Mother Mu Alumni Invasion

"In his first novel, septuagenarian John Millar uses an interesting mix of literary styles to educate his readers about the nature of war, its cost in blood, and its consequences in the lives, loves, and hopes of those who chose or were forced to wage it." Read the full review.

Check out the article in the latest Cornell Alumni Magazine (September-October 2016), "Liquid Gold," about New York's hard cider renaissance. See what the Nicholsons ('94) have to say about it from their vantage point at Red Jacket Orchards, our reunion sponsor.

A new thriller by Jim Glenn '59, Pakistan, India and the Bomb: Spy versus Counterspy, is available at Amazon.com. Set in 1972, it involves a Pakistani professor, a CIA spy, an American businessman, and India's secret development of an atomic bomb. Related events include the KGB's influence on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government and Pakistan's plan to destroy India's bomb-making facilities, which could precipitate a war between the countries. Jim lives near Taos, New Mexico. Reach him at: jamesglenn@taosnet.com.

When you walk into the office of the 28-year-old mayor of Ithaca, New York, you get an instant taste of what it means to have a young person running your city ...Click here to read more.

Brother Svante Myrick '09 was recently chosen by Forbes as one of the top 30 leaders under 30. See http://www.forbes.com/profile/svante-myrick/.

Ron and Lorraine Skalko visited National on May 21, 2015.

John Munday's wife, Judi, wrote on August 31, 2014: "John was seventh in his age group in today's Rock and Roll Half Marathon! Amazing! His time was 2 hr. 39 min. and 11 sec. – just 45 seconds under his estimated time. The heat ~85, and humidity were rough, and I just wasn't sure at all he'd make it through – so many runners looked so stressed and were dripping. His older brother, Ted--who's 77 (SAE '59), had come from New Jersey and placed second in his age group! Our nephew also had a good run at 1:40 – much below what he'd hoped, but he encountered thyroid issues that limited his performance! What family support! Our daughter Sarah also joined us at the beach for the race, along with a good family friend of Sarah’s – Brittany. The race was in Virginia Beach during Labor Day weekend.

"John's physical therapist, Tara, who was responsible for so much of guiding John's physical recovery [after his terrible fall last year], came to share in the celebration – once John was home from the hospital last September, she was one of the first to help him believe that he actually might run again!

"What an incredible day. He is still feeling pretty good hours later. He says he just feels like he had a good workout! He's gimpy with the left hip arthritis, but otherwise feels great! We'll have to see how the next few days go!"

For the past three years, alumni from classes of 2000 to recent graduates of Cornell SAE have gathered in Manhattan to reunite with old friends for a night of music and dancing on the weekend before Super Bowl. This year, on January 25, 70 brothers from NY Alpha and their dates convened at Avenue Nightclub for the third annual alumni formal.

The formal was similar to those hosted at Hillcrest each year for Homecoming, Valentine’s Day, or Paddy Murphy. Several alumni gathered with other members of their pledge classes for large group dinners beforehand and then came to Avenue for a night of fun with familiar faces. The private event was staged at one of New York’s premier nightlife venues, and it promoted a message of post-graduation support for the house at a young age. A portion of each ticket sale was donated directly to the Hillcrest SAE Development Fund at Cornell. Numerous alumni traveled to the formal from locations outside of the tri-state area, including Ohio, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Panama.

We hope this tradition will continue for many years to come!

James Norton '08

Hal Sieling '62 tends to the grill at the Cornell Club of San Diego's annual freshman send-off picnic in August.

"It is my pleasure to announce the new Weiss fellows, whose nominations by their students and colleagues attest to their extraordinary teaching and mentoring," said Skorton. "These three prominent educators exemplify the excellence of our faculty and its commitment to students."

Lipsky, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution and director of the ILR School's Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution, joined the Cornell faculty in 1969. Colleagues have described him as a role model for younger faculty members who combines eminence in his field with "uncommonly devoted commitment to advising, teaching and mentoring undergraduates."

Nominators cited Lipsky for his warmth and steady encouragement of students, his support for undergraduate research and his ability to "illuminate both research findings and the art of conflict management and resolution." Many students wrote letters attesting to Lipsky's generosity as a mentor.

Lipsky's work focuses primarily on negotiation, conflict resolution and collective bargaining. He has published more than 70 articles and book chapters and is author or editor of 15 books and monographs. In 1997, the New York State Senate passed a resolution honoring Lipsky "for his distinguished contributions as dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations [at] Cornell University."

