by Arlene Alda
Dr. Arthur Klein, pediatric cardiologist, is a leader in pediatric medicine. His many appointments, positions, and honors include being a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a Fellow in the American College of Cardiology. He has served as the senior vice president of children’s services and chief of staff at the Children’s Medical Center of the North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital health care system and is now president of the Mount Sinai Health Network.
Robert Klein is an actor, singer, and stand-up comic. One of his first jobs was as an improviser in the Second City theatrical group in the 1960s. He made his Broadway debut in The Apple Tree in 1967. His first comedy album, in 1973, Child of the Fifties, was nominated for a Grammy and his second Grammy nomination came for his album Mind Over Matter. Robert Klein returned to Broadway in the Neil Simon comedy They’re Playing Our Song, for which he earned a Tony nomination. Mr. Klein has appeared in such films as The Owl and the Pussycat and The Back-up Plan. He is the author of The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue and has done eight comedy specials for HBO.
Robert F. Levine graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1963. He has practiced law for more than forty years, representing clients in all major areas of the media and entertainment industries. Mr. Levine has a particular expertise in the publishing industry, where he acts as attorney and literary agent for many celebrated authors. He also produced the motion picture That Championship Season, based on the Putlitzer Prize–winning play.
Suzanne Braun Levine, writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, families, and the media, was the first editor of Ms. magazine (1972–88) and the first woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Suzanne Levine was named a Ms. “Woman of the Year” in 2004.
She developed and produced the documentary She’s Nobody’s Baby: American Women in the 20th Century, which won a Peabody Award. Ms. Levine reports on the continuing changes in women’s lives in her books, on television and radio, at lectures, and on her website. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, Fifty Is the New Fifty, and How We Love Now.
She is married to attorney Robert F. Levine and has two children.
Born in Poland, Daniel Libeskind became a U.S. citizen in 1964. His firm Studio Daniel Libeskind has designed cultural, commercial, and residential projects around the world. They include the master plan for the World Trade Center in New York City and the Jewish Museum Berlin. Current projects include Zlota 44, a residential high-rise in Warsaw, and Haeundae Udong Hyundai l’Park, a mixed-use development in Busan, South Korea, which when completed will include the tallest residential building in Asia. Mr. Libeskind has received numerous awards, including the 2001 Hiroshima Art Prize, given to an artist whose work promotes international understanding and peace. It had never before been given to an architect.
Rick Meyerowitz is an artist/illustrator and writer, who over the course of his career has done thousands of illustrations for advertising agencies and magazines. He is also the author of eight books, at last count. He and his friend Maira Kalman created the much talked about New Yorker cover “NewYorkistan,” which was published in December of 2011. Later that week, the New York Times magazine wrote, “When their cover came out, a dark cloud lifted.”
Hector Nazario (“Nicer”): See Tats Cru
After graduating from Pratt Institute in 1960, Barbara Nessim entered the New York Society of Illustrators show, which marked her becoming a professional artist, her childhood ambition. Ms. Nessim was one of the few full-time professional women illustrators working in the United States in the 1960s. She carved a niche for herself in the competitive field of graphic design, doing illustrations for publications such as Rolling Stone, Time, Ms., and New York. Her work has been exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Louvre in Paris. Her most recent major show was a fifty-year retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2013.
Margaret M. O’Brien, S.C., attended the College of Mount St. Vincent during and after her novitiate period, where she majored in English and education. She later earned her master’s degree from Columbia University in library science. She has been a teacher, a library media specialist, and a school principal and has overseen the Sisters of Charity mission in hospital care, nursing homes, and hospice. Sister O’Brien’s work has taken her from Staten Island to Guatemala, culminating in her current position as treasurer of the Sisters of Charity, New York, where she has helped maintain the focus on the religious and human values in the midst of difficult financial circumstances.
Sotero Ortiz (“BG 183”): See Tats Cru
Al Pacino’s acting career has spanned more than fifty years and has included plays such as Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? for which he won a Tony Award in 1969. He has starred in many movies, including The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scent of a Woman. Mr. Pacino has won all of the major acting awards—Tony, Oscar, Emmy, British Academy Award, and Golden Globe, as well as having been elected the best actor of all time by the British television audience for Channel 4. He has also directed, produced, and starred in Looking for Richard, a documentary about William Shakespeare’s Richard III, and has performed as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice both on Broadway and on film.
Chazz Palminteri is an actor, writer, and director. He wrote and performed in his one-man play A Bronx Tale, which led to his acting in the movie of the same name, directed by and costarring Robert De Niro. Mr. Palminteri has appeared in more than fifty films, including The Usual Suspects and Analyze This. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Cheech in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. He also directed the movie The Perez Family, starring Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams. Chazz Palminteri is a member of the Actors Studio in New York City.
Regis Philbin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1953, earning a degree in sociology. He is a media personality, actor, and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. He is most widely known for Live! with Regis and Kelly as well as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Million Dollar Password.
