BRUCE BERGMAN (guitar) – Music remained relevant to the founder of The Bravados and even after admission to the bar in 1970 he was very active in the club date business – the wedding, country club and cotillion circuit – as a bass player, guitarist and singer, leading jobs for society bandleaders Meyer Davis, Lester Lanin, Peter Duchin, and Ben Cutler, playing jobs as well for Skitch Henderson, Ray Bloch, Bill Harrington and Herb Sherry.  He also formed his own society group which for a number of years in the early seventies was the house band at The Princeton Club of New York.  In 1975, he penned the book “How To Make Money Playing Rock Guitar” (published by G. Schirmer), followed by “The Complete Easy Guide To Playing Rock Music“. He was then writing articles on guitar technique for Guitar Player Magazine, a number of which appeared in the compendium volume “Rock Guitar”, with pieces by Lee Ritenour, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Carlos Santana and Rick Derringer, continuing as an active player until 1984. Beginning in 1979 he was three times elected to the Long Beach (New York) City Council, serving through 1988, credited as instrumental in reviving the fortunes of a once declining city, thereafter continuing his public service as counsel to the New York State Senate through 2011. He is today a prominent real estate-mortgage litigation attorney (based in Garden City, New York), the writer of more than 500 published legal articles, a frequent lecturer for lawyers and judges and author of the four-volume treatise, Bergman on New York Mortgage Foreclosures, LexisNexis Matthew Bender, published in 1990, revised twice a year since then and cited with regularity by the courts.

GARY GROSS (guitar) – A successful pawnbroker and jeweler (Bon Jovi appreciated his wares), he was for his career the proprietor of S&G Gross, a landmark store for more than one hundred years steps from Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, retired as of 2016.

MONGO BOOTH (vocals) – Unable to complete Cornell (Stuyvesant High graduates typically could), he eventually earned his degree from City College, but nonetheless worked a blue-collar job for the New York Transit Authority for his career.  A heavy smoker, he was claimed by lung cancer in the late 1990’s.  No one knew until letters sent to his Manhattan apartment by concerned Bravados were returned marked “deceased”.

JEFF RECKSEIT (bass) – Before joining The Bravados in 1963, Jeff had already experienced some musical success, working with recording artist Mickey Lee Lane and the Lane-Turns as well as Richard Perry and the Escorts, (later, a well known record producer) at Trude Heller’s in Greenwich Village, Manhattan.  The singer in that group was Goldie Zelkowitz, later to tour with Goldie and the Gingerbreads, then with Ten Wheel Drive under the name Genya Ravan.  Jeff later commented that he felt privileged to have been a member of the Bravados in the early days.  He had moved to Boston where he played throughout Massachusetts and on up to New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine with several bands as well as his own group, The Funny Company, which he fronted.  He then went on the road, traveling with an all-girl band out of Nashville called Fancy Friends.  Back in Boston, he joined another road band, Jimmy Vee and the Common People, a Vegas-type show band.  In 1974, living in Maryland, he adopted the stage name Jeff Rex, and played with many bands including the Davis Brothers, The Paladins, Eric Vance, the Moonshine Riders, Frank Turner, Juke Box Live, and the Rhythmix.  Having retired in 2001 from the investment industry and music, he was becoming accustomed to a quiet life at home when 10 years later in the summer of 2011 he was called by a well-known guitarist in the Baltimore area, inviting him to sing and play bass as a duo in a local club.  It became a four-piece band called the Cadillac Kings.  Said Jeff: “In some ways, that was more fun than ever, but deep down inside, I’ll always be a Bravado.”

JOHN DEWITT (bass) – Although an engineering graduate with a masters degree, he was the most bitten by the music bug.  That led to pursuing an advanced degree in music, authoring a music book for bass players, and a career teaching bass and performing. Along the way he played bass for such acts as Patti LaBelle, Edie Adams, Bo Diddley, Julius LaRosa, Al Martino, Samantha Sang and the Jimmy Dorsey and Les Elgart Orchestras. In 2013 he retired to Florida’s west coast.  His book “John DeWitt’s Rhythmic Figures For Bassists” was coincidentally reviewed in the same column and the same issue in 1976 of Guitar Player Magazine as was Bruce Bergman’s book “How to Make Money Playing Rock Guitar”.  Who could predict that two guys who played in a band one year at Cornell would both write music books some ten years later which would remain united.

JEFF NEWMAN (drums) – He is a prominent, nationally recognized real estate attorney and has published two books – one on negotiations and the other on leadership, with a third on marketing and personal branding due out in 2013 published by Wolters Kluwer.

