MIT Class of 1963, Class Notes for the March/April 2007
issue of Technology Review
In the September Technology Review issue I reported that *Steve Gorad was working in a law office in in New York City. In a recent E-mail Steve told me a few details about his job. He works for the Graubard Miller law firm, occupying the entire 19th floor and a bit of the 21st floor of the Chrysler Building. The management has tried to preserve as much of the original decor of this fabulous building as possible. Even the bathrooms are "landmarked" (meaning that by law they can't be changed). If you go to the bathroom to relieve yourself you are doing it in all the original fixtures ... and they still work! Steve says he wishes all his fixtures worked so well! His time at the firm is spent on litigations, mostly long and nasty estate matters. He says there are few things as distasteful as family members fighting over the money of dead relatives. One of his cases, which was settled last summer, had been going on for 22 years. Steve cautions us to write our wills with the help of professionals, and choose our executors very carefully. He's not a lawyer, nor does he even like what they do, but he says sometimes a lawyer is really necessary in this world. Although he's working in the realm of perhaps the most-worldly of worldly concerns (battles over money), his main focus is, as it has been for most of his post-MIT life, the other-worldly. He continues his interest in and investigations into spiritual practice, and journeys on the inner planes. But THAT, says Steve, is a whole other subject!
In October *Steve Levy reached that milestone birthday (whose number I won't say) that we all have recently reached or are about to reach. As a surprise his wife Nancy orchestrated the making of a video of interviews with Steve's family and friends talking about his life. I was one of the people interviewed, and here are a couple of the stories I told about our classmate. When I met Steve at MIT in the fall of 1959 he was an oddity to me. He was a kid from California, the first Californian this New York City boy had ever known. And he wanted to be an economist. I never thought of MIT as a place for economics; to me it was a place to study science and engineering. Of course the Institute has a world-class economics department and has produced many Nobel laureates. But Steve and I had a number of interests in common -- baseball (Steve was a big Dodgers fan, I was a Yankee fan), card playing (poker, and gin rummy -- Steve was far out of my league in bridge -- he was an expert, I was a beginner), and affection for our MIT experience. We also shared a roommate. *Frank Model was Steve's roommate junior and senior years in a Baker House front double. Frank had been my friend at the Bronx High School of Science and was my roommate sophomore year. In the fall of 1962 when we returned to MIT there were two hot pennant races going on. The Yankees finally pulled away from Detroit in the American League, and the Dodgers and Giants were battling it out in the National League. At Baker House we used to watch the games in the TV room, a crowded lounge area on the first floor. There were always lots of Yankee fans watching the games, and Steve hated the Yankees. He was confident that the Dodgers were going to win and meet the Yanks in the World Series. He didn't want to be in that TV room, surrounded by New York fans, so he rented a TV so he could watch in his room, in comfort, without the disturbances from other Bakerites. Now in baseball, they say "it ain't over until it's over", and the Giants ultimately beat the Dodgers to win the National League pennant by a single game. It was a Yankees-Giants World Series in that fall of 1962. Steve's roommate, Frank Model, was from Queens, NY and was a big Yankee fan. The irony of the story is that the TV that Steve rented was used by Frank and his Yankee fan friends (me included) to watch the World Series. Steve was so disgusted with the outcome of the baseball season (the hated Giants playing the even more hated Yankees) that he hardly watched the series at all. When I was asked what profession I thought Steve might have taken up had he not become an economist, I said that he might have excelled as a baseball color announcer.
This month I sadly report the death of our classmate Lawrence Coppola. Lawrence received his degree in Course 6, and lived in Roslindale, MA while he was an undergraduate. He ran cross country and track for MIT. At the time of his death Lawrence was living in Foxboro, MA. Our sincere condolences to his widow, Barbara Coppola, and the rest of Lawrence's family. If you have any memories to share about our late classmate, let me know and I'll include them in future columns.
Regards to all. You can reach me at: Mike Bertin, 22 Gillman St, Irvine, CA 92612. E-mail: MCB1@aol.com. If you want to schmooze, call me at (949) 786-9450