Advance, Cornell ILR School's publication for alumni and friends.
Issue link: https://advance.epubxp.com/i/429746
arriet Oxman '48 remembers Jerry Alpern '49 as the class comedian. "He used to tell jokes and make everyone laugh," she says. "He was a jolly, happy person." Of Oxman, Alpern says, "She was smart. Very smart." In a sense, little has changed — Alpern still tells jokes; Oxman is still smart. At the school where they met, however, little has remained constant. Oxman and Alpern are mem- bers of ILR's frst class. They have, literally, seen it all. When they arrived on campus in 1945, classes were held in Quonset huts and "high tech- nology" was a slide rule. "In the Cost Account- ing course, the engineers would all whip out their slide rules to do basic arithmetic," Alpern says. "We counted on our fngers." "We were the orphans of the campus," he recalls. "We didn't have the facilities early on. But, we did have good faculty, and we had unity as a class." "Everybody knew each other. It was a harmonious group," says Oxman. Both Alpern and Oxman knew early on that they wanted to attend Cornell. Alpern transferred from New York University at age 16, be- coming "maybe the youngest member of my class." Before attending NYU, he had applied, unsuccessfully, to the School of Hotel Administration. Once on campus, Alpern pledged Sigma Alpha Mu, where his brother, Danny Alp- ern '46, was a member. Both brothers lived at the fraternity when Jerry attended the Casca- dilla School, an Ithaca prep school, as a teenager. Danny, a College of Engineer- ing student, had planned to transfer to the newly opened ILR after World War II military service. Tragically, though, he drowned off the Korean coast during U.S. Navy duty. In his memory, their parents created the Daniel Alpern Me- morial Scholarship, the school's frst scholarship, and the Daniel Alpern Memorial Prize, the school's frst prize for academ- ic achievement. To date, 451 scholarships and 141 prizes have been awarded. At least one prize recipient is well known to ILRies — Dave Lipsky '61, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution, director of the Scheinman Institute on Confict Resolution and former dean. Jerry Alpern says, "I used to kid him that he wouldn't have become dean if he hadn't won that award." Alpern was the frst ILR student to be admitted to Cornell's MBA program and to be dually enrolled in ILR and the business school. He earned his MBA in 1950. After graduation, he worked for his father as personnel manager and assistant trea- surer of the Pal Blade Co. in New York City. "My father was the one person who appreci- ated what those two degrees meant," Alpern jokes. At age 85, he continues to work as a business adviser and fnancial consultant. Oxman, one of the few women in her class, transferred to the ILR School because of her inter- est in history and economics. "I thought the school would have good professors, and I was right," she says. "They had top professors; every one of them was superb." H 6 Forever Linked First students deepen ties to ILR as it evolves