Regis has been in front of the camera for some fifty years and is considered a cultural icon in TV broadcasting. He has beaten his own record in the Guinness Book of World Records for most hours on camera … 16,548.5 hours over the span of his career.
Regis Philbin has recorded four albums of songs. His latest CD is Regis and Joy, Just You, Just Me, which was made with his wife, Joy.
Colin Powell graduated from City College of New York (CCNY), earning a bachelor’s degree in geology, but found his real calling in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during that time. He graduated from CCNY with a commission as a second lieutenant in the army. Powell served two tours in Vietnam, earning a total of eleven military decorations, including a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and the Legion of Merit.
General Powell earned a master’s in business administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 1972. He is a retired four-star general, former United States secretary of state, national security adviser, commander of the United States Army Forces Command, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has advised Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He is the founding chairman of America’s Promise Alliance, dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth. His many accomplishments also include that of bestselling author of his autobiography, My American Journey.
Amar Ramasar, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, got his performing start at TADA! Youth Theater, in the musicals Prop Shop and Sleepover. In 1993 he studied at the School of American Ballet (SAB) as well as the American Ballet Theatre Summer Program and the Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet.
Mr. Ramasar became part of the New York City Ballet as an apprentice in 2000 and joined the corps de ballet in 2001. He became a soloist in March 2006, and in October 2009 he was promoted to principal dancer.
I. C. (“Chuck”) Rapoport is known
for his work as a photojournalist in the 1960s and more recently as a television and film screenwriter. Mr. Rapoport’s photography career is notable for his Life magazine photo essay on the aftermath of the tragic Aberfan, Wales, mining disaster and for his exclusive photos of the fitness master Joseph Pilates. From 1970 to 2004 he wrote a dozen Movies of the Week for television and worked as a staff writer and producer for Law & Order.
Carl Reiner is a writer, actor, director, producer, and comedian. He has performed and written for stage, television, and movies and has also written novels, autobiographies, and children’s books. He created The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which he was also an actor. He appeared on television with Sid Caesar in the Admiral Broadway Revue, which ultimately became Your Show of Shows.
His album, with Mel Brooks, The 2000 Year Old Man, was a hit comedy record in 1961. In addition to having received many Emmys, he is in the Television Hall of Fame and has won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Most recently he has acted in the movies Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen and is currently busy writing another memoir.
Jaime (“Jimmy”) Rodriguez Jr. is a restaurateur. His Jimmy’s Bronx Café (1993–2003) included a three-hundred-seat dining room with an outdoor deck that seated another four hundred people. The Café hosted New York Yankees ballplayers and other celebrities. In 2003, Jimmy was listed in Crain’s New York Business as one of the Top 100 Minority Business Leaders. He currently owns Jimmy’s Don Coqui, in New Rochelle, which he runs with his two daughters, Jaleene and Jewelle. It specializes in authentic Puerto Rican cuisine.
A. M. (“Abe”) Rosenthal had a distinguished career of almost sixty years in journalism. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning foreign correspondent, an associate managing editor, managing editor, and executive editor of the New York Times. Of his many achievements, he was most proud of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States, which was bestowed on him in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known professionally as JAR, graduated from Harvard as an art history and philosophy major in 1966 and soon after moved to Paris, the city he loved. There he wrote scripts for movies, designed tapestries, and worked in the couture world, which he realized was not for him. His interest in jewelry design led to opening his company, JAR, with partner Pierre Jeannet. JAR’s designs are known worldwide for their unusual stones, vibrant colors, and remarkable workmanship. His exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Jewels by JAR,” is the museum’s first retrospective of the work of a living designer of jewelry.
Andy Rosenzweig has been a policeman, a detective, and a chief investigator for the Manhattan district attorney. As chief investigator, he solved a double murder that had previously remained unsolved for twenty-five years. That case was the subject of an article for The New Yorker and a subsequent book, called The Cold Case, written by New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch.
Since his retirement from the police force, Andy Rosenzweig has gone on to earn a master’s degree in writing. He is currently working on his first novel.
Gabrielle Salvatto began her ballet training at the Dance Theatre of Harlem at age eight. She continued her studies at the School of American Ballet and received her high school diploma from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. She graduated from the Juilliard School with a bachelor of fine arts in dance, where she performed repertoire by Ohad Naharin, Jerome Robbins, Nacho Duato, Eliot Feld, and José Limón. Ms. Salvatto has since danced for Austin McCormick’s Company XIV and Sarah Berges Dance. After a year dancing and performing with the Professional Training Program at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Gabrielle proudly joined the newly formed company in August 2011.
