I had taught as an adjunct lecturer of human physiology at York College from 1983-84. Surprisingly, last year — 28 years later from having written on the chalkboard at York — I received an e-mail from the York College Library informing me that the college was honoring me in its 40 Years of Faculty Scholarship display for my 2000 book “Mathematical Logic and the Philosophy of God and Man,” from 1st Books Library.
I never knew President Emeritus Milton Bassin all these years until I read the obituary of this remarkable professor and administrator who built York in downtown Jamaica from 1971-91 and gave me the opportunity to teach in my early academic years. I had wonderful and talented occupational therapy students, most of whom were female and minority.
I wish to express my heartfelt sympathies and thanks to Bassin and his family for his academic accomplishments, which made it possible for me to teach at York. I also wish to thank York for its surprise honorarium last year.
The comedian Milton Berle once joked about himself saying, “We saw his star at its rising,” but he was wrong. The star was neither Berle nor an astral phenomenon but Jamaica’s own Bassin. May he rest in peace.
Joseph N. Manago
Briarwood
