The Rochester Review, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
September was quite a month for lyric soprano Renee Fleming '83E (Mas). Not only did she sing Mozart and Richard Strauss with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic in the opening concert of the orchestra's new season, she was also invited to sing the title role in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Massenet's Manon during the opening week of its season. She may be, decreed The New York Times, "the most sought-after lyric soprano of her generation."
Research physicist Ted Martonen '77 (PhD), combining his expertise in medical research and computer technology, has won the 1997 Computerworld Smithsonian Award for Medicine for his supercomputer simulations of the human lung. (Such simulations allow researchers to "test" theories on an organ, predicting with accuracy possible outcomes.) Martonen is a research physicist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory in North Carolina.
At the National Institutes of Health, David Lee Robinson '72 (PhD) is filling the newly created position of ombudsman. Robinson, a 25-year veteran scientist in the National Eye Institute, acts as mediator among his colleagues at the NIH in a trial program to deal with conflict resolution at the institutes. "Rather than being a pain in the neck, as I halfway thought it might be," Robinson says, "the job has really been fascinating so far. What is amazing to me is how differently the same story can be seen by opposing parties."
Arts and engineering can and do intersect, despite some popular notions to the contrary: Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, has named Richard R. Andre '96 its 1997 Tau Beta Pi Laureate. The optical engineer, who also minored in music at Rochester, made a major impact on the University's cultural scene, the society said. It cited him for several thousand hours of service to undergraduate musical organizations, including the Student Broadway Company, of which he was a founding member. Andre now works for Anvik Corporation, which designs and builds microelectronics manufacturing lithographic equipment. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Andre is also a member of the Acoustical Society of America, AIP, and SPIE.
Some high-stakes gamblers risk their life savings; some just risk their lives. Violinist Martha Curtis '78E is one of the latter. Fans of the stalwart Sunday news magazine 60 Minutes may already be familiar with Curtis's story--the popular program featured her courageous gamble last year.
Suffering from one of the most severe forms of epilepsy, which eventually made it impossible for her to perform, Curtis chose to undergo a series of radical brain surgeries and, finally, removal of half of her right temporal lobe in an attempt to control the seizures. This surgery was so extreme that doctors weren't even sure that she would know what a violin was afterward, much less ever again play one in public.
They needn't have worried. After a dramatic recovery, Curtis is now playing better than ever. She was back in Rochester this fall for a lecture-recital. "I never speak in public without playing my violin," she said. "It helps me convey my will to thrive, not just to survive."
"There's never been anything like this on television before," says the promotional material. The special television program, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, based on the best-selling book of the same name, profiled three couples as an illustration of the difficulties of cross-gender communication. Bruce Terry '81, managing director of Marathon Capital Growth Partners, in Greenwich, Conn., and his wife, Diane, were one of the couples featured. "Simply knowing even a little bit about how a woman communicates is pretty powerful knowledge," Terry said after the show was filmed. The couple was chosen out of about 300 volunteers responding to a national ad.
Best-director honors went to Brady R. Allred '90E (DMA) at the Marktoberdorf Chamber Choir Competition in Germany last spring. The director of the Duquesne University Chamber Singers also saw his singers take first place overall and earn a citation for best interpretation of a 20th-century piece at the international competition. . . . Meanwhile, first-place award in the 1997 Jenny Lind Competition for Sopranos, sponsored by the Barnum Festival and Stamford-based Connecticut Grand Opera and Orchestra, went to another Eastman alum, Kathleen Callahan '95E.
Jennifer Greenfeld '87E, '88 took a huge leap this past year, from one side of the continent to another, as well as from one glossy mag to another. Greenfeld, who works as a photo editor, has moved from that position at Marie Claire in the Big Apple to sunny Woodland Hills, Calif., and Jump magazine.
Jane Warren Larson '43 of Bethesda, Md., is the daughter of the late Stafford L. Warren, who taught radiology at the School of Medicine and Dentistry during the 1930s. When radiology became a department in 1939, Warren was named department chair. He left the University in 1943 to become medical director of the Manhattan Project.
In a memoir she recently completed for her family, Larson writes of gatherings with her father, George Eastman, and George Whipple, founding dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry. Here are some excerpts.
