ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY SCHOOL WINTER 2016 NEWSLETTER ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DRIVE 2015 We have been doing well with our membership drive. So far there have been 29 yearly renewals, 8 new year memberships and 3 new Life memberships. Thank you all for your support! If you are a yearly member and there is a 15 along with your year of affiliation right after your name on your address label, then please renew asap. Send your check ($15 per year or $105 for Life for mailed newsletters, or $10 per year or $70 for Life for e-mail) to AAUS, 587 Fox Lane, Worthington, OH 43085.
FAREWELLS We mail the Fall newsletter to everyone on our list and through returned letters and family announcements then sent to us, we learn about the passing of additional University School “family”. This year, unfortunately, it seems to be a very large list. We send our condolences to the family and friends of: *Roberta Schultz Brunner, ‘35 *Leon Zechiel, ’41 husband of Dorothy Fawcett Zechiel, ‘41 *Grace Barricklow LeBart, ’41 sisterin-law of Robert Bohannan, ‘39 *Barbara Funk Reinert, ‘41
*Connie Park Varney, ‘42 *Glenn Swineford, ‘42 *Dudley Marple, ’45 brother of Nathan Marple, ‘45 *Leslie O. Adams, ‘45 *Edward Elford, ‘45 *Gene Satchell, ‘46 *Tom Kimball, ‘46 *Kathleen Chapman Cahoon, ‘46 *Jane Michel Baker, ’50, sister of Erwin Michel, ‘52 *Myles R. Miller, ’51 father of Myles R. Miller, III, 70s *Phyllis Hunter, ‘52 *Suzy Fuller, ‘64 *Jeanetta Dell Short, ‘70s sister of John C Dell, ’67 and Susanne Dell Potts, ‘64 In an earlier newsletter, I failed to acknowledge the passing of James McCormick, ‘50 brother of Bill McCormick, 54. I deeply apologize. We also send our deepest sympathies to --Elizabeth Wilson Piatt, ’48 on the passing of her husband, Tom Piatt. --Carol Johnston Miller, ’66 on the passing of her mother, Mary Johnston.
If I have left out any relatives in the acknowledgements, please do let me know so I can add them.
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DONATIONS We received a donation of $50 from the family of Tom Kimball, ’46 with a note of his passing from his wife. She wrote that he spent his whole student life at OSU (University School and then Ohio State) and “there never has been a bigger fan. Several of his life long friends called after his death. Please pass along my sincere appreciation to those who remembered him.” We have also received a total of $435 for the Skip Woodruff memorial donation to be sent in his honor to the University School Endowment fund. This means that the general fund of AAUS will put in $65 to total $500; the amount set by motion at the June Annual meeting. I wish to gratefully and sincerely thank all of you who contributed to this fund: Nelson Robbins ‘59, Dick Baker, ’62, Cindy Violet, ’69, Margaret Van Ness Nelson, ’59, Marynell Drumm Gale, ’52, James R. Allen, ’58 and Lucy Wolfe Sherman, ’64. I also sincerely thank all of you who have written to me, thanking both Skip and me for what we do, and have done, to keep us “University School-philes” or “University School-ies” together and active. For me it is, and was for him, a labor of love. We appreciate how so many of you feel, as we do, that it was the University School experience which so fundamentally shaped our lives and the directions it took.
UPCOMING REUNIONS Gary Page, and Bill Wood ’66 have sent some 50th reunion plans... The Reunion will be June 24th-26th
including the reservation of a nice conference room at "the Buckeye Hall of Fame Grille 775 Yard St #100. It will be Friday, June 24, 2016, from 5:00pm to 1:00 am. Other news to follow. Contact Bill Wood at billwood@earthlink.net or go to their events page on Facebook. (https://www.facebook.com/events) Also, don’t forget the Annual AAUS multi-class reunion, Sat. June 25th, 12:30-4:00 at Ramseyer Hall, Rm. 100.