On November 29, 2012, a group of SAEs descended upon a bar in Mid Town East and broke bread together (actually, hot truck sandwiches, to be more precise). About 40 people attended, with brothers from almost every decade: from Steve Hindy '71, founder of Brooklyn Brewery; to Ray Hill '85, the man who cut down trees with a chainsaw to clear the view from the deck of Hillcrest; to Dave Einhorn '91, founder of Greenlight Capital; to several recent graduates from 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Steve Nicholas's ('92) brother Alex, owner of Keats, actually specially ordered bread from Ithaca Bakery, which makes the bread for the real Hot Truck. For anyone who wants to host or arrange their own regional hot truck party, please feel free to contact Darryl Tom '92 for menus and recipes at darryl.tom@gmail.com.

Across the United States in 45 Days: Seeing the Country by Bicycle

It was 7:00 in the morning, and the temperature had already reached 88 degrees. We were at the top of the Appalachian Mountains, having just crossed the state line into Virginia. The end of our journey was in sight (at least metaphorically speaking). We had about 400 miles in front of us to reach Yorktown, Virginia, our “finish line” in biking across the United States. It was an exciting day for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was we’re out of Kentucky. I am sure Kentucky has a lot of beautiful places and nice people, but somehow we did not run into them when we crossed the state. Kentucky in fact is known as a biker’s nemesis. As one of the few remaining states to not have a leash law, dogs run free, and of course, love to chase bicyclists. We had gotten warnings from literally every person on a bike coming eastward for the past two weeks—“get pepper spray, and sticks to protect yourself.” We skipped the pepper spray, but got 3-foot sticks, which we strapped to our bikes. So as we crossed into Virginia at 7:00 a.m. (and we thought back into civilization), we ceremoniously threw our sticks away. A few hours later, we found ourselves biking down a small lane in the Virginia countryside, and sure enough, a German Shepherd comes running our way. Bad luck, I thought. Then a second German Shepherd came, followed by a third, and a fourth dog. Pretty soon we had eight Shepherds chasing us. This is like a scene out of a bad dream with eight dogs chasing us, and we had no way to defend ourselves. We pedaled as fast as we could, and somehow made it out of there without a bite.

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That was one of several interesting adventures we had along our 3,600-mile journey. We started in San Francisco and finished in Yorktown, Virginia. The trip took 45 days, which means we averaged about 80 miles a day. My two sons and I did the journey together. Cameron (21, a senior at Stonehill College) joined me from San Francisco to Telluride, Colorado. He then went back to start his summer job. My younger son Connor (18, a sophomore at NYU) joined me in Telluride and went on to Yorktown, Virginia. It was a great chance to bond with my two sons. We spent quite a bit of time together—figuring out the logistics of each day’s journey, and dealing with the inevitable problems that crop up along the way. Our ride was unsupported, which means we took all our own gear, and had to plan the journey ourselves. Most cyclists ride “supported,” which means they are part of a bigger group, and someone brings their luggage from place to place and organizes hotels, etc. We packed lightly, each of us carrying about 15 pounds—a few changes of clothes, maintenance and spare parts, nutritional supplements, and a lot of sunscreen!

None of us were big cyclists. We started planning the trip initially as a bit of a lark, to see if we could do it, and also to spend some time together. We also did the ride to raise money for a nonprofit organization, Wateraid (www.wateraid.org), an organization that helps communities in developing countries get access to clean drinking water and sanitation. We also kept a blog to document the trip (http://bike-across-america-hill.blogspot.com/).

Our route from San Francisco took us eastward, over the Rockies and through the deserts of Nevada. We stopped at a Pony Express station one night in Nevada, which was a pretty cool experience. By the time we crossed the Continental Divide past Sargents, Colorado, we had already crossed 20 summits/ mountain passes. We were beginning to think of Pueblo, Colorado, as the “promised land,” since it was the start of the flat lands. The eastern part of Colorado had its surprises in store for us as well. Just outside of Eads, Colorado, we ran into a tornado! The weather changed more rapidly than I believed possible. We were in an area that had no trees, for almost as far as the eye could see. One minute we were in 95-degree heat with a few gusts of wind. Then, a huge tailwind started propelling us; we were going 30 miles an hour without really pedaling hard. The sky became black to the point where we could only see about 500 to 1,000 feet at most, and the temperature dropped rapidly to the high 60s. Then we saw a tornado form—and thank goodness—just as quickly dissipate in front of us. After the tornado, the heavens opened up with hail. We found out quickly that biking helmets come in handy in the case of hail! We were lucky we made it to a farmer’s shed to get cover. Had the storm hit us 30 minutes earlier, we would have had no cover, other than crawling in a divot next to the road.

