After seven months I mislaid my notes from the 45 year Reunion - I apologize to the classmates who endured my "interviews" but haven't seen their stories in print here. E-mail, call or send me your news and I'II put it into this column. Here's one item I recall without notes. I spoke to *Jesse Shereff several times during the weekend. Jesse started with the class of 1962, but finished with 1963. I remember him as the social chairman of Baker House who pioneered the daring (for 1960) "inter-course" party. How tame it all seems now. Jesse and his wife Rochelle live in Manhattan near Lincoln Center. Jesse is mostly retired, but still does some computer consulting. He taught for 10 years at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. One of the things Jesse and Rochelle like to do is participate in the "One Day University." This program brings together top faculty from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other top-tier schools for an incredibly challenging day in which you can take up to four courses. Best of all there no SATs to ace, and no stress.
I communicated with *Ray Soifer by E-mail after the reunion and I sent him a picture from our 25 year gathering at MIT. Ray says his wife, Margaret, didn't recognize him from that picture. He's 40 pounds lighter and much trimmer today. Good job Ray, most of us are going in the opposite direction. Ray retired from Brown Brothers Harriman in 2000 and set up a consulting practice. He was quite active with that for about 7 years but is now happily retired, having moved from NJ to Arizona in 2004. Margaret and Ray were married in 2006. His two sons from a prior marriage, Don (Colgate'90) and Brian (Bates '95) are living in Washington, DC, and Quincy, MA, respectively.
Last August *Henry Nau had an Op Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times called "Force With Diplomacy." It was about the conflicting American foreign policy traditions of liberal internationalism, reducing tension through multilateral associations and trade, associated with Woodrow Wilson, and classical realism, the "big stick" policy, associated with Teddy Roosevelt. A third tradition, practiced by Thomas Jefferson, James K. Polk, Harry Truman and Ronald Regan, combines force and diplomacy into conservative internationalism and is based on the idea that force is not necessarily a last resort, nor is force a substitute for diplomacy. It will be interesting to see which tradition our new president hews to. Checking in the alumni directory I see that Henry was a course 14 graduate (economics for those of you who have forgotten) but has spent most of his career studying and writing about US foreign policy, international politics, US foreign economic policy and international political economy. He is a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He directs the US-Japan-South Korea Legislative Exchange Program sponsored by the Japan-US Friendship Commission, which brings together members of the U.S. Congress, Japanese Diet, and South Korean National Assembly for informal discussions of core issues in domestic and foreign affairs.
*Doug Dancis lives in Maryland, and enjoys going to folk singing festivals and concerts. One of the interesting things he has done is to spend some summers in the Three Arrows Community located on Piano Mountain in New York's scenic Hudson Valley. This cooperative society was established in 1936 by a group of young, New York socialists looking to build a summer'paradise' away from the hubbub of urban life. Initially bonded by a common ideology, primarily activists in the Jewish Labor movement, Three Arrows, with its 75 home sites, has blossomed over the decades into an active, modern co-operative serving generations of members and a diverse group of newcomers. During his stay there he ran into several people from the Bronx, where he grew up, one of whom was a family friend of my wife Barbara. Another example of 6 degrees of separation.
*Roger Gans is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rochester, still teaching and doing research on control systems and various aspects of nonlinear dynamics. Roger is still active in theater, as he was at MIT and in high school. In 2008 Roger appeared in productions of "As You Like It" and "Prelude to a Kiss." In fact, since leaving MIT Roger has acted in or directed almost 100 plays.
Though most of you are reading this in the warm spring of May, I'm writing in the cold winter of January. Hope you all had a happy new year and are busy and active in 2009. When this column is in print I'll be attending my 50 year high school reunion. It's that year for most of the MIT class of 1963. Half a century out of high school. Good grief. Can our 50 year anniversary of our graduation from MIT be far behind? Amazingly, since our last column I have no obituary notices. That's always a good thing. I'll close with a plea - I have no backlog of news. If you don't send me some information about what you are doing I'll have to write about my January cruise through the Panama Canal.
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