Just Kids From the Bronx (35 page)

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

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, foundations, 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.