CLASS OF ’57 NOTES FOR Sept-Oct 2002 TECH REVIEW

From Alan M. May

At our 45th Class Reunion held in June class officers were elected. Nelson Disco is your new Class President. Hank Salzhauer tells me that the new Vice Presidents are Gary Dischel, Bob Gal and Martin Zombeck. Your new Class Secretary is Jack Safirstein while Ron Keefe continues as our perennial (and ever solvent) Class Treasurer. Congratulations to you all!

There is always news of Ray Stata. If I published a fraction of it, there would be no room in these columns for anything else; however, one choice item (sent to me by Hank Salzhauer) ought not to pass unmentioned. On November 8, 2001 the Semiconductor Industry Association awarded their industry’s highest honor for leadership, the Robert N. Noyce Award, to Ray. (The Noyce Award honors the memory of Bob Noyce, the co-founder of Intel). Ray “received the award for his continual commitment to key education initiatives. Ray has supported hundreds of programs designed to develop learning skills for youth and promote interest in engineering. As the first president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, Ray advocated that engineering education and university funding were the responsibility of government and industry. The “Two Percent Solution” contribution program encouraged corporations to dedicate a portion of their R&D budgets to education. Legislation passed in 1988 helped combat a teaching shortage in Massachusetts. The ME-STEP program (Math English Science Teaching & Education Program) recruited 300 new teachers to middle schools. Ray has served to establish a charter school movement in Massachusetts and, to restructure the state university system. Additionally, Ray serves as the co-chairman of the Engineering in Massachusetts Collaborative dedicated to nurturing interest in math and science among students in K through 12 grade level.” At MIT Ray serves as chairman of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is a member of MIT’s Executive Committee. In 1987 and 1988 Ray served as President of the MIT Alumni Association. Ray does all this while running a Fortune 500 Company that he co-founded and served as president, CEO, and currently Chairman.

Elaine and Janet Byron write to update us on the status of the Jules Byron Memorial Scholarship Fund. Since 1997, the fund has provided an unrestricted annual scholarship for a needy student from the Bronx High School of Science who chooses to attend MIT. Last year the Byron ladies sent out their first solicitation letter and were “absolutely overwhelmed” by the response. They raised more than $14,000 from 73 donors. That increased the funds value by 150% and doubled the 2001 scholarship. Thus, they were able to give last year’s recipient a scholarship of $2,000 in September 2001. The Byron ladies write: “The generosity of Jules’ friends, colleagues and relatives still bring tears to our eyes.” They request that, for those wishing to participate, checks should be made out to “Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund/Jules Byron” and mailed to either lady at 11 Whitewood Road, Roslyn, NY 11576.

Philip Cheney dropped a note from Concord MA to say his main interests continue to be engineering and technology. Phil is VP Engineering at Raytheon and an AIAA Fellow.

Ave atque vale! I am thrilled to report that this will be my last appearance in these columns as your Class Secretary (I’ve served as Class Secretary at various times for at least 20 of the past 45 years). While I’ve enjoyed writing these columns; doing so however has taken much precious time away from Egyptology (I’ll tell you something about that in a future letter to Jack), music appreciation (see the June 2002 issue of Audio Video Interiors for an article about our Listening Room), and, most especially, grandfathering. I could not have kept these columns reasonably full for the last five years writing from Dallas, Texas had it not been for the consistent assistance and input you, my fellow classmates, have given me – for which I say a most grateful thank you to you all!

And, thank you Martin Zombeck for establishing and maintaining our Class website.

Lester Gimpelson wrote: “ I am very saddened to report the death of Marshall G. Schachtman, '57 on February 1. Marshall's whole career, from co-op days thru to retirement some years ago, was with Bell Laboratories; afterwards he consulted on CCITT matters and picture-phone conferencing compression techniques. Marshall had been ill for some time and with "overseeing" by a quartet of friends from MIT and Bell Labs was living in an assisted care home in New Jersey. On February 17 over seventy of his friends gathered to remember him, with extemporaneous remarks and a slide show that, happily, turned into a "roasting" which Marshall in his good humor would have enjoyed. Friends remembered his idiosyncrasies (did they ever!), his travels and visits (caviar drop offs for me in Brussels on his way back from Iran and drop-in to his former secretary on Peace-Corps duty in Kenya), his slides (estimated at 12,000), his long answering-machine messages (touting "the real Marshall"), his magnificent ski house at 10,000 feet in Breckenridge (Colorado), his extraordinary memory for both technical info and everything else, and his do-anything-for-friends mode of life. The story was told, complete with slide, of Marshall monitoring an underground cable in the hot sun of a southwest desert. He bought a beach chair and umbrella and sat there beside a telephone company truck. The local newspaper also got the picture and used it to complain about this luxury causing Ma Bell's high rates. As his boss verified, back in New Jersey, he vouchered the chair and umbrella. As an undergrad in Atkinson dorm, Marshall co-oped at Bell Labs and so built his own telephone switch, hooking up friends in the East Campus dorm. This large machine (a stepper, for those with telco backgrounds) sat in a bathtub and was called Atkinson-T&T. What else? It later moved to the Grad House, found a new bathtub, and continued to switch calls. Amazingly it still lives, dusty but proud, in Marshall's house in Red Bank, NJ. Would anyone like to have it? One of Marshall's Bell Lab's cohorts said: Marshall never spoke ill of anyone and I don't know anyone else about whom I can say that. Certainly Marshall was one of the most colorful, best-known and most universally liked characters of the Class of '57.” Marshall has no surviving family members. A fund has been set up in Marshall’s memory at MIT. Lester has Marshall’s MIT ’57 ring and says he is prepared to give it to a classmate who makes an appropriate contribution to that fund.

I am grieved to report the death of two additional classmates: Trond H. Kaalstad who was a Senior Administrative Officer at MIT and who died on November 23, 2001 and is survived by his brother Oscar (Class of 1952); and William D. Couper who died on August 27, 2001.

At our superlative Class of 1957 website http://alumweb.mit.edu/classes/1957/ you will find a plethora of information about your classmates, and the last five years of these columns---Alan M. May, secretary, 3601 Turtle Creek Blvd., Dallas, TX 75219; (h) tel: 214-528-8812; (w) fax: 214-521-8544; my e-mail address is: ammay@jump.net