Class Notes, January/February 1997

Saturday March 01, 1997 Category: Archives Permanent Link

Happy 1997! Hope you partied like it was Senior Week all over again! (Maybe that’s your excuse for not writing me–insert first of many thinly-disguised pleas for gossip here). As you’ll see from this edition of Name Dropping, there’s so much to celebrate. Here in Washington during the closing days of the presidential campaign, I’m quickly learning that our nation’s capital doesn’t make anything but laws, regulations, reports, and trouble–there are dozens of Cornellians contributing to Washington ‘s largest export: paperwork.

Ben Faulkner is (or was, by the time you read this) on temporary assignment in Gore-land ( Tennessee ), working on the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign. Lina Petty, here in DC with the Democratic National Committee, has also recently been spending time with Mr. Big Mac and the veeper, fighting off the forces of evil as we know them. And don’t call Sandy Fried a wonk yet, but she’s working on it: she’s a legislative assistant to the governor of Illinois.

At the October International Spirit of Zinck’s Night, at Lulu’s (think Collegetown bar/meat market that you can actuall move around in), I caught up with Levina Wong, who’s working on a PhD in electrical engineering at the U. of Maryland, College Park. Also out in the ‘burbs, Nancy Merrill, whose Bethesda apartment is just down the block from Toby Levine Communications, the educational consulting firm where she works.

Robin M. Smith and Ilan Barzilay toil in the stacks with “half of Cornell” at Georgetown U. ‘s law school, while Liz Rand and Brian Finch say they see plenty of red at George Washington U.’s law school. What’s that saying–make love, not Law Review? Maybe that’s a good idea: there’s already one licensed lawyer in DC for every ten people…

A walk around downtown last week to disprove my notion that DC isn’t much more than Ithaca on the Potomac , with only slightly less predictable weather. In a rainstorm last week, I barely recognized an umbrella-less Andy Morse (sans baseball cap, too), dashing off to keep things going, er, swimmingly, at ABC TV, where he’s a production coordinator. Up the street, Dan Dovdavany, ever the conscientious paralegal, was only worried about keeping his briefcase safe and dry.

And in an apartment building so close to mine that I can practically see that the lightning wasn’t dancing to the beat of thunder, but rather to their 1970’s CD collection, live Marion Vetter and Ami Gadhia. Marion breaks frequently from her dietetics internship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda to catch Saturday Night Fever at Polly Esther’s, a—you guessed it—downtown 1970’s club. Ami is part of the Class of ‘96 Advisory Board Company crew that may just number 96 any day now. Already I know about Katie Butler, Andrew McCollurn, Rhan Soh, and Dennis Shin. No doubt there were others who have yet—hint, hint—to drop me a line (insert second of many pleas for gossip, juicy or otherwise).

Don’t ask Navy Ensign. Ian Craig—fresh out of Naval Officer Candidate School in Pensacola —what he’s up to now. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” jokes Craig, who works at the Pentagon, and undoubtedly has an FBI file. “But probably you’d die of boredom first.”

Christie M. Kaefer (that’s *lieutenant* to Christie Kaefer, mind you) can certainly tell you what she’s doing: struggling to get up at 4 or 5 a.m. to head over to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where she’s doing an internship in dietetics. She’s probably getting up at about the time workaholic Saif Rathore is going to sleep. He’s a Georgetown medical school research assistant by day and organic chem. student (and happy-hour maven) by night. When Dante created the rings of hell, he forgot all about medical school, or at least that’s how I always thought of it. But Lisa Firestone is surviving first-year medical school just fine, thank you—even going so far as to use the phrase “loving it” to appropriately capture the experience.

Up in Philadelphia , Lillian Su and Sondra Iacullo are sharing an apartment and med school class notes at Temple U. Sondra often sees Ken Bogursky, and engineer posted at Philadelphia ‘s Kulicke and Soffa Industries. She also hears from former apartment-mates Connie Lung and Barbara Yien, who are now a long, long way from Eddy Street. Connie just finished CSX Corp.’s training for engineers in North Carolina , and has been sent to Jacksonville , FL. Barbara—who recently finished the Radcliffe Publishing Institute at that unmentionable Crimson school with the horrible hockey team—lives in San Francisco and works in publishing.

Kathryn Petrillo, Dan Creskoff, and Adam C. Michaelides can battle it out for the gone-the-distance awards: Kathryn’s saving the environment in Bulgaria, where she’s serving with the Peace Corps, while Dan is teaching English in Japan through the JET program. Adam, who’s with the Peace Corps, is teaching science (and guitar, of course) to high schoolers in Malawi. A bit closer, Jurica Novak, breaks for tea and scones (and a dose of royal family rumors) in Cambridge while working on a PhD in physics.

That’s all the news—fit or otherwise—I’ve got to print. I won’t say write soon, but you’d better!

—Courtney Rubin, Class Columnist