Holy Shirt (+playlist)

Ollie Rosengart

My career has been a winding path which I feel very fortunate to have taken. After graduating CCNY with a bachelor's in engineering (my most prized degree), I went to N.Y.U. law school. With the civil rights movement in the air, I spent 3 incredibly rewarding months in Mississippi as a civil rights law student. Back in NYC, in the late 60’s I became a criminal defense lawyer with an anti-poverty law program on the Lower East Side, happily in the midst of the political and cultural turmoil of the 60’s. In 1970 I began a three year stint teaching the criminal law clinic at N.Y.U. law school, handling cases with students. After that I quit lawyering for 8 years, and became a teacher in and director of an urban studies in program in the N.Y.U. college. At the same time I studied for and received a doctorate in psychology from the Union Graduate School, and worked half-time as a psychotherapist. After about 8 years, I felt burned out as a teacher so I left N.Y.U., ended my practice as a psychotherapist (it was too sedentary for me) and started a 25 year career as an Assistant Attorney General with New York State. My specialty was overseeing the sale of coops and condos and handling all of the construction defect complaints. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend my entire working life doing interesting, rewarding and very varied work. Eight months ago I retired from the AG’s office and I have been having a great time pursuing hobbies, learning a great deal, doing volunteer work and working a little as a consultant and an arbitrator/mediator.

I am married and have two boys from a previous marriage, aged 23 and 29. My wife is a lawyer with the N.Y.C. Dept. of Health, my older son is a computer wizard of some sort, and the younger one just graduated from Wesleyan and is searching for himself.

(posted on Ollie's behalf by Bob Bein)

Rosenstreich’s Travels: From the Bronx and Back

David and Vicki and grandkids, 2007









David and Vicki Rosenstreich, 1965












After I graduated from CCNY in 1963, I spent four years at the NYU School of Medicine, and another two years as a medical resident at the Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Uncle Sam then offered me two choices: get my behind shot off as a medical officer in Da Nang or do immunology research at a lab at the NIH in Bethesda, MD. Not surprisingly, I chose the latter and worked for three years at NIH as a member of an elite military group, the “Yellow Berets”. After my commitment ended, I stayed on, having discovered that the government would actually pay me to sit around all day thinking great thoughts and playing with chemicals. It definitely beat having a real job.

Finally, in 1978, my wife, Vicki, could no longer tolerate living where it was clean, quiet and stress-free and insisted that we move back to New York City. I spent 18 months as a visiting professor at the Rockefeller University in Manhattan, making sure that we could still tolerate life in the “Big Apple”, and in 1980 moved back to the Bronx to join the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I’ve remained at Einstein since then and currently serve as a Professor of Medicine at the Medical School and the Montefiore Medical Center, and the Director of the small but mighty, Division of Allergy and Immunology. I guess it was my destiny never to escape from the Bronx.

For some reason, despite trying to slow down, I seem to be working harder than ever. I spend a lot of my time seeing allergy patients, some of it supervising trainees and giving an occasional lecture, and an ever-increasing amount of hours writing memos and answering emails from various bureaucrats and administrators (whose numbers seem to be increasing exponentially).

Over the years, I’ve published research papers on a number of subjects but unfortunately, am probably best known for a study on the role of cockroaches as a cause of asthma. I’m pretty sure that my personal knowledge of roaches began when ZBT was still in the basement of the DKE house. Nonetheless, it’s a little embarrassing to be known among scientists and physicians, as the “cockroach guy”. I still dabble a bit in research and am currently involved in some potentially exciting work that I’m sure will win me a Nobel Prize, but still can’t convince the NIH to fund.

I’m still married to the same terrific girl, Vicki Abokrek (CCNY, 1965). We met in the fall of 1961 at an otherwise disastrous Friday night Zebe party (a long story). We were pinned at a “Spring Fling” at the Motel on the Mountain and were married in Brooklyn in 1965, in a wedding attended by Mike Newman and his wife Geri. We’ve been blessed with three great children and two wonderful grand children, all of whom I’m quite proud.

When I’m not working, we spend a little time in the winter in Miami Beach and some time in the summer in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Most of the time, we remain home in our modest, pseudo-Mediterranean villa in Larchmont, NY. These days, I’m especially enjoying my new role as a doting grandfather. When the grandchildren are a little older I plan to teach them the words to “Oy Oy Oy Zeta Beta Toy”, still one of my favorites although my children can’t believe that I actually ever sang it. A few weeks ago, I found my granddaughter, Riley, playing with my old ZBT “Raadios” beer mug. I don’t know where it came from or how she got it since I hadn’t seen it for years. Nevertheless, I took it as a good omen. (Does ZBT admit women yet?).

Regretfully, I haven’t been diligent enough about keeping in touch. I still see or hear from Mike Newman, and am determined to visit him this winter when I’m in South Florida. I used to call Ollie Rosengart occasionally when I had a legal question about NYC real estate, and have crossed paths with Phil Gerstein when I least expect it. However, I have been lucky enough to be involved professionally with two other brothers, Lanny Rosenwasser (class of 1968) and Marvin Fried (Class of 1965). Lanny and I were together at the NIH and have remained close since then. He’s the former President of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and is an internationally known allergist/immunologist. We manage to see each other a few times a year, mostly at various medical meetings. Marvin is the Chairman of the ENT department at Einstein/Montefiore and is one of the world’s leading experts on image-guided sinus surgery. His office is one floor above mine and we have an on-going collegial relationship, that I’m certain has been greatly facilitated by our fraternal bond. We’ve never exchanged the secret ZBT handshake, but I’ve been tempted when passing him in the corridor, to flash him the secret ZBT gang sign (Do we have a gang sign or am I confusing us with the Crips?).

