The Wheatly School Alumni Association Newsletter # 149
Arthure Engoron
May 5, 2024
Dear Wheatley Wildcats and Other
Interested Persons,
Welcome to The Wheatley School
Alumni Association Newsletter # 149.
According to Substack, in the first
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The Usual Words of Wisdom
Thanks to our fabulous
Webmaster, Keith Aufhauser (Class of 1963), you can
regale yourself with the first 148 Newsletters (and much other Wheatley data
and arcana) at
Also, thanks to Keith is
our search engine, prominently displayed on our home page: type in a word or
phrase and, wow!, you’ll find every place it exists in all previous
Newsletters and other on-site material. I use it frequently; it works
usually!
I edit all submissions,
even material in quotes, for clarity and concision, without any indication
thereof. I cannot and do not vouch for the accuracy of what people tell
me, as TWSAA does not have a fact-checking department.
We welcome any and all
text and photos relevant to The Wheatley School, 11 Bacon Road, Old Westbury,
NY 11568, and the people who administered, taught, worked, and/or studied
there. Art Engoron, Class of 1967
The Class of 1974 50th-Year Reunion
Writes Debra Copeland - “The Wheatley School Class of 1974 50th-Year Reunion
will be held on October 19, 2024. We had an approximately 70-person positive
response rate when testing the waters for attendance. Siblings and
graduates from other years are welcome.
Southern California Wheatley Reunion Contemplated
Writes Sydell Howoritz Weiner
(1964) - “I see that there are
many Wheatley alums in and around San Francisco. I’ll bet that that’s true of
Los Angeles, too. So I’m calling on SoCal Wheatley Alums to get our act
together. I’m in Beverly Hills and I’d love to plan a reunion! sydellweiner@gmail.com
Wheatley Alumni Softball Game - Memorial Day Weekend
Where: The Brandon Lustig
Memorial Field - 11 Bacon Road Old Westbury, NY 11568
Contact Bernadette
McCrave at 516 297-8147 or Coach David Burke at BURKED@EWSDMAIL.ORG.
SOCCER, TOO
Please note -
Link currently unavailable in this forum.
Free Concert, Saturday, 5/18, In Greenwich Village
“Sheli Nan” is our own
Shelley Nan Hershcopf, Class of 1968
Wheatley Fight Song
William (“Billy”) Kirchick (1969)
version:
We are the Wildcats,
Wildcats are we
We never lose our pep
ability
So you do your best boys
(I know chauvinistic, but no one was woke back then)
And we’ll do the rest
boys
We are the Wheatley
Wildcats!
Art Engoron (1967) version:
We are the Wildcats,
Wildcats are we,
We never lose our
pep-a-bility.
You do your best boys,
We’ll do the rest boys,
We are the Wildcats!
Writes Peter Siegel (1966) - “Arthur, The lyrics to the Wheatley Fight Song, which
may be identical to “On Wisconsin,” are as follows:
“Onward Wheatley, onward
Wheatley
Break right through that
line
Winners all will heed the
call
A touchdown sure this
time, you rah-rah
Onward Wheatley, onward
Wheatley
Fight on for her fame
Fight fellas, fight,
fight, fight we’ll win this game”
Unfortunately, in my
senior year, 1965-66, the song did not sufficiently inspire the team, which
lost all of its games and scored only one touchdown. Best, Peter”
Graduates
1965 - Richard Goldfeder - Deceased
Writes daughter Christy Goldfeder
Ingkavet (1991) - “Hi
Art, I’ve been meaning to send this to you, but it has been hard for me
to write it.
Richard Goldfeder - 8/19/1947 -
3/3/2024
My father, Richard
Goldfeder (Wheatley Class of 1965), passed away on March 3, 2024, from
complications of Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by:
Brother James/Jim
Goldfeder (now Jim Pahz) - Wheatley 1961
Dad was born in Brooklyn,
NY to Abraham and Katherine Goldfeder on August 19, 1947. He lived in Hollis,
Queens before the family moved to the East Williston School District.
The Goldfeders lived in
Roslyn Heights on Dogleg Lane when Jim and Dad were in high school. Then, in
Dad’s junior or senior year, they moved to Bengeyfield Drive in East
Williston.
Dad liked sports, and he
played football in high school. He was friends with classmates Randy
Seibel and Marshall Serwitz.
Dad and I had some of the
same teachers, namely Mr. Platt and Mr. Ouchi, and Stephen
Ehre taught my Aunt Susan and me. Dad told me that he was not
the greatest student, and sometimes he and his friends would cause trouble in
class.
Dad met Sallie Crick (our mom) at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Mom
was also from Long Island, but much further east, in Westhampton. They got
married halfway through school in 1967 and had their wedding reception
at the Bengeyfield Drive house.
