Yale Class of '52
Artists & Authors

Following graduation from Yale, Shelby entered the naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I. On board a U.S.N. destroyer, he saw Korean War action, as well as circumnavigating the globe during his three years of active duty.

After three years at the Virginia Law School, Shelby practiced admiralty and aviation law with firms in Manhattan. During the eighties he became an officer and director of six companies owning and operating dry cargo ships under foreign flag. When they were sold, his law practice moved to Oyster Bay, where he founded an international charter yacht brokerage business offering professionally crewed luxury yachts in world wide prime cruising venues.

Rendezvous (National Safety Council Newsletter, October 1972)At the time this was published the editor noted: ”This article, written by admiralty attorney W. Shelby Coates, Jr., during the Korean War, is a beautiful example of the sheer horror that strikes deck officers when they know there is a good chance of a collision. Although Navy terminology is used throughout, the mistakes leading up to the near miss are typical of those that can be made in any pilot house, on the bridge or in any Coast Guard/Navy Combat Information Center.”

Samuel Elder Barnes
Yale 1952

Since 1982, I have done over 200 pen and ink drawings of historical places, homes, and churches. I am essentially self-taught. I had one art appreciation course at Phillips Andover Academy and have been influenced by visiting art centers during my worldwide travels.

This exhibit drawing is of special interest to the class of 1952. It depicts Dick and Mary Ann Patton's home in Vero Beach, Florida, which they enjoyed prior to Dick's untimely death. Mary Ann is now married to another classmate, Paul Casey; they live in Hobe Sound, Florida.

I have had the pleasure of having my works exhibited in Martha's Vinyard National Bank 1987, Lenox Library 1988, and in the Berkshire Athenaeum several times since 1995.

Rodney G. Dennis, 3rd

Rodney left Yale after sophomore year and went on to further his studies in Europe and do graduate work at Harvard. He retired after a distinguished career as curator at Harvard's Houghton Library.

The Marks in the Field (1992) was a somewhat overblown exhibition catalogue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Houghton Library, but really a farewell statement to the library on Rodney's retirement. It was a comparison of early manuscripts with recent ones, three of which were written by Rodney. Despite almost universal criticism for attempting to compare the old with the recent, it won second prize for the best library publication of the year.

In An Epistle of Secrets (1998), this treatise purports to be two religious works written by Jews just before and after the birth of Christ. They were discovered by a Spanish Jew, Paulus Heredia, who published them in Latin in the 1470's. The original Hebrew has never been found, thus suggesting they may be forgeries. Rodney was the first to translate them from Latin into English.

Carolyn (Harlequin Ink 1996) Rodney met Carolyn, a person who was HIV positive, addicted to heroin, and frequently in jail for credit card fraud, while she was distributing food stamps in 1990. He became attached to Carolyn and was her primary caregiver at the time of her death in 1995. These fifteen poems resulted from that relationship. At Rodney's reading of these at the Harvard Poetry Room, the audience was composed almost equally of old Yankees, academics and inner city blacks.