Io Triumphe! The magazine for alumni and friends of Albion College

Vol. LXXI, No. 1

Winds of Change: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina 14 Bill Ritter, ’62: Returning to the Well 18 Events Especially for Alumni 38

IoTriumphe! summer

2006

T he M agazine

for

A lumni

and

F riends

of

A lbion C ollege

Boom Times Members of Albion’s baby boom generation speak out on what was important to them as students and what is important to them today.

Remember your gang?

Has it been awhile since you checked in with your Albion friends? Get reconnected through the next edition

IoTriumphe!

of the Albion College Alumni Directory.

simply make a gift of $22 or more* to the Annual Fund before Dec. 31, 2006!

The directory will be available in print and online versions next spring.

M. ARVOY PHOTO

To qualify for a copy of the directory,

summer 2006

Reminisce about the Quad with Jim Whitehouse, ’69, in “Reflections,” page 26.

The Magazine for Alumni and Friends of Albion College

It’s easier than ever to give. Just go to: www.albion.edu/alumni/makinggift.asp

Features

8

Trendsetters Hear from Albion College’s “leading edge” of baby boomers how the past still colors their lives and aspirations today. *Due to IRS regulations, all gifts between $22 and $42 will have $8.50 deducted from the total gift credit. Those over $42 will be receipted at the full amount.

68 | Io Triumphe!

18

Returning to the Well

14

Bill Ritter, ’62, looks back on 40 years of life and learning at Albion College.

Winds of Change Spring break service trips to the hurricaneravaged Gulf Coast offer ‘life- changing’ experiences.

3

Briton Bits

22

Albionotes

38

Alumni Association News

41

Li’l Brits

14

1988 ALBIONIAN PHOTOS

office of institutional advancement 611 e. porter st. albion, mi 49224 517/629-0242 advancement@albion.edu www.albion.edu/alumnigiving.asp

Departments

Susan Sadler is a partner in the law firm of Dawda, Mann, Mulcahy, The Lux Fiat Society ($50,000 and above) Albion College Io Triumphe!

Society ($25,000-$49,999) and Sadler,The PLC, in Bloomfield Giving Societies The Trustees’ Circle ($10,000-$24,999) Hills, Mich. She is currently a The President’s member of Albion College’sAssociates Alumni ($5,000-$9,999) Purple & Gold Society ($2,500-$4,999) Association The Board of Directors.

The 1835 Society ($1,835) The Briton Round Table ($1,000-$2,499) The Crest Club ($500-$999) The Shield Club ($100-$499) The Stockwell Society (Deferred gifts)

8 Cover photos courtesy of Albion College Archives and Albionian.

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P e r s p e ct ! v e s

IoTriumphe!

T he latest news arou nd camp u s

Magazine Staff

Br !ton B!ts

Editor: Sarah Briggs

| Io Triumphe!

Sarah Briggs, Editor sbriggs@albion.edu 517/629-0244

Web Manager: Nicole Rhoads Albion’s 20-person Jazz Ensemble, under director James Ball, plays monthly at Cascarelli’s in downtown Albion and appeared at the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival and at the Firefly Club in Ann Arbor at the end of February. The group’s repertoire includes music by the great bands of Ellington, Basie, Goodman, Kenton, Jones & Lewis, and Gordon Goodwin. The Music Department’s orchestra, choirs, and symphonic band will all perform their final concerts in April. For details, see the calendar on page 40.

Io Triumphe! is published three times annually by the Office of Communications, Albion College, 611 E. Porter St., Albion, MI 49224. It is distributed free to alumni and friends of the College.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Office of Communications, Albion College, 611 E. Porter St., Albion, MI 49224.

World Wide Web: www.albion.edu Albion College is committed to a policy of equal opportunity and non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability, as protected by law, in all educational programs and activities, admission of students, and conditions of employment.

About Our Name The unusual name for this publication comes from a yell written by members of the Class of 1900. The beginning words of the yell, “Io Triumphe!,” were probably borrowed from the poems of the Roman writer, Horace. Some phrases were taken from other college yells and others from a Greek play presented on campus during the period.

In 1936, the alumni of Albion College voted to name their magazine after the yell which by then had become a College tradition. For years, Albion’s incoming students have learned these lines by heart: Io Triumphe! Io Triumphe!

Haben swaben rebecca le animor Whoop te whoop te sheller de-vere De-boom de ral de-i de-pa— Hooneka henaka whack a whack A-hob dob balde bora bolde bara Con slomade hob dob rah!

Al-bi-on Rah!

Kresge Hall Dedication Honors Legacy Past, present, and future all came together during the dedication of Bruce A. Kresge Hall April 27. The latest in a line of Albion College projects funded by the Kresge family over the past eight decades, the new building is named for long-time trustee Bruce Kresge, ’53. The fourstory structure, located in the science complex at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Hannah Street, houses teaching and research facilities for biology and chemistry.

“Bruce Kresge is Albion College,” said President Peter Mitchell. “His commitment to the College through the decades is emblematic of the generations of Kresges who have been students, parents, friends, trustees, and major institutional benefac-

tors. Bruce and his wife, Peggy, are Albion alumni who simply love their alma mater dearly, and believe in giving back in a way that benefits future generations of students and faculty.”

A retired family practice physician, Kresge, along with his wife, Peggy Sale Kresge, ’53, 10 years ago created the College’s Kresge Science Fellows Program, providing summer research opportunities for students.

Funding for the new $23.3-million science building came from the Kresge family, The Kresge Foundation, alumni, parents, friends, and other sources. Initially, the Kresges donated $1-million toward the project. In December 2003, The Kresge Foundation awarded a $3-million special grant in honor of Bruce Kresge when he

D. TRUMPIE PHOTO

My mother has told me how her grandmother, an 1890s graduate of Hillsdale College, participated for many years in a round-robin letter with her college friends.

