Class of 1956 Newsletter – Fall 2010 [.pdf] - Penn Alumni ...

5 5 t h r e u n i o n
PENN
CLASS OF
‘56 Homecoming Events on October 30, 2010
Will Pre-Launch Class’ 55th Reunion in May, 2011
F A L L 2 0 1 0
If you thought Class reunions ended with our 50th, think again. We’re getting ready
for our 55th next May 13-16, and you should plan now to attend and alert your friends
in the Class too. The Class of 1955 had a very successful reunion this year and we can
surpass them next May.
Elsewhere in this newsletter our Reunion Co-Chair Jim Wilson, gives you more details
about both the Reunion and the Pre-Reunion Events at Homecoming—final Reunion
plans will be sent to you in March, 2011. But start planning now to avoid other
commitments that might keep you from attending. Get in touch with the classmates
you especially want to see and encourage them to attend.
I and your other classmates look forward to seeing you at Penn next May.
Classmates,
Yours for the Red and Blue,
1956Dear
John C.T. Alexander, W’56
President, Class of 1956
B

Q: Jim, what will our 55th Reunion be like?
A: It will be much more laid back than our 50th—
Rather than having a lot of scheduled events, the
emphasis will be on letting our classmates visit
with other classmates. This will also give them
time to take advantage of Philadelphia’s museums,
restaurants and other attractions.
Q: How are you getting ready?
Q
&A
A: We have a great committee (see the list on page 3)
and we’ve been working hard to make sure that
this is a reunion to remember. For example, we’ve
decided to have the dinner on campus on the top
floor of the new Huntsman Hall, which has
beautiful views of the campus and the city.
We’ve also been stressing communications with
our classmates because we know how busy a
lot of them are. Alan Ackerman is heading our
Affinity Group Committee, which seeks to reach
classmates through the activities they participated
in at Penn.
Q: How can classmates help with this?
A: If they contact Alan (email: AlanAckermanEsq@
aol.com),he can make sure they get a list of
classmates who participated in their activity—
for example a fraternity, sorority, club or sports
team. These lists usually have not only addresses
but also phone numbers so all they have to do is
write a letter or make a call. In addition, we hope
classmates will get in touch with their personal
friends to ask them to come.
2
with Reunion Co-Chair Jim Wilson
Q: Is there any other way classmates can help?
A: Classmates who live in the Philadelphia area can
get involved with the Reunion program event
arrangements, for example, acting as volunteer
hosts and hostesses to welcome classmates and
help them with directions. If you’d like to help
this way, email me at 329wilson@comcast.net and
tell me how you’d like to help.
Q: If I want to make hotel reservations in
advance, what do I do?
A: The Penn Alumni room block for Alumni
Weekend is at The Philadelphia Marriott
Downtown, 1201 Market Street. The Penn
Alumni Weekend 2011 rate is $179/night plus
tax. Please contact the Philadelphia Marriott to
book your room in one of two ways:
Go online at: www.alumni.upenn.edu/
alumniweekend2011/marriott.html
or call 800-266-9432 and ask for the Penn
Alumni Weekend 2011 room block.
Q. Any final thoughts?
A. Just that this 55th gives us one more chance to
see our classmates at Penn, where a lot of our
friendships began. I hope a lot of classmates will
take advantage of this opportunity, even if they
haven’t been to a reunion in a while. It would be
great to see everyone and we’re planning to make
it as enjoyable and accessible as we can.

Quick Guide
TO HOMECOMING & REUNION EVENTS
Full details of all Reunion Events will be sent in March.
Homecoming events
For full details, check the
Homecoming website:
www.alumni.upenn.edu/
homecoming2010
saturday, october 30, 2010
n Eye-opener reception at The Class
of 1956 Trolley, 37th and Spruce
Streets from 10 a.m. until the Old
Guard Brunch.
reunioncommittee
Sidney Wollerton Mudge, Reunion Co-Chair
Jim Wilson, Reunion Co-Chair
Frank Brown, Reunion Vice Chair, Dinner Chair
John C.T. Alexander, Ex Officio
John W. Alexander, Jr., Communications Chair
Alan Ackerman, Affinity Chair
Sanford Simon, Gift Chair
Myles Wilson, Telethon Chair
n Old Guard Brunch: Hall of Flags,
Houston Hall, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
At the brunch, our very own C. T.
Alexander will be recognized for his
50 years of service in the Press Box
at Penn home football games as
“The Voice of Franklin Field.”
*Note that Golf carts will be available
to go from Luncheon to Game and
from Game to parking garages after
the game.
n Penn vs. Brown game, Franklin
Field, 1:30 p.m.
CommIttee membeRs:
Mary Louise Gorman Denney
Rose Sachs Cooperman
Adrienne Sacks Ellis
Jim Siegel
Pat Siegel
John “Jack” Swope
Janice Yelland
F A L L 2 0 1 0
55th Reunion events
Friday, may 14, 2011
n Dinner-Huntsman Hall, 38th and
Walnut, 6:15 p.m.
saturday, may 15, 2011
n Alumni Day, Parade of Classes.
3

