Class Note 1957
Issue
July-August 2022
Steve Katz submitted a 1951 photo of his grandfather with President Truman celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Katz Drug Co. and suggested we discuss our classmates’ roots. Responses were immediate and wonderful, such as Al Rollins’ story of his ancestors helping Daniel Webster win a criminal case back in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Cal Perry working on genealogy for 35 years to create a family pyramid going back to the 1600s, and Joel Mitchell’s family arriving on the Mayflower. Great stuff for a future Class Notes column, but not now with Putin’s cruel war on Ukraine.
Art Koff responded that his grandparents immigrated from Ukraine in the late 1800s and settled in upstate New York. Bert O’Neill’s grandfather left Finland to avoid the Russian czar’s draft, immigrated to Minnesota, and worked in iron mines for five years to obtain U.S. citizenship. Herb Roskind provided a moving portrait that traced his family back four generations from a cemetery outside Kyiv to his life today at Arizona State University. Gary Gilson reported his ancestry from Bessarabia, a sliver of a country alternatively part of Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia. Bruce Bernstein’s grandparents, a family of blacksmiths in Lithuania, came to America and founded the North American Iron and Steel Co. Mike Lasser’s grandparents immigrated from a small village outside Kyiv, and Mike wondered if his family was related to Herb’s, which prompted Jay Greene to reply, “We’re all cousins, baby.”
Indeed we are. And our hearts are with those freedom fighters in Ukraine. The hope is that a ceasefire will have been negotiated by the time you read this, and the atrocities of war will have stopped. “But, not likely,” says Chris Wren, former New York Times bureau chief in Moscow. “Putin is a nasty piece of work.”
Nasty, yes, but there must be hope. Bob Slaughter wrote he was “amazed at the widely multicultural backgrounds of our relatively small class.” That’s our treasure, and perhaps that is our hope for humanity as well: to recognize the importance of diversity while understanding we are just one family. All cousins, baby.
—John W. Cusick, 105 Island Plantation Terrace, Vero Beach, FL 32963; (772) 231-1248; johnwcusick@aol.com
Art Koff responded that his grandparents immigrated from Ukraine in the late 1800s and settled in upstate New York. Bert O’Neill’s grandfather left Finland to avoid the Russian czar’s draft, immigrated to Minnesota, and worked in iron mines for five years to obtain U.S. citizenship. Herb Roskind provided a moving portrait that traced his family back four generations from a cemetery outside Kyiv to his life today at Arizona State University. Gary Gilson reported his ancestry from Bessarabia, a sliver of a country alternatively part of Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia. Bruce Bernstein’s grandparents, a family of blacksmiths in Lithuania, came to America and founded the North American Iron and Steel Co. Mike Lasser’s grandparents immigrated from a small village outside Kyiv, and Mike wondered if his family was related to Herb’s, which prompted Jay Greene to reply, “We’re all cousins, baby.”
Indeed we are. And our hearts are with those freedom fighters in Ukraine. The hope is that a ceasefire will have been negotiated by the time you read this, and the atrocities of war will have stopped. “But, not likely,” says Chris Wren, former New York Times bureau chief in Moscow. “Putin is a nasty piece of work.”
Nasty, yes, but there must be hope. Bob Slaughter wrote he was “amazed at the widely multicultural backgrounds of our relatively small class.” That’s our treasure, and perhaps that is our hope for humanity as well: to recognize the importance of diversity while understanding we are just one family. All cousins, baby.
—John W. Cusick, 105 Island Plantation Terrace, Vero Beach, FL 32963; (772) 231-1248; johnwcusick@aol.com