We ran into a lot of interesting people along the way. One group of cyclists had come from Beijing, on the way to making the closing Olympic ceremonies in England. They biked through China and Korea, flew to and crossed Japan, flew to LA, heading east across the U.S. to Washington, D.C. They then were flying to Ireland and on to England. We had heard about them from several people since Colorado, at first not believing the story, as it seemed a bit too crazy. But sure enough it was real. We finally caught up to them in a little bar/restaurant outside one of the levees by the Mississippi River (another 100-degree day). Most of the guys who were part of the group were in their 70s. They were all using old sturdy bikes. One fellow bought his at a bazaar in China. So much for thinking you need a fancy racing bike! We also ran into a lot of Europeans who were cycling across the United States.

It was a blast to finally get to Yorktown. The last day was July 3, 124 miles in the saddle, one day ahead of schedule. We finished at the Yorktown Victory Monument, which commemorated the American and French forces defeating the British in the Revolutionary War. Our arrival was greeted with not quite as much pomp and circumstance, but we were very happy to see our family again and be off our bikes and done with our journey!

Click here to read the Cornell Daily Sun article about Brother Eddie Rooker.

A group of SAE brothers attended a surprise 50th anniversary party for Bill Kingston '59 and his wife, Jackie! Click here to read more about the party and our brother Bill.

Marshal Case '64, president and CEO of the American Chestnut Foundation, is on a mission to restore American chestnut trees to the eastern forests. His work allowed him to collaborate with President George W. Bush and former President Jimmy Carter, who have been active with the conservation effort. President Bush asked to have an American Chestnut planted at the White House for Arbor Day (April 29) 2005, and Case (right) joined him and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns for the event. Case spent some time with the President before the tree planting on the North Lawn. This year, Case also joined Carter at the Carter Center, where his foundation planted chestnut trees.

[The Record Fall 2005]

Kirin Holdings to take 20 stake in Brooklyn Brewery

a book review of The Craft Beer Revolution by Steve Hindy

March 2014 "Free Craft Beer" by Steve Hindy

Expanding on a Brew Native to Brooklyn

At work in Cairo during the early 1980s, Steve Hindy found himself drinking beer that had been brewed at home by other American expatriates. They had picked up the skill living in parts of the Middle East where alcohol was banned. It was pretty good, and Mr. Hindy learned to make it himself when he and his family moved back to New York in 1984. Their old neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan had gotten too expensive, so they found a two-bedroom apartment in a part of the city that a family with young children could afford. It was Park Slope.

Four of the fermentation tanks in place at the Brooklyn Brewery.

An upstairs neighbor, Tom Potter, liked the home brew, which he shared with Mr. Hindy as they watched the Mets in the transcendent baseball season of 1986. Why not make small batches of craft beer and sell them around the city? The next year, against a lot of advice, Mr. Hindy gave up a job as an editor at Newsday, and Mr. Potter left banking.

In 1988, they began by making a single premium beer brewed according to a Bavarian purity law from 1516, with no additives. Production would be done under contract with a brewery in Utica, in upstate New York.

They called it “Brooklyn Lager.”

“In the beginning, we drove beer trucks all over Brooklyn,” Mr. Hindy, 63, said. “In Bay Ridge, I ran into the attitude — ‘If this stuff is so good, why did you name it Brooklyn?’ ”

This week, the Brooklyn Brewery founded by Mr. Hindy and Mr. Potter is installing eight giant stainless-steel fermenters that reached North 11th Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn after a one-month journey from Bavaria. Each fermenter should be full by Christmas, each able to make one million pints a year. This will allow the company, which also continues to brew in Utica, to double its production. About 35 new employees have been hired.

When they first set up shop in Brooklyn more than two decades ago, Williamsburg was filled with industrial shells, some still functioning, others used by artists who were refugees from the high rents of SoHo in Manhattan. Now the Wythe Hotel, humming down the block from the brewery, occupies and former textile factory and cooperage. “When we moved in, the warehouse was $3 a foot,” Mr. Hindy said. “Today, you’d be lucky to find anything for under $20 a foot.”