4
newsnotes
MAry Lou GorMAn Denney
(marylou.denney@verizon.net) writes:
“Bob [‘54] and I are still hard at work;
Bob with his Law firm consulting
business and I with real estate sales with
Prudential Fox Roach in Devon. Our
nine children are in various parts of U.S.
but 5 families live close by. Our oldest
of 17 grandchildren are triplets living in
San Antonio and will be going to college
next year-- hope they will be coming
East and putting Penn on their list. Our
children are in their 40’s and 50’s now.
That scares us when we think of it!!!”
Gail Lebengood, wife of BoB
LeBenGooD (rlebengood@charter.
net) wrote on Bob’s behalf: “Bob was hit
by a car last September while jogging.
Physically he has healed, but it has left
him with TBI (traumatic brain injury)
so it is very doubtful he will attend the
reunion. Just for news purposes, he ran
the ING half marathon in March ‘09
in Atlanta just to prove he could do it
at his age, and finished the entire race!
Of course he always was a “jock”. He
has been in 5 Peachtree Road Races in
Atlanta and I know he will miss being
at the upcoming reunion. Please keep us
informed and I will take info to him to
see.” Gail will relay any emails to Bob.
IrA TIGer (Itiger@schnader.com)
retired about seven years ago after 40+
years as a litigator for (and former
chairman of the Litigation Department
of) Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis.
Ira says:“My wife and I have 5 kids
(one a Penn graduate). One is a lawyer,
three are engineers, and the youngest
is a nurse/supervisor. We have 5
grandchildren – a college junior, two
10th graders, one ninth grader, and one
eighth grader. We reside in Elkins Park,
Pa. – within 20 minutes of four of our
grandchildren.”
Ira the sports fan concludes: “After loyal
allegiance to the Brooklyn Dodgers
from birth through college graduation,
I switched to the Philly sports teams
when I made the Philadelphia area
my permanent home in 1959 (after
graduation from law school). I rise
and fall with the highs and lows of the
Phillies, Eagles and Flyers and (to a lesser
extent) the 76ers.”
MIckey LITTMAn
(mickey.j.littmann@
morganstanleysmithbarney.com)
responded to our email with a long
poem called “The Class Reunion”,
illuminated with animated cartoons. We
wish we could quote the whole thing but
the first and last verses are:
“Every five years, as summertime nears,
An announcement arrives in the mail,
A reunion is planned; it’ll be really grand;
Make plans to attend without fail.
I’m feeling quite hearty,
And I’m ready to party
I’m gonna dance ‘til dawn’s early light.
It’ll be lots of fun;
But I just hope that there’s one
Other person who can make it that night.”
Not to worry, Mickey–you’ll have plenty of
company.
roGer W. TInkhAM (rolextabasco@
comcast.net) spent a lot of time in the
Medical Marketing field, visiting leading
surgeons. He served on the Lighting
Subcommittee of the American College
of Surgeons, which helped develop
the first Surgical Television System.
He retired in 1984 to move to Coastal
South Georgia where he enjoys golf year
round, the sport of falconry, and visiting
his family. He enjoys keeping up with
members of the Heavyweight Crew from
the past and the current crews.
PAuL ruBensTeIn (rubystone@
aol.com) is “retired from the stock
market, still safely divorced, living in
Manhattan, which makes me wonder
how I ever found the time to work when
there’s so much stuff going on here! I
have two beautiful granddaughters who
unfortunately live in Illinois, so I don’t
get to see them as much as I’d like to.
I attend all Penn home football games
and most road games too, and otherwise
keep busy trying to find ways to defeat
Democrats and promote Republicans.”
An around the World trip earlier this
year showed ALAn AckerMAn
(alanackermanesq@aol.com) and his
wife Barb “many of the ancient wonders
and civilizations that we had missed
along the way. Very interesting and
educational. Filled in some of the blanks
while I was studying American History
at Penn.”Alan and Barb have seven
grandchildren who reside in Manhattan
and Toronto (unfortunately not in
Pittsburgh, where the Ackermans reside).
BILL ZIeLenBAch che56
(billz5609@aol.com) retired from
Battelle in Columbus, Ohio, 16 years
ago. Still living with wife, Joan, in
Hilliard, Ohio. Golf game is not getting
any better but Bridge game is. Still
chasing family genealogy. Son Kurt is a
Wittenburg University graduate and is a
program manager at Chemical Abstract
Service in Columbus, Ohio; Daughter
Karen (Brown) is a Miami (Ohio) Univ
graduate and a life underwriter with
American Health (formerly AIG); We
remain active in the Presbyterian church.
Looking forward to my 55th.
MerLe Zucker (merlezucker@
gmail.com) is President of the Fairmont
Condominium, Member of the Board of
Directors of the Neighborhood Club of
Bala Cynwyd and Legislative Assistant to
Representative Kathy Manderino of the
194th District of Pennsylvania.
Merle says: “I am constantly busy and
not ready to retire because every day has
the potential of being the absolutely very
best day of your life.”