The letter, actually a compilation of messages from everyone in the group, would circulate, and each time it came around the recipient would insert a new message in place of the old one and send the letter on its way again.

My mother commented on her grandmother’s delight on receipt of the latest installment and the opportunity to catch up on long-awaited news of her friends. My daughter, a Hope College graduate, is part of a 21st-century version of the round-robin letter, an e-mail group in which she and her friends update one another on the latest happenings in their lives. While the careful penmanship on pretty stationery has given way to glowing letters on the computer screen, the intent is the same: to keep the friendships alive and growing. I have heard of Albion alumnae who also have kept round-robin letters going for many years, and I suspect our more recent graduates are using e-mail in the same way my daughter does.

In my correspondence with Chad Boult, ’70, for this edition’s cover feature, he included the following story in an e-mail. “A happy coincidence,” he wrote. “Paul Moore, ’72, and I grew up on the same block in Sault Ste. Marie, attended Albion, and then went separate ways without any communication for 30 years. Now we are friends . . . living a mile apart, caring for our elderly parents (who are also old friends), and sending our children to the same public school in Baltimore.” This friendship transcends Albion, to be sure, but the bond these friends enjoy is undoubtedly the stronger for their having been Britons.

the Rock

Design: Susan Carol Rowe

campaign update

Because I have worked at Albion College for so many years, people often assume I’m an Albion graduate. The fact is I’m not, but I have always felt at home here. As an Ohio Wesleyan University alumna, I recognized many similarities between these two institutions from my very first days on the job: the caring faculty, the intimate classes, the commitment to excellence in the liberal arts and to community service . . . and most especially the enduring student friendships that are formed.

I was reminded of these special qualities during a visit this spring with my college roommate. Janet and I hit it off from the day we first moved into our freshman dorm; we later joined the same sorority, pursued the same major, and were the honor attendants in each other’s wedding. Our visits together have become less frequent over the years as she and her husband have moved all across the country, but, when we do get together, it’s still as easy as ever to pick up where we left off.

And now Janet’s daughter is a student at Ohio Wesleyan, and her performance in a theatre production there is what brought us together once again.

I see this story repeated so many times at Albion in the letters and photos I receive for our class notes section. Maybe these friendships bind us together so tightly simply for the fact that we live our college years so intensely.

College friends are the ones who were there to console you after a test that went badly and to celebrate when you were admitted to grad school, to head out with you on a late-night pizza run and to raise a glass with you when you turned 21. They were there for the mundane, the outrageous, and the life-changing moments we all experienced.

While I know that students who attend larger universities enjoy such friendships as well, I contend there is something about the smallcollege setting that ensures these ties will last.

Class Notes Writers: Nikole Lee, Luann Shepherd

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On the Importance of Friends ‘Who Knew You When’

Contributing Writers: Morris Arvoy, ’90, Jake Weber, Bobby Lee

Bruce and Peggy Sale Kresge, both ’53, at the April 27 dedication of Kresge Hall. stepped down as its board chairman, as well as a $1.5-million challenge grant. A $150,000 bonus grant will be awarded by the foundation once Kresge Hall achieves Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

Kresge Hall is part of the College’s current $41.6-million science complex renovation and expansion project.

Summer 2006 |

Br!ton B!ts

• Virtual Campus Tour www.albion.edu/tour/

health

Actress Sigourney Weaver will offer the 2006 William K. Stoffer Lecture at Albion’s Opening Convocation Aug. 24. Currently a spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, she will focus on women’s health issues during her speech.

The Pre‑Medical and Health Care Studies Institute will co‑sponsor the event.

A Yale School of Drama graduate, Weaver played the tough‑as‑nails Ripley in the Alien movies and won a Golden Globe award for her portrayal of anthropologist Dian Fossey in the highly acclaimed film Gorillas in the Mist.

landmarks & legends

PHOTO COURTESY OF A. ZATKOFF

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Albion Students Win International Awards

By Morris Arvoy and Jake Weber Three 2006 graduates will head to Europe next fall to teach or study, with support from major international awards programs.

Rebecca Anthouard and Natalie Corbin will teach English in Germany next year at the middle or high school level under Fulbright grants. They were among just 140 students selected from a national applicant pool.

Anthouard, a German and chemistry major who was born in France and moved to the U.S. when she was eight, called the opportunity her version of the American Dream: “going abroad, living for a year, seeing what I’m made of.”

kudos

• Summer Alumni Events www.albion.edu/alumni/events.asp

Breakfast Heaven

Concord’s Silver Spoon Cafe is open all week for breakfast and lunch, but for many Britons, the Silver Spoon is synonymous with Saturday. The Silver Spoon’s faithful weekend clientele includes Albion’s softball team, the Saturday morning faculty-staff bicycling crew, and even rock legend Ted Nugent, who hails from the area. Delicacies such as their signature cinnamon rolls and truly the biggest, most scrumptious omelet in these parts bring the people in, but the Silver Spoon’s friendly employees, who always treat their customers like family, ensure that people keep coming back.

| Io Triumphe!

• Albion Community Guide www.albion.edu/communityguide/

Boarding Houses

With about 95 percent of Albion students today living in campus housing, it may seem hard to believe that from the late 19th century through the mid-1920s, the College had no dormitories. All students lived off-campus, either in boarding houses or independently-run fraternity houses. Understandably, College officials at the time were a bit nervous about unsupervised student behavior, and in 1898 they drew up a set of “Social Regulations” that included the following provisions: • Young men may make formal calls [on their female counterparts] not to exceed twenty minutes in length, on (Above) The Spooners Club was one of Wednesday evenings between seven and eight. several boarding clubs that served Albion • Informal calls, not to exceed two hours in length . . . students c.1910. (Below) Undoubtedly used may be made once a week on any evening except in the preparation of hundreds of meals for Sunday or Wednesday.

