I recently finished printing out and looking through all 554+ of Jonathan
McDowell's satellite reports. A truly remarkable record of the world's space
programs, they fill four large three-ring binders and a little bit of a fifth,
wherein I'll continue to collect the latest ones as he produces them. Between
my recently augmented set of TRW Space Logs (still need Volume 1 number 6
and volume 2 number 1, though) and Jonathan's reports, I should have a detailed
handle on all the world's space launches since Sputnik 1 (now just three
days away from its 48th anniversary October 4). (Not that there aren't dozens of
websites that already have lots of that kind of information!)
In looking through Jonathan's reports, I encountered the name Harvey
Tananbaum, who is currently director of the x-ray astronomy department at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (or something like that)--in other words,
apparently Jonathan's boss. This brought back some memories, because Harvey is
originally from Buffalo, NY, my home town, and we both attended the same high
school, Bennett High. He was class of 1960, I was class of 1963, so he was in
his senior year when I began there as a freshman. Harvey was perhaps
Bennett's most academically gifted student ever. He graduated with something like a
99.2 GPA, a record that as far as I know is unequalled at Bennett before or
since. (Those were the days when GPAs were scored numerically on a scale of
0-100, and anything 90 or over was an A.) To retain this high a GPA he would
have had to submit perfect or nearly perfect homework assignments and exams
>every time< in >all< of his subjects--the sciences, English, foreign languages,
history/social studies, and math--in >all four years< as a student. Not
merely A's but mainly 100's. All of us honor students had A grades, but Harvey's
scores simply blew everyone else's out of the water. The gulf between a
"routine" honor student's four-year 96.5 GPA, say, and a 99.2 GPA is truly
astronomical. My first year at Bennett, Harvey's name was >invariably< at the top of
the Honor Roll, every report-card period. The kind of focus it takes to
maintain a 99+ GPA over four years of schooling is rare indeed in a high-school
kid, and it has evidently stood Harvey in good stead throughout his career.
At Bennett it was a tradition for each year's National Honor Society to
publicly perform a play of some kind, often a funny adaptation of some Broadway
production or other. The class of 1960 NHS play was called "Darn Yankees," and
as I recall Harvey starred as Mr. Applegate, that is, the Devil. ("Damn"
was, of course, a proscribed utterance for high-school students in those early
1960s days.) I also recall Harvey was top scorer from western New York in the
1960 MAA high school math contest (dunno how he ranked nationwide, but he
must have been pretty high). He was profiled as an exceptional student by the
Buffalo Evening News (now just known as the Buffalo News). Graduating as class
valedictorian, he went on to Yale and thence to a doctorate at MIT, after
which he embarked on a lifetime in x-ray astronomy. I recall crossing paths with
him at MIT once or twice when I was an undergrad. I heard that he married a
Bennett classmate named Rona Lichtman, but I cannot confirm whether that's
true or not. Rona is the elder sister of Jeffrey Lichtman, with whom I shared a
homeroom at Bennett for four years and who is now, I believe, a physician
somewhere in upstate New York.
I recently saw a medical TV show on one of the local San Diego educational
channels that featured another Bennett grad, Ronald Krauss. Ronald was also
class of 1960 and graduated as class salutatorian (the number two GPA person)
behind Harvey Tananbaum. Whereas Harvey went to Yale, Ronald went to Harvard,
and he eventually became an MD. He has had an illustrious medical career, as
you can discover by Googling his name online. Ronald was president of the
Bennett math club in 1960, a post I subsequently occupied in 1963, my own senior
year.
Finally, and I hope readers aren't totally bored to tears by these
45-year-old reminiscences, let me bring up just one more Bennett grad who might be
familiar to some list members: Laurence A. "Larry" Marschall, who presently
occupies a chair in astronomy and physics at Gettysburg College. Larry was the
valedictorian of Bennett's class of 1962 (the year ahead of mine). In the late
1950s Larry and I lived on the same street in Buffalo and attended the same
public school, PS #54. For many years during the 1990s he regularly reviewed
books for the New York Academy of Sciences magazine, and when that ceased
publication, he continued his reviews in Natural History magazine, where his
column presently appears. I have often read his reviews and I must say he has
sold me more than one book over the years for my personal library. He also wrote
a pop-sci book himself, which I own and read with enjoyment, on the Large
Magellanic Cloud Supernova 1987A. At Bennett his book bag, which accompanied him
to his various classes, became so huge and heavy that he mounted it on
wheels and towed it around behind him, much to the amusement of us other students.
Larry and his book bag appeared in the 1962 NHS school play, Oedipus Rex,
whose theme song was "I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old
Dad."
Oh, yes. The 1963 NHS school play was Romeo and Juliet, done as a musical
comedy, written and directed by yours truly, in which I played Romeo and spoke
with a Kennedy accent. (Vaughn Meader's record "The First Family" was big in
1963: "Now, er, JULIET, let me say this about THAT...") It left them rolling
in the aisles. Thankfully, it was the only play I ever had anything to do with
in my life.
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