MorT hAnDeL (morthandel@aol.
com) writes: Upon the acquisition of
Marvel Entertainment by Disney on
December 31, 2009, I retired as Board
Chair of Marvel - after a wonderful 12
year run. My wife, Irma, and I spend
about 7 months a year at our home in
Boca Raton, FL, and the balance of the
year in West Hartford.” Now that I’m
fully retired, we get to spend more time
with our 3 children and 4 grandchildren.
Irma and I continue to be involved
with our performing arts center at the
University of Hartford, and I am still
able to maintain my single digit golf
handicap. With all the pains of age and
body part replacements, it’s still better to
look at the grass from this side.”
“I will be glad to help call some of our
classmates before next May’s reunion,”
writes Tony DuTTon (adutton@
hodgsonruss.com). “The best bets for
me would probably be fellow members
of Phi Kappa Sigma and members of the
track and cross-country teams. I mostly
divide my time between Toronto,
Ontario and central Florida.”
rose sAchs cooPerMAn
(rosecooperman31@comcast.net)
“I think someone’s math is a little out
of whack. It just doesn’t seem possible
that we left the ranks of undergraduates
at Penn 55 years ago. We must have
graduated at age 3.
“Seriously, it really is the year 2010, and
here we are anticipating celebrating the
55th year since graduation. I’m really
looking forward to meeting and greeting
my fellow members of the Class of ‘56.
I’ll certainly be there to toast all of us
and get the chance to catch up on all
that’s going on in your lives. Don’t
forget to bring your family pictures, and
you all have my permission to brag a
little, as long as I get my chance, too. I’ll
start the ball rolling by saying that my
grandson is about to begin his junior
year in the College as the 3rd generation
of our family. (Both his parents and
one set of grandparents graduated from
Penn.)”
If you watch the better kind of
programs on TV, you’ve doubtless
seen some written by sTeve FAyer
(fayersteve@aol.com). Steve won a
national Emmy for writing an episode
of the PBS series “Eyes on the Prize”,
for which he was the principal writer.
The series covered the U.S. civil rights
movement from the Brown vs. Board
of Education Supreme Court decision
in 1954 to the drive for political power
in the 1980s. He also wrote “After the
Crash” the pilot program on which “The
Great Depression” series was based and
was the writer for the series. He won
a Writer’s Guild of America award for
“George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on
Fire” and has been involved in several
other noteworthy series.
He is co-author of “Voices of Freedom,
one of The New York Times “notable
books of the year”. In the past decade,
he has published 20 short stories and
has recently completed two fiction
collections, “The Diver’s Game” a novel
in stories set in Brooklyn’s Holy Cross
Parish and “The Settlement”, tales of
a long-ago scandal in a Catskill village.
“Calliope”, a tale of black and Jewish
families in the Catskills, was awarded
first prize in the New Millennium
Writings short fiction competition for
2009.
When not writing he has “helped build
a gaff-rigged schooner in a Danish
shipyard, done ocean research on the
migration of the European eel, sailed
across the Atlantic at the tail-end of
hurricane season and wandered the
mountains of Central America”. Steve
has been a MacDowell Fellow and
is a member of the Writers Guild of
America.
Incidentally, Steve is the third member
of the Class of 1956 to win an Emmy:
William Link and the late Richard
Levinson won in 1970 for “My Sweet
Charlie” and in 1972 for “That Certain
Summer”.
F A L L 2 0 1 0
DAve kLIne (dkline@lsuhsc.edu)
attended his 50th Reunion at the Penn
Medical School in May. After retiring
in 2008 following 41 years at Louisiana
State University Health Sciences Center,
Charity and Ochsner Hospitals in New
Orleans, he and his wife Nell now live
in the Pisgah National Forest 3.2 miles
from Blowing Rock, North Carolina,
in a cabin built in 1898, reachable only
via gravel roads and by fording a couple
of streams. Retirement gave Dave time
to diminish a hectic schedule and also
to address a personal medical problem
discovered just before retirement.
He and Nell keep quite busy. They took
Master Gardener classes at NC State
and they volunteer at the Ag Center
in Boone, where Dave sometimes
mans the call-in line for diseases and
pests of flowers, vegetables, lawns and
ornamental plants. As a crew leader
for the 2010 Census, he supervised a
group of enumerators, whose territory
was ”mountainous and Appalachian”.
In the Fall, Dave and Nell return to
Appalachian State University’s Kidd
Brewer Stadium, where they help out at
football games.
“I feel fortunate to have reached this
point in life”, Dave says, “and I wish my
classmates of ’56 the very best and hope
that some of you can visit.”
John W. ALexAnDer, Jr.
(jalexande2@comcast.net) and his
wife Leslie sold their Wynnewood, PA
home of 35 years last June and moved
to a big sunny apartment in Bryn Mawr,
which is convenient since Leslie still
teaches at Bryn Mawr. John is a Board
member and former treasurer of Lower
Merion Affordable Housing, which gives
qualified residents the opportunity to
own their own homes and a member of
the Finance Committee of St. Colman
Church in Ardmore. Despite some
health problems in the last year, John
is happy to have more time to do more
reading–and a little writing–without the
worries of a house and yard.
5

