CLASS OF 1953 WHO'S WHO & WHERE - The City College Fund

a service out of the York English Department called REWRITE, a call-in service for writers in businessor pleasure or professions to get answers to usages they were stuck on right then, on pages already intheir typewriters. It was very successful—manned by a dozen professors four hours a day—reachingacross several continents. My colleagues and I did interviews on-air, in magazines, on TV. One interview,with Marty Wayne of lunch-time radio on WNYC brought an invitation for me to try out theservice on his show, Senior Edition. I started the grammar section of that show, which was passed onto Leonard Lopate almost thirty years ago. I stayed with it for fifteen years, until I went to China in1998, when it was passed on to a successor, who is still there.At about that time, I became greatly interested in Philip Roth, and after my son’s death, I concentratedon writing what became an academically successful book called Philip Roth and the Jews (SUNY Press1996), which gave rise to conference presentations, reviews and other book chapters on associated subjects.I was also elected to head the full York faculty caucus because we had a problem with an overbearingand rules-ignoring recently-appointed president. I oversaw the recall of that president, whichI presented as a faculty resolution to the Board of Trustees. They acted favorably upon it almost immediately.With all that, my favorite activity was teaching and my place of greatest satisfaction, theclassroom. However, in 1998, I applied for a slot in our college’s exchange program with a Chineseuniversity. After securing a position for Vera as a basic English instructor there as well (upon whichshe retired from twenty-years of resumed work for the NYC Board of education), I went off to teachChinese university teachers of English how to teach Shakespeare, and to teach English majors Englishand Western Civilization. About that I can write another three hours, but a promise is a promise—toyou, to my own deadline, and to my birthday girl, whom I am taking out to dinner, so I will concludeby getting to…2003-13: In 2003, I took advantage of a very generous retirement incentive to give up my full-timeline, become an Adjunct Professor of English (and later of History/Philosophy as well) and teach twocourses a term at York, which I have been doing for the last ten years.I look forward to seeing you on commencement weekend and to reading your bios as well.