Class Note 1958
Issue
May-June 2021
Ivy-educated, with little else to do, I’m guessing we’ve all been hitting the books. So what have you been reading lately? A brief review or two will do. Books with really good hooks might wind up in the Sound & Fury.
To prime the literary pump, my own reading has ranged from sublime to ridiculous. I loved Barack Obama’s A Promised Land describing his “go-for-it” presidential game plan. He tells of upstairs life in the White House with Michelle and the kids and grandma. He takes us for global spins in Air Force One. And he writes good, for a Harvard (law) grad. Yet this is only volume one, with more to come!
For more light-hearted enlightenment I’ve perused David W. Barber’s When the Fat Lady Sings: History of Opera as it Ought to be Taught. Chapters titled “Teutonic Tunesmiths” (Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and “Italian Sausage Machines” (Verdi, Puccini, et al.) are outdone only by the one headlined “A Cut Above” about the castrati, those unlucky guys who sang soprano back in pre-feminist days. Every Barberian sentence and cartoon is a gasser.
So please send something to help fill this column—and do it now, before you forget which room you are in and why you went there.
As for classmate notes, John Trimble writes that the southwest Florida folks will gather for their winter mini in late March, when spring will have sprung. Larry Weltin, the peripatetic ad agency founder, says he and Marty have moved to South Carolina, next to a Nicklaus-designed golf course. He also sent this witty ditty: “A Navy commander named Zwart/Well-schooled in starboard and port/Suggested that Quickel/With a beard like Ted Bikel/Tweak the name of his ’58 report.” This referenced Ron Zwart’s suggestion to rename class obits “The Quickel and the Dead.” That called for my retort, to wit: “Captain Larry, proud U.S. Marine/After steeping himself in Green/Detoured to Mad Ave./Found new flags to wave/Then settled on a Nicklaus scene.”Not bad on short notice! Yet clearly, the Marines won still another battle.
Sadly, we note the passing of three ’58s: most recently Atlanta attorney Glower Jones;Seattle native Dave Maryatt, who started an eponymous local conglomerate; and Richard Roth, who founded an ad agency in New York City.
—Steve Quickel, 411 North Middletown Road, Apt. F-310, Media, PA, 19063; steve58@quickel.net
To prime the literary pump, my own reading has ranged from sublime to ridiculous. I loved Barack Obama’s A Promised Land describing his “go-for-it” presidential game plan. He tells of upstairs life in the White House with Michelle and the kids and grandma. He takes us for global spins in Air Force One. And he writes good, for a Harvard (law) grad. Yet this is only volume one, with more to come!
For more light-hearted enlightenment I’ve perused David W. Barber’s When the Fat Lady Sings: History of Opera as it Ought to be Taught. Chapters titled “Teutonic Tunesmiths” (Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and “Italian Sausage Machines” (Verdi, Puccini, et al.) are outdone only by the one headlined “A Cut Above” about the castrati, those unlucky guys who sang soprano back in pre-feminist days. Every Barberian sentence and cartoon is a gasser.
So please send something to help fill this column—and do it now, before you forget which room you are in and why you went there.
As for classmate notes, John Trimble writes that the southwest Florida folks will gather for their winter mini in late March, when spring will have sprung. Larry Weltin, the peripatetic ad agency founder, says he and Marty have moved to South Carolina, next to a Nicklaus-designed golf course. He also sent this witty ditty: “A Navy commander named Zwart/Well-schooled in starboard and port/Suggested that Quickel/With a beard like Ted Bikel/Tweak the name of his ’58 report.” This referenced Ron Zwart’s suggestion to rename class obits “The Quickel and the Dead.” That called for my retort, to wit: “Captain Larry, proud U.S. Marine/After steeping himself in Green/Detoured to Mad Ave./Found new flags to wave/Then settled on a Nicklaus scene.”Not bad on short notice! Yet clearly, the Marines won still another battle.
Sadly, we note the passing of three ’58s: most recently Atlanta attorney Glower Jones;Seattle native Dave Maryatt, who started an eponymous local conglomerate; and Richard Roth, who founded an ad agency in New York City.
—Steve Quickel, 411 North Middletown Road, Apt. F-310, Media, PA, 19063; steve58@quickel.net