Nolan Asch:
CLASS OF 1967
Roosevelt High SchoolClass of 1967
Yonkers, NY
Columbia University - EngineeringClass of 1971
New york, NY
Nolan's Story
Hi! I just joined this site and I see a lot of familiar names that bring my memory back to high school days at RHS.
Since 1967 I spent the next four years (1967-71) at Columbia. I nthe spring of my freshman year Mark Rudd and company took over the campus and we got a lot of national media attention. It was mainly too much for me and the movie "the strawberry statement" shows me , a freshman wondering around the sterile Carmen Hall dorm, overwhelmed by these events. By the time I was a junior in the Spring of 1970 when all hell broke loose I was "in command" of about 100 people as part of the Columbia objective of closing the goverment down on May Day. Columbia and Berkeley really got many of the tough assignments. My "Patton" speech always started with "anyone who wants to get arrested raise your hand! You get out of here. We are NOT here to get arrested, we are here to mess up traffic at Dupont circle. Get something wet over your mouth and noise for the tear gas and follow me. We will jaywalk in Dupont Circle and when they come after us we RUN. Then do it again and again. I finally sought refuge in a college campus, the safest place in those days. That was the day with the famous picture of Attorney General John Mitchell with his hands folded looking at RFK stadium filled with about 50,000 demonstrators "arrested". Who did I spent there but my old RHS friend, Bruce Moore. He had come down from BU. John Mitchell later went to prison himself. Bruce was my partner both for Woodstock that past summer and for the classic VW Mirobus cross country "hippie" trip for 3 months in 1971 after graduating college.
Then I had "had it" with NYC tne northeast, cold weather and stress so I took a full fellowship with a stipend of $6,000 per year, not a bad starting salary to go get my MBA at Tulane Univ in Nawlins Louisiana. That was remarkable place long before Katrina. Person per person, that town has the greatest concentration of great musicians and great chefs anywhere. It is recovering and a tourist or conventioner now can go there and see most of the tourist sites and never see the original dev...Expand for more
astation of Katrina.
After getting my MBA (like so many did then) I was sick of academia so I sent out hundreds of resumes and got only 13 possible interviews, 1 with Exxon and 12 insurance companies. They did not care about my MBA but I had past one of the Actuarial exams while I was taking a Columbia Statistic course. So by great luck I started on the Actuarial professional career I still am at after 36 years.
I got married in 1979 and had 2 kids. My daughter just got married a few weeks ago at age 29. Both my wife and I were 29 when we wed and both partners have parents whose weddings have "made it" for 30 plus years. I am hopeful. Both kids graduated college ( she at columbia, my son at Penn State) immediately moved out, got good entry jobs and have been standing on their own feet so far.
I digressed in another post to the 1964-73 classic rock heydey and my best friend ( who now is gone) Jack Wissner. He was an increble guitarist and we were inseparable. I went with him through many rock groups that worked for $200 or $300 a night on weekends at bars like the "Fore and Aft" in new Rochelle and Todds, a spot around Armonk where tons of Ct. kids crossed the border to NY where the legal drinking age was just 18.
Jack played and really led "The Medallions" with Joey Kramer whom he always sought as a drummer. He played in two other bands with Bobby (Bob) Mayo who later "made it" with Peter Frampton and if look at who wrote the songs and listened to his keyboards and singing on the classic "Frampton Comes Alive" album, which made Frampton, you see how important Bobby was to all that, which Frampton freely admits. We all were sadened by his death in a car crash a few years ago. He only DRANK MILk, while evryone around was ingesting god knows what...there is a lot of randomness in life but I still believe in free will and our ability to steer the arc of our lives and, at least tilt the odds toward one "fste" versus another.
That's basically may story and I am overjoyed at this site and look forward to chats with many of you. I wish you all the very best!! ( I always was a longwinded guy.
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