1960

Some of us are anything but ready for retirement. Forbes magazine reports our classmate, Gene Kohn whom it describes as "a blunt-speaking 30 -year veteran retailer," has gone to Brooklyn to personally supervise the recovery of a famous but ailing wedding gown firm, I. Kleinfeld & Sons.

Gene is living three or four nights a week in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights not far from Mike Heitner and his wife, Susie. Gene's wife, Judy, visits from Boston, and Gene goes home on the weekends. And still, on Mondays, he gets to Hanover for his Dartmouth Co-Op management duties.

"What is that word 'retirement?"' Judy exclaims. "We don't know the word in our family." And Gene declares, "The last thing Kohn wants to do is retire. He needs another deal when this is over in three or four years."

I do get a little correspondence for this column and would like more. Please regard this as an open invitation. Marty Lower sent a fax of an $80 check he wrote to BobBoye for two copies of Bob's coffee-table book. Underwater Paradise: The World's BestDiving Sites.

"This is hardly newsworthy," Bob remarked when reached at home in Bernardsville, N.J. "The book dates from 1989." However, our class takes the long view, and the book, published by Harry Abrams, is still in print. Bob, just before leaving for a trip to New Zealand, said his fifth grandchild has just arrived.

Hastening to report other correspondence, Les McCracken writes he took early retirement from the Wyatt Cos., and moved with his new wife, Cathy, to Bonifay in the Florida Panhandle. He keeps working, as a consultant for DynCorp, but he remarks of his new home, "This area is one of Florida's best-kept secrets; seems like 300 days of sun, yet the summers are more comfortable, much less humidity, and often cooler than Washington, D.C."

George Liebmann, a lawyer in Baltimore, has written a new book, TheGallows in the Grove, on the courts and civil society. It is available from the Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Conn. Just three years ago George published The LittlePlatoons: Sub-Local Governments in ModernHistory. Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon paid tribute to it, saying, "In the tradition of de Tocqueville, he reminds us of the continuing importance of small scale political structures."

Dick Levy, a senior manager at Varian Associates in the Bay Area, has been elected 1998 chairman of the board of the American Electronics Association.

And John Omaha, a chemical dependency counselor, gave a lecture in San Francisco at the local Dartmouth Club on "Addiction in America: Why the Epidemic is Worsening." He developed the thesis that substance abusers are reenacting their childhood emotional traumas.

Ken Reichm, 5522 Nagle Ave., Van Nuys. CA 91401; (818) 994-9231 (h); (213) 237-4712 (fax);