by Arlene Alda
After high school, I went to the University of Kansas because that’s the place to study reptiles. I only went there for one year, but while I was in Kansas, the Bronx accent stood out tremendously, of course. It was really funny, because I kind of got celebrity status there. Like, people would call their friends. We got a kid from the Bronx over here. People wouldn’t believe it. I had some call me and put their little brother on the line. I just want to hear your accent.
In the final few weeks of being there, I was doing a research project with a professor, who oddly enough also came from the Bronx. During that time, I was bitten in an artery by a rattlesnake, and it turned out that I had developed an allergy to them. There was no antivenom in the local hospital, so they flew me by helicopter to the next biggest hospital, in Kansas City. My heart stopped. I had no pulse. No blood pressure. I had stopped breathing. My professor was there with me, and when I was partially gone I thought I heard his voice saying, Listen, kids from the Bronx don’t die in Kansas. That brought me back to life. By the time I got to Kansas City, I was in rough shape, but got through it.
In the hospital, I was a celebrity too. Not because I had a rattlesnake bite, but again because I was from the Bronx. Their image was of Fort Apache. Their reactions were mixed. Fifty percent trembled and with the other fifty percent there was the wow factor. When I got through that experience, it all came together for me. When I was younger, I had thoughts like: “Could I work and live in Australia? Or in Africa?” Everything happens for a reason. I thought of all the natural, unspoiled areas of the Bronx, and I knew that was the most important place for me to be. So I came back.
NOTE
A. M. (“ABE”) ROSENTHAL
1. The Mosholu Parkway area was considered to be one of the more beautiful sections of the Bronx, a section where trafficked roads were, and still are, bordered by wide expanses of parkland. Mosholu Parkway has the Grand Concourse and Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Bronx Park, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the Bronx Zoo to the east.
BIOGRAPHIES
Arlene Alda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, received a Fulbright Scholarship, and realized her dream of becoming a professional clarinetist, playing in the Houston Symphony under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. She switched careers when her children were young and became an award-winning photographer and author who has written nineteen books, including Just Kids from the Bronx. She is the mother of three daughters and the grandmother of eight. She and her husband, actor Alan Alda, live in New York City and Long Island.
Anonymous found her place in the world of advertising on Madison Avenue. She is now retired, spending time with her beloved dogs, her writing, and work in her community.
Emanuel (“Manny”) Azenberg is a theatrical producer who has had seventy-one productions on Broadway. His first producing credit was The Lion in Winter, in 1968. He became the producer of Neil Simon’s plays in 1972, which include The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Biloxi Blues. Additional credits include Mark Twain Tonight! and Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of La Bohème.
Mr. Azenberg has won twenty Tony and Drama Desk Awards combined. He was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2009. He received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2012. He has also taught theater at Duke University for over two decades.
Jemina R. Bernard graduated from Yale University and Columbia Business School, where she received a master’s degree in business administration. She was an officer of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, worked as an adviser to Chancellors Joel Klein and Dennis Wolcott at the New York City Board of Education, and was senior vice president of regional operations for Teach for America.
Since September 2013 she has been the chief executive officer of ROADS Charter High Schools. Ms. Bernard has dedicated her career to having an impact on low-income communities and young people of color.
Roberto Martin Antonio (“Bobby”) Bonilla played major league baseball from 1986 to 2001. His teams included the Pittsburgh Pirates, the White Sox, the Mets, the Baltimore Orioles, the Florida Marlins, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. As a free agent and because of a favorable deferred payment contract with the New York Mets, Bonilla became the highest-paid player per year in the history of baseball and the three other major professional sports in the United States.
Martin Bregman is one of the leading producers in the entertainment business. Among the more than two dozen films he’s produced are Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, which was nominated for six Academy Awards and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. His other films include The Seduction of Joe Tynan, The Four Seasons, Scarface, and Carlito’s Way.
He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, the actress Cornelia Sharpe.
Dr. Michael Brescia received his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University in 1954 and his medical degree from Georgetown University in 1958. He is cofounder and executive medical director of Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, the only fully accredited acute care specialty hospital providing care for adult advanced cancer patients. He is the coinventor of the Cimino-Brescia fistula, an internationally renowned hemodialysis method that represents a milestone in the field of kidney disease. It is used almost exclusively for artificial kidney therapy. Dr. Brescia has received many awards for his professional work and his service to the community.
Majora Carter is an urban environmentalist and strategist. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a bachelor of arts degree and in 1997 received a master of fine arts degree from New York University. Ms. Carter served as project director (1997–98) and associate director of community development (1998–2001) for the Point Community Development Corporation, working on youth development and community revitalization in Hunts Point. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001. Ms. Carter received a MacArthur “genius” Grant in 2005, and since 2008 has been president of Majora Carter Group, LLC, a private consulting firm. She was responsible for bringing the Hunts Point Riverside Park into existence. It is the first open waterfront park in the South Bronx in sixty years.
