Hasta La Ideas

Stephen B. Shepard (pictured) and Leonard Nimoy vacationed together. They became friends through their wives and on those trips to the Caribbean, would often discuss the novels of Philip Roth.

Nimoy was also the person Shepard turned to when he was offered the opportunity to be the founding dean of CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. From his essay in the Jewish Daily Forward:

Over dinner, I told Leonard about the possibility of the new job at CUNY and my concern that perhaps I was too old to take on such an enormous task. Leonard was then 74, semi-retired as an actor and director but developing his wonderful new career as a photographer. He got right to the heart of the matter:

“How old are you?”
“I’m 65.”
“How long would you stay in this job?”
“Probably five or six years.”

So, came the punch line, ” You’ll be younger when you finish than I am now.”

Shepard wound up serving at CUNY a little longer, from 2005 to 2013. Read the rest of his piece here.
 
[Photo via: cuny.edu]