Albion students, this rolling pin from Alzina • Permission must be secured from the President Pugsley’s boarding house is now displayed in for any social gathering . . . at which ladies and the College’s faculty/staff dining room. gentlemen are to be guests.

According to College historian Keith Fennimore, the code of conduct was adopted by the faculty, “‘hoping thereby to secure a more general and faithful observance of these amenities and proprieties of social life essential in the training M. ARVO Y PHO of true manhood or TO womanhood.’”

Stand-Alone Photo

Online

Find these Bonus Bits stories online at: www.albion.edu/iotriumphe/

M. Arvoy PHOTO

• Homecoming 2006 www.albion.edu/homecoming/

IoTriumphe!

Commencement 2006: Over 400 Graduates Joined the Ranks of Albion Alumni May 13

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Weaver Opens Year With Stoffer Lecture

Corbin, a German and English major, said she was “ridiculously excited” when she learned about the grant.

“I hope to be an English professor one day,” she said, “and this gives me a chance to teach. I want the German students to use creative writing to help them learn English.”

Both students previously studied at Heidelberg University in Germany.

Math major Giovanni DiMatteo is the only U.S. citizen accepted for the European Union’s 2006 Algebra, Geometry, and Number Theory (ALGANT) program. The scholarship, worth nearly $52,000 over the next two years, will underwrite his graduate study at the University of Paris-Sud in France and the University of Padova in Italy.

“I am ecstatic to be accepted to this program,” said DiMatteo. “The intensive nature of the program, the deep local traditions in algebra and number theory, and the diverse student body all have me in high spirits.” He eventually plans to study in France for his doctorate.

As an undergraduate, DiMatteo participated in the Budapest (Hungary) Semester in Mathematics.

All That Jazz: Festival Composition Award Goes to Amy Riske, ’06

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Thinking of visiting Albion this summer or during Homecoming 2006 (Oct. 13-15)? Take a look at these Web pages for information on campus events, Albion area attractions, dining options, and accommodations. We’ll leave the (lamp)light on for you! See also the “Summer Alumni Events” Web link below for details on activities in Northern Michigan and elsewhere, plus a photo scrapbook of past events.

Sigourney Weaver

fare finds

Need Help Planning Your Next Visit to Albion?

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find it on the web

Fulbright winners Natalie Corbin, ’06, and Rebecca Anthouard, ’06.

A Time to Reflect: AIDS Memorial Quilt Returns to Albion Letters to the Editor College Bids Farewell to Faculty Retirees Sigma Nu Raises $10,000 for ‘Jessie’s Gift’ Mentoring Program ‘Gay? Fine by Me’ Rally Sparks Awareness Ford Institute Students Honored at Public Policy Conference

Cutline here for stand-alone photo. Program, the deep local traditions in algebra and number theory, and diverse student body all have me in high spirits.” He plans to study in France for his doctorate.As an undergraduate, DiMatteo participat

For even more Albion College news, go to: www.albion.edu/ac_news

Summer 2006 |

Br!ton B!ts

Rolling on the River Two Minutes with . . . Astronomer Nicolle Zellner

By Bobby Lee Sports Information Director

By Morris Arvoy

To say Keith Havens is at home on the water is putting it mildly. Albion’s swimming and diving coach for the past 21 years, Havens is also one of the nation’s best whitewater canoeists, with over 25 national titles to his credit (he says he stopped counting long ago).

Havens is part of a family tradition of canoeing competitively that stretches back to his grandfather, Bill, and great-uncle, Bud, both Olympic canoeists who passed the love of paddling on the river to Bill’s sons, Bill, Jr. (Keith’s dad) and Frank. Frank was in four Olympics and struck Olympic gold in the 10,000-meter flatwater canoeing event in 1956. Bill, Jr. qualified for three U.S. Olympic teams and placed fifth in the 1948 London games. Keith started as a flatwater sprint paddler and competed in the U.S. Olympic flatwater trials in 1980 and 1984.

More recently, Havens has moved on to the challenge of whitewater canoeing, which he says is more exciting than flatwater racing.

He teamed with Ed Sharp of Virginia to post the fastest overall time in the formula-16 twoman distance event in the American Canoe Association’s 2005 National Championships on the Lower Dead River in Maine. Individually, Havens was third in the distance race last summer.

“You have lanes and heats in flatwater sprint canoeing—it is a few minutes of hard paddling and then several hours of waiting for the next heat,” Havens explains.

Whitewater canoeing requires greater physical stamina—paddling in rollercoaster conditions for up to 90 minutes at a stretch—and a well-

Io Triumphe!: Space . . . Nicolle Zellner . . . why?

You have set about redesigning our astronomy program. How was your first year of teaching?

It was a little bit more work than I expected, but I feel invigorated and motivated to teach.

I enjoyed it. I made a decision early on in my career that research was not going to be my top priority in life. I want to try to reach out to students.

Do you see yourself as a role model?

I’d like to. I hope that if students see me standing up there as a non-traditional physicist it will expand their view of scientists. At first I wanted to be a role model for girls, but now that I have learned more about how poorly American kids are learning science and math, I feel that if there is anybody out there I can reach out to then it will be positive.

What is the best thing about teaching?

When students interrupt me with questions about things we haven’t talked about. During spring semester I had so many questions I actually had to cut out a lecture because I was so far behind. It’s important to encourage their curiosity. For many of them, astronomy is the only science course they’ll take at Albion.