That, in a nutshell, sums up what has happened to me in the almost half a century since I pledged Alpha Chapter at CCNY in 1959. As you can probably tell, I remain pretty much the same as I’ve always been; a basically happy, mildly geeky individual, who’s been fortunate enough so far, to have led a fulfilling, productive life. The four formative, enjoyable years that I spent in Alpha Chapter have always meant a great deal to me and I’m looking forward with great anticipation to seeing everyone again.

Fraternally,

David Rosenstreich

Here's the list of who's coming

1. Ollie Rosengart	19. Sy Sohmer
2. Ken Blinn	20. Marty Phillips
3. Eddie Acker	21. Joel Moses
4. Joel Henkin	22. Eddie Brown
5. Walter Speigel	23. Jerry Schachter
6. Norm Gleicher	24. Bernie Witlieb
7. Eric Groper	25. Carl Hammerschlag
8. Bob Straussman	26. Phil Waxberg
9. Bob Friedman	27. Barry Dunbridge
10. Nick Lewin	28. Stan Sandler
11. Stan Meyers	29. Barry Herman
12. Bob Blaunstein	30. Arnie Salob
13. Herb Dooskin	31. Bill Kaplan
14. Bob Bein	32. Hal Hyman
15. Steve Schulman	33. David Rosenstreich
16. Robert Bernstein	34. Marvin Treib
17. Steve Marcus	35. Harvey Gluck
18. Al Linden	36. Joel Neuwirth

More Photos from Barry Dunbridge

That's me running a 5k race.

Then it's the family at our 25th anniversary.

And then it's me, my beautiful wife Harriet, and our kids in 1970.

Hi from Joel Moses

As I write this we are in the midst of moving from our home in NJ to Florida, with an interim stop at our country home in the Berkshires. So, life is very hectic, but fullfilling.

Linda and I were married 45 years ago (Nick, Bob B and the late Herb Charnes were ushers). We have two boys, two grandkids and one dog, who is shown in the picture with me.

After graduating, I went to Baruch where I received my MBA and graduated first in my class, and was fortunate to have lunch with Martin Luther King as representative of my class. Following this, I went to Baylor, where I received my Ph. D. in Organizational Psychology.

My career has been a satisfying one - spending the first part as a psychologist at AT&T and actively participating in its divistiture. I have specialized in identifying leadership potential and have aquired a nice reputation in this field, culminated by receiving the Distinquished Professional Contributions award from the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 2000. I've written several books and lots of other stuff. Steve Marcus and I have been in contact through the years as we share many common areas of practice.

I left AT&T in 1989 to form a consulting firm, was its President and Managing Director, and we grew to over 45 employees with business all over the world in the area of assessing leadership potential and developing leadership talent. I sold my share of the business last year, and have joined another firm tas a Senior Practice Fellow to help build their leadership practice. Additionaly, I've been on the Board of the MedicAlert Foundation, and am currently its Chair.


I look forward to sharing more details with all of you, and can't wait to see you all again. Thanks to Steve and Bob for making this happen.

Sy Sohmer (that's me in the middle)

After I left CCNY in 1963 I went to the University of Tennessee where I earned an M.S. in botany and met my future wife, Sara Rose Harrison of Oneida, Tennessee. From there I took my first real job as an instructor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 1967. I was given paid leave to earn my Ph.D. in Botany at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu in 1969 and returned to La Crosse in 1971 and bought a farm which we still own. It sits above the western bluffs of the Mississippi River near a town called Nodine.

I created the University’s Herbarium, which became the third largest in the state of Wisconsin, and served, via various leaves-of-absence, with the Smithsonian Institution’s Flora of Ceylon Project (1973), as a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Smithsonian (academic year 1975-76), as a Staff Associate in charge of the Tropical Biology Initiative at the National Science Foundation (1977-78), and as a Forest Botanist with the (then) Office of Forests, Department of Primary Industry, Papua New Guinea (1979). In New Guinea I led patrols (which were often armed) and trained Papua New Guineans in botanical research and collected widely in that country, including collecting a couple of cases of malaria.

I left Wisconsin in 1980 to become the Chairman of the Botany Department of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu and served, concurrently, as the Director of Research from 1985. While there I organized a number of major programs, including the Flora of the Philippines Project, a number of research initiatives in Papua New Guinea, initiated and led the National Geographic Society-supported Hunstein River Expedition to the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea in 1989, organized the New Caledonia Terrestrial Biodiversity Task Force of the Pacific Science Association in 1990, and conceptualized and organized the Marquesas Expedition (in French Polynesia) funded by Hermes Inc. during 1988 and 1989. The Flora of Hawaii project, which I was able to initiate and get all of the funding for, resulted in the publication of the Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai’i in 1990, which was called the world’s best botanical publication of its kind in the 20^th Century and for which I received the Engler Medal at the 1993 International Botanical Congress; one of only 7 botanists ever to have received this honor at that time.

I left Hawaii in 1990 to become the Senior Biodiversity Advisor for the Agency for International Development in the State Department until 1993, when I was recruited to be the President and Director of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT). As a start-up operation I have been able to create all of the programs at BRIT and am particularly involved in development and public outreach efforts to secure a sound financial base for the institute. My own research interests are where the boundaries of botany and medicine meet. With a remarkable staff, I have been able to make BRIT one of the major institutions of its kind in the world. During this period BRIT has made a major contribution to the cultural and scientific life of Fort Worth, and is now part of a team raising $42 million to build BRIT’s new home adjacent to the Fort Worth Botanical Garden. Not bad for an organization dedicated to dead plants!

I have published or edited over 100 articles and books, organized over 20 major symposia and workshops, and given hundreds of papers and talks.

Sara and I have two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel, both of whom now reside in Washington, D.C. and we celebrated our 40^th wedding anniversary on August 5^th this year.