Haverford’s top alumni press notice in the last ten days is a rave review by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times of July 21 of In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, a new book by David Wessel ’75, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal. The Times’ reviewer calls the book “essential, lucid–and, it turns out, riveting–reading.”
David tells the story of how Fed Chair Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen and a few others tried to save the US economy last autumn.
More from Michiko K: “Mr Wessel uses his narrative gifts and a plethora of sources to give readers a vivid, highly immediate sense of what transpired in last-minute high-pressure seat-of-the-pants meetings in Washington and New York while placing these events in a broader historical context.”
Sounds like a good read, preferably beside a cool lake, especially now that the market is looking better. (There’s a nice photo of David on p. C8 of the July 21 Times.)
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Meanwhile, two parents of recent Haverford grads made their way into The Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday (July 29). John R. Koelmel, father of Liz Koelmel ’09, is featured in the Business section (p. C1) since he’s the CEO of First Niagara Financial Group in upstate New York which just acquired a company near Haverford, Harleysville National Corp.
In the story, Koelmel talks about how he was already familiar with the area through “making his way through some very prime-time geography” while looking for the lacrosse fields Liz was playing on. He saw some prime-time offensive lacrosse from his daughter as Liz claimed 11th place in both goals and assists on the all-time Haverford scoring list while making all-Centennial Conference, second-team all-Region, and all-Conference Academic Honor Roll selections. How’s that for combining business and pleasure for dad Koelmel?
A front-page story yesterday on the work of Childrens’ Hospital of Philadelphia on the deadly childhood tumor neuroblastoma, resulting in the first drug trials to help those afflicted with this disease after more than 20 years of research, turned to Dr. Stephen Chanock, chief of translational genomics of the National Cancer Institute, for comment.
“It was John’s vision (John Maris, the lead researcher at CHOP) to go to the leaders at CHOP and say we need to do this….They’ve done it magnificently…Kudos to them,” said Steve Chanock.
“These diseases are more complex than we ever imagined, ” Dr. Chanock went on in the story headlined “A Childhood Cancer Slowly Yields its Secrets.” “For those of us in the trenches it’s breathtaking in terms of the complexity of what cancer is.” (p. A9 of the Inky.)
Dr. Chanock’s Haverford connection is son Nick Chanock ’05, like Liz Koelmel,a top Haverford athlete (as a pitcher for the baseball team).
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Nick Chanock was having a pretty busy day while his father was getting quoted in the Inquirer. Nick, who works as an assistant to uber- sports agent Arn Tellem ’76 while also attending Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles, was on his way to Philadelphia, also intending to stop for one of his favorite hamburgers at an eatery near the Haverford campus.
Or was he?
Nick had to forego that hamburger at the last minute since his trip to see one of Tellem’s clients, the Phillies’ promising future catcher, Lou Marson, up the road a bit from Haverford in Allentown, PA, where he plays for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs,the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, had to be abruptly cancelled.
Marson was the major bait used to attract the Cleveland Indians to send the Phillies Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Cliff Lee in yesterday’s major baseball trade (pending review of medical records of the eight players in the trade). So Marson headed for Cleveland, but we hope you can get back to the Main Line for that burger soon, Nick!
(In another strange twist of fate, Marson’s General Manager at Cleveland will be Mark Shapiro, son of Ron Shapiro ’64, Tellem’s friendly rival in the ranks of the top major league baseball player representatives.)
–Greg Kannerstein ’63