Scarsdale Adult School Celebrates 75 Years

This letter was sent by Jill Serling, Executive Director of the Scarsdale Adult School which celebrated its 75th year in 2013:
Scarsdale Adult School has been celebrating its 75th year of enriching those in the community with a wealth of special events.

We started off with our first ever Teacher/Student Art Show, unveiled with an Opening Cocktail Reception for the public. Despite inclement weather, the gala was well attended by current and former instructors, students, members of the Board of Trustees and Advisory Committee, and many friends and family. For the entire month of February, artwork submitted by SAS instructors and their students were on display at the Scarsdale Public Library in the Scott Room and the lobby.

In April, we were privileged to host the only Westchester and Connecticut visit from New York Times best selling author George Saunders. The Little Theatre at Scarsdale High School was packed with members of the community eager to meet one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2013.

Avid readers and fans of his award winning book, Tenth of December, were not disappointed. Saunders engaged the audience with amusing tales and anecdotes of how he became a writer and, in conversation with his editor Andy Ward, provided insight into the writing of his most recent collection of short stories.

Next up was an evening with Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, media consultant and journalist covering the economy and financial markets. In May, in conjunction with the Scarsdale Public Library, we presented Can You Fight Poverty with a Five-Star Hotel? Einhorn lectured and answered questions about whether the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's investment arm, was really an experiment run amok.

The fall semester brought even more special gatherings in the form of courses unified under the theme of 1938, the year of our founding.

Movie Matinees instructor Marilyn DeRight presented an October screening of Hitchcock's comic thriller from 1938, The Lady Vanishes. This 75-year old movie was filled with amusing characters of the period and was the penultimate British film directed by Hitchcock before he left for Selznick's Hollywood.

Also in October, at Vintology's new location, enophiles enjoyed a sampling of wines from producers who re-emerged in the late 1930s or who got their start after the end of prohibition. A Tasting of American Wine included vintages from Seghesio, Wente, and Louis Martini, among others.

Harriet Langsam Sobol selected The Late George Apley, the 1938 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for a book discussion special event. Set in the 1920s, the novel tells the story of the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful Boston family. This evening October class was a one-of-a-kind opportunity to enjoy the lively discussion that infuses Sobol's popular daytime BookTalk courses.

In November, Michael Malina, 47-year Scarsdale resident and husband of former SAS executive director Anita Malina, joined the faculty to lead a class on The Boys from Syracuse, the 1938 Tony Award winner for best musical. Adapted from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, the show spawned the Rodgers and Hart standards Falling in Love with Love, This Can't Be Love, and Sing for Your Supper, among others.

Last, but not least in our year of festivities, we presented Brunch and Brahms: An Appetizing Afternoon last Sunday. Over 100 people weathered the cold to attend this final special celebration. Mark Russ Federman engaged the crowd with stories about his family, the history of the lower east side, and his family's "appetizers" store, Russ & Daughters. Transformed from the days when his grandfather peddled herring from a pushcart, the family store that opened in 1914 is now on the National Register for Historic Places and has been designated by the Smithsonian Institute as "a part of New York's cultural heritage." Federman presented a short video from a PBS film entitled "The Jews of New York," featuring three of the four generations to have been part of the Russ family business. Beyond laughter and memories, the food he supplied was also outstanding, with herring, lox, and pickled olives being some of the crowd favorites.

Then, as the clouds parted and rays of sunshine filled the room, SAS veteran instructor Edmund Niemann, one of the "crown jewels" in the SAS stable of instructors, entertained attendees with a Brahms piano recital. In past semesters, he has regaled students with performance-infused lectures on Beethoven, music in America and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, the French School, and most recently, the symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Sibelus. What better way to cap off the year than with Niemann's rendition of three different Brahms pieces over bagels and lox.