1948 - 60th Reunion

The 60th reunion of the Class of 1948 was a great success. As of June this year 31 of the 55 of us who graduated in 1948 were still around, and 15 attended the reunion along with nine of the wives. They were a pretty vigorous bunch of 80-somethings.

Three of our five living women members were there. The prize for vigor has to go to Elizabeth Fuller Elsner, who spends the winter in Alaska where she is addicted to cross-country skiing. She had to take time off this past year to get a new hip but she is now back to her old sport. She spends the summer in Massachusetts and came down on Saturday morning with Nan Godley. Nan still does some volunteer work at Harvard. Sylvia Preston Griffiths also does volunteer work at Columbia.

The prize for the longest trip goes to Al and Ruth Fisk who came from California. They live in the Sonoma valley and until recently had a small vineyard. They also won a gold medal in 2003 at the Cal State Fair for their pinot noir. They have now given up the vineyard and keep busy with duplicate bridge, gardening and leading environmental walks. Next longest was Jock Bishop, who is retired from an academic career at Minnesota in internal medicine and research in the physiology and biochemistry of diabetes. He now pursues a hobby in creating rustic furniture from buckhorn wood. In listing our longer travelers I overlooked Dick Buker who is the last member of our class still seeing patients. He is the county health officer of Chester, Mont., and is in charge of disaster planning for his area. He attended with Candace Chang.

Bob and Mary Lempke joined the group on Friday from Indiana. The OR at the Richard L. Roudebush Indianapolis VA Medical Center was named in Bob’s honor. He was chief of surgery there for many years. He has taken up oil painting—landscapes and some portraits and has had a showing of his works in Indianapolis. Dave and Kayoke Morton came from Pueblo, Colo. They have been doing a lot of traveling, including trips to Japan to see Kayoke’s relatives.

Bud and Esther Rowland, Jack and Ann Strominger and Paul Talalay came from Columbia, Harvard and Johns Hopkins respectively. I mention them together because they probably represent the most successful of our academicians. Paul is the John Jacob Abel Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at Hopkins. He is widely known for his studies of vegetables like broccoli that induce protective enzymes in the body and help prevent cancer. In 2005 he was awarded the prestigious Linus Pauling Award in recognition of his work. Jack is a professor at the Dana Farber institute at Harvard. He has studied histo-compatibility in man and other vertebrates leading to the understanding of mechanisms of immune recognition. In 1999 he received the Japan Prize, the largest monetary reward for scientific investigation. Bud was chief of the department of neurology at Columbia’s Neurological Institute and was widely known for his work on stroke.

Paul and Betty Goldstein, Paul and Margaret Koehler, andDick Richardson represent our clinicians who remained in the Northeast. Paul is the only member of the class who remained in New Haven and has been an anchor for returning alumni. He now spends winters in Florida. When he is in New Haven he spends one day a week in his clinic. Dick Peterson is now retired. He drove down from Southbury, Conn., with his daughter Melanie Barry. Paul and Margaret drove down from Newbury, N.H. Paul served us for 50 years as class secretary. He’s still pretty active despite acquiring four artificial joints.

During the spring I contacted almost everyone in our class. I’d like to mention three of our achievers who couldn’t come. They are Herold Griffith, Tom Frei and Betty McCleary Hamburg. Herold spent eight years as chief of plastic surgery at the University of Illinois medical school. He was made an honorary member of British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, of which there are only eight in the United States. Tom is the Richard and Susan Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard and a member of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. In 1972 he was given the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award for demonstrating that a combination of chemotherapeutic agents could result in long-term survival and even cures in some leukemias and lymphomas. This award is often a prelude to the Nobel Prize. Betty reports having two careers, first as a professor at Harvard and then as the first director of child psychiatry at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. After retiring from Mount Sinai, she began a second career as president of the William T. Grant Foundation. Herold couldn’t come because his wife is so frail. Tom couldn’t make it for health reasons. Betty thought she could come in on Saturday but something must have interfered.

Looking forward to seeing all of you on our 65th.

Ben Rush