By Stephen W. Buck
In response to growing interest in our lively monthly coffee hour, two classmates, Steve Howard and Bill Weber, have joined the Communications Team. Steve writes, “I practiced law in Los Angeles from 1968 until 2007. The high point of my legal career was an oral argument in the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the disposition of lawsuits by American businesses pending in the US against Iran as provided for in the agreement that brought the US hostages home. Unfortunately, although some media predicted after the argument that our side would win, we did not. Still it was a very heady experience and by coincidence the last case heard by Potter Stewart, for whom I had clerked 13 years before.
“On the personal side, my wife Marilyn and I have two adult daughters. Hannah is a consulting software engineer, currently working on a crypto currency project that I absolutely cannot understand. Ali is a psychotherapist with an active practice. Both work entirely from home and intend to do so indefinitely, pandemic or not. Times change.
“Since my retirement Marilyn and I have taken in excess of 25 international hiking trips, principally in the Alps, the Himalayas, and the Andes. With the pandemic hopefully on the wane, we look forward to more trips abroad; but now that I am in my 80s, my hiking is going to have to be limited to much tamer terrain.
“Around home, my main interest is gardening, especially succulents and other drought-tolerant, ornamental plants. I don’t know why, but I love to prune. I also occasionally get to the golf course, but sadly, I never got any better than I was in college, which was not very good.
“On the Communications Team, I will initially concentrate on organizing our class coffee hours, identifying hopefully interesting discussion topics and encouraging participation in the coffee hours by classmates with particular knowledge of or experience with the discussion topics.”
And from Bill Weber: “Joining the Yale ’62 class communication team seemed like a good idea considering the two stories I had written for the website on my experiences as town supervisor and the troubles I encountered with the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas deposits and potential deep well injections sites in my town. Then with my attendance at some coffee hour sessions it was Al Chambers who suggested I join the communications team. I am glad to report that I have assisted in two terrific presentations, one by Jim Lewis and another set by Chuck Post. Jean McKillop is our organizer and does a terrific job keeping us in line! My next assignments are continued outreaches to our classmates for stories of great accomplishments since 1962.”
Phil Proctor reports, “I am now a regular panelist on the comedy quiz show Says You! as it celebrates its 25th year on NPR, and streaming live online! Go to the link for details. I am also the cohost of an ongoing podcast called Phil & Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show, interviewing celebrity friends like John Goodman, Penn Jillette, Thom Hartman, Weird Al Yankovic, Leonard Maltin, and many more. The Firesign Theatre has also recently released a double LP edition of Dope Humor of the Seventies—a limited edition of skits from our live radio shows on Standup! records, also available as a download. And I, and my darling wife, Melinda Peterson, have been recreating various old-time radio characters on YouTube with the Online Radio Theatre players, in shows like The Lives of Harry Lime, The Burns and Allen Show, My Favorite Husband, and The Maltese Falcon. Google ‘Radio Theatre of the Air, Gregg Oppenheimer.’” Phil ends his note with a photo of him in a T-shirt that reads, “Old Lives Matter.”
Gary Richardson asks, “Following up on our recent 6Y2 coffee-hour conversation about voter suppression as well as classmates’ concerns about the undemocratic behavior of the Yale board of trustees, is anyone else taken aback that only one Yale professor signed on to the June 1 letter of concern about the threats to American democracy signed by 100 academics, while 11 Stanford and 11 Harvard professors signed on?”
Sadly, we report the passing of classmates Henry Clay Child, George Evans, Robert Gray and Thomas Childs, whose obituaries will be posted on our website in due course. On our website, we have newly written obituaries for the following classmates: Ed Worthy and Matt Black.