ZETA PHOTO PAGE


Why not share aspects of your life and some of your photographs here? Your contribution could include information about your family, your career, your kids or grandkids, and be accompanied by photos. Send a brief commentary and some photos to either Larry or Jack, and we will try to present them for the group to enjoy. Thanks.

Our Latest Contributions

Some "pics from the past" complements of Jack Berger, including his captions.


Paul ("P.T.") Tschampel (Eat your heart out, George Clooney)


Donald H Kubicek (Shown Alongside his Pontiac, in the Rear AXE House Parking Lot)


Kenneth R Jolls (No, you dummy, that's not Roy Orbison......)


William F. ("Slim") Pickens (Pose by Auguste Rodin; Wardrobe by Giorgio Armani)


Peter C. ("PVDV") Vandervoorn (Can't ID the Bathing Beauty....)


Man, they work 'em hard in the Drago Group...................


William ("Bill") McCray, Anyone in touch with him?


Richard ("Troll II") Muesing, (Let's see....first we extract the pig shit with MEK.............)


Here are some 'Car' and 'House' shots, At the top, its Ohio Street towards the left corner, looking out the front door. That might be the neighbor's dog on the grass. The green chevy looks familiar, but I forgot who owned it. I would not be surprised if that is Doug's "bomb" behind it, and possibly Don's Pontiac towards the corner.

The bottom is most certainly my 'shmatteh' bought as a leaving from the Illinois Bell Telephone Company. I believe it was a 56 or 57 Ford, painted in olive drab, with a speed governor on it. It had a notoriously under-designed cooling system, that I nursed back and forth once to NY with Doug's help (a story in itself). After returning to C-U, I replaced the radiator at Monkey-Ward's for the princely sum of $50. By the time I traded it in, about a year later, the seams on the new radiator were starting to pop....

That two-tone chevy in front of my car looks very familiar, but I can't qwuite place it. PVDV had something like it, but his had a Canary Yellow accent to the white.


am at a loss to identify the individuals in these pictures. In the one on the left, the guy with earmuffs is NOT walking a dog -- that is his shadow against the incline. The other guy seems to have a set of handlbars in front of him. I suspect that if someone can recognize the clothing, we may have a shot at ID-ing the three of them.

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This picture documents "The Great Theft of Halloween 1962", which took place at the Zeta AXE House in Chamaign-Urbana. Having observed that pumpkins had been placed outside the door of a neighboring sorority, up the block on Ohio Street, we conspired to steal them, principally for their meat. It was J W Carmichael, Jr. who attested to his expertise in baking pumpkin pie, if would could get the ingredients.

I think Doug Relyea drove the getaway car, and Mike Heidari and I stealthily crept up to the sorority porch, and hornswoggled the two pumpkins into laundry bags. We drove off, to the shouts of 'Stop, Thief!" when the sorority girls discovered what was afoot.

The booty was taken down to the AXE House kitchen, where the pumpkins were hollowed out, to permit JW to bake the pies, which he subsequently did. History does not record the quality of the pies, but I believe they turned out "close enough for folk music." It occurred to us that we could then carve Jack O'Lanterns, out of the remaining shells, and return them as a peace offering to the sorority. This picture shows the end product of that labor. Please note the ubiquitous Skippy Peanut Butter jar on the dining room table.

On the return trip, I believe it was Jon Yatabe and I who carefully placed the Jack O'Lanterns on the sorority porch. To the accompaniment of 'Oohs and Aahs,' we left with all forgiven.

For those who can't recognize the perpetrators, they are :
Standing (L to R): JW Carmichael, Jr. The late Ed Bromels ("The Horse"), Doug Relyea, and Jack Berger (perhaps the last picture taken of me with some hair....)
Seated: (L to R): Jon Yatabe and Ken Borden

Jack Berger found these two letters in the back of a drawer recently and though they might bring back some fond memories.

Keith Shelton wanted to share this 1963-64 photo he found in his "archives." One wonders where this motley group of chemists and chemical engineers were headed. How many can you recognize? What was the occasion? Where is that car now? Many thanks to Keith for this photo!