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Zellner: It’s cool! It’s fascinating! It’s beautiful!

You look out there at the stars at night, and you see Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper—and if it’s dark enough, you see the Milky Way and distinct colors in the stars. You start to wonder, why is that? Astronomy is a topic that gets people curious.

Astronomy professor Nicolle Zellner says Albion’s new observatory atop Palenske Hall allows her classes to observe the sun, the moon, and other celestial objects, including Saturn and the Orion Nebula, with computer-controlled, GPS-aligned telescopes. Zellner, who just completed her first year at Albion, has previously worked on a Space Shuttle mission for NASA and currently studies material from the moon.

How many non-science majors do you have in your astronomy courses?

It must be tough to translate between the two lexicons.

Almost one hundred percent.

The students ask a lot of questions that I can’t answer without using physics and equations. One of my biggest challenges is trying to describe planetary motion and black holes to an English major.

So you’re teaching the poets who look to the stars as their muses. Is there something that the humanities can teach you?

To appreciate something for its beauty, instead of its analytical value. To look out at the moon and say, “Oh, how big and bright and beautiful you are,” instead of, “Okay, Apollo 11 landed there, and Apollo 15 landed there, and that crater was formed a hundred million years ago.”

What is one thing about the stars and space that everyone should know?

The sun and all of the planets in our solar system were formed about nine billion years after the universe was formed.

Finally, a difficult question: Star Wars or Star Trek?

Star Wars! That’s an easy question.

Havens (at steersman) and his son, Zane, won the 2005 national title in their class at the American Canoe Association’s Whitewater Open Canoe National Championships this past summer on the Dead River in Maine. Havens’s older son, Zaak, has won 12 national titles.

Briton Sports on the Web Did you know that you can find all of the following on the Albion College sports Web site?

The “A-Club Newsletter” also

• Sports news and results

• SportsNet broadcast schedules

provides season updates for

• Schedules and rosters

• Sports archives

Briton sports fans. To get

Follow the Britons at: www.albion.edu/sports/.

It’s the next best thing to being here!

| Io Triumphe!

RAPID SHOOTERS PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO

short takes

honed ability to read the river. “The winner in whitewater,” Havens adds with a grin, “usually doesn’t flip [the boat] over, paddles more, and bails less.”

The family success in the sport has inspired Havens’s sons, Zaak and Zane, to take it up as well. Zaak, who plans to attend Albion College in the fall, teamed with Kalon Baughan, ’88, to win the 2005 formula-16 two-man sprint for the 19-39 age group at the National Championships, while 16-yearold Zane was the 2005 winner in the youth one-person race.

Canoeing has a rich history and a bright future on the Albion campus. In 1986, Havens and a group of six Albion College Canoe Club members (Kalon Baughan, ’88, Tim Jabin, ’86, Mike Doyle, ’87, Greg Walz, ’88, Mick Ruel, ’88, and Ken Wardowski, ’88) won a Dragon Boat national championship

your copy, send an e-mail to: aclub@albion.edu or call 517/629-0900.

M. ARVOY PHOTO

Go Br!ts!

Coach Keith Havens believes Albion’s Canoe Club members can hold their own against the best programs in the U.S. when they begin national collegiate competition next fall. in Philadelphia and competed in the World Dragon Boat Championship race in Hong Kong. Each year the Canoe Club also competes in canoe races around the country, and in the Outdoorsman Triathlon (swim, run, and canoe) in North Carolina, frequently winning the college division. Tom Pitt, ’88, the College’s accounting manager and assistant swim coach, teamed up with A.J. Dancho, ’06, to place third in their class at the 2004 National Whitewater Championships. Havens and his brother, Kirk, president of the American Canoe Association, are currently formulating a collegiate national championship series, beginning in fall 2006 on the Rappahannock River in Virginia.

“We are expecting a lot of college teams for the national meet,” Havens says. “Interest in the Canoe Club at Albion is high with the possibility of being on a competitive team which will be ranked nationally. In addition, our new canoe house, opening this summer, should make it easier to get people out practicing, and we are still hoping to develop a whitewater course below the Victory Park river dam.”

Summer 2006 |

TREND SETTERS

| Io Triumphe!

K. WELLER PHOTO

T. MORSE PHOTO

The population explosion we call the baby boom was felt throughout American society, and Albion College was no exception. The generation born between 1946 and 1964 created an enrollment tidal wave that first filled school classrooms to overflowing and then cascaded over college campuses. Albion’s enrollment grew from 1,560 in 1965-66 to what was then a record 1,939 in 1981-82. And the campus reflected the issues and trends of the day in other ways. From inscriptions on the Rock to the talk around the tables at the Eat Shop to the headlines in the Pleiad, attention turned to the Vietnam war, the environment, women’s rights, and racism.

For this edition of Io Triumphe!, we caught up with three alumni who represent part of the first wave of baby boomers to hit the campus and asked them about those tumultuous days, about what’s important to them now, and about what they see as the boomer generation’s important contributions to American life.

D. TRUMPIE PHOTO

By Sarah Briggs

“I’ve come to believe I was destined to be a civil rights lawyer,” says Brent Simmons, ’71. “I absolutely love the profession . . . the legal research, the writing, the trial work. For me, it was the right choice.” Having begun his legal career with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he’s still a strong voice for civil rights and continues to consult with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in defending affirmative action in hiring and college admissions.

As an executive with the New England League of Middle Schools, Lyn Ward Healy, ’72, works with 40,000 teachers in six states on ways to improve teaching and learning for young teens.