After graduating, my
parents lived and worked in NYC. Later, they moved back to East
Williston.
We eventually moved to a
house on Howard Street in which my aunt Susan’s high school friend, Randy
Rosenblatt (1968), had grown up. And my classmate, Jodi
Fingerman (1991), lived in the Bengeyfield Drive house in
which my grandparents had lived.
In his career, dad was a
retail marketing sales executive. He worked with creative teams to develop
custom point-of-purchase displays for beauty and consumer packaged goods
brands. Besides working at other agencies, he also founded Display Equation,
an agency startup with two business partners. He was an environmental pioneer
in his industry, starting the “Recycle at Retail” initiative to reduce
plastic waste.
In his free time, dad
enjoyed running, skiing, playing drums along to his favorite music, watching
movies, and dining out. He loved driving, fast cars, traveling, and spending
time at the beaches on Long Island.
My parents divorced after
38 years together, and they both found love again. Dad got remarried, to
Danielle Slanovec, and they lived in Blue Point and then Bayport (both in
Suffolk County) — where Dad spent his last days.
He’s lovingly remembered
by his wife of 11 years, Danielle Slanovec Goldfeder, brother James and
sister Susan, daughters Leslie Chaikin of West Islip, NY, and Christy
Ingkavet (Stephen) of Austin, TX.
He will be remembered by
his stepchildren Cody Miller (Katie), Breanne Miller, and Renee O’Shaunessey
(Ru). And he is remembered by his 3 granddaughters Sarah, Leah, and Anna
Chaikin of West Islip, NY and 4 step-granddaughters: Riley, Kayla, and Bridget
of Midland Park, NJ and Kailani of Bayport, LI.
Richard with
wife Danielle
Richard with
daughter Christy
Richard with
daughter Leslie
1967 - Robert (“Bobby”) Jacobs -
Family Facts
Writes Bobby - “I was inspired to write a bio by Art’s admonition
closing each newsletter and recently reading Gary Briefel”s recent post. He
lived two houses away from me. I lived on the shortest street in the Roslyn
Country Club: Hummock Lane; four houses on the corners of I.U. Willets Road
and Percheron Lane.
When Kenny Lang, Howie
Kirchick, Phil Kane and I formed our optimistic but destined-to-go-nowhere
band, The NuTones (name taken from the stove vent in Howard’s kitchen!),
Ernie Briefel took us to his warehouse and was able to get the guitars
wholesale to launch our careers. We had our share of gigs; happy to see that
Kenny went on to play music to this day.
The members of the Class
of 1967 are celebrating turning 75, and I celebrated with my three kids,
their spouses, and 7 grandchildren! My father’s business had a season box at
the “new” Shea Stadium for the Mets, and I took my kids out of school for
opening day as soon as they knew about baseball. I figured they would
remember going to the Met’s opener with their father long after they forgot
what they didn’t learn in school!
My wife and I;
three kids and spouses; 6 of 7 grandchildren
After graduating NYU in
the Bronx (no longer there), I started my “graduate” education as a
management trainee for the Aetna Insurance Company in Richmond Va. On my
first day at work the receptionist greeted me with “I heard you were Jewish,”
in a long southern drawl. When I confirmed it to be so, she replied,
“Where did you put your horns?” (I learned about that long before, at Temple
Sinai in Roslyn Heights). So started my career in the insurance business.
After a year with that
program with a promotion to their Home Office in Hartford in the offing, I
decided I was moving in the wrong direction, and I joined my father's
insurance business, Jacobs & Jacobs Inc. Many will remember the office
building on the Long Island Expressway Service Road in Roslyn Heights. We had
a sign outside with a clock, and we received calls and letters from people
complaining that they were late for work and to please correct it!
We worked together
successfully until his retirement in 1990. Subsequently, my 20 or so
employees and I continued to grow the business. However, in 2007, recognizing
the era of Family Insurance agencies would soon prove challenging, I sold the
business to Hub International, currently the largest privately held
Insurance Brokers in the U.S. I am still working for them as a Senior
Vice President in the area of Food Processors, Restaurants, Condominiums, and
Co-op's, along with personal clients I have known for 30+ years.
Jeff Orling’s sailing
adventures paralleled my own. My wife (Ceil; married 49 years) and I, and our
three kids, had a 37’ sailboat, and we spent summer weekends cruising Long
Island Sound, up and down the Connecticut and Long Island harbors. With a
little more practice and acquired skills, I spent four summers sailing from
Glen Cove to Martha’s Vineyard, where we built a house in 2006. The
second-best day in a boat owners life came after the 4th summer,
when my family, too busy getting on with our lives, sold the boat.
