Alumni & Friends News

Carolyn (Bauling) Raphael – M&A ‘57
Carolyn’s latest poetry collection, Travelers on My Route, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. It includes a poem about Renaissance Art (“The Day Verrocchio Put His Paintbrush Down”) and a poem about her efforts to learn Italian (“Verbs I Learned at the Opera”).

Purchase information about the book and several of her poems appear on my website: carolynraphaelpoetry.com.

Marlene (Marmer) Siff – M&A ‘53
Marlene’s work on paper, Negotiation, will be on view in a group exhibition, Every Picture Tells A Story, at Silvermine Galleries in New Caanan, CT through April 4th.

Additionally, her painting A Dozen Roses has been accepted into Passion, an online group show by the San Fernando Valley Arts and Cultural Center. The show will run from February 1st to March 31st on www.sfvacc.org.

Billy Dee Williams – M&A ‘55
Released his memoir “What Have We Here?” on February 13th.

“A film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades—a heralded actor who’s played the roles he wanted, from Brian’s Song to Lando in the Star Wars universe—unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed.

Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.

His first film role was in The Last Angry Man , the great Paul Muni’s final film. It was Muni who gave Billy the advice that sent him soaring as an actor, “You can play any character you want to play no matter who you are, no matter the way you look or the color of your skin.” And Williams writes, ‘I wanted to be anyone I wanted to be.’”

Wednesday July 24th, 2024

Our condolences go out to the Heckheimer family, for the loss of Charles Heckheimer this past June.

Charles Heckheimer was a beloved music teacher at both the High School of Music and Art and later Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts from 1977-1992. It was at LaGuardia that he created and developed the school’s Instrument Repair Workshop. On Charles’ 90th birthday, Alumni & Friends dedicated and placed a plaque in the Workshop to honor his many years of involvement with the school.

At LaGuardia, Charles was best known for his strict command of the classroom, quick wit, colorful neckties, and distinctive handmade belt buckles. To this day his students express their gratitude and recall how he changed their lives for the better.

The family will be holding a memorial in his honor later this fall. You can read his full obituary here - plattmemorial.com/obituaries/charles-heckheimer ... See MoreSee Less