By consulting in the schools and advising parents and policymakers, she believes she can help address the distinct educational needs of this age group. “I haven’t begun to think about retirement,” she says. “There are still too many areas I want to explore.”

Johns Hopkins medical researcher Chad Boult, ’70, says America has ignored for too long the looming problems in health care for its aging population. “Our national leaders, both in health policy and politics, must wake up to this if we’re going to make a difference before it’s too late.” Recognized in 2000 with the Excellence in Research Award from the American Geriatrics Society, Boult has recently developed a new model of home-based care for chronically ill older adults that he believes will prove to be more effective and more affordable than current approaches.

Summer 2006 |

Nader calls for student action Brent Simmons, ’71 Brent Simmons counts the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall among his personal heroes.

And like Marshall, who is best known for his spirited fight against racial discrimination, Simmons has devoted much of his career to the advancement of civil rights for African-Americans. “Ministers and lawyers have always been in the forefront of civil rights movements,” he says.

Simmons remembers well an event that set him on the path toward becoming a civil rights attorney.

Having grown up in Albion and Battle Creek and attended integrated schools, Simmons says he had been insulated from most forms of racial segregation until he went on a high school debate team trip to Florida in 1966. When the group stopped for gas in Jeffersonville, Ga., Simmons, the only AfricanAmerican in the group, was barred from using the restroom.

“The gas station owner, a white man, stepped in front of me,” Simmons recalls, “and said, ‘We don’t have any colored facilities here.’ It was a shock. I had never encountered anything like that in my life. For black people in the South, that had been a fact of everyday life, but this was 1966, two years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing this kind of discrimination. At that point, I knew that civil rights work was where I was going. It was one of those life-changing moments that tells you what it is you have to do. I later learned that my paternal grandfather was from Jeffersonville.”

Simmons entered Albion College the following fall, one of just 13 black students on campus at the time. He eventually helped found the Afro-American Union (now Black Student Alliance) at Albion and became a spokesperson for black students as a member of the Student Senate and as an occasional author of the “Black Rap” column in the Pleiad. The College administration took notice of his efforts, and, during his senior year, he was sent on recruiting trips to predominantly black high schools in the Midwest and on the East Coast. “By the time I graduated, we had increased black enrollment significantly,” he notes.

The activist stance that was prevalent among students in the 1960s and ’70s is missing on campuses today, Simmons says. “This generation seems to take a lot for granted. Too many believe the issues that motivated us are all in the past.” From race relations to environmental concerns to the Vietnam war, he 10 | Io Triumphe!

adds, “events were pushing on us directly. Perhaps the times made it easier to be rebellious and to call for social change.”

A political science major, Simmons enjoyed the intellectual sparring he encountered in his classes with professors like Charlie Schutz and Bruce Borthwick. “I felt like I was where I needed to be.

I grew from that experience.” Julian Rammelkamp’s English constitutional history course was a must for pre-law students at the time, and it was Rammelkamp who persuaded Simmons to apply to the University of Michigan Law School.

“Julian Rammelkamp is the reason I’m the attorney I am today,” Simmons says. “I would have gone to law school anyway, but Julian Rammelkamp got me into Michigan—and Michigan was the key to everything that followed.”

After serving for four years in the U.S. Navy and graduating from U-M Law School, he joined the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDEF) in 1977. Simmons worked for LDEF in New York and Washington, D.C. for the next six and a half years. He was put on cases all over the eastern and southern U.S., including the celebrated Tommy Lee Hines case involving a mentally impaired black man in Alabama who was accused of raping three white women. Hines’ conviction was overturned on appeal. When President Ronald Reagan fired three members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in the early 1980s, Simmons was on the team that eventually won the reinstatement of two of them, including Mary Frances Berry, who went on to chair the commission.

Simmons returned to Michigan in 1984 to become an assistant attorney general under thenAttorney General Frank Kelley. Beginning in 1989, Simmons served for five years as a commissioner for the Michigan Supreme Court. He has been a law professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing since 1994.

The 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Bakke case, permitting affirmative action in college admissions, spawned a national debate on this question that continues to this day. Simmons has worked on a number of key court cases on affirmative action, including the lawsuits challenging the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law school admissions policies. “With Dr. Rammelkamp’s help, I was one of the early beneficiaries of the law school’s affirmative action program,” Simmons says. Along with colleagues from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Defense Fund, Simmons represented

minority students who had intervened in the lawsuits to help defend race-conscious admissions at the university. In June 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court held that race could be one factor considered in admission to the university. Earlier this year, Simmons worked on a legal challenge to a Michigan ballot initiative that would strike down race- and gender-conscious affirmative action in government contracting, employment, and university admissions.

“This really isn’t about preferences,” Simmons insists. “This is saying that, in addition to many other factors, race, ethnicity, and gender can be considered.

The law does not permit minorities to be admitted or hired under different or lower standards. They must first qualify under the same standards.” He maintains we as a nation need to recognize the intrinsic value in diversity.

Simmons worries that the events of 9/11 have changed our national mind-set. “Unfortunately, in times of crisis, people and the government too often revert back to prejudices and stereotypes.” Racial and ethnic profiling is simply unacceptable, he adds. “We can’t dismiss an entire group of people because of how they look.”

Life is so much more interesting, he contends, because of the different perspectives we bring to it.

“We should embrace our differences, rather than being alienated by them.”

Brent Simmons is a past member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Lyn Ward Healy, ’72 By turns melancholy and manic, rebellious and eager to please, middle-school teens can be the most challenging youngsters to teach, says educational consultant Lyn Ward Healy. Unfortunately, they are also the most often overlooked students in the school-age population. As associate executive director of the New England League of Middle Schools (NELMS), Healy is passionate about educating this special group of kids, who represent a third of all students in K-12 schools, and she holds strong views on the kind of teaching and resources it takes to reach them effectively.