"As my father and Whipple would stand in the medical school library, admiring some great sweep of horns mounted on the wall attesting to Eastman's last African safari, Eastman himself was apt to come by to swap hunting tales. It soon became a habit for the three men to hunt together in the fall on a farm near Rochester where pheasants were stocked and the fields were friendly. . . .
"George Eastman died in 1932, when I was 10, and so there must have been only two or three of our 'hunt parties.' His declining health put a stop to festivities, much to my mother's disappointment. Still, it's a wonder dad and mother could arrange even two or three parties when you consider that the invitees were in great demand. George Whipple had just won the Nobel Prize a few years earlier for solving the mystery of pernicious anemia, which saved thousands of lives. And George Eastman was unapproachable, really, except that he loved eating whatever his hunting party brought in each fall. My dad always came home with a brace of pheasants. My mother cooked and cleaned them, as I recall, and then hung them in the root cellar, where they apparently 'cured' until the party. . . .
"The night of a party, the house would be done up to a fare-thee-well, with curtains newly cleaned, windows washed, our best 12-place banquet cloth laid down hours ahead, and all the silver out. I remember the candlelight and my dad pouring the wine and then carving the pheasant. Everyone at last found things to talk about and it was always a triumph. George Eastman wasn't a conversationalist, but a glass or two of that Prohibition wine (which you couldn't buy in any store around) always seemed to perk him up. After the party, my mother would tell my dad how much she thought George Eastman enjoyed himself. . . .
"Dad never talked to me about Eastman's death--nor did anyone in the Whipple family, even though their daughter Barbara was my best friend from around the age of four through college and afterwards. My mother, though, said that he took his own life because he was ill with no hope of recovery, that he had been a truly great man, and that my father had helped him enjoy himself during his last days. . . .
"Later, my father became engrossed in ever more complex X-ray research. When the war broke out, General Groves asked him to take responsibility for the health and safety of workers at the Manhattan Project. He had been groomed to succeed Whipple as dean of the medical school, but after the war, the California legislature invited him to found the UCLA medical school."
Alumni Michael Silverberg '54 and Charlotte Goldman Silverberg '55 were among over 40 Rochester students, faculty, and alumni who traveled to Yodefat, in northern Israel, to participate in the archeological dig co-sponsored at that site by the University and the Israeli Antiquities Authority. This was the sixth summer for the dig.
Yodefat was the first sizable city captured by the Romans in their march on Jerusalem in 67 CE. Shown here on site are the Silverbergs as they work on a steep slope that may have been part of a Roman assault ramp.
This summer's dig uncovered the remains of a human, surrounded by arrow heads, found on the floor of luxurious mansion. The findings are "vivid testimony to the last moments after the Roman Army broke into the city it had besieged for 47 days," according to a story in the Jerusalem Post. (The remains of 30 other victims, evidently reburied by returning Jews years after the city's destruction, had been found earlier.) Excavators also uncovered unusually well-preserved frescos similar to those found in Massada and Jerusalem from that historical period.
Doug Abeles '81 is a contributing writer for television's comedy staple, Saturday Night Live. Abeles, who married Lori Sanchez last spring, also writes for This Is Not a Test, a live cybercast talk show on the Microsoft Network. . . . The LaJolla Playhouse in California now has the benefit of the stage-managing skills of Jana Levinson Llynn '81. The playhouse has her working on its production of Having Our Say, the Delaney sisters' story. This gig follows Levinson's last stint as stage manager of a new musical version of The Jungle Book at Broadway's New Victory Theater. . . . Prolific author Bob Bly '79 has just seen his 35th book published, by Henry Holt & Co. Meanwhile, the National Enquirer has been tut-tutting over Bly's 34th offering, The "I Hate Kathie Lee Gifford" Book. Gifford, in turn, hates the book so much, the Enquirer reports, that she has instructed her aides in Greenwich, Conn., to snap up and destroy any copies they find on the shelves of local booksellers. Bly's new book may be a little less exciting. Its title: Secrets of Successful Telephone Selling. . . . Then there's writer Michael Walsh '71E. Warner Books has been talking, a lot, about his new novel, a forthcoming sequel-cum-"prequel" to Casablanca, tentatively titled As Time Goes By. Some people have been tut-tutting about that too.
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