Gene Cooper email: gcooper82@rcn.com
To start, I want to say working with the reunion committee again has been a special pleasure. It’s been great fun meeting together, planning the reunion and sharing stories.
First off…after 35 years of marriage, Abbie and I have become grandparents. As the grandparents in our class know, it’s one fabulous experience. Dylan Adam Cooper is now 14 months old. Our son David, age 32, and our daughter-in-law, Lizzie, age 31, are thrilled, as we are. David, who worked four years as a Manhattan assistant district attorney, is now working with a law firm in White Plains, NY. Lizzie is on the staff of the Democratic Senatorial Election Campaign, working for NY Senator Chuck Schumer. Dylan too, is working, on saying “grandma” and “grandpa”. They live in Hartsdale, NY, 40 minutes from our home in Manhattan. Fortunately, Abbie and I are close enough for scheduled and unscheduled grandparenting duty!
Since selling my management consulting firm in 2000 I continue to be almost retired. I still enjoy working two days a week maintaining a psychotherapy practice, as well as continuing with my executive coaching work. As mentioned in my 45th reunion write-up, I built a management consulting company in New York specializing in employee counseling programs and organizational consulting with New York metro corporations. After some two years of working at it, the company grew nicely with a staff of 27 or so psychology and social work professionals serving some major corporations. (In 1973, at age 33, I had returned to graduate school and got a degree in clinical social work. Prior to that, I had worked in marketing for several years while doing volunteer work with adolescent drug treatment programs.)
With post-graduate training and work at several psychiatric hospitals and family clinics, I became a licensed psychotherapist. The executive coaching, which is working with executives and managers referred by their companies to improve their interpersonal behavior skills, developed from my business relationships with client companies I have worked with after selling my firm. Much of it is fun, challenging stuff!
On the personal side, I have been doing well following a rough patch in 2000. As mentioned in my 45th reunion write-up, I survived heart bi-pass surgery after some post-op complications that had me laid up in the hospital for over a month. I keep active by playing tennis year-round and skiing, in addition to just plain walking around the city. Abbie, who retired some years ago working as a corporate human resources specialist, and I, continue to take advantage of living in Manhattan by attending a lot of theater, film, concerts and lectures, among other things. Abbie also takes continuing education courses, primarily in the area of English literature. We travel some and spend some time at a home in Pennsylvania. I’m busy trying to expand an article I wrote for a corporate seminar into a manuscript. It’s harder than studying for the Physics Regents exam! The title: “Managing and Parenting – A Parallel View. How Workplace Managing and At Home Parenting Find Common Ground”. The subject matter evolved from my work with executives and families over the years.
Some flash memories from high school…
- Senior class play and gym dance that followed. A take-off on the Steve Allen TV show with Dick Schaab playing “Steverino” and “The Bop Tones” supplying the music. Other things I remember about the play…Irene Metress and her ventriloquist act, Anne Bohnel playing a very friendly nurse in a skit I lifted from a TV show, the whole class on stage singing “Moments To Remember”. I’m sure others remember other acts. A fun night.
- Playing varsity football and actually catching some passes and making some tackles.
- Going to Palisades Amusement Park with Tony, Leo and our dates with Tony’s mother driving (no driver’s license yet). Seven in the car? Saw Vic Damone sing “On the Street Where You Live”. How did I remember that??
- Playing Acey-Ducey and poker at Leo’s “bungalow” with some of the guys. The expression “I’ll bet the pot” generated some serious losses ($5 to $7).
- Junior year going with the Future Teachers of America club to visit New Paltz Teachers College. Only guy on bus with 22-24 girls (too quiet to take advantage of it).
- “Going with” Karen O. sophomore and junior year. Fun time.
- Karen O. breaking up with me beginning of senior year. No fun time (in fact, as a clinician, today I would diagnose what I was experiencing as transient adolescent depression).
- Dating Pat M. (class of’60). Going with her to the Rt. 59 drive-in. Left parking spot with speaker still on my side window. Cracked the window on my ’47 Dodge (hmm, must have been a good movie!).
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With Ang and Albie at the ice cream parlor and dance hall in Montvale. First time I heard Elvis – singing “Heartbreak Hotel”.
- Struggling around Pat Clift with her multi-crinoline skirt to get to my locker.