On 4/10/13, Bill Gould Wrote:
Now a story. Arnie's first job after college (I used to remember where he
went, but hey) was in New York and one day he was driving his VW Beetle on
the NY State Thruway when he got a flat tire. He's up front of the car,
jacking it up to change the tire when he realizes the whole car is shaking.
He stands up and lo and behold there are two guys at the back of the car
also preparing to jack it up and steal the tires - things happen fast in New
York. They look at him and say 'Oh - sorry didn't see you but we'll take
the back and you can have the front.' Somehow he managed to get them to
leave..... I think I knew Arnie had passed away, but don't remember the
details.
Bill Gould
Lance Golden added:
Arnie Goldman and I were very close in high school and we kept in touch until his death in 1998. Arnie, along with Dennis Rich, went to school at Grinnell College in Grinnell Iowa. Dennis I believe, was a chain smoker until his wife and children cajoled him into quitting and in turn gave him a white Samoyed dog he named Smokey. Arnie, I think, occasionally worked on a pipe. In college Arnie played the guitar I believe as much for his own pleasure as anything else. He went to grad school in Pittsburgh and ended up with a PhD in biophysics. Like many of us he sought to serve his country during the Vietnam War here stateside and went to work for the National Institute of Health in Boston doing research on the effects of high altitude radiation on the human eye. At that time the US was considering producing a plane in competition with the Concorde and one of the questions was the effect of radiation at high altitudes on the human eye, he was doing that research. At that time he met his wife Sandy, a died in the wool native New York girl. They had two girls and for reasons that escape me now they all moved to Milwaukee for a while. He was then recruited by a biotech company on the East Coast which was working on a safe, effective, injectable lubricant, which we all now see being used as an alternative to knee replacement. He worked very hard and long to assist the company in developing and getting this product through the FDA maze. Unfortunately Arnie did not see it brought to market for he died of pancreatic cancer about 1998. I miss him terribly.
From Don Nathan:
It slipped my memory that Lance was in that same car pool with Dennis Rich, Arnie Goldman and Jeff Perlman, although for the life of me I can't recall how far I had to drive to pick him up. The good thing about it was not having the shame of having to walk to school.
Actually, that's that altogether fair. Sometimes one of the guys couldn't get a parent's car, and we'd have to fend for ourselves. Then I'd walk to school with Walter Schwalm who lived right by me. He was a swell guy and who played a great game of chess.
Dennis went on to teach theater at Columbia College where he was Dean of the Theater Department for some time, a position from which he stepped down I think so as to be able to travel more. He's indicated to me that he's going to come to the reunion - I haven't seen him since about 2003 when we had dinner over at Khyper Pass in Oak Park. Back then he looked just the same save for a little gray at the temples.
It's going to be interesting to see the changes in people over the course of 50 years.
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