The problem is, there are so few standards for middle-level education, she explains. Even defining what a “middle school” is can be difficult. In Vermont, for instance, there are 21 different con-

figurations for where seventh grade is taught. And certification rules vary widely state-to-state with very few teachers specifically prepared to work in middlegrade classrooms. Both are issues that NELMS continues to address.

Healy’s commitment to young teens has grown out of her experience teaching at-risk middleschoolers for eight years and serving as a building administrator for a 1,300-student middle school for an additional seven. Added to that experience is a master’s in education from Harvard. Today, she consults directly with schools and districts in six states, providing professional development sessions for teachers and conducting school assessments.

She finds that she must constantly combat the lack of understanding that most adults have about how middle-schoolers should be taught. Young teens have educational, physical, and social needs that are distinctly different from those of their counterparts in high school and elementary school, she says. Part of her job is to convince policymakers at all levels that resources must be invested in academic programs and facilities designed especially for the middle grades.

Healy says she is concerned with the current national movement toward increased emphasis on educational testing. The focus on testing “has raised the level of awareness and accountability of school programs,” she observes, “but we are regimenting what is being learned.” By “teaching to the test,” she fears American education is stifling students’ curiosity and limiting teachers’ creativity. “We are taking away the joy of teaching and learning, and that concerns me.”

While her job can sometimes be politicallycharged, she says she enjoys framing issues and building coalitions—her work meshes well with her activist bent. And as a resident of New Hampshire, she says, politics really are part of everyday life with candidate visits and stump speeches a common occurrence. “You cannot live in New Hampshire without being fascinated by politics.” She especially relishes the give-and-take of political debate, and worries that too often today “we seem to have lost the ability to talk to each other when we disagree.”

Her political activism stretches back to her high school days in Cincinnati during the racial tensions

Summer 2006 | 11

ing his final year on campus and sparked what has become a lifelong interest in politics.

Boult’s 32-year medical career has coincided with far-reaching changes in the profession, and he believes those changes have influenced the mind-set of the young people who are entering the field today.

“Today’s medical students are still bright and ambitious,” he says, “but medicine is not the open-ended profession it once was. . . . In general, many now see medicine as a good job, rather than an inspiring profession.” He misses the degree of idealism he saw in earlier generations of physicians.

Boult says he would like to see medicine focus on patients and their families more than diseases and technology. Anyone who has cared for a chronically ill relative knows the strain it places on the entire family—both in time and money. “Dealing with complex health care can really sap the vitality of the whole family,” he observes. “Three generations are often affected by having a chronically ill older person in the family. The effects ripple down through our economy and our productivity nationally.”

He will continue to advocate, he says, for affordable solutions that “will result in better care and better quality of life for Americans with chronic illnesses.”

Visit our online edition to read comments from other baby boom-era alumni and to add your own. Simply go to: www.albion.edu/ iotriumphe/ and click on the cover story.

Boomer Trivia Okay, baby boomers, just how good is your memory for Albion people, places, and things? Find out with this quiz about campus life from 1968 to 1986.

1. What was the date of the first Earth Day? (Extra credit: Which national network featured Albion’s Earth Day on its evening news?)

2. Who was Joseph Washington?

3. In what year did former President Gerald R. Ford announce the founding of the Institute for Public Service that would bear his name?

4. List the following campus buildings in order by construction date: Olin Hall, Gerstacker International House, Herrick Center for Speech and Theatre, Palenske/Putnam/Norris complex, Mudd Learning Center.

5. What does ZPG stand for?

6. What was Bernard Lomas’ occupation before he served as Albion’s president from 1970 to 1983? (Extra credit: From what city and state did he come to Albion?)

7. What band played on campus in 1970-71 and “colored our world”?

8. In what season did the Briton basketball team advance to the Final Four in the NCAA Division III national championships?

sometimes controversial speakers to campus. (3) Fall 1977. (4) Palenske/Putnam/Norris complex (1969), Answers: (1) April 22, 1970 (CBS Television). (2) Albion’s dean of the chapel in the late 1960s, known for bringing

12 | Io Triumphe!

Baby boomers may be in denial on this point, but the fact is they are aging. And as they age, they will place unprecedented demands on the American health care system. That scenario has physician Chad Boult worried. Director of the Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a specialist in geriatric medicine, he says, “Within the next 50 years, there will be a tripling of the number of people who are old, chronically ill, and disabled.

Our society is not preparing for this.”

The increasing number of older Americans will be only part of the story. Adding to the problem, he says, is that our health care delivery system is too fragmented to deal effectively with people who are coping with several chronic conditions at the same time. Elderly patients today often face a bewildering array of medical specialists, therapists, pharmacists, and insurers, most of whom are not communicating regularly with one another. “The net effect,” Boult says, “is that the people who need all of these services frequently are left to patch it all together. It doesn’t work—these patients are old and frail, and many have cognitive impairment. . . . It’s a very inefficient system.”

At Johns Hopkins, Boult has put together a research team that has designed a new approach to caring for chronically ill older persons (called “Guided Care”) that he believes has “tremendous potential to change chronic care in America.” With $5-million of funding from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute on Aging, the John A. Hartford Foundation, and other sources, Boult is currently conducting a five-year study of the effects of Guided Care. Under this program, specially trained nurses work individually with patients and their families, coordinating their health-related services and communicating with their health care providers. The nurses also empower the patients and their caregivers to make lifestyle changes and manage their chronic conditions proactively.

Boult is confident that when the study is complete it will show that the overall quality of life for these patients (and their families) will be better, and that they will be hospitalized less often. That, in turn, will save on health care costs.

