Posted on Nov 1, 1997

Dr. Clyde Heatly '18 celebrated his 100th birthday with family and friends on Oct. 12.

A retired otolaryngologist (ears, nose, and throat specialist), Heatly had a distinguished career in medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.

Born in Schenectady, Heatly says that he knew he wanted to be an otolaryngologist as soon as he began working in his uncle's ear, nose, and throat office in his early teens. He attended Union because it “seemed the natural place” for him to go. He was a member of Chi Psi, captain of the debating team for three years, class valedictorian, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

He graduated at the top of his class at Johns Hopkins Medical School and, after a three-year residency, received a Rockefeller Travel Fellowship to study medicine in Edinburgh, Zurich, and Vienna.

He began his career at Strong Memorial, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Rochester, when the hospital had just opened. Heatly assembled the otolaryngology department and began the department's residency program. As the hospital grew, Heatly's specialty — bronchoscopy, in which a surgeon removes foreign bodies embedded in the lungs, such as peanuts, chicken bones, and open safety pins — kept him busy. He also maintained a private practice for more than forty years.

Dr. Heatly retired as chief of otolaryngology in 1963 and retired from private practice in 1970. In 1972 he received a citation from the Medical Society of the State of New York for fifty years of medical service and the “Award of Merit” from the Rochester Academy of Medicine for “distinguished service to the medical profession of Rochester.”

Today, Heatly is a resident of Valley Manor Apartments, a retirement community in Rochester run by Michele Sciortino '84. Heatly says that being at Valley Manor adds not only to his happiness but also to his well-being. He walks up and down East Avenue about a mile each day — which, coupled with a wonderful family who visits often and brings him great happiness, may be the key to his longevity.

Posted on Nov 1, 1997

Last July in Israel, three
members of the Union hockey team helped lead Team Canada
to a gold medal in the fifteenth Maccabiah Games.

Ryan Donovan '97, Joel Bond '99, and
Leeor Shtrom '99, all Canadian-born, played well for Team
Canada, which was coached by former Montreal Canadiens
coach Jaques Demeres.

Donovan, a forward, scored three goals
and had three assists in the five-game series; Bond, a
defenseman, scored a goal, assisted on three others, and
had the team's best plus/minus rating; and Shtrom played
in two games, allowing only three goals.

The Maccabiah Games occur every four
years, and competitors must be Jewish. More than fifty
countries participated in events ranging from bowling to
mini-football. This was the first year that a winter
sport was played, and the Ukraine, Israel, the United
States, and Canada competed in hockey.

Each of the Union students received a
gold medal and a wonderful experience. Team members
toured Israel for three days before and two days after
the competition. They visited United Nation soldiers at
the Lebanon border and saw Tel Aviv, Massada, the Dead
Sea, and much of Jerusalem.

Donovan, who graduated last spring, is
working in Boston, and Bond and Shtrom are looking
forward to their junior year at Union.

Posted on Nov 1, 1997

Jay Goldberg '98 isn't sure whether
David Letterman ever saw his sign: “Make Schenectady
the Home Office.”

But he gave it his best shot from the
third row of the Ed Sullivan Theater on Sept. 22 when he
asked a page to take the sign to the host just seconds
before the taping of the CBS show began.

Ultimately, it was George Clooney and
Bill Cosby who made the national airwaves, not Goldberg
or the eighty-nine other members of the Union contingent
who were bused to New York by producers of “Late
Night with David Letterman.” But the Union students
had fun trying to get on air. Dozens sported “Top
Ten Lists” and signs, and Jon Zandman '99 brought a
bagful of garnet “U's” and liberally
distributed them to members of the crew, who dutifully
pasted them to their shirts.

“Late Night,” a favorite on
American campuses, invited Union students as part of a
promotion to bring to the studio students from a dozen
colleges and universities over twelve weeks in the fall.
Rohit Sang, a producer, said he decided to invite Union
because he recalled it from his college search as having
an exceptional seven-year medical education program.

The students traveled by bus and were
treated to a reception, all compliments of “Late
Night,” and got back to campus in time to see the
broadcast.