NEW ROSTERS AVAILABLE SOON The new rosters will be available in late Spring. You will have order information in the next newsletter. As a result of the fall newsletter mailing, several were returned as undeliverable. The internet people search results show these folks at the addresses I have. Thinking the post office made mistakes, I have retried mailing the letters and again they have been returned. I have tracked down some of these, but the following list I can’t find. If you have any information on the following folks, please let me know as soon as possible so I can print up the new directory as correctly as possible. Also, if you are planning a move within the next year month, let me know now. 1935 James J. Black 1935 Mary Kilgore Woolford 1941 Margaret Hart Griese 1941 Donn Keiper 1941 Patty Evans Harding 1943 Walter Engle Jr. 1945 L. Ernie Nuzzo 1948 Stewart M. Rose 1950 Nelda Nicholson Piscini, living in Canada for decades 2
1950 1951 1952 1955 1958 1966 1967
Peter Pixley Jane Roos Neville Carol Parsel Milner Midge Ramey Joyce Curtis Bates Ralph Gauvey, Jr. Pamela Todd Battle
University School and Walt Disney Studios John Jacobs, ’62 made this discovery and has gone to great lengths to make available to us all of the related subjects and items electronically. This is one of those interesting, yet relatively unknown contributions of University School to the teaching world beyond what went on in the building. In the files of University School documents (kept at the OSU Archives) are copies of letters between people at the Walt Disney Studios and Mary Jane Loomis. The letters referenced a Disney Studios animated film project on health, funded by the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company. The animated shorts were to be based (with permission) on a book by the faculty of University School; How Children Develop. The scanned correspondence, the e-book, and on-line copies of some of the films produced by the Walt Disney Studios --- Steps Toward Maturity and Health; Physical Fitness and Health; and Understanding Stresses and Strains will be made available to the OSU Archives for eventual posting on their web site. In the interim, the items should soon be available on the University School Web site TOSUS.org Please look for it soon!
INTERESTING ADVENTURE By Leslie Hauck, ’64 (complete with Canadian spellings) After living in Canada for 46 years I finally got my visit to the province of Newfoundland (pronounced New-fun'land, accent on land); I hope it was just my first. I was very excited to be chosen as an instructor for a “The Year of Craft” Fibre Arts Conference organized by the Newfoundland and Labrador Craft Council. Coming from Canada, the U.S., England, and India, I was one of fourteen instructors covering the fibre arts of quilting, net making, felting (both high fashion and nature-inspired) embroidery, dying and printing, tapestry weaving, paper making, sculptural knitting, and me, hand spinning yarn. I applied to teach not only because it would be a great and fun experience, but because I would be paid handsomely if I taught all three days, with all expenses paid! The workshop and accommodation venues were strung out in various buildings spread over three contiguous communities that lay on Bonne Bay, a large and complex configuration. My workshop was in the Visitor's Centre for Gros Morne National Park, and a moose was spotted walking by outside our big windows at the edge of the forest! We were fed each day by the local ladies' auxiliaries of fire and church: moose meat in the soup, “bottled moose” spread in sandwiches, a divine moose stew that hinted of good red wine and sour cream, and my favourite experience: Newfoundland Flakey. This is layers of 3
saltine crackers, Dream Whip (my friends here know me as very antiDream Whip!), and custard made from a box. I wasn't too enamoured of the taste of Bake Apple topping on the cheesecake (a yellowy-orange berry like a raspberry). My students were enthusiastic, wonderful and fun, and all the attendees, being fibre fanatics, were kindred spirits. We were witness to the meeting of mountain and ocean scenery, sunrise colour on western flank, the green of spruce generously flecked with the yellow of fall birch all the way up to the top of the mountains, all except Gros Morne which is solid rock, alternately displaying grey or purple, and whose name, I was told, means Big Gloomy; snow on top by the last day. www.grosmorne.ca See it for yourself; come and visit!
JOEL BARKAN, ‘59 Occasionally, we receive information on deceased alumni which sheds light on their lives. Many of us lose track of classmates after graduation and are unaware of their career paths or how they have affected others in their field, so we are most grateful when we are sent information on their lives which we can share with you. Here are two different folks remembering Joel Barkan. January, 2014 from: J. Stephan Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director, Global Health Policy Center “Joel Barkan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and senior associate with the CSIS Africa Program. A specialist on issues of democratization and governance across Anglophone Africa, he served as the first regional democracy and governance adviser for eastern and southern Africa at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1992-1994. Since then, he has straddled the worlds of academe and policy by consulting extensively for USAID, the UK Department of international Development, the UN Development Program, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the World Bank. Dr. Barkan has been a visiting fellow at the US Institute of Peace, (1997-1998), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2001-2002) and the University of Cape Town (2004-present or 2014). He has written extensively on African politics and economic development, and on democracy and governance, including articles in Foreign Affairs, the American Political Science Review, Current History, Journal of Democracy, and World Politics. He has 4
appeared on multiple occasions on Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, France 24, NPR and PBS. He received his Ph.D. in political science and African studies from the University of California at Los Angeles. His latest book is Legislative Power in Emerging African Democracies (Lynne Rienner, 2009)” And now more personal recollections from a colleague, Jennifer Cooke, Director, Africa Program: “Joel was a leader among activist US Africnists, a standout talent who gave generously to us at CSIS and to so many beyond. Joel’s knowledge of African political affairs was rooted in more than 45 years of teaching, research, and travel throughout Africa. He had an abiding passion for Kenya, where he first traveled in 1962, and was skilled not only in understanding and conveying the complexities of Kenyan political dynamics but also in seeking practical ways to support democratic consolidation and empower voices of reform. Unlike many Africanist scholars of his generation, Joel embraced, and actively shaped, both the worlds of academics and foreign policy. Joel joined the CSIS Africa Program as a senior associate in 2001. He wrote and commented extensively on developments in East Africa, and more broadly on US support for democratization and governance. He codirected the CSIS East Africa Forum, examining the links between security, governance, and equitable economic development and, most recently, co-led the Kenya Working Group, as the country went through an uncertain election period and a constitutional change that transformed the structure of governance.