Reducing the cost of health care for the elderly is a necessity, Boult observes. “Health care spending is

going to increase by 400-500 percent in the next 15 years. All the projections are there. The medical costs of caring for this aging population are going to be overwhelming.”

Unfortunately, Boult says, “we as a society have not really grappled with this problem.” As the baby boom generation nears retirement age, health policy experts and politicians will have to devise solutions that will ensure access to high-quality health care for everyone. If we don’t work aggressively for change now, he notes, “we are at risk for an even greater divide between the haves and the have-nots in the years to come.”

Boult entered the field of geriatric medicine almost by accident, he says. After graduating from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1974, he trained in internal medicine and family medicine and then taught for six years in family medicine residency programs at Case Western Reserve University and the University of California, San Diego.

Then in the late 1980s, he realized that “there was something missing for me. There was some part of me that wasn’t being tapped.” He left his job in California and entered the master’s program in public health at the University of Minnesota. While there he was invited to join other researchers focusing on health issues for aging populations. It’s a path he has pursued ever since. In 2001, he took his current position at Johns Hopkins, where he also teaches in the schools of medicine and nursing. His research team, which includes health policy experts, primary care physicians, nurses, and other professionals, shares his commitment to dramatically reshaping chronic health care in this country. “It’s not just a job for these people,” he says. “It’s mission.”

His career in medicine might never have happened, if not for the intervention of Albion chemistry professor Jack Crump, Boult says. “I had come from a small rural high school in the Upper Peninsula, and we really hadn’t been exposed to what was then stateof-the-art thinking about a lot of scientific matters.

I had been a straight-A student in high school, and I was shocked to find myself failing in chemistry as a freshman. . . . Dr. Crump gave me some special tutoring. He showed me that he cared. That saved me.”

Spending a semester at the University of Vienna also had a huge impact on his education, Boult recalls. “It was such an eye-opener—I’ve never been the same since. Coming back for my senior year at Albion, I was a changed person.” It galvanized his opposition to the escalation of the Vietnam war dur-

Gerstacker International House (1970), Herrick Center for Speech and Theatre (1975), Mudd Learning Center

Lyn Healy is entering her second term on the Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Chad Boult, ’70

(1980), Olin Hall (1983). (5) Zero population growth. (6) Minister (Cleveland, Ohio). (7) Chicago. (8) 1977-78.

of the late 1960s. Later, as an Albion student, she was involved as a member of the Student Senate in mediating various protests including a sit-in on the lawn of the president’s home to advocate for extended hours for women. She also remembers the spring of 1970 when crosses appeared on the Quad in response to the invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, and two years later sitting with friends as the lottery numbers were called out for the military draft.

Even in those turbulent times, she recalls, students were optimistic about the future, and idealistic enough to think “we can do anything.” As barriers to access in education and employment came down for women and minorities, she says her generation learned important lessons in tolerance. “I’d love to think we baby boomers have made people more accepting of differences.”

Healy may be best known to her contemporaries as one of the steering committee members for Project 250, a student fund drive launched in June 1971 to raise a $250,000 endowment for scholarships in honor of the College’s newly inaugurated president, Bernard T. Lomas, ’46. The steering committee, which also included Rick Simonson, ’72, Jan Chamberlain, ’73, Jon Gaskell, ’71, and Bill Healy, ’72, exceeded its goal by June 1972, raising nearly $277,000 from alumni, trustees, and charitable foundations. The President Bernard T. Lomas Project 250 Awards now assist as many as 15 students annually; each receives a $2,000 scholarship based on leadership and service to the campus community.

“Bernard Lomas was a huge influence on my life,” Healy says, in explaining her involvement with the fund drive. “He and his wife, Barbara, were wonderful to me.”

Healy hears regularly from the student recipients of the award. “To think that all of these students are getting scholarships as a result of our efforts—it shows you how, with the right support, an idea can grow.”

Summer 2006 | 13

Winds of Change C. VAN DE VEN PHOTO

Spring break service trips to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast offer ‘life-changing’ experiences

C. VAN DE VEN PHOTO

As we made our approach into the Gulfport airport, at first we would see a rooftop with a blue FEMA tarp here and there. As we got closer to the coast, half the houses on a block would have a blue tarp, and then almost all the houses on a block. Finally, as we flew right over the coastal neighborhoods, there would be no more blue tarps, because there were almost no houses left to put tarps on. The plane got very quiet at that point.

T. WILCH PHOTO

Chris Van de Ven, geology faculty

The effects of Hurricane Katrina were so massive along the Mississippi coast, says Albion College volunteer Tom Hunsdorfer, that it looked as though “some giant arm had come up out of the Gulf of Mexico” and swept away everything in its path. The wind and water destroyed the highway bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs (top) and ravaged this home in Biloxi.

14 | Io Triumphe!

Seven months after Hurricane Katrina hit, much of the area we worked in between Pascagoula and Gulfport still looked like a war zone, especially the areas nearest the water, where it appeared that some giant arm had come up out of the Gulf of Mexico and swept away all of the buildings within a quarter‑mile of the beach. Many large structures were simply gone. Huge sections of a concrete and steel bridge were shoved aside and stacked up like dominoes by the force of the storm surge.

In Jackson County, Miss., (population 150,000) where we spent most of the week, 4,000 homes were destroyed completely, and another 8,000‑12,000 are uninhabitable and will also probably need to be destroyed. Many people are still living in FEMA trailers or other temporary dwellings. Also, in this one county, 100,000 cars and trucks were destroyed. Much of the vegetation within five miles of the coast has died due to the immersion in salty, polluted water. . . .

A number of the people we spoke with were still dealing with the physical, economic, and psychological effects of the hurricane.

