forman returned to Timor-Leste — 50 years after doing ethnographic fieldwork there — to receive the Order of Timor-Leste from President José Ramos-Horta. The highest honor bestowed on a foreigner, the accolade recognizes Forman’s contributions to the Timorese struggle for independence and statehood. The Forman family is building a digital archive of their anthropological research on the Makassar people, among whom they lived from 1973-74.

I. Bruce Gordon would enjoy hearing from classmates. “I still get around,” he says, “though not as easily as in the past.”

Marcia Berg Haskell writes, “Still living in Watertown, Massachusetts; still missing my husband; still running a weekly unfoldment circle. I have been actively studying shamanism, and finding a lot of satisfaction and calm from that. Quiet, peaceful, grateful life.”

“Majesty,” a 5-meter-high oil-on-canvas painting by Ellen Lapidus Stern, hangs in the main lobby of the Jerusalem Municipality complex, in Israel.