David DelTredici was a school chum in my Marin Catholic days (1951-1955) who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1980. In high school he won several music scholarships, including the Liberace Prize, for which he was kidded goodheartedly but mercilessly. He had to play "Bumble Boogie" endlessly for benefits until he hated it. He finally came out in the later 1980s and we met again at a Mavericks Concert at the S.F. Symphony in the summer of 1995. We chatted quite a bit at our high school class's fiftieth reunion. He's regarded as the father of neo-romantic music, starting with his many compositions based on the two Alice books.

tinyurl.com/48eh3q

Robert Hass, co-winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is the younger brother of my classmate Fred Hass in my St. Raphael's Grammar School class of 1951. Fred was one of my nemeses and has turned out almost opposite to his poetic brother, who wrote a moving poem about a loveless and wistful Dominican nun we had in fifth grade who gazed out the window as we sang Robert Burns' poems set to music.

tinyurl.com/66odpu