’61 Class Notes September/October 2020
Jamie McLane writes: I have talked to Bill Sargent and I am happy to report that he feels he has now fully recovered from his heart attack, is skiing and running again, and, like the rest of us, is currently hibernating, isolating and distancing himself from the Coronavirus, while remaining at his daughter’s home in McLean, VA. We decided that since Lou Allyn has so ably stepped into the role of Class Notes collector and editor for the past year, as the class webmaster, he should continue in this role until at least our 60th. The Coronavirus also is causing a bit of havoc with the YAA’s scheduling of reunions for next Spring as the Class of 1960’s 60th had to be canceled for this past May and is being rescheduled for next Spring, along with ours. So, hold May 27-30 and June 3-6, 2021 open on your calendars right now for our 60th, which is being very creatively built by Wilford Welch, with advice and counsel from many. The Charleston Mini was postponed again from October this year to late March/early April 2022. The Mini for Kansas City, MO, under the leadership of Eddie Robertson and Patrice, is still scheduled for 14-17, 2021.
Joe Novitski [mailto:jnovitski@gmail.com] sends a rowing story for our socially distant times: Under the rules of our local Public Health Order, I can row – but only on a full flood tide. My Maas 24 is temporarily stored on the float behind my houseboat, moored on a backwater off San Francisco Bay. The houseboat settles onto mud for about 12 hours each day, during twice-daily low tides. Early one morning this week, I was nearing the end of a 5k piece on a dropping tide, closing on the Strawberry peninsula, where people walk every day during our local stay-at-home order. I heard a voice shout: “Slow down your slide!” Over my left shoulder, there was a man I had never seen standing on the rocks at the end of the peninsula. He shouted at me again:” Slow down your slide.” Now, the guy was right. I was at about 4,600 meters, perhaps tired, but certainly not paying enough attention to getting my body angle early after the release. Frankly, my knees were coming up too quickly. I completed my piece and shouted back “Thanks, Coach.” He shouted back that he had rowed for four years at – I think I heard Rutgers – then coached as an assistant. “Now, let me see your catch.” I showed him: blades buried, arms straight, legs only. Racing start. “Beautiful!” he shouted. “Now do that on every stroke.” I let her run as the tide was ebbing fast, and I had to get home while I still had water at my float. I made it, with about three inches of water depth to spare. Both pieces of his advice worked. Power early at the catch and arms away to body angle then slow slide. At the same or similar stroke rates, my splits in long pieces have dropped by nearly ten seconds.
Robert Grossman‘s son sent us comments on his Dad’s incredible illustrated novel, “Life On The Moon”, about the first published fake news story, on which he toiled for years and for which he found a publisher just before he passed away. The book has been nominated for an Eisner award for Best New Graphic Novel. An Eisner Award is the equivalent of an Oscar Nomination for Best Picture for the comic industry. Only 5 books are nominated out of literally hundreds submitted! I am so proud of him, and proud of all those who contributed in helping us get it out. If you have not read “Life on the Moon”, you should!
Lloyd Douglas Shrader passed away on March 15, 2020 at Brookdale Meadowmount Senior Living Center in Chapel Hill, NC at 84. Born on November 6, 1935 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, he moved with his family to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Doug graduated from Fork Union Military Academy in 1954. He married Anne Royall in 1959 and graduated from Yale College in 1961 and Yale Law School in 1964. After clerking for a Connecticut federal judge, Doug joined the law firm of Goldstein and Peck in 1965 and moved to Westport, Connecticut. In 1971, he became a founding partner of the Connecticut law firm Zeldes, Needle & Cooper, where he practiced until 1998. He then established the boutique firm of Shrader and Knapp, with partner Beverly Knapp, in Westport. Doug retired from the law in 2010, and he and Anne relocated to Chapel Hill. Doug was an accomplished plaintiff’s trial attorney, an early inductee into the American Trial Lawyers Association, and a champion of social justice and civil rights. In the early 1960s he moved, with his wife and children, to Mississippi to help organize voter registration and document human rights abuses. Throughout his life Doug was active in local, state and national Democratic Party politics, eventually serving as state campaign manager for presidential candidate Gary Hart. In retirement, he continued his passion by teaching the popular “The Supreme Court in the Twenty-First Century” course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Duke University. Doug loved to tell stories, play golf, and watch the New York Giants win on Sundays. Doug joins his beloved wife, Anne, who died in December. He is survived by his daughters, Elizabeth and Ellen, two sons-in-law, four granddaughters and three great-grandchildren. The family plans to hold a memorial service when coronavirus restrictions on travel and gatherings are lifted.
Kenneth Lloyd Wolfe, 81, died May 9, 2020 at Cornwall Manor nursing home after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease. He was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania on February 15, 1939. He graduated from Lebanon High School in 1957 and was named to the Pennsylvania All State Football First Team by the Associated Press in 1960. He also was selected for the National High School All-America Football Team. In 2001, Ken was inducted into the Lebanon School District Hall of Fame. Graduating from Yale University in 1961, Ken helped to lead Yale to its last undefeated and untied season as the team’s starting halfback. He received All-American and All-Ivy recognition for football in 1960. After Yale. Ken served in the U. S. Navy for three years and earned his MBA from The Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia. He returned to central Pennsylvania in 1967 and began his career at Hershey Foods Corporation (The Hershey Company). In 1994, Mr. Wolfe was selected to serve as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company, where he served until his retirement in 2001. Ken also served on the board of directors for numerous other companies, including Bausch & Lomb, Revlon and GPU, Inc. He also served as a member of the board of trustees for both the Hershey Trust Company and Fidelity Investments. Ken is survived by his second wife, Gloria; three children, Arbelyn Wolfe, Pamela Wolfe and Joseph Wolfe; eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Mr. Wolfe was predeceased by his first wife and mother to his three children, Ruth Sansone Wolfe, who died in 1992.
LPA/JMcL