6
PENN ALUMNI BOOkSHELf
So many Penn alumni have written fascinating books that it is impossible to list them all, but here a few which have been
recommended. If you have written a book and you would like to inform your fellow alumni about it, let Lynn Carroll
know at lynnc@upenn.edu!
A Bridge of Leaves; also, The Lower East Side:
A Portrait in Time by Diana Cavallo, CW’53
The Complete Book of Breastfeeding
(4th Edition just released) by Sally Wendkos Olds CW’55
www.sallywendkosolds.com
Open Spaces Sacred Places: Stories of How Nature
Heals and Unifies by Tom Stoner, W’56
http://openspacessacredplaces.org
Higher Calling (A Reluctant Sleuth Mystery)
by Edward J. Rand, W’58
www.reluctantsleuth.com
New Low-Fat Favorites Cookbook
by Ruth Abramson Spear, CW’54
Trouble Tree by John Hill Porter, W’55
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger by Maxine Swarttz Schnall ED’56
The Columbo Collection by William Link W’56
Chance Encounter: A Post-Holocaust Story
by Sanford Simon, W’56

AN UPDATE ON CAMPUS CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
F A L L 2 0 1 0
CAMPUS
transformations
The Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine completed in Fall 2008 is a state-of-the-art, 500,000 square foot outpatient
facility adjacent to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The Perelman Center is home to Penn Medicine’s
Abramson Cancer Center, radiation oncology, cardiovascular medicine and an outpatient surgical pavilion.
The Anne and Jerome Fisher (W’53) Translational Research Center, slated to open in 2010, will be a new eight-story
biomedical-research center dedicated to the growing field of translational medicine, which emphasizes an accelerated pace
for converting laboratory discoveries into medical therapies.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center completed in Fall 2009 performs research in the fields of political communication,
information and society, media and the developing child, health communication and adolescent risk. The Policy Center’s
goal is to provide expert analysis that brings these issues into focus.
The Weiss Pavilion completed in Spring 2010 transformed the long arcade on the northern side of Franklin Field into
a new Weight Training and Fitness Center. The Center inhabits the space of the arches on two levels and connects the
interior concourse space under the stadium bleachers with the new east-west exterior pedestrian promenade.
7

A
University of Pennsylvania
3533 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6226
The Class of ’56 Reunion Committee at work.
Non-Profit
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit #2563
Philadelphia, PA
1956
Class of
Newsletter