In response to this photographic offering, Doug Relyea offers the following recollection. "While the location is still a great mystery, the Bomb is my old '59 Chevy convertible -- black with white top and red interior. Haven't thought about that one is years, but every once in a while (when the temperature got above 50 deg F so that the top wouldn't crack from stiffness) we'd put the top down and go cruising around the area -- usually over to Danville (Vermillion County was "open" on Sundays) or over to Turkey Run State Park in Indiana. Don't recognize the house, but the crew was the usual Turkey Run bunch -- wonder if the Perse Poilu was trying to squeeze in and get a ride back to the AXE House?? If so, the scene is probably in the neighborhood, but most likely halfway between East Chem and AXE --

"As for the grime on the machine, it only got washed after all the winter crud was long gone -- black shows every speck of dirt, and no sense washing the crate more than once a year! Another interesting thing about the '59 Chevy -- the gull-wing rear end made a good airfoil if you got the speed up high enough. When I left Anus Mundi Illinois for the last time in July of 1965, I decided to cross the city limits as fast as I could -- I had to give up at 102 mph because the ass-end started floating with the "wind under the wings"! So much for yesteryear -- let me know if anyone else recognizes the location.

"It was noted under the photo, ...where is that car now? By now, long since recycled into tin cans, but I traded it in on a brand-new '66 Dodge shortly after getting to Baytown (where I've been ever since) -- the first in a procession of many vehicles over the past four decades, but the only new one I've ever bought (I kept it for 28 years, and my son finally traded it in on a newer car when he was in High School)."

As part of its comprehensive program of issuing stamps to honor distinguished Americans, the USPS unveiled a new block of four stamps to honor four American scientists on May 4, 2005 at Yale University. The stamps honor Barbara McClintock, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Richard Feynman and John von Neuman.

In designing the Gibbs Stamp, the USPS retained Dr. Kenneth R. Jolls, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, IA to help specify an appropriate abstraction of Gibbs contribution for the face of the stamp. Dr. Jolls has devoted his career to applying computer visualization technology to representing these very same concepts, that prior generations of researchers were forced to construct painstakingly from either wood or clay. The Gibbs stamp bears the 2-dimensional representations, specified by Dr. Jolls, taken from the original work published by Gibbs at the beginning of the 20th century.

When the date for the unveiling was specified, it turned out that Dr. Jolls could not attend because of his ongoing academic commitments. He then asked his classmate of many years, Dr. Jack S. Berger, a Bergen County resident, living in Mahwah, New Jersey, to represent him at the unveiling ceremony. Here are a couple of pictures of interest:

On the right, posing with Jack, is John Willard Gibbs, III, MD, PhD, the great grand-nephew of Josiah Willard Gibbs (Josiah Willard Gibbs never married and had no issue of his own). We are standing in front of the cabinet that contains one of the two models of the Gibbs Surface for Water, that were crafted by James Clerk Maxwell. The other model is at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in England.

This is Jack, beside a blowup of the JWG commemorative stamp. Ken specified the choice of the graphic, taken from Maxwell's 'Theory of Heat,' to go on the stamp as best representing the core contribution that Gibbs made to Thermodynamics. These two exhibits were part of a "wall" of exhibits about Gibbs' life and contributions, that was set up in the Henry R. Luce Building at the Yale campus.

Starting with these three photos from Peter Van Der Voorn, I am initiating a new set of photos on this page. Please provide your photos, or any sort (family, vacations, or other adventures) to share with the rest of the gang.


Peter provides these photos of gatherings at the Zeta house from our days there.

The gentleman in the center of this photo, two places to the left of the speaker, looks like Larry's Thesis Professor, Carl S. Vestling; who else do you recognize?

That looks like Doug Relyea and Larry Gundersen in the middle; do you recognize yourself in this photo?

And who do you recognize in this one?

Jack Berger says "I did a sail with my son-in-law's father, the boat owner (a 37.5' Hunter with 6.5' keel) for two weeks going out of Stamford, CT as far as Vinyard Haven, MA and back.

Highlights included catching three porgies, and nearly getting run over by a Boomer on our way into the New London, CT harbor. You may remember that the Electric Boat Company is in Groton, CT right across the river from New London, where these leviathans go for their periodic servicing and maintenance."