Thank you to John Abel for solving a mystery. Our Class of ’62 Baseball Scoreboard is now to be found at Booth Field, the current home of Cornell baseball located on Ellis Hollow Road near Game Farm Road. The scoreboard was moved from its previous on-campus home at Hoy Field in the middle of the 2023 season.
And, while we’re sort of on the subject of class projects, in an article (8/29/24) about museums beyond NYC, The NY Times called the Johnson Museum of Art, home of the Class of 1962 photography collection, one of “the best museums in the Empire State.”
“I am so proud,” writes Steve Ploscowe (Fairfield, NJ). “My wife Wendie (Malkin) ’65 and I graduated from Cornell. Our daughter, Lauren (Rosen) ’92, also graduated from Cornell, and this year her daughter, our granddaughter, Sydney, graduated from Cornell. Wow! Three generations of Cornell graduates. What could be better!?!”
John Neuman and wife Carolyn (Chauncey) ’64 “are in process of preparing our Ithaca west-shore, lake house for sale – not yet formally on the market but soon. Should there be classmates who have a potential interest and would like to know more, they should just reach out (jln16@cornell).
“Finally, this is the final year any of our relatives are here as undergrads. Our grandson is a senior and we have a senior grandniece here, too. They are 5th generation Cornellians! What great fun to be ‘in the wings’ for their journeys here.”
According to Mike Eisgrau, “This has been a very busy year for Paula and me. We split our time between homes in Manhattan and Englewood (Sarasota) Florida. We started the year with a delightful Italian dinner with Judy and Bruce Rich ’60 who are our neighbors on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But soon we had to get back to Florida to continue a major re-landscaping project. You may remember Hurricane Ian in 2022. It wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Our house withstood the storm but our acre+ property was devastated. We’ve spent the last two years restoring the landscaping—a bigger job than we had imagined.”
Neil Schilke (Rochester Hills, MI) and wife Ro just “completed a fun cruise that ended with a spectacular sunrise sail going into NYC under the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge and past the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes when you travel the world you forget that the USA has many special places, like NYC. We had cruised from Montreal, stopping in Quebec City, PEI, Nova Scotia, Boston and Provincetown. We walked 8 miles in Boston, only to be followed up by walking 10 miles in NYC, including The Highline on the lower westside. Now back to reality!”
Neil and Ro Schilke in New York City
Don Juran (Rockville, MD) writes, “Carol and I attended an off-year Reunion for the first time so we could share the journey with #1 son Adam ’94, who came in from Brussels for his first-ever Reunion.
“The CRC folk were housed in High Rise 5 on North Campus. It was all congenial, but I missed my classmates – I was, to my knowledge, the only ’62 member in attendance. I also missed the last step descending from the Dairy Bar and wound up on my face. But it takes more than concrete to crack my thick skull, and I was fine except for a world-class shiner.
“Many thanks to the Class of ’69 for feeding us leftovers, even a glass of wine, when we couldn’t find anything open on North Campus Friday night.
“It’s always a trip to sing onstage at Cornelliana night, and perhaps be part of the quartet doing the Old Alumni verse of Song of the Classes, a verse that I wrote decades ago. But to sing next to my son made it even more meaningful.”
Marc Gerber (Naples, FL) has been blowing his own horn since his days playing trumpet in the Big Red Band. “Having the greatest time of my life playing trumpet with four different bands five or six times a week. You can’t have more fun than swinging with superb musicians without getting arrested.” Marc sent along this video of his group performing “When You’re Smiling” (circa 2018). Marc can be seen starting around the 1:15 mark.
“It was maybe 2011 when I found music here. A jazz singer who sang with Harry James when she was 17 (she is 80 now) has been running a jazz jam for 35 years here in Naples. I started going to the jazz jam where I met many musicians and vocalists.
“I was soon playing with these people twice a week. After I left the bandstand one night this elderly gentleman asked if I could play that song the following week so he could sing it with me. I said, ‘Sure,’ which was how Frank Camposano [the lead singer in the video above] and I met.”
About 2015, Marc began welcoming armed service veterans at Honor Flight receptions at the local airport, RSW, and has provided a band for every Honor Flight since. “It is extremely moving to meet the WWII vets knowing that they saved our world. Very few left. Frank was in the foxholes in WW II! The HF are now Korean and Viet Nam vets.” Shown here is Marc and his group playing at an Honor Reception.
“My closest friends here are my musician friends. A more wonderful group of people I have never met. You can’t have more fun than making music with friends with your clothes on. My retirement is a dream I didn’t dare dream.”
Marc playing at an Honor Flight reception.
From John Graybill (San Antonio, TX): “This past year we made another trip to Guatemala, where we have a second home. In December, I had a bad mosquito encounter which was followed by dengue. Our home is at 5300 feet elevation….no problems with mosquitos over the last 20 years. I developed the dengue hemorrhagic syndrome after this and had to have a craniotomy to drain out a subdural hematoma. I am now…many months after the event, still walking with a walker or canes. Improvement is s-l-o-w and has changed my life. I have orchids in Guatemala and model railroading in Texas. Have for many years been engaged in medical missions in Central America but too old for that now.”
“After over a decade since officially retiring from Rutgers,” writes Judith Shulman Weis, “am still as busy professionally as ever. I just had the second edition of my book Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know – a book for the general public – come out and am giving ‘book talks’ to any group that is interested. I’m involved with the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which is educating the negotiators about the environmental and human health damage of plastics, and especially microplastics. We are trying to counteract the 200 lobbyists who show up at the negotiating sessions! I’m excited that I will be going to Cornell in late October to give a seminar – not in the Ecology & Evolution or the Environmental Science Dept – but to the Textiles Dept! The talk will be about microfibers from textiles, which are shed by the millions from synthetic clothing in washing machines and are one of the most common sources of microplastics in the ocean. People like me can find and analyze the problems, but it will take Textile scientists to solve the problems by creating fabrics that don’t shed (as much). Pete Weis (’60) and I are still in good health, traveling, and enjoying our two grownup granddaughters and our high school freshman granddaughter.”
Dave Nisbet reports that he and his “wife Reginia are doing well, living comfortably here in Boston. I’m still coaching rowing part-time to kids at Community Rowing on the Charles River. I was in touch with Don Light recently and he is retired and living on the Cape.” Dave included a photo of them crewing the week before the IRA national championships race in 1962 in which “we won by a comfortable margin beating powers Washington, Cal, and everybody else.” In the photo, Don is in the 3 seat (3rd from the right) and Dave is next to him in the 2nd seat. This win landed the Cornell crew on the cover of Sports Illustrated (June 15, 1962).