So now I’m living in a
Condo on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, summering on Martha’s Vineyard,
taking piano lessons, and traveling the world. Visited Cuba, China, Moscow,
St. Petersburg (one of the world’s great cities, which may not be viable for
travel again), India, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Peru, Israel, Jordan, Egypt,
and throughout Europe. Our kids did junior year abroad and gave us the
opportunity to visit Florence, Australia & New Zealand, and South Africa.
Jason, Jennifer,
Ceil, Jamie, Bob
My Wheatley education
started a valuable educational process that continues to this day. Staying
curious turned out to be a valuable asset!
And who knew,
pre-computer, that Mrs, Tegnell’s 8th grade typing class would be
one of life’s great building blocks! All the best, Bob(by) Jacobs 1967”
1967 - Howard Kirchick and Phil
Kane - Hitchhiking
Writes Howard - “Hi Art, I thank Ken Gallard (1968) for
his gracious comments about my bio. His narrative also brought to mind
a hitchhiking experience I had back in the day.
Classmate Phil Kane and I
were hitchhiking along Glen Cove Road in front of the Carvel at which we
worked. Along comes a Rolls Royce that passes us by. But then,
the driver pulls over, stops, and starts backing up, and we notice the DPL
(diplomat) plates on the car. He stops by us, rolls down the window,
and tells us to hop in. Turns out he was the son of a UN
diplomat. He told us he wasn’t going to pick us up, but then he
remembered the days when he’d be hitchhiking and cursed out the drivers that
zoomed by. We’d never been in a Rolls before, so that was pretty cool.”
Writes Art Engoron (1967) - While on the topic of hitchhiking…..during spring break
of junior or senior (I’m having a senior moment) year, my classmates George
Krauss, Mitch Stephens and I hitchhiked down to Washington D.C. We “crashed”
with Antioch College friends of my older brother (Malcolm,
1964); and the next day we picketed the White House in favor
of legalized hitchhiking. Mitch alerted the now-defunct-but-then-significant
Washington Star, which sent a reporter to cover the “demonstration,” who
interviewed Mitch and wrote a published article for the paper (copies are now
collector’s items). Meanwhile (the timing is hazy), the three of us left our
backpacks (or what passed for them in those days) right behind the US Capitol
Building while we toured the inside. Of course, when we returned a few hours
later, we found that our stuff had been ransacked. To this day, Mitch is
convinced the ransackers were just vandals; I’m convinced it might have been
the Capitol Police checking out three suspicious packages on the Capitol
grounds. For some long-forgotten reason, I decided to hitchhike back to New
York alone, and I ended up spending a night in the Centerville, Maryland
jail, where I was sexually attacked by a much older inmate but escaped (by
screaming bloody murder at the top of my lungs) unscathed.
1967 - Jill Simon Forte - Scott
Frishman - Jack Wolf
Writes Jill - “I was sad to hear that Scott Frishman’s wife passed
away…..too early to die. I remember Scott.
I loved reading Jack
Wolf’s post, and I was also one of those Refuseniks 😁. There never was
nor ever will be anything I would recite a pledge to, and being an Atheist
that also holds true. I didn’t know Jack back then, but I think I would have
liked him. Reading the rest of his post, I definitely like him now 😁☮️.”
1969 - Richard Abraham Frankfort -
Tributes
Writes Barbara Frankfort Patrick
(1960) - Art. Thank you for
posting my sister LauRha’s memorial for our brother Ricky. She expresses
everything that my little big brother was. As a much older sister, now I can
say I didn’t really appreciate having to take him on my dates, and I am
certain whoever I might have been with wasn’t thrilled to have a chaperone.
But Rick was so special. Being weak and addicted made him stronger, and he
found being sober gave him insight and helped others find their inner peace.
Rick saw the best in everyone, and he was the best of all of them. My
beautiful sister-in-law Toodie saved him, and he found his soul mate and best
friend. They built a beautiful and fulfilling life together. For all who knew
him, he is smiling down on you.
There were five Frankfort Wildcats: Barbara 1960, William 1963,
Richard 1969, Laura 1974, and Mollie 1974.How blessed
we were!”
Writes Scott Frishman (1967) - “Art, I can’t believe that Richard Frankfort has passed
away. Mike Cornfield, who lived next to Richard on Dogleg Lane, and I, who
lived behind Richard on Pebble Lane, were all close friends growing up. His
father, Jessie, turned our attic into a second floor with a playroom, crawl
space, and housekeeper’s room; He was a master craftsman .
Richard certainly took
after Jessie, as Richard’s sister, LauRha described in her Obituary of
Richard in the Newsletter.