From Mike (Mickey) Miller comes news that he gave a talk to the Schmooze and Schmear group of ROMEO’s (Retired Old Men Eating Out) on Financial Planning, including Investment, Estate, and Charitable Planning. “I skipped Retirement Planning, hoping that has already been done.”
After a thankfully mild winter in Allentown, PA where he lives, he was planning on going to NYC for the CAU Spring Theater Seminar in May. “I am so happy that two of my daughters, Laurie Brotman (Cornell ’86) and Amy Sams will be joining me. In July, I am off to Chautauqua, NY for a theme week on The Future of the American Experiment, in partnership with American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution.”
From Larry Kirsch: “I was inspired to write by a recent note from Phil Bereano ’61 mentioning his antiapartheid activism as well as his more recent contributions to GMO policy. Having lived in South Africa, his experience resonated. I was also very pleased to learn that he has kept in contact with mutual friends including an old roommate, Joe Geller and Burt Neuborne, both ‘61. Please share greetings with the whole gang! I am in close touch with Paul Marantz ’62 who is retired from the political science department at the University of Vancouver.
“My wife Karen and I moved to Portland OR in 2025 after many years in Boston and New Hampshire. We are very fond of the ‘Left Coast’ although it’s put a crimp on our regular Columbus Day trips to Ithaca.
“Here in Portland, I’ve published a couple of books about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)–the first of which discussed the efforts of advocates to pass the original CFPB legislation–inspired by Elizabeth Warren. So soon, we are trying to salvage the remnants of its extraordinary contribution. More recently, I’ve been working with the new Brooks School of Public Policy to help students in their Clinical Program engage with policymakers in New York State and Oregon on consumer protection and antitrust. I’ve found that serving as a mentor, leading informal tutorials and helping wherever I can, to be extremely rewarding.”
Making up for lost time, Helen Chuckrow (Ossining, NY) sends the following, “I majored in Literature as an undergraduate and did a year’s graduate work in Greek and Latin Classics, working at the then brand-new Olin Library in between. Heard a lecture on Russian childcare by Urie Bronfenbrenner and switched to Child Development. Got my MA in that, getting married the day I handed in my master’s thesis. After two children and a divorce, I then worked part time at six different libraries as a circ clerk, as well as at six different synagogues, preparing children for their bar/bat mitzvah, using the Hebrew I had learned in high school (Erasmus Hall). I then got two jobs: working at the Westchester Community College Library full time and reading Torah at a synagogue in Norwalk CT. I did that for ten years which meant I sat for ten years while commuting, sitting (at my desk at the library, and at home, and studying for the Torah readings). I then retired and wrote a book, Interpreting the Bible with Chutzpah which is available on Amazon for a mere $14.99! I’m still tutoring children for their bar/bat mitzvah via Zoom but otherwise enjoying (or sometimes bored with) all my free time. I loved Cornell and Ithaca. No place is more beautiful. And I’ve been to a lot of them, having hitchhiked through Europe in the early ‘60s and been driven cross country, on a lark, by my wonderful companion, a man who keeps me laughing and who introduced me to hockey and baseball. What more could I ask!”
After 35 years of practicing tax and estate law, Aline Holstein Lotter (Manchester, NH) retired to devote herself fulltime as a painter. She writes: “My good news: I’m alive and healthy except for the cancer I must beat back. Multiple myeloma. Treatable for years to come. I have opened my house to both my granddaughters Tabitha Taby and Natalie Mitchell. But I still do for myself, so far. I don’t paint much or even read. For caretakers I have my two tuxedo cats. For socializing I look back to the artists of the younger generation and a very special cousin for whom I painted a 4×6 foot closeup of 3 elephants talking at a watering hole. Her image. She’s an elephant scientist.”
In January, John Curtis (Rockwall, TX) and wife Janie set sail on a Viking World Journey from Los Angeles to London, westward across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and northward in the Atlantic from the Cape of Good Hope. “We will be home again in mid-May, having made calls in two dozen countries along the way. We are in Namibia at present [March 2025], preparing for a dinner party in the Namib Desert. When we reach London, we will visit with friends from our years of living there before returning to the states. We are moved by the many cultures we have experienced as we travel around the world. What a planet!
Dave Duffield has made news again with his historic $100 million investment to expand Engineering’s Duffield Hall! “Dave Duffield is an extraordinary philanthropist and a truly visionary Cornellian,” said President Michael I. Kotlikoff. “His generosity has already immeasurably enhanced the quality of the university’s research, education, and campus life, and he continues to find and pursue new avenues for advancing Cornell’s mission.”
According to a media release from Reeve Hamilton, assistant dean/Cornell Engineering, “Duffield’s latest gift will expand Duffield Hall to encompass the space currently occupied by Phillips Hall, an adjoining building that has housed the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering since it opened in 1955, having been built with funding from the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation. With the endorsement of the Phillips family, the school’s directorship and the Engineering Quad’s largest auditorium, located in the expanded Duffield Hall, will be named in honor of Ellis L. Phillips Sr., Class of 1895, who was among the school’s earliest and most prominent graduates.”
Construction is scheduled to begin this year and be completed in 2027, hopefully in time for our 65th reunion.
Rendering of an expanded Duffield Hall, set to transform the corner of Hoy and Campus roads. Credit: NBBJ
Rendering of the upper interior of an expanded Duffield Hall. Construction begins in 2025, with completion expected in 2027. Credit: NBBJ