Class Notes, March/April 2003 Class Notes
Saturday May 10, 2003 Category: Archives Permanent Link
Although I’ve lived at the same address for years, a classmate (I will call him Josh Fruhlinger) referred to me as his “long-lost college friend” in an e-mail update. I’m surprised that Josh and I haven’t been able to keep in touch with each other considering the omnipresence of www.google.com. We met during a mandatory round of Orientation Day icebreakers, so, naturally, I assumed we would still be reminiscing about Slope Day shenanigans and the majestic Styx mural in our dorm.
Fortunately, there’s still hope for other “long-lost college friends” who wish to reconnect with their elusive freshman year chums. Log into the Alumni Directory through www.alumni.cornell.edu to update your street and e-mail address or to find a former boyfriend/girlfriend you’ve been avoiding for years. If all of those www.classmates.com advertisements are to be believed, someone is looking for you right now!
In addition to calling me the “Class of ‘96 Total Information Awareness Officer”—a distinction that truly belongs to Courtney Rubin or Sheryl Magzamen—Josh described the last few years of his life in his message: “I quit grad school, got a ridiculously overpaid dot-com editor job in San Francisco, and got laid off from said job after two years with a ridiculously generous severance. I knew a bunch of people who needed freelance editorial help, and so what started off as a brief break between jobs has turned into 18 months as a freelance technical editor who never has to go to the office, sit through meetings, get up before noon , or put on pants.” In March 2002, Josh moved from San Francisco to Berlin and back before settling in Baltimore last August. “I live in a downtown apartment that’s just as nice at half the price of San Francisco , still freelance editing, still not wearing pants.” With refreshing candor like that, who needs pants?
Another dot-com veteran, Stephanie Cockerl, hasn’t let the sluggish economy keep her from succeeding in New Media. Her company, smcockerl studio, was featured on Business Owners’ Idea Café. According to Stephanie (our Class of 1996 co-president), “the site is a resource for entrepreneurs on all levels. I have also won a Golden Web Award for several websites. The award is given by the International Assn. of Webmasters and Designers and is presented to those sites whose Web design, originality, and content have achieved levels of excellence.” Stephanie adds that she recently “implemented an intranet solution for the New York Golisano for Governor campaign and has been selected to appear “on the PageOut website as a featured instructor for the courses she teaches as adjunct professor at Metropolitan College of New York, formerly Audrey Cohen College .”
In other news, Brooklyn resident Karin Klapper reports that she “switched jobs in October of 2001 from a big Wall Street law firm to a very small litigation boutique specializing in white collar work”—and loves it! Todd Humora writes, “Laura Barrantes ‘97 and I—and our dog, Jack, who also went to Cornell—recently moved to California from Maryland .” He has started working on a home audio company called Sonance as a product design engineer.” (That’s Todd, not the dog, by the way.) After 9/11, Mark Gelston was recalled to active duty. He is currently “working at the US Central Command in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.” Over in Florida , Monica Rodriguez Quirch has been busy renovating a new home, starting a business, and taking care of her 1-year-old son, Mauricio Quirch Jr. She plans to “catch up with Maria Jose Castro in San Francisco en route to a cruise through Alaska .”
If you read the New York Times every Sunday, you may have noticed that a lot of our classmates got hitched in 2002. Marisa Schiller, MD ‘00, a resident in neurology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, married Gary Sosinsky last August. Marisa’s husband is an associate at Nordlicht & Rand, a New York law firm. Columbia U. graduate Jesse Goichman, MBA/JD ‘02, met James Eisenberg, MPS RE ‘02, while working on advanced degrees at Cornell. James is a managing director for operations at Urban American Partners in West New York , NJ , and his wife is an associate at the New York law firm of Clifford, Chance, Rogers & Wells.
Vegetarianism helped David de la Nuez find his future wife at a Columbia U. orientation barbecue for graduate students in August 1997. He noticed Sharon Collins because she was one of the few people who was not eating a hamburger or hot dog and “she had beautiful, curly hair.” He is a doctoral candidate in industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia , and Sharon teaches eighth grade math and science at Robeson Academy Prep, a program for high-achieving students at Paul Robeson Junior High School in the Bronx . Food was also the catalyst for the union of Rebecca Braff and Brian Maxwell. According to the Times, “the couple met in 2000 at Radius, a Boston restaurant, where Ms. Braff was working as an assistant to the pastry chef and Mr. Maxwell as a line cook.” Rebecca is currently a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT, and Brian is the executive chef at The Vault, a restaurant in Boston .
School psychologist Dr. Allison Jeffer married Troy Patterson, a medical sales consultant at the Metropolitan Club in New York last August. A few months later, David Goodman and Vicki Grape exchanged vows at Temple Hillel in North Woodmere , NY . David is an associate in Manhattan with the real estate debt-markets group of Deutsche Bank Securities, and Mrs. Goodman is a certified public accountant and a portfolio manager at Invesco Private Capital in Manhattan . Congratulations to all the happy couples!
Please send your class news to Courtney, Sheryl or myself. We would love to hear from you.
— Allie Cahill, Class Correspondent