Lawrence Saper is an inventor as well as an entrepreneur. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering. He had worked in that field for fifteen years when he invented the first synchronized heart monitor and founded Datascope. He is the former chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer at Datascope, where he served in those capacities from 1969 until January 2009. Datascope makes high-tech medical diagnostic equipment. The company went public in 1972. By the mid-1980s it was the market leader in both patient-monitoring equipment and cardiac-assist devices. Its two principal products were intra-aortic balloon pumps and patient monitors. Mr. Saper also started Genisphere, which is a subsidiary of Datascope Corporation.
Julian Schlossberg, movie, theater, and television producer, is also a distributor and teacher of film. During his tenure at the Walter Reade organization, he hosted the radio program Movie Talk, which was on the air for nine years.
His stage productions include Sly Fox, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and It Had to Be You. He was the producer of PBS’s American Masters special Nichols and May: Take Two, about the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. In 1978 Schlossberg left Paramount and went on to establish Castle Hill Productions, a film production and distribution company. Castle Hill has distributed more than five hundred first-run and classic movies to theaters, pay TV, basic cable, home video, TV syndication, and all other motion picture outlets worldwide. It has become one of the largest independent film distribution companies in the world.
Mr. Schlossberg is also a producer’s representative for prominent figures such as Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, and Elaine May.
His work-in-progress Witnesses to the 20th Century, a documentary series, examines the major historical events of the twentieth century from the perspectives of some of the prominent people of the time.
Louise Sedotto is currently the principal of P.S. 76, the Bennington School, in the Bronx. She received her undergraduate degree from Iona College and her master’s degree from the College of New Rochelle and holds administrative and supervisors degrees from Mercy College.
Ms. Sedotto began her teaching career at Saint Frances de Chantal School in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx and five years later began teaching at P.S. 26, part of the New York public school system. In 2001 she became the assistant principal in P.S. 76 and in January 2003 she was appointed principal.
P.S. 76 was cited by President George W. Bush as one of the highest-performing schools in the city. A photograph of President Bush, some students, and Principal Sedotto hangs in her office at school.
Carlos J. Serrano, playwright, director, poet, and theatrical producer, graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in creative writing from Brooklyn College in 1993. While there, he won the Irwin Shaw Award in Playwriting and the Grabanier Drama Award. He is a member of the People’s Theatre Project’s resident playwrights unit and its literary manager. Mr. Serrano’s play The Ortiz Sisters of Mott Haven was produced at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre in 2005 and was featured as the inaugural play for the forty-seventh annual Puerto Rican Theatre Festival in San Juan and Arecibo in 2006. His other playwriting credits include 24 Hours at Tiempo, The Day a Mariachi Band Followed Charlie Home, Charlie Needs a Shrink, The Blues of Daisy Peña, and Alter Ego. He is currently working on the Nuyorican Circus and Medicine Show.
George Shapiro graduated from New York University and became an agent at the William Morris Agency in New York, after which he became a personal manager and producer with his partner and friend Howard West. They formed their production company and executive produced the Peabody, Emmy, and Golden Globe award-winning series Seinfeld. George Shapiro is the personal manager of Jerry Seinfeld. He has also packaged hit programs such as The Steve Allen Show, That Girl, starring Marlo Thomas, and Gomer Pyle, starring his client Jim Nabors. He also packaged a number of specials for Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing.
Robert F. X. Sillerman is an entrepreneur whose company, in the past, owned seventy-one radio stations. He is the founder and serves as the chairman and chief executive officer of SFX Entertainment Inc., concert promoters. He was the owner of Elvis Presley’s estate and the TV hit American Idol and was also the majo
r producer of the hit Broadway show The Producers. Mr. Sillerman has been the CEO of Viggle Inc., his new company, since June 2012.
Valerie Simpson, songwriter, pianist, and producer, formed the legendary songwriting duo Ashford and Simpson with her husband, Nick Ashford. Together they received ASCAP’s highest honor, the Founders Award, in 1996 and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In January 2007 they accompanied Oprah Winfrey when she opened her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
At President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Ashford and Simpson rewrote their song “Solid as a Rock” as “Solid as Barack.” They dedicated it to the president at his inaugural festivities. Nick Ashford died in a New York City hospital on August 22, 2011, of complications from throat cancer.
Ms. Simpson released a new solo album in June 2012, Dinosaurs Are Coming Back Again, that features the last recorded performance of Nina Simone, a second duet with Roberta Flack, and an instrumental version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Ms. Simpson is especially proud of her induction into the Bronx Walk of Fame.
Dava Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, is the author of four highly acclaimed books, including Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude. She is also the coauthor of six books, including Is Anyone Out There?, with astronomer Frank Drake. She has received many awards for her contributions to the public awareness of science. Ms. Sobel is currently the Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Sotero (“BG 183”) Ortiz, Wilfredo (“Bio”) Feliciano, and Hector (“Nicer”) Nazario are dedicated graffiti artists and professional muralists. They are three of the original members of their company Tats Cru: the Mural Kings. They are known individually and collectively for their many letter styles, complex designs, and explosive use of color. Their work has been featured in many publications, music videos, and documentaries.