Posted on Nov 1, 1997

Minh Phan '96 may never know for sure,
but his father's recent release after sixteen years as a
political prisoner in a Vietnamese detention camp may
have had its start with a letter-writing campaign last
spring by about 800 students and staff at the College.

The elder Phan's release came
unexpectedly on Aug. 24 as Minh Phan, a graduate student
in the College's Graduate Management Institute, was
visiting his family in Saigon. Local police never
mentioned anything about the letter-writing campaign,
Phan says, “but I think it helped a lot.”

Hien Dinh Phan, who held a variety of
posts with the South Vietnamese government before the
fall of Saigon in 1975, was taken prisoner by the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1981 for
“counter-revolutionary” activities after not
reporting to a political reeducation camp. The family had
become increasingly concerned about the toll that prison
camp life was taking on the elder Phan (age
seventy-seven) and agreed last spring to the Union
letter-writing campaign.

More than 800 letters appealing for the
elder Phan's release were sent to the president and prime
minister of Vietnam and the Vietnamese embassy in
Washington.

Members of the Amnesty International
chapter at the College held a reception in mid-September
as a “victory party.” It was the president of
the chapter, Jody Mousseau '97, who suggested the
letter-writing campaign. The younger Phan, who lives
off-campus caring for two teenage nephews, told about
fifty students and staff members at the reception,
“I'm very happy and very touched by the fact that
you all made it here today.”

Posted on Nov 1, 1997

Author Andrea Barrett '74 says that she does not know
how to talk without telling stories, so in a lecture in
the Nott Memorial on Sept. 29, Barrett did what she does
best — she told stories.

Barrett, the 1996 winner of the National Book Award
for fiction for her collection Ship Fever and Other
Stories, presented ideas about arctic exploration
stemming from research for her new book.

Using the metaphor of the stories of northern
explorers she encountered in her research, Barrett
addressed our human explorations as writers, artists,
scientists, scholars, and students. Barrett juxtaposed
several arctic expeditions with differing goals but
similar successes, suggesting that the adventures we take
on, whatever they might be, sometimes are very different
in scope but equally important in what they accomplish.
She contrasted the “long dark middle” of two
arctic journeys she had studied — the Imperial
Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition and the Norwegian
explorer Nansen's expedition into the Arctic.

While the Austro-Hungarians strove to discover a
northeast passage, their ship drifted northwest and
eventually crumbled, caught in the current of ice. Yet
Nansen's ship was built to float above the ice, and
carried its crew toward their goal of discovering a
northwest passage until they too abandoned their ship.
Still, both crews achieved successes — though not the
successes they had expected. “In my writing I
sometimes join one crew, sometimes the other,”
Barrett said. When writing Ship Fever, she felt as if she
were drifting in the right direction, yet when writing
The Middle Kingdom, the current brought her in an
entirely different direction. “One journey was more
painful than the other, but both brought me home,”
she said. When beginning the creative process, Barrett
explained, “two poles, two approaches hang in the
air.” Yet the approach we choose is not important.
“Perhaps what's important is the way we integrate
what is in our head and what is in the world,” she
said. “What is important is that we commit ourselves
to the journey and do all that we can to prepare
ourselves for it.

“Writing, like drifting through the ice in search
of land, is like exploration,” she explained.
Whatever perspective one might take, it will yield
something, for even failure may yield good things in the
end. The morning after her lecture, she joined students
in Assistant Professor of English Hugh Jenkins's freshman
honors program class to chat about writing. While the
students might have expected to hear tips about
succeeding as a writer, Barrett had a different message.

The focus of the conversation became the difficulties
of writing. Barrett reaffirmed their belief that writing
is hard work, explaining that she wrote for ten years
before her first story was published. Barrett doesn't
write because of the perks that come with being a
published author; she writes because she loves it.
“I rewrite again and again and again until I am so
sick of it that I don't like any part of it,” she
said. “You reach the point of sickening
exhaustion.” Barrett says that she is never happier
than when she is writing, and she encouraged the students
to “find pleasure in writing papers and in thinking;
find pleasure in making something beautiful out of what's
in your head.”

And her secret to success? “Most of writing is
patience; willfulness is useful. I have a modest gift as
a writer, but I am very stubborn and I work hard.”