They took over a Dr. Brown’s Soda bottling plant, then a matzo factory, were robbed at gunpoint, hunted down a forklift charger that had been stolen by a junkie, and worked on streets that were barely breathing by day, and desolate by night.

It helped that Mr. Hindy had spent six years in the Middle East as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering wars and mayhem. In October 1981, he was seated in a military reviewing stand in Cairo, not far from the president of Egypt, Anwar el-Sadat, when Mr. Sadat was shot to death by soldiers parading past him. Mr. Hindy was kidnapped in southern Lebanon with two United Nations peacekeepers from Ireland who were tortured and killed. The wooden door on the family home in Beirut was shot up with machine-gun fire.

So he could deal with Brooklyn. Part of their marketing scheme was to make their neighborhood a destination, to capture a hip tone that was not yet widely heard or felt.

“In early 1996, Williamsburg was still a sketchy, industrial area,” Eric Ottaway, the general manager for the brewery, said. “It was stark. You’d open the doors for an event, and no one would come in.”

“Now,” he added, “we open the doors, and people are lined up down the block.”

Mr. Ottaway, 43, met Mr. Hindy when he was 12 years old in Egypt. His father, David Ottaway, a correspondent for The Washington Post, had been seated next to Mr. Hindy during the Sadat assassination. The Ottaway family had considerable wealth in newspaper holdings, and when the brewery was considering a public offering, they came in as private investors. They eventually bought most of Mr. Hindy’s stake, keeping him on as the company president, and all of Mr. Potter’s. (He has opened a distillery five blocks away, with Mr. Hindy as an investor; they are co-authors of “Beer School,” a frisky, compelling account of how they built the business.)

On three sides of the corner where the company has its warehouse, North 11th and Berry Streets, apartment buildings have replaced small manufacturers. Running against this tide is a brewery that just doubled it size.

“Brooklyn is a fantastic place, recognized all over the world, an almost mythical place,” Mr. Hindy said. “It has turned out to be a great name for a beer.”

Brooklyn Brewery doesn't try to compete with beer giants on advertising. Instead, the craft brewer focuses its marketing around community events and arts organizations, says President Steve Hindy, who co-founded the company in 1987 with Tom Potter.

"This earns us lots of goodwill and plenty of quality sampling of our fine Brooklyn-branded beers. We try to make sure the Brooklyn 'B' is prominent at all events," Hindy says. In their book, Beer School, Hindy details how he convinced Milton Glaser, the legendary designer of the "I Love NY" logo, to create the now famous "B."

Generations & Innovations
from the Cornell Alumni Magazine

Mark and Brian Nicholson '94 are the third generation managing Red Jacket Orchards, their family's 50-year-old fresh fruit juice company in Geneva, New York. When the brothers entered the business, with B.S. degrees in pomology and agriculture business management and marketing, respectively, the family had just begun making apple and fruit juice blends to supplement their seasonal cider making.

"We started out as a niche market," said Brian, company president. "Now we are in the process of bringing fresh back to the juice shelf."

Sales of their fresh-pressed juices and fruit nectars have increased 25 to 50 percent annually for the past several years. And a new 22,000-square-foot kosher and LEED-certified juice processing facility symbolizes their vision to build Red Jacket juices into a national brand, a strategy built on years of experience with direct-to-consumer sales at the New York City Greenmarket and the Geneva farm store.

"Years of feedback from customers helped us prioritize the freshness and flavor of the juices over more commercial attributes," said Mark, company executive vice president.

The juices get their freshness from a traditional "rack and cloth" pressing process, no added sugar or concentrates, no heat pasteurization, and minimal filtering. It sounds simple, but Mark and Brian have fine-tuned the process by working extensively with the Cornell community.

"The Cornell network is a big part of our success," Brian said. "We've benefited from being near the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, both through education and ongoing collaboration with scientists on product development. The NYS Food Venture Center helped us perfect this product—we wouldn't be where we are without their expertise."

This fall, Red Jacket will reach out to its newest generation of customers through a student ambassador program on six New York State college campuses, including Cornell. Ambassadors will give away free samples and promotional items, creating awareness of Red Jacket's all-natural juices.

He's Got The Juice
By Metta Winter
2004, Office of Public Affairs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University

Brian Nicholson '94 followed a roundabout path back to his family's fruit farm. It's a good thing he did, because his experience in marketing, branding, and sales is paying off for Red Jacket Orchards.

