No.3
April 1, 2005

Welcome to the third issue of the Columbia College Class of 1963 eNewsletter. Thanks to your response to the second edition we've got more news to pass on. I am again including a sampling of notes that I have received during the last month, just as I received them. Because of space restraints in Columbia College Today (CTT), I may be unable to include all of these in the next (July) issue in their full form.

Keep those cards, letters, and emails coming! If I get your notes before the beginning of May, I should be able to include them in CTT (and the May eNewletter).


Table of Contents:


Next Second Thursday Lunch - April 14

Columbia University Club of New York

Every Second Thursday, 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Columbia College Club - 15 West 43rd Street, NYC

Please join your classmates for an informal lunch at the Columbia Club every second Thursday of the month. It is our hope that these gatherings will renew old friendships and foster improved relationship with our class and the College. The next lunch will be on March 10, 2005.

March Lunch Continues the Tradition

The fourth Second Saturday Class of 1963 lunch may have brought only 4 of our classmates back together on March 10 (drastically down from our record gathering of 9 in February), but the group still had a great time exchanging information.

In attendance were:

Doron Gopstein
Paul Neshamkin
Barry Reiss
Frank Sypher

(From left to right) Paul Neshamkin, Frank Sypher, Barry Reiss, Doron Gopstein

Please add your presence at the next lunch on Thursday, April 14, we expect a large turnout including two representatives from the Columbia College Alumni Office, Sharen Medrano, and Vanessa Rosado, both Assistant Directors and active in supporting our class and these luncheons. I expect that we will have a good discussion on ways that we can improve the alumni experience for our class. Please let me know if you will attend so that we can reserve a big enough table; RSVP to Paul Neshamkin (pauln@helpauthors.com).

Lunch Archives

If you like to see our previous lunches, click on the dates below:

December 9, 2004

January 13, 2005

February 10. 2005

 

 

For information and inquiries call Paul Neshamkin at 201-714-4881 or email at pauln@helpauthors.com.


Latest News from the Class of 63

I continue to receive many emails from our classmates in response to the eNewsletter. Here are a selection of notes and news that you have sent in.

Ira Malter
After 40 years in New England ,I have decided to give the Philadelphia area a try. I am starting at Pottstown Memorial Hospital and living in a new apartment complex in Valley Forge (equal commute to work and the joys and culture of Center City). My first wife,Geri,passed away after a nineteen year battle with cancer, I have remarried, a wonderful woman Cynthia Rosen who is an artist,originally from Philly but who spent 20 plus years in Vermont during her first marriage which produced 4 children (currently 19-23 years).My own Harley and Evan attended Columbia (classes of '93 and '96).

Jim Johnson
I have only made one reunion -25th - so there is a lot of catching up. I will try to keep it brief. I had to sit out a semester at Columbia due to a bleeding ulcer and so finished in December of 1963 instead of in the spring. The ulcer proved quite valuable, though, providing me with a 4-F draft status So, instead of going to Viet Nam, I got a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University. Along the way I interned for a year with the Illinois General Assembly - talk about an education in politics! While in Springfield I met my wife Bev (at a bar, where else?), and we have been going strong for 38 years. After a year at Montana State University, I moved to the University of Nebraska at Omaha (my home town - you CAN go home again, if you want) where I just stepped down from a nine year stint as chair of the political science department (one step ahead of the folks in white coats). This is my last year in full time teaching and am eagerly looking forward to retirement (well, I have been for 37 years, to tell the truth).
We have four kids, two home made, two store bought, two boys, two girls (it is easier to get a "balanced" family when you adopt). The two adopted are racially mixed and that, too, has been a source of education into the social life of America - mostly positive, actually. Bev and I have three grand kids, one from our adopted daughter and two from our birth daughter. She, who had Hodgkin's disease in her junior year of college and was given only a 50-50 chance of having any children, is about to present us with twins. Our son Joel was the only legacy to Columbia, where he easily outshined dad (he had the good grace of apologizing for that). With his Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa he and a colleague started an alternative rock group - the Two Skinnee Js - some of your kids or kids kids may have heard of them although they were never invited to the Grammies. He now lives in Brooklyn so Bev and I have a pad for more frequent visits once we're retired. I will keep your Thursday lunches in
mind.

David Orme-Johnson
After getting my PhD in experimental psychology, I have mostly been conducting research on Transcendental Meditation (TM), which drew me into a wide range of areas including autonomic stability, EEG, intelligence, creativity, higher states of consciousness, blood pressure, medical care utilization, prison rehabilitation, international conflict resolution, and most recently, fMRI neuroimaging. To my knowledge, I have conducted more research on meditation than anyone else in the world, and I have traveled to about 56 countries speaking about it, including four times at the UN (see Orme-JohnsonResearch.net).

In the early 1970s, several of us who were interested in the educational potential of meditation to reduce stress and increase the clarity of thinking and creativity in students and faculty founded Maharishi International University (now called Maharishi University of Management, MUM) and Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland (MERU). My administrative roles included Chairman of the Psychology Department, Director of the Psychology Doctoral Program, and Dean of Research at MUM, and Vice Chancellor of MERU. Our experiment in education from kindergarten to PhD has been highly successful (MUM.edu), but sadly, other schools and universities have not yet included TM as part of their curriculum as we had hoped.

By far the most important of my research endeavors have been studies demonstrating that groups of meditators create an influence of coherence in collective consciousness, which improves the quality of life in the larger society, including reducing crime rate and armed conflict, and even subduing international terrorism. Despite the controversial nature of this research, we have managed to publish some of our studies in leading journals. Our main focus is trying to establish large peace-creating groups of meditators around the world, which could be in schools, universities, businesses, prisons, retirement communities, or the military.

Today I live happily in Florida with my brilliant and funny wife of 42 years, Rhoda Bonovitz (Vassar, ’62), where I continue writing and pursuing my lifelong interest in art (SeagroveArtist.com). The light of our lives are two children, Nate and Sara, and grandchildren, Cleo (8) and David (5).

Sidney P. Kadish
Wrote to say "I wish that I can write about a new book I have published, extraordinary grandchildren, etc. but all I can report personally is a slow recovery from right rotator cuff surgery." When I asked him if there was a dramatic story behind his injury, he replied, "Nothing dramatic. Hiking in the White Mountains last summer I slipped crossing a stream and landed on my shoulder. Wait 'til I win the Tour de France-now that will be a story." That certainly would be, Sid, but I think you are being far too modest, I'm sure you must have been on an extremely difficult trail.

Share your news and views with your classmates. Contact your Class Correspondent, and let him know what you would like posted here or in Columbia College Today (CCT).

For information and inquiries call Paul Neshamkin at 201-714-4881 or email at pauln@helpauthors.com.

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Mini-Reunion this Fall

Why wait 5 years? Let's get together in New York City in October!

We have decided to move our class mini-reunion to the Fall, centering events around the Homecoming Game on October 15. Perhaps lunch with your classmates on Friday, the 14th, some socializing in the evening. Then on Saturday, we can get together at the Homecoming tent in the morning at Baker Field, and then watch Columbia beat Penn at the Homecoming game that afternoon. Watch this space for more news as we firm this up, but save the dates, October 14-15, 2005.

For information and inquiries call Paul Neshamkin at 201-714-4881 or email at pauln@helpauthors.com.

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