A memorial concert was held in Don's honor on June 15, 2014 at Lyman Hall on the Pomona College campus. We felt it was an appropriate way to gather local family, friends and colleagues together.  A reception was held following the concert in the Lyon Garden.

Impromptus D 899, Op. 90………………...…………...….Franz Schubert     

          1. Allegro molto moderato

          2. Allegro

 Etudes…………………………………………………..... Frédéric Chopin

          Op. 10 no. 12 (“Revoluntionary”)*

          Op. 10 no. 9

          Op. 10 no. 3 (“Tristesse”)

 Ballad no. 1 in G Minor*…..………………….……….... Frédéric Chopin

 Prelude in C# Minor  Op. 3 no.2……...……………...Sergei Rachmaninov

  Intermezzo Op. 118 no. 2*……………...…….................Johannes Brahms

*from Don Hafner’s repertoire

....Last spring, Anna spotted an announcement from Michael Deane Lamkin, head of the Scripps College Music Department, requesting community members to supplement the All-College Choir in two performances of Brahms’ ein deutsches Requiem.  Knowing my love for Brahms—and the Department’s need for baritones with a range of one octave—she signed me up, which led to many Saturday morning rehearsals, a tuxedo rental and one of the best musical experiences I’ve had in years.  Within a month, I was booked at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, under condition that I not sing but instead apply my efforts to foundation fundraising, which is my new job as an Associate Director.  So, in 1999, at age 46, I finally find myself in the performing arts (in a manner of speaking) and thoroughly enjoying it, although the commute to Costa Mesa is a bit of a bear.  The Center’s schedule includes everything from Broadway shows and jazz to classical ensembles, but our signature series is international dance, for which we are the primary venue on the West Coast.  Anna and the girls and I all saw the San Francisco Ballet’s Giselle in October, and we are looking forward to the Stuttgart and Bolshoi companies in the months to come.  It is safe to say that I have missed more concerts in the past six months that I attended in the previous six years (just as it is safe to say that I have forgotten more about science than I’m able to remember).

This Christmas Eve, we are replacing our family reading of A Christmas Carol with tickets for the extended family to the South Coast Repertory Company’s production of the Dickens classic.  I’m looking forward to it, as I am the Brahms Bicentennial in 2033.  On behalf of Anna, Megan and Shana, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center (for which your contributions are tax deductible), I wish you all the best for a Happy Christmas and a Merry New Millennium.

...After one modest week of Eastern Sierras camping in the summer of 2000, we were again hit by the “big vacation bug” this year (the “empty savings account inoculation” wore off) and we indulged in a three-week extravaganza in August, driving 6400 miles in a great triangle to Minnesota and western Canada.  The highlights of the hypotenuse were Santa Fe and Minneapolis, where we had dinner with my cousin, enjoyed a great production of Amadeus at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, saw a Japanese manga exhibit at the Walker Art Center, took in some real Minnesota culture at the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, and then—the pièce de résistance—canoed the Boundary Waters wilderness near the Minnesota-Canadian border.  Altogether, we covered 19 lakes and 19 portages in five days, a circular route of about 50 miles, which is quite an accomplishment for the four of us, even though our Canadian-accented outfitter, Frank Jr., and his friend once did the entire route in 18 straight hours (I should note, however, that Frank Jr. is in his early 20s, was not carrying packs on his trip, and has biceps the size of my thighs).  We encountered a thunderstorm the first day out, paddling like mad to an island campsite and putting up our tent just before the downpour hit, but the weather after that was gorgeous and the scenery—including otters and bald eagles—stunningly beautiful.  For the most part, Megan and Anna teamed in canoe #1 while Shana and I did a pas de deux in the other, with Koko admirably performing her role as Indian canoe dog.  With good maps and a Cracker-Jack® compass, we avoided getting lost, although on Day 5 I miscalculated the effect of a headwind and I became “a mite bewildered” as to our location for an hour or so (Megan eventually figured out what happened, and she will be nominated for a Girl Scout badge when the opportunity presents itself).  For those of you considering a similar adventure, I recommend planning menus on the basis of weight; there was no way for us to lift an 80 pound pack of store-bought comestibles into a tree, and bear-proofing for us consisted of camping on islands and throwing our food pack into a bush.  We also deprived ourselves of the superb (but expensive) outfitter’s cuisine; I heard the freeze-dried crème bruele was outstanding.  Of course, most people in the Boundary Waters just fish for dinner, but three of us are vegetarians and, after canoeing for six hours, cleaning a trout wasn’t what I had in mind anyway.

The next leg of the trip took us across Canada from Lake of the Woods to Vancouver, via Banff National Park.  From Calgary to the West Coast the scenery is so unrelentingly spectacular that I found myself longing for the urban sprawl of southern California after two days.  In Vancouver (and later in Seattle), we met my brother Gary and his wife Sue, who flew out from Hartford to see us and my nephew Brian, whose leg was pulled so often in his youth by my father that he is now designing below-the-knee prosthetics in a doctoral program at the University of Washington.  After seeing friends Alan & Patt in the San Juan Islands and the Brummet clan in Seattle, we drove to Ashland for an Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Troilus and Cressida, toured Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento, had lunch with my other brother Darrell in Sausalito (and met his girlfriend Trina for the first time), and saw Anna’s childhood friend Sally Ames and family in the San Luis Obispo area.  Well rested and happy, we arrived home on Labor Day weekend, and began getting ready for school and Megan’s birthday on September 11...

December 16, 2007

Dear Friends:                                                                                                                                               

The Holidays are traditionally known as the Season of Light, and yet, like so many Yuletide celebrants, I find myself ironically gaining weight during the month of December.  The reasons for this are undoubtedly myriad, and while my ability to resist hollandaise sauce remains strong—as demonstrated by this morning’s scrambled eggs with salsa (the Mexican condiment, not the Latin dance)—my fondness for eggnog is, I believe, the principal cause of my end-of-the-year physical, if not financial, belt-tightening.  Last weekend, as we decorated our Christmas tree, we enjoyed a half-gallon of this seasonal concoction—a reasonable quantity until I became aware that Anna, Megan and Shana were all drinking some other beverage.  Megan in particular was enjoying her Silk® soy nog, quietly suggesting it was a healthy and delicious alternative to the 1200-calorie, 64-grams-of-fat-per-serving real thing that I was consuming.  Now in her sixth year of veganhood, she is tolerant of my less healthy food choices but finds my counterarguments unconvincing (e.g., that certain high-fat foods carry the imprimatur of the Season, that sausage is Jesus pronounced backwards, etc.), and so I change the subject from food, as I am doing now, to the real point of the Holidays—that this is indeed The Season of Light, the time of year when peace-affirming, wimpy behavior is not only tolerated but encouraged, when we intuit that the evil we perceive is like a shadow and that through our actions and deeds we bring light to the world and align ourselves with the message of the Nazarene.  With all the hustle and bustle surrounding Christmastide, it is easy to forget that we are the biggest and brightest lights of all, so let your inner light shine brilliantly and beautifully this Holiday Season and throughout the New Year....