48 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN | CLASS NOTES more to complete the Patriot League? Anne and I have five granddaughters— two seniors, two juniors and a freshman. Brett is a senior at Orchard Park and a cheerleader. She works at Niagara Produce of Elma in huge hot houses and markets. She plans to go to Niagara University, studying forensic psychology and criminology. LiliAnne, in Canton, Conn., works at Ben and Jerry’s. She is planning to study engineering at Union College to save the world. Ryan and Taylor are twins, juniors and cheerleaders at OP. Elizabeth is a freshman and busy at Canton High School. I received a lovely, but sad, note from Barbara Rojas, wife of Roderigo Rojas to add the news to our class notes that he died. After a fall at home and hip surgery, the Parkinson’s that he had fought for 20 years claimed his life. They were married in the Lehigh Chapel in 1959 after she graduated from Cedar Crest. She writes that he was a brilliant engineer, and they traveled to Central America, namely El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica (the country of his birth). They also lived in Argentina and Spain before returning to the USA. Their four children adapted well to the customs, schools and cultures of these Latin countries. She enjoyed the challenges presented as wife and homemaker in places where you could buy one egg at a time. She asked me if I was in the production of “Porgy and Bess”—she was Bess! What memories! We ended the winter with a lot of snow, officially 133 inches at the airport, but missed most of the 77 inches in 24 hours that hit Orchard Park. We also had three days of a Christmas blizzard, where 31 people died. Bills games were affected. They moved the Browns game indoors and four days early in November. They left two days early to Chicago to play the Bears before the blizzard hit. They returned two days later to find the airport closed (they had to land in Rochester). Maybe Jack Hobby and Gary’s Barber Shop will be right this year—Bills and Eagles in the Super Bowl! If we get to see Lehigh football this year with new Coach Cahill, it will be Cornell on Sept. 16. Greekers to all our classmates. Miss you, Pete! ’59 Bob Teufel, 1 Stoklea Drive, Emmaus, PA 18049. (610) 967-2049 (H); (610) 393-0565 (C); rteufel@aol.com Believe it or not, but we are planning our 65th LU reunion, scheduled for June 6-9, 2024. And we hope to shatter the record held by the Class of 1953 with 25 attendees. It should be possible, according to the latest count from the Alumni Office, we have only lost 270 classmates from our original 700, so a pool of 430 remains. But looking at our class contacts, we have scores of ’59ers living in Florida, California, Arizona, etc., so travel may be an issue unless you have your own jet. Our class president and reunion chairman, Leon Harbold, has reserved the Villa Pazzetti at Saucon Valley Country Club for our Saturday night dinner. We were awed by the great location and delicious food when we were there for our 60th. Not sure if we can get the Lehigh Glee Club back, as Ed Hamer’s granddaughter, who led the singers, has graduated, but we will try. We caught Leon on his way south, leaving for New Smyrna, Fla., for three weeks in April, plus stops on St. Simons Island, Ga., on the way down and the Biltmore in Asheville, N.C., on the way back in May. His first try on the East Coast as the Sanibel place he rented last year got wiped out in the hurricane. Other committee members are Jim Swenson and our faithful class treasurer Glenn Kinard. Glenn mentioned he is still playing “old guy” tennis twice a week and has not joined the herd moving to pickleball. If you are interested in joining the planning committee, let me know. As the Brits would say, our class treasury is “a bit skint” as we blew through our reserves with a two-hour open bar at our class dinner, but at our age, who can stand up for two hours of cocktails anyway? However, Leon passed along a way of making a tax-advisable reunion gift to Lehigh. “The tax firm I use has verified that the new legislation for 2023 allows using a transfer from an IRA (one’s RMD) to reduce taxable income and invest up to $50K in a charitable annuity. This is a nice additional benefit of about 30 percent to someone’s federal tax and using the annuity for meeting current flow needs for the lowest cost (nice ROI).” Heard from Don Cazer, retired in Niskayuna, N.Y., that he is thrilled to have a grandson now attending Lehigh and manages to stay in touch with many of his Alpha Chi Rho brothers. Add to your “no good deed goes unpunished” list is an incident that put Dan Bayer’s arm in a sling and a long trip to various emergency rooms. Dan was making his Meals on Wheels delivery to an elderly woman when he was greeted at the door not by the client, but by a burly German shepherd who chomped on his wrist to seize the hot meal. Seems the woman was dog-sitting for a relative and had no idea if the dog had a rabies shot. The traveling relative could not be contacted, so hapless Dan had to shop around Harrisburg looking for an emergency room that carried the vaccine. By the way, that was Dan’s last trip for Meals on Wheels! Our local newspaper, The Morning Call, had a lengthy article recently about our seemingly ageless classmate Roger Penske and his Team Penske competition in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. After winning the Daytona 500 on Roger’s 85th birthday, the team was looking to present “The Captain” with a Le Mans trophy to celebrate his 86th birthday. As Roger is one of the few of us still working, we retired guys need ways of filling our time. One way is to sit in your car with sunglasses on, point a hair dryer at passing cars and watch them hit the brakes. ’60 Williams E. Millsom, 67 Mystic Road, North Stonington, CT 06359. (860) 536-2926 (H), (860) 235-3618 (C); bill.millsom@gmail.com Hello, classmates. How time flies! It seems as if I just wrote the last column. I received a nice email from Michael Kobran, who wrote that shortly after graduating from Lehigh, he went to work for the city of Detroit as a civil engineer, assisting in the design of Detroit’s expanding freeway system. He obtained a master’s degree in public administration and retired in 1990 as assistant director of streets and traffic. He then worked for Barton-Aschman Associates as a consultant, before returning to New Jersey in 1994 as his wife, Johanna, had taken a job as executive VP of Brookdale Community College. Michael then worked as a consultant for T&M Associates. He was also an adjunct instructor at his wife’s college for a few years, finally retiring in 2004. They then moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where they had a summer home. They sold that in 2013 and moved to Brookline, Mass., to be near their son. In addition to their son, they have three daughters, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. They all gather every other year at an inn in the Berkshire Mountains to celebrate Thanksgiving. To keep busy these days, he writes a bi-monthly political
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