Mark Cash graduated from New York University in 1952, went into the army in 1953, and returned to New York University for his bachelor of law degree, which he received in 1957. He received his master’s of law in taxation from NYU in 1963. He practices in New York City, where he does tax law, estate law, and commercial litigation.
Mary Higgins Clark is a worldwide bestselling author, having written thirty suspense novels, one historical novel, a memoir, and two children’s books, in addition to being coauthor with her daughter Carol of five holiday suspense novels. Her books have sold more than one hundred million copies in the United States alone. In her memoir, Kitchen Privileges, Ms. Clark quotes an old saying, “If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for life, love what you do. I love being a storyteller.”
Ms. Clark has also won many awards for her writing, as well as having received twenty-one honorary doctorates, including one from her alma mater, Fordham University, where she graduated summa cum laude as a philosophy major in 1979.
In 1996 Ms. Clark married John Conheeney, former Merrill Lynch Futures CEO.
Avery Corman is a writer and the author of the novels Kramer vs. Kramer, Oh, God!, The Old Neighborhood, 50, Prized Possessions, and A Perfect Divorce, among others. The first two were made into movies that have become classics. In line with his passion for basketball and his ties to his old neighborhood, Mr. Corman gifted to the City of New York a restored basketball court in his childhood school yard, which became a catalyst for the creation of the City Parks Foundation, for which he has served as a board member since its inception in 1989.
Kenneth S. Davidson graduated from Colgate University in 1966 and a year later taught ninth-grade English in the New Rochelle public school system.
In 1968 he got his first job on Wall Street at Cowen and Co. and five years later founded Davidson Capital Management Corporation, managing hedge funds for wealthy individuals, endowments, fo
undations, and retirement funds.
Kenneth Davidson is a founding partner of Aquiline Holdings, LLC, and in 2012 started Balestra Advisors, an investment advisory business.
Mr. Davidson has been a member of both corporate and not-for-profit boards, including the Juilliard School, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, and from 1997 to the present American Friends of the National Gallery/London.
Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, graduated from Lehman College with a degree in political theory. When he was twenty-three, he became the youngest member in the New York State Assembly, where he served seven terms. He is known as a champion for working families in the Bronx, a leading voice against environmental racism and injustice, and an advocate for justice and equality for all.
Dion DiMucci, singer, songwriter, and guitarist, a founding member of Dion and the Belmonts in his early vocal career, is a multiplatinum recording artist, Grammy nominee, and inductee into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame. His hits include “Abraham, Martin and John,” “Runaround Sue,” and “The Wanderer.”
Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, a physicist, graduated from Hunter College with a degree in science, got her master’s degree at Radcliffe College, and received her doctorate from the University of Chicago. She became the head of the Materials Science and Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, a physics professor at MIT in 1983, and institute professor in 1985.
In 2012 Dr. Dresselhaus was awarded the prestigious Kavli Prize for her original work in nanotechnology and carbon molecules. She is also the recipient of the United States National Medal of Science and a corecipient of the Fermi Award.
She still practices the violin and plays chamber music as often as she can.
Millard (“Mickey”) S. Drexler attended the City College of New York, got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Buffalo, and a master’s in business administration from Boston University. He worked for twelve years in New York City department stores before moving on to Ann Taylor, where he was president and CEO from 1980 to 1983. He worked for the Gap, Inc., for eighteen years, serving as president and then CEO. He is currently the chairman and CEO of J.Crew and is often called the “Merchant Prince” and “the man who dressed America.”
He is married to Peggy Drexler, a research psychologist and author. They have two children.
Jules Feiffer is a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and children’s book author and illustrator who has created more than thirty-five books, plays, and screenplays. He is well known for his long-running editorial cartoons for the Village Voice. He was also the first cartoonist commissioned by the New York Times to create comic strips for its op-ed page. Mr. Feiffer has won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for his cartoons; Obies for his plays; an Academy Award for the animation of his cartoon satire Munro; and lifetime achievement awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society. He has been honored with major retrospectives at the New-York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the School of Visual Arts.
Wilfredo Feliciano (“Bio”): See Tats Cru
Leon Fleisher, who lived in the Bronx for a short time, is a renowned pianist and conductor. He made his public debut as a pianist at the age of eight and played with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux at the age of sixteen. Mr. Fleisher studied with Artur Schnabel and is linked via Schnabel to a teaching tradition that descended directly from Beethoven. Mr. Fleisher received a 2007 Kennedy Center Honors Award and continues to concertize and record. He teaches at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Milton Glaser graduated from Cooper Union and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. He founded Push Pin Studios in 1954 and was a cofounder of New York magazine with Clay Felker in 1968. He teamed with Walter Bernard in 1983 to form the publication design firm WBMG.
He has had one-man shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. He designed the “I ♥ NY” logo in 1976, perhaps the most reproduced logo of our time.