Joel touched a wide ranging community of African and Africanist scholars, practitioners and policymakers. He was a generous mentor of young professionals with an interest in African affairs, an optimist and a refreshing straight-talker with a wry sense of humor and irony. Joel was tireless in reminding us all of Africa’s countless possibilities and the enduring responsibilities that Americans have to know and engage Africa seriously. We are in his debt and thankful in so many ways for the exceptional life he led.”
ALUMNI IN THE NEWS… Margaret Van Ness Nelson, ’59 sent this about another ’59 grad, John Matthias. Program announcement for Wed. Sept. 16.2015 at the Wexner Center (at Ohio State University) This was co-sponsored by Ohio State’s Department of English and Film Studies Program. “Poet, critic, and novelist John Mathias joins us for a presentation of his multimedia performance piece Automystifistical Plaice: A ballet Mecanique Spread-Spectrum Ecstasy, with voices. The piece is based on Matthias’s much discussed long poem, “Automustifstical Plaice” (2002), which explores the strange collaboration between screen siren Hedy Lamarr and avant-garde composer George Antheil that led to spread-spectrum technology, a critical component of modern telecommunications. Working from his original text, Matthias has created a presentation piece for three playerreaders who are backed by a barrage of audio-visual effects that range from Antheil’s music to robotic speech. The aesthetic of the presentation version is part Brecht, part Beckett. Matthias will
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screen and discuss clips from a filmed performance of the piece, while reading from the poem. Born in Columbus, Matthias is editor at large of Notre Dame Review.”
CURRENT ACTIVITIES… SONIA MODES SCHOTTENSTEIN, ’46 still plays the piano professionally after 66 years. She appears every Tues. and Sat. evening at the Top Steak House in Columbus Ohio. KARL PETERJOHN, ’68 is a Sedgwick County commissioner in the Wichita Kansas area. DON JAFFA, ’64 spent another Christmas and New Years in Germany and would like to make another trip back to see Naples and Rome one more time. He has bought a house here in 29 palms (California) and has started homesteading and raising a herd of cats. I am now running a Veterans Clinic here in the Morongo Basin (Morongo, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms), as there are 22,000 military retirees in the area and the local VA has 1317 homeless vets living east of here on the desert. TOM THATCHER, ’45 is featured in the current edition of Martha’s Vineyard Museum newsletter. The article is about a new exhibit featuring pottery made with Island clay. The exhibit will detail the history of both commercial and hand-crafted pottery during the 1800s including that of the Wampanoag tribe. It then goes on to talk about the most recent pieces in the Made of Clay exhibit which date from the middle of the 20th century. “One important potter featured here is Tom Thatcher, who as a young man established the Martha’s Vineyard
Pottery in 1950 and operated his shop in West Tisbury for nearly two decades. The photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took his picture at work for Life Magazine in 1953, beginning a friendship that lasted for the rest of the photographer’s life. Much of our 20th century pottery collection was donated by Tom Thatcher. He was interviewed for this exhibition and he was able to share his knowledge with us.” STEFFANIE WOODRUFF HAUEISEN, ’64, retired from 31 years of teaching French and Spanish at both middle and high school levels with 13 of those years as a middle school librarian. I am now a trustee (and devotee) of the Worthington Historical Society. I am involved with their educational programs both by leading 3rd graders on tours, during Pioneer Days, through the Orange Johnson House museum and conducting both historical walking and bus tours on several different topics throughout the Worthington area. My favorite thing has been helping the local PBS station with their filming of the neighborhood series project with the one on Worthington in which I also appeared several times speaking about my favorite topic, Education!!! (Another U-Hi person, Nikki Gnezda, ‘69 is also a volunteer for the Worthington Historical Society doing many of the same things I do and also appeared in the Worthington Neighborhoods documentary. I hope we can get her to send us more about her very busy life for a future newsletter.)
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