Mixed Media

Music

In September 2001, music came to the rescue for Robert Stern ’69. A long and successful career as a dentist had ended abruptly after surgery to repair detached retinas, and he was in a dark place, literally and metaphorically. “Both eyes went,” he says.

“It was a disaster. I lost my career. There was no way I could be a dentist again. So when I was able to sit upright, I started playing my violin, 10 hours a day for a month, to get my mind right.”

Stern, who is 75, had played the violin throughout his time at Haverford, starting from the first moment he walked into Barclay Hall and met his guitar-playing roommate, Rob Stavis ’69. Although Stern played plenty of classical music during college, he expanded his horizons by learning to play folk and bluegrass in a band with George Stavis ’67 (brother of Rob), Jim Clifford ’67, and philosophy professor Aryeh Kosman. By sophomore year, he was rooming with Dave Barry ’69 and moving into rock ’n’ roll, eventually playing bass in the popular campus band The Federal Duck. “We played all of the time,” Stern says. “Every weekend we had gigs at Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Penn, Beaver College, etc.”

After graduating with a philosophy major, Stern continued on to graduate school—but by 1970, he’d had enough of philosophizing and wanted to focus on making music. “My head wasn’t into grad school, so I went to the West Coast where George