A glance at the sales staff biographies on the Red Jacket Orchards Web site makes you think there was a conspiracy at work. Brian Nicholson '94 finds that funny.

In fact, Nicholson says, it's downright shocking (and, he quickly adds, rewarding) that he, his brother Mark '94, and sister Amy May '98 are back on the family payroll. Mark is vice president of Juice Works, and Amy May is co-market manager for New York City Greenmarket operations.

"I was a business administration/marketing major and, although I didn't know what I wanted to do, I was very solid in my thinking that there was no way I was going back to the farm," says Nicholson, the first to return and the only one whose role allows him to work where he can watch their tree fruits grow.* "Going to Cornell had exposed me to a lot of metro New York people, and I thought there had to be something better out there than the blood, sweat, and tears of farming!"

Yet it seems, looking back, that everything Nicholson did, all those experiences that he described feeling at the time as "a natural fit" were actually a setup. A setup so that not 10 years later, he'd be back in Geneva, N.Y., with the skills to make a unique contribution to a family business his grandparents started 40 years ago.

The path back home began with Nicholson's first job out of Cornell, when he became marketing manager for Langeveld Bulb Co., an international flower bulb company. Although headquartered in Holland, half of the members of this family-owned agricultural business worked out of New Jersey. They employed a very aggressive marketing style that allowed Nicholson to put into practice some of the most advanced concepts he'd recently learned in Warren Hall.

One day Nicholson would be doing grunt work (shelving tulips and paper whites in, as he describes it, "mom and pop Agways in train-stop towns throughout Pennsylvania,") but the next he'd be back at headquarters logging into Wal-Mart's mainframe computer where he could check the sales performance of every Langeveld bulb placed in 800 Wal-Mart stores throughout the United States.

To trust vendors enough to give them direct access to sales data, store-by-store on an hourly basis, was a revolutionary concept that Wal-Mart pioneered, Nicholson recalls. It was a lesson in the power of retailers partnering with suppliers.

"By being allowed to manage the details of your own product line in the store-knowing what's selling and what's not and figuring out yourself how to address that quickly-you're in a position to maximize everybody's return," Nicholson explains.

Later, as an account supervisor for the New York City advertising agency Jordon, McGrath, Case and Partners/Euro RSCG, Nicholson learned another valuable lesson: the power of integrity. In managing the Bounty paper towel account, Nicholson says he became schooled in how Procter & Gamble developed trust with its business partners, worldwide.

Then came the clincher that would eventually land him back by the shores of Seneca Lake. Nicholson fell in love. "The work at JMCP was so much fun because our product was ideas," Nicholson recalls. "Suddenly I saw how much I loved the creativity involved in branding."

Meanwhile back on the farm, Nicholson's father Joseph Jr. was experimenting with a new product-fresh pressed juices made with whole fruit-that offered wholly new possibilities for developing the Red Jacket brand. To survive in agriculture, you have to differentiate yourself from the crowd by constantly reinventing yourself, Nicholson explains. When his grandfather bought 500-acre Red Jacket Orchards in 1958, the land was planted in cherries, which he eventually replaced with apples. Fourteen years later, when Joseph Jr. returned to the farm, he began experimenting with other fruits: notably flavorful varieties of plums, including Greengage and Mirabelle, prized in Europe but unavailable in the United States, and apricots, thought to be impossible to grow on the East Coast. (During the peak summer months, 1,200 pounds of Red Jacket apricots are sold every day in Manhattan's Union Square Greenmarket.)

When Nicholson returned to become vice president for marketing and sales, the juice line was so new that the labels were being printed on the office computer on sheets of address labels. Now there are eight varieties, including rhubarb apple and strawberry apple sold in 80 of New York's finest gourmet stores and down the coast to Florida through the upscale retailer Whole Foods and Fresh Market.

To Nicholson, a brand is a living thing with which people have a relationship. Like a friendship, that relationship grows and changes over time, and people judge it based on the quality of interaction over time.

"The name, the label, the taste of the product is something more than a commodity like sugar, which is just sugar," he explains. "I have this opportunity to take what has been my family's brand for 40 years and make it mean more to people in a positive way. And that's the challenge, it's also the fun."

Mark, based in Washington, D.C., heads up sales for Red Jacket's growing juice division. Amy May is developing new value-added products through her contacts with consumers in New York City.