LETTERS

REFUGEE PHYSICIANS AT TUFTS I was so happy to read Professor David Stollar’s article on the great doctors who educated me (“A Way Out of Germany,” Winter 2014). Who could ever forget Dr. Schmidt’s biochem lectures, with his heavy accent and pleasant manner? Or the lectures of Drs. Brugsch, Thannhauser, or Magendantz? Brilliant Alice Ettinger presided over our weekly neuroradiological meetings on Mondays, and added similarly brilliant colleagues like Bob Paul to the department she founded. Drs. Proger and Pratt did a great service to our school and our community by recruiting these superior doctors.
Garrett G. Gillespie, M59
Osterville, Massachusetts

The quote from Siegfried Thannhauser [about his painful expulsion from his homeland during Hitler’s rise] really struck a chord for me, reminding me of my parents. They were Holocaust survivors who never returned to visit Poland because the wound was too deep. Sweden and the United States gave them the opportunity to renew life after the darkness. My parents’ lives are briefly described on a plaque in the Sackler Center’s Rosenblatt-Bialer Conference Room. They were not scientists, but I wanted their stories, like the stories David Stollar told in his article, to continue to be known.

What Tufts’ leaders and the Tufts community did during those times gives me another reason to be proud of so special an institution.
Michael Rosenblatt
Newton, Massachusetts

The writer was dean of the Tufts University School of Medicine from 2003 to 2009.

NOBEL PRIDE Thank you for highlighting a few of the many Tufts graduates who have achieved eminence in their fields (“Glittering Prizes,” Winter 2014). I will never forget watching the evening news back in 1979 and seeing the Tufts seal on a podium and Professor Alan Cormack speaking about the Nobel Prize he had just won for his work in developing the CT scan. I have always been grateful and proud of the education I received at Tufts, but this was a moment to reflect on how accomplished our somewhat underappreciated school really was (and is).
Robin Kuttner Gausebeck, J71
Rockford, Illinois

OVER THE ACHING MAIN I got a kick out of “All Is Not Lost” (Winter 2014), the article by Tomás Dinges, A99, about sailing a tops’l schooner, the replica of the Amistad. He got a taste of what life was like in the days of iron men and violent seas. I still sail a tops’l schooner, Pride of Baltimore II, with metal knees and metal hips and screws in my right arm. I’m also a director of that schooner. While I don’t go aloft anymore, I still work the pin rails and belays on deck. Argh, matey!
Jim Hiney, E60
Haymarket, Virginia

SUNNY MEMORIES I appreciated your remembrance of Sunny Breed, J66, G72, Tufts trustee and devoted alumna (“In Memoriam,” Winter 2014). If it hadn’t been for Sunny, I would never have been at Tufts.

I met Sunny in November of 1971, when I was staying in a friend’s room in West Hall while in town to interview at Harvard and Brandeis. I ended up going to a class with my host, having a meal at Carmichael, and hearing the Bubs at Cohen Auditorium that night. By morning, I was smitten by the place, so I found my way to Ballou Hall, where Sunny was an admissions officer. It turned out that Sunny was from Kansas City, Missouri, as I was. After a campus tour and a lunch together, I decided that Tufts was where I wanted to be.

Sunny and I remained friends. We both lived in Los Angeles for many years. She was head of the L.A. Tufts Alliance; so was I. She continued to be involved in almost every conceivable way at Tufts; so did I. And when my younger son was applying to college in 2007, I introduced him to Sunny. When he was admitted, she sent him a small elephant paperweight as a welcome to the Tufts family.

Not only have I never met anyone with so deep an affection for the Hill and all it represents, I have rarely met a finer person. Throughout our forty-three-year Tufts-centered friendship, I had countless experiences with Sunny where I saw how selflessly she served others. I never once saw her angry or bitter—though her life had its share of hardship. Sunny is to me the embodiment of the Tufts spirit: quality without pretense. Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Tufts ever gave me.
Steven Koltai, A76, F78, E12P
Washington, D.C.