1961
By now everyone has been informed that our class' 70th birthday party is scheduled for the weekend of April 30-May 3, 2009, in Scottsdale, Arizona. The host committee of Len Disavino, John King, Jim Nova, Jeff Conn and Jay Torok are working hard to make sure that this will be an outstanding success. Try to attend and sign up early so that the host team can organize events accordingly. The preliminary schedule of events is diversified and appears to be exciting.
David Birney recently had a script of his published by one of the oldest publishers of dramatic works in the country. The script, titled A Christmas Pudding, is a holiday confection of songs, stories, poems and tales of the season by assorted famous authors, collected with a host of carols, traditional music of the season and comic recipes.
Some of our classmates who went on to the Dartmouth Medical School have recently come to the forefront. Will Weintraub has left surgery and patient care to assume an administration position at Abington Hospital in suburban Philadelphia. Art Provisor, who has been the head of pediatrics at a hospital in Columbus, Georgia, is moving to Macon, Georgia, where he has assumed a similarly responsible position. Doug Zipes is still in the cardiology division at Indiana University, where he occupies a chair named after him and holds a visiting professorship also named after him. I guess that this guarantees his future employment. In addition he has endowed an annual lecture in his name. Ted Tapper has achieved a near celebrity status as a result of his son Jake Tapper '91, who is a well-known reporter for the ABC News with stories on numerous popular television talk and magazine format shows (Nightline, GoodMorning America, World News Tonight). I have seen Jake on the tube and he is really good at what he does.
This past spring Gerry Kaminsky gave a presentation to volunteers at the Dartmouth College Fund leadership summit in New York, where he emphasized the class mission statement and vision, why and how we work hard for added participation, and other fundraising projects the class had done in addition to the Alumni Fund drive (the Frost Statue, the Class of'61 Legacy: The American Tradition in Performance Fund).
Tony Horan has a new book in for publishing next spring on the topic of the growing epidemic of diagnosis and over-treatment/ mistreatment of prostate cancer. Though not exactly a thriller novel, the book is probably very informative.
Ken Walker is still coaching his daughter Sabrina's Special Olympics tennis team. Ken has been doing this for many, many years and doing it well. However, in an effort to improve team and player morale, Ken's other daughter Leese Walker '91 came up with the idea of applying theatrical-teaching practice (designed to improve communication skills and teamwork) to the tennis team. With assistance from the Dartmouth Club of Long Island this pilot program was applied to the Special Olympics tennis team. The results were very successful and discussions are under way to expand the program to other Special Olympics teams.