GENE COGGSHALL (bass) – Being an intellectual musician is always a welcome quality; Gene had read Cornellian Thomas Pynchon’s opus, “V.”, and helpfully proselytized about it.  When he returned to Ithaca in the Fall of ’66 for his MFA, he continued his bass playing with the group Back Alley, eventually moved to New Jersey and went on to a successful career in business.  A sweet, smart, funny guy, his family lost him to Parkinson’s Disease in 2012.

LARRY LAUFER (piano, organ) – Talented, but darkly unhappy, genuine musical success might have been in his future (note his backup vocals and organ playing with Crazy Elephant on the number 12 hit from ’69 “Gimme Gimme Good Loving”) but he took his own life some time in the early seventies, too few years after the joys of the Summer of ’66.

AARON PRESTUP (drums) – The kid who was too young to drink when he propelled The Bravados at The Blossom and at Lou’s has long been a successful periodontist in New Jersey.

MARK WALLACE (vocals) – Having attended dental school at Howard University, he decided to stay in the Washington, D.C. area where he has been a successful dentist ever since, still active as of 2016.

SONI EDWARDS (vocals) – Now Sondra Buesing Riley, she is director of the cooperative education and internship program at Saint Peter’s College in New Jersey. While at Cornell with The Bravados, Soni’s singing so impressed the band’s booking agent, John Perialas, that he offered her a recording contract. Because education had to be paramount, though, her parents rejected the idea. But as fate would have it, she went on years later to record with the gospel choir Jubilation, found on the compilation CD “Oh Happy Day” on which Queen Latifah sings the title track with the group’s backing. That recording earned three 2010 Grammy nominations, winning in the category of Best Traditional Gospel Music; kudos indeed for another Bravado alum.

JOE MOONEY (drums) – The reliable drummer in The Cornell Bravados (1964-1966) passed away in 2019. Joe spent much of his life in public service in Florida after graduating from Ithaca College. He first worked as a planner for the Northern Virginia Regional Planning Commission. Later as a planner and assistant to the City Manager of Gainseville, Florida. In 1969 he was appointed by the Governor as State Model Cities Program Director for Miami and Tampa and in 1971, was appointed Director for the Florida Division of Housing and Community Development, authoring the bill that created the Florida Housing Finance Agency. His lengthy public service thereafter was dedicated and impressive. He was also a good guy.

MICHAEL HYMAN (guitar) – He moved to South Florida to practice law and kept a version of The Bravados going there as an oldies group through the mid-1990’s.  (Mongo flew down for the engagements.)  Sadly, he passed away in the spring of 2013 still a devoted fan of the old sounds, but knowing that his daughter, Paula, was carrying on the musical tradition as a professional trumpet player.

(DR.) RICK GERARD (drums) – He, too, settled in South Florida where he has been a successful orthopedist since the 1970’s.  After leaving The Bravados, he formed the Band of Gold – an oldies group with his daughter Michelle as lead singer. Later he joined the ContraBand playing local Florida clubs and were the opening act for touring groups such as The Turtles. In recent years he has been playing drums and signing with The Vintage Rock Project out of Ft. Lauderdale.

JEFFREY WARREN HYMAN (organ) – As did his older brother Mike Hyman and Doc Gerard, he moved to South Florida and continued playing with that version of the Bravados.  He is a tax accountant with offices in Pemboke Pines, an amateur astronomer of some note (visit You Tube for that) and enjoys collecting Corvettes (six and still counting).

DON RODGERS (guitar) – Don was a decorator for his career and was until 2015 president of Don Rodgers Interiors, Inc., confining his work to special projects commensurate with his listing as one of the top ten designers in Long Island. Now residing in Melville, New York, he devotes much time to his love of tennis and has captained or been on teams that earned a trip to the National Championships four times with the USTA. Although he never touched a guitar since “retiring” from the Bravados in 1975, he still, and always will, consider himself leader of the “last group of NY Bravados” –and a Bravados CD is always in one of his cars, at the ready to bring him back to the great times.

LAWRENCE “LARRY” BERGMAN (voiceover introduction to sweet sixteen party tracks on Rollercoaster Records release) – Born in 1913 he was 50 when he made this introduction with his dulcet tones. The father of Bruce Bergman and his sister Fern, the sweet sixteen celebrant, he was a graduate of New York’s City College-so difficult to accomplish during the great depression-with a degree in chemistry, a scholar, wordsmith and conspicuous gentleman. He passed away in 2003, a week before his ninetieth birthday.