 OCTOBER 22 • 2020 | 21

campuses, have received tre-
mendous support from their 
building administrators when 
it comes to safe and timely 
voting. “We have a lot of civ-
ic-minded residents, and we 
send a lot of letters,
” says Tracey 
Proghovnick, director of res-
idential marketing for Jewish 
Senior Life. 
The letters remind residents 
they should have received their 
absentee ballot by Oct. 16, that 
there are strict rules to adhere 
to about who can handle their 
ballot, that no postage is nec-
essary to mail your ballot back, 
and that shuttles will be made 
available for those residents 
who want to deliver their bal-
lots in person.
“We also have something 
called ‘
Voice Friend,
’
” said 
Tracey, “a phone call system 
where we can inform residents 
and families via voicemail 
about things going on at JSL, 
and voting is a topic.
” Residents 

are always encouraged to call 
their building’
s administrators 
or their clerk’
s office with any 
election-related questions. 

JFS OFFERS RIDES
Jewish Family Service (JFS) is 
also offering support. To that 
end, JFS is offering free rides to 
Oakland County residents to 
drop off their absentee ballots 
at designated drop-off points 
prior to Election Day. Rides are 
subject to availability. Call JFS 
at (248) 592-2266 for further 
details.
Helping their residents 
legally vote is, of course, only 
one of many challenges senior 
communities have had to face 
during the coronavirus crisis. 

There’
s also the ever-evolving 
effort needed to maneuver 
around recent Michigan 
Supreme Court rulings invali-
dating Gov. Whitmer’
s COVID-
19 executive orders protecting 
residents and staff. On the 
heels of that, there are new, 
recently issued regulations by 
the Michigan Department of 
Health and Human Services 
to help shore up the holes in 
regulations left by those rulings. 
Understanding all of that in 
this tumultuous election year 
has to be like trying to navigate 
around bumper cars in a carni-
val ride — absent the same level 
of fun.
Rachel Fox is fully aware of 
the drama surrounding this 

year’
s election. “People are so 
confused,
” she told me. “They 
don’
t know where to turn.
” 
Fortunately, at 105 years old 
she has remained patriotic and 
not apathetic as evidenced by 
her casting a vote in her 23rd 
presidential election, an effort 
West Bloomfield Township 
Clerk Debbie Binder never 
takes for granted. “Our seniors 
are critical in modeling the 
importance of voting to the 
next generations,
” said Debbie. 
“They truly understand the 
value of their voice.
” 
That sentiment was fur-
ther reinforced just prior to 
my submitting this column. 
That’
s when I received confir-
mation that Rachel’
s 100-year 
old brother Max Elkin, of 
Minneapolis, who still drives, 
had mailed in his absentee bal-
lot, too.
Need any further incentive 
to do your civic duty? Vote. 
Now. 

“WE HAVE A LOT OF
CIVIC-MINDED RESIDENTS.” 

— TRACEY PROGHOVNICK OF JEWISH SENIOR LIFE

P

aul Milgrom, a Jewish 
economist born and 
raised in Detroit, is 
one of two men to win the 
2020 Nobel Prize in Economic 
Sciences for “improvements to 
auction theory and inventions 
of new auction formats.”
Milgrom, who has been the 
Shirley and Leonard Ely Jr. 
Professor of Humanities and 
Sciences at Stanford University 
since 1987, jointly received the 
honor along with Robert B. 
Wilson, an emeritus professor 
at Stanford. Wilson was origi-
nally Milgrom’
s thesis adviser 
and eventually became his col-
laborator.

Milgrom’
s primary research 
has consisted of studying how 
auctions work and using that 
to design new auction for-
mats for goods and services 
that are “difficult to sell in a 
traditional way,” such as radio 
frequencies, according to the 
Prize Committee. Milgrom and 
Wilson famously designed the 
auction protocol the Federal 
Communications Commission 
uses to determine which phone 
company gets what cellular 
frequencies. 
“Milgrom formulated a more 
general theory of auctions 
that not only allows common 
values, but also private values 

that vary from bidder to bid-
der,” the Nobel committee said 
in the release, “demonstrating 
that a format will give the seller 
higher expected revenue when 
bidders learn more about each 
other’
s estimated values during 
bidding.”
Milgrom was born in Detroit 
in April 1948, had his bar 
mitzvah in March 1961 at 
Congregation Beth Yehudah 
and graduated from Oak Park 
High School.

The Jewish News archives 
indicate that in 1965, Milgrom 
graduated from United 
Hebrew Schools High School 
in Detroit. That same year, 
he received a youth award 
from the Women’
s Auxiliary 
of United Hebrew Schools. 
Milgrom was also a United 
Synagogue Youth (USY) fresh-
man adviser at B’
nai Moshe in 
1966.
In 1970, Milgrom grad-
uated from the University 
of Michigan with an A.B. in 
mathematics, and received 
both his M.S. in statistics in 
1978 and his Ph.D. in busi-
ness in 1979 from Stanford 
University.
The prize amount is 10 mil-
lion Swedish Kronor (about 
$1.1 million) and will be 
shared equally between the 
laureates. 

Jewish economist with Detroit roots 
wins for his work on auction theory.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

Nobel Prize Winner

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Paul 

Milgrom

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