Harold L. Flescher

March 7, 2018
Born and brought up in Manhattan. After Stuy, I went to NYU in the Bronx at what is now Bronx Community College (I think). After doing my Master’s courses at NYU I went to work at United Nuclear Corp in Whiteplains, NY, working on the design of a nuclear power reactor to be towed behind a tank. DUH! Well someone in the government finally figured out this would be an easy and dirty target, so that job lasted 6 months. I worked at Martin Co in Baltimore for 2 years and then at Raytheon in MA for 35 years, retiring in 2001. My specialty that I started working at Martin was designing electronic systems to work in nuclear weapon and space radiation environments. I was an experimentalist and lucky enough to field 2 experiments in underground nuclear tests. Pretty exciting to be able to harness that much energy for experiments and crawl around in the experimental alcove the day after the test. I stayed in technical work for 20 years, and then managed a variety of technical activities at Raytheon with groups up to 500 people. Now I manage me, a full-time job. On the other side of work, I raced sports cars for 40 of those years, with one national championship and too many trophies to count. I did some open ocean sailing races as a deck ape, flew airplanes for a while including a single engine round trip cross-country, and skied deep powder whenever I could (and living in the NE, ice too). In my dotage I shoot skeet, trap and sporting clays, with an occasional foray into pistols and rifles. I hunt paper and clay birds, although they’re not very good eating. I have a good butcher for food.

Alexander N. Rossolimo

I spent only the 10th grade at Stuyvesant. I was born in Paris three months before the start of World War II in Europe. My father, Nicolas Rossolimo, was an International Grandmaster of Chess and French national champion. In 1952, we moved to NYC. After graduating from JHS 3 in the Village, I enrolled in class 3JA at Stuy in fall 1954. In June 1955, my father decided to return to France. I had been very happy at Stuy, and during my studies there had achieved a 98.4 percent GPA. That November, my father decided to return to the U.S., where I attended Lycée Français of New York—I did not think that Stuy would take me back! In 1957 I enrolled at CCNY, graduating with a BEE degree. I attended graduate school at Harvard, earning an M.A. in applied math. In 1973, I received both a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard and an M.B.A. from MIT.
Career highlights: Project leader at Boston Consulting Group (BCG); Director of planning and financial analysis at United Brands; Senior director at Digital Equipment Corporation in the Office of the President Ken Olsen; CEO of a dot-com company; Chairman of a think tank focused on critical issues for America and the world.

Stephen Grossberg

Our 1957 class valedictorian Steve Grossberg was recently awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Society of Experimental Psychologists. This well-known cognitive scientist is listed on Wikipedia and has additional websites describing his work (See the first two links below). The third link is Steve’s acceptance speech upon receiving his most recent award; it is both personal and scientific. Many of us heard him speak at our 50th Anniversary Reunion in 2007. We now have additional opportunities to learn about Steve’s impressive life and work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Grossberg
http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/steve-grossberg-psychologist-brain-research/
https://youtu.be/9n5AnvFur7I

Robert (Bob) Majeski

[…] After graduation at age 16, I attended Columbia University with a NY State Science Scholarship and was majoring in chemical engineering. I admired the Navy, perhaps from watching Victory at Sea and the Silent service on TV, so I joined their NROTC Unit. After one year, the officers of the Unit nominated me as candidate for the US Naval Academy. I had to take a competitive exam, and was selected to attend along with five other men from NROTC Units across the country. The Secretary of the Navy was our sponsor. I was on summer cruise off Algeria when I was informed of my appointment. I had never flown before. To return to the USA, I was airlifted off the fantail of a destroyer by a helicopter, literally dangling in the air over the ocean, and taken to an aircraft carrier. Then, was catapulted off the aircraft carrier in a mail plane, and flown to a naval air station in North Africa. Then, we flew a Navy DC-4 to Newfoundland, via the Azores; then, a DC-3 back to the US. The DC -3 got caught in a thunder storm and we were tossed all around. It was quite an adventure for a city boy. Read More »

Kirby Williams

After graduation from Stuyvesant, I attended Hamilton College, where I majored in English literature and German, graduating in 1961. I worked for the Institute for International Education (IIE) in New York and then for the New York Department of Health, before setting sail for Le Havre, France on October 5th, 1962, never to return to America to live. I entered the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris in 1967 and spent the next thirty years founding a family and advancing into the Directorial and Diplomatic ranks of the organization. I retired in August 2000 and have spent the intervening years traveling and writing. My first novel, “Rage in Paris,” was published by Pushcart Press/W.W. Norton in December 2014, when I was 74 years old. The novel is in the historical fiction and crime genre and, fortunately, has received some good reviews and achieved pretty good sales so far. The novel’s website link is: www.rageinparis.com, for anyone wishing to learn more about the book and what I’ve been up to over the last nearly sixty years. The fact that I managed to take on the task of writing the novel is a tribute to Irving Astrachan, my Creative Writing teacher at Stuyvesant, who was a demanding but inspiring taskmaster! My immediate plans for 2015 are to write a sequel to the novel, which I intend to finish by the end of the year. I wish everyone in the class of 1957 a healthy New Year 2015 and I hope that we can do some catching up at our 60th class reunion in 2017!

Frank Benedetti

Frank was born in the Bronx.  While growing up he was a member of the local Boy Scout troop as well as a member of All Souls Unitarian Church.  A graduate of Stuyvesant H.S. in 1957, he went on to attend City College of New York graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English.  While serving in the US Army he attained the rank of Captain before his tour of duty expired.  After relocating to Atlanta, he met his soulmate, Gary Trowbridge, and they have been together since 1964. In 1993 they were transferred to Winston-Salem NC where he has since retired from his job as a Vice-President at Wachovia National Bank after 31 years. Frank and Gary have testified before Congress on the proposed Anti Same Sex Marriage Amendment in 2001.  Since then they were legally wed in NYC on January 23, 2014. Both are members of local art groups and have been the recipients of several Human Rights awards. They spend their time doing volunteer work for their church and various civil rights groups. They have established the Frank & Gary endowed scholarship at he University of NC School of the Arts and are enjoying their retirement.

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