By Marty Snapp
Hank Schutz died last February 16 after a long career in computer science, including nine years in computer linguistics, seventeen in data communications for industrial applications, and ten developing software to control machines used by opticians in making eyeglasses.
“Had I been bolder as a youth, I might have chosen music as a career, as the violin has been a lifelong and much-loved companion,” he wrote in our 50th Reunion class book. “In any case, I have played in several professional gigging groups and the local chamber orchestra wherein I have been concertmaster for many years, plus ‘in the pit’ for more than twenty musical theater productions.
“Hank was so many things to me,” says John Mauceri, who roomed with him and Allen Meyer in Branford all three years. “At first, he was just a goofy, somewhat ribald graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, complete with ‘boy jokes’ and a penchant for puns. Slowly, he emerged as a profoundly kind and spiritual man who was as good a friend as anyone could imagine.
“I should have known that someone with a name reminiscent of the great early Baroque composer Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) would be something of an angel to me and my pursuit of a career in music. And indeed, it was Hank who helped organize my first concert in the Branford dining hall, and then, one week later, played violin in my score to Brecht’s A Man is a Man. It was Hank who traveled with me to Europe during our pre-senior year summer of 1966, where we visited cultural sights and attended operas, ballets, and theater in the UK and on the continent. And what a summer that was!
“Perhaps more important was that we stayed at the home of Hank’s parents’ friends England and with Hank’s uncle and aunt in Vienna. That’s when I found out more about World War II than anything I had read in a book. There were stories and experiences shared with me that form the basis of my knowledge of a war that never seems to have ended and is the basis of one of my books (The War on Music).
“Hank’s Quaker upbringing, his magnificent wife, Frances, and how he and our other roommate, Allen Meyer, forged an enviable unit that took us from our late teenage years to being jettisoned into adult life gave me the protection and love that allowed me to follow my dreams. He was, indeed, one of my angels.
“I have met many good and loving people in my life, but I have never met anyone better than Hank. He, Allen, and I stayed together all the way through our undergraduate years: three examples of the new admissions policies that brought kids from high schools with no family history with ties to Yale. An engineering student from Baltimore (Hank), a pre-med student from Pennsylvania (Allen), and a musical kid from Long Island (me). By senior year we were so close that we were finishing each other’s sentences, much to the delight of others in the Branford dining hall.
“Because Hank was the son of Viennese immigrants and a violinist, he was at my side for my first concerts. Allen joined in the support system, moving music stands and chairs. They also participated in my crazy idea of creating a Branford College Literary Magazine (we managed three volumes together). My first visit to Europe was with Hank during the summer of 1966, and we stayed with his parents’ family and friends in London and Vienna, attending opera and theater for ten glorious weeks of discovery and laughter. We three roommates were blessed with our marriages, remaining with our girlfriends for over fifty years. Hank will always remain a model for how we should live our lives”
“Nicely said, John,” says Allen. “Hank made things and the people all around him better. What I remember most about Hank is his clever and dry sense of humor, usually accompanied by a warm chuckle. As he loved our school and our country, he also really loved pointing out their ironies and faux pas. In this and other ways he had a fierce commitment to social justice, expressed in his calm, serious, humble, Quaker community kind of way. As to his music, he also nurtured a beautiful community of players and friends. He was a very accomplished ensemble violinist. He had perfect pitch!
“The world is a better place because Hank was here. I am so fortunate I knew him, and for so long. I miss him awfully badly. He was a good friend. He was a good man. He is missed.”
Finally, Paul Adams Sitney – P.Adams to his friends – who died on June 8, was a ground-breaking historian of American avant-garde cinema. He was the author of Visionary Film, one of the first books on the history of experimental movies. He was also a fierce critic of academia and its effect on the arts, calling Princeton, where he taught for many years, “the great enemy of poetry.”
P.Adams was born in New Haven but eschewed Yale to go to Trinity College. He transferred to Yale after freshman year, and while he loved his Greek, Latin and Sanskrit classes, “I so loathed the all-male environment I married after one he semester.”
“All my life I backed into my most important decisions. As a townie I didn’t go to Yale until my family moved away. Because I was an inadequate philologist I took an easier path, becoming a film critic and historian. I even became a university professor because I failed as an arts administrator.
“In 1980 I took a one-year post at Princeton and stayed 36, retiring in 2015.” He set a Princeton record for the number of courses he gave (nearly 300) and the number of programs in which he gave them (11).
“My happiest experience was a staggeringly rigorous great books course, but most of my seminars were spent dissecting nearly incomprehensible films. If the students did not find me funny, I probably wouldn’t have survived there. Universities tolerate a few outspoken cranks like me as long as we have no power.”