In 2004 Mr. Glaser received a National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and, in 2010, the National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama. In 1974 he opened Milton Glaser, Inc., and continues his work in the many fields of design.
Grandmaster Melle Mel, born Melvin Glover, is an American hip-hop musician, one of the pioneers of rap, and the leader of the Furious Five. The group produced the song “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It).” The 1983 music video of that song starred the young actor Laurence Fishburne and was directed by then unknown film student Spike Lee. Grandmaster Melle Mel became the first rap artist ever to win a Grammy for Record of the Year after performing a rap on Chaka Khan’s hit song “I Feel for You,” which introduced hip-hop to the mainstream R&B audience.
Sam Goodman graduated from Kenyon College in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He received his master’s degree in urban-suburban administration in 1995. His master’s thesis was on his Grand Concourse community.
When he graduated from Kenyon, Mr. Goodman became a Westport, Connecticut, school bus driver and served on the Westport Democratic Town Committee. From 1981 to 1993 he served as executive director of the Westport Transit District. In 1993 he relocated to the Bronx full-time. Sam Goodman has worked as an urban planner for the Bronx borough president’s office since 1995. His family has had ties to the Grand Concourse since the 1920s. Mr. Goodman conducts tours of his neighborhood. “What I really enjoy is sharing perspectives on my home community in order to inform, enlighten, and inspire those who want to learn about this place and its people.”
Joyce Hansen is a writer of children’s books that explore African American themes. She has been writing books and stories for more than twenty years. Her first children’s book, The Gift-Giver, was inspired by her students and her own Bronx childhood. Six of her fifteen books were named Notable Children’s Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies and four of her books received the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award.
Ms. Hansen lives in South Carolina with her husband, Matthew Nelson, and writes full-time.
Daniel (“Danny”) Hauben received his degree in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts. Born, raised, and still living in the apartment in the Bronx that his family moved to when he was nine years old, Hauben’s focus has been the urban landscape. For more than thirty years he’s been painting on location in streets and parks, from windows and rooftops. He is an eight-time recipient of the BRIO Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Bronx Council on the Arts. He recently completed a twenty-two-painting commission for the new North Hall and Library, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, for the Bronx Community College. These panels represent the largest public arts commission since the era of the WPA. His paintings are in public and corporate collections, including the White House, the Library of Congress, the New-York Historical Society, and Harvard University. He currently teaches at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College and the Riverdale YM/YWHA. He can be seen painting on his show Art and About on Bronx.net.
Dr. Renee Hernandez received his premed degree in organic chemistry from Fordham University and his medical degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He did his residency with Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and is board certified in internal medicine. He went back to the Bronx to serve his community, where he has his office and medical practice.
In 2012 Dr. Hernandez created the first legal rum and whiskey distillery in the Bronx since Prohibition.
Steve Janowitz is a retired math teacher who taught at Middle School 118 in the Bronx for thirty-two years. The last ten years of that time he was the school’s math staff developer, where he held workshops on new teaching methods.
His second career became that of comedy writer for and with his wife, the actress an
d comedian Joy Behar. He modestly says, “My comedy writing was not by design. It just evolved. I always tried to make Joy laugh out loud at least once a day. Often I would say things that she thought were funny and they would end up in her act. I never thought of myself as a writer, only someone who liked to make wisecracks. It took a real comedian to pick out what was worth repeating on the stage.”
Steve Jordan is a musician, composer, a multiple Grammy Award-winning record producer, and the Emmy Award-winning musical director for the CBS television special Movies Rock. In his early career, he played drums for the Saturday Night Live Band and for the Blues Brothers. From 1982 to 1986 he was the founding drummer in The World’s Most Dangerous Band on Late Night with David Letterman. Mr. Jordan has also worked with Keith Richards and the X-pensive Winos as a composer, producer, and player. Currently, he is a member of the John Mayer Trio, and records and tours with Meegan Voss, his wife, under the band name The Verbs.
Maira Kalman is an artist, illustrator, author, and designer. She is the author and illustrator of thirteen children’s books, including those of Max Stravinsky, the poet-dog. She’s done covers for The New Yorker and created sets for the Mark Morris Dance Group production of Four Saints in Three Acts. She has illustrated several books for adults, including The Principles of Uncertainty, And the Pursuit of Happiness, and Food Rules. Ms. Kalman has had shows of her art in the Jewish Museum in New York City and the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles. She is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York.
Michael R. Kay received a bachelor of arts degree in communications from Fordham University but began reporting while still at Bronx High School of Science and then at Fordham University for WFUV.
He started his professional career with the New York Post as a general assignment writer, with sports-specific assignments to basketball, and later received the Yankees beat writing assignment.
Mr. Kay left the Post for the Daily News, in 1989, still primarily reporting on the Yankees. At that time, Kay also served as the Madison Square Garden Network Yankee reporter and the television play-by-play broadcaster of the New York Yankees.