Life is going on, but there is still the sense of people being in shock.

Tom Hunsdorfer, assistant to the president

C. VAN DE VEN PHOTO

Nearly 70 Albion students, faculty, staff, parents of students, and community residents traveled to Mississippi and Louisiana in two separate groups over spring break in March, primarily to assist in reconstruction of homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina last August. One group was sponsored by Albion First United Methodist Church under pastor Dwayne Bagley, the other by Campus Crusade for Christ. They ripped out moldy drywall and installed new, painted interiors and exteriors, hauled trash, fixed roofs, put in new floors, and served food in a relief kitchen, among other tasks. In the accompanying first-person accounts and photographs, you will learn how these trips involved much more than construction projects. They became opportunities to reflect on the quality of human relationships, on the responsibility that we, as members of the larger society, have to one another, and on matters of faith and service.

In one location where we worked [in Louisiana], it was pretty much a ghost town. Not one home was in livable shape, and no businesses were up and running. We worked at two houses in the area, one of which had not been touched since the hurricane hit.

On that house, we spent two days clearing out debris and tearing out the interior walls. It was a pretty daunting task, which our group of 11 students fell just short of completing in the time that we worked there. The homeowners seemed to be in pretty good spirits, and they had great attitudes in the midst of this mind-boggling situation.

Looking back on the trip, I am very glad that I chose to spend my spring break in this way. At first I had doubts about whether I wanted to go, but now I know that I could not have spent my spring break in any better way.

Tim Kuzma, ’06

Winds that topped 90 mph severely damaged this home in rural Greene County, Miss. These volunteers, part of a 27-member work team sponsored by Albion’s First United Methodist Church, repaired the roof and replaced all of the shingles during their week-long stay in March.

The women would fix meals for us when we got back from our work sites at the end of the day. They told us how grateful they were for our help. And ours was just one of many groups they had hosted.

Meagan Burton, ’07

What hit me most was that it was seven months after the storm, and so much had yet to be cleaned up. The U.S. can move fast in other locations across the globe, but we haven’t been able to do so on our own Gulf Coast. Trash and debris were everywhere. The fact that so little has been done is really telling. I’ve been to Africa twice and witnessed scenes like this—this part of Mississippi looks like a Third World country.

In spite of this devastation, so many of the people still were hopeful. They treated us like family. They provided us with food as we worked on their houses, and we traded addresses—I’m sure letters will be going back and forth. It was really touching.

I’m from South Carolina, and one of the things I enjoyed most about the trip was that I could take people from Albion and Austin Gee, ’07 immerse them in Southern culture. There is something to be said about the manner in which we embrace people and take them in. I saw this throughout the week. It made me proud to be a We all would say this was a Southerner. At the Methodist church where we stayed in Mississippi, we could not have asked life-changing experience. . . . for more hospitality. At 6:30 in the morning, the It was hard work that I knew men would come in and cook breakfast for us.

had a purpose and a meaning.

Austin Gee, ’07

Summer 2006 | 15

T. KUZMA PHOTO

(Photos beginning at near right)

To shield themselves from mold and other hazards, those involved in interior demolition work at this home, including Sara Furnival, ’06, (left) and University of Michigan Campus Crusade staff members Paula Burch and Kurt Heinold, were required to wear protective suits.

A. NORTON PHOTO

The 41 Campus Crusade for Christ students from Albion volunteered in and around Slidell, La., repairing homes, cleaning up debris, and performing many other tasks. Whitney Patton, ’09, (left) and other team members served meals to as many as 500 people daily at a relief kitchen.

R. BAHR-MEYERHOLT PHOTO

Bill Whitehouse and his daughter, Meredith, ’09, joined other Albion faculty, students, and community residents working at this home near Pascagoula, Miss., that had suffered extensive flood damage. The team installed new drywall throughout the home.

The whole trip was about humans helping humans and how interconnected we

Charles, the homeowner we were helping, was living in a difficult situation before the storm. His house looked a bit like a glorified children’s fort—it was so poorly built. He was worse off before the hurricane than most people were after the hurricane. It meant so much to us to know that we were truly providing something for him. He’s getting this chance to restart entirely. It’s the Noah story. He deserved this help more than anyone else we might have encountered. . . .

Katy Van de Putte, ’09

are, how responsible we are for each

They literally need our hands and feet [in these areas on the Gulf Coast]. . . . They have work for anyone who goes down there. It’s simply a matter of saying, “Yes, I will help.”

Katy Van de Putte, ’09

I was really excited to be part of a work team that included an Albion community member, a professor, and a pastor. We discovered how well we connected not only within our group, but with the people we met.

Jill Fuhrman, ’09

The number of volunteers we had, as a proportion of our student body, was pretty impressive. It is amazing to see that the people of Albion—in the community and on campus—want to help out in any way we can. We are inspired to give back through volunteering—and we have fun doing it.

Rachel Lippert, ’08

During our trip to Mississippi, I felt we were all on equal footing. We were all going into this completely unknown situation and didn’t know what we were going to encounter, and it just felt like everybody stepped up—students, faculty, staff, parents of students, community members. Overall, it was a profound experience for me. I went on the trip expecting to see evidence of devastation and to help some of the victims. My jaw dropped when I saw the physical destruction firsthand and realized how much people continue to suffer. I felt truly appreciated by the families we helped. We all worked hard during the week and gave a lot of ourselves, but clearly we were getting as much as we were giving.

Looking back on this trip I have mixed emotions. The devastation wrought on the metro New Orleans area and Mississippi is far other’s well-being. beyond anything I had imagined before we traveled down there.

The lives of many of these people will never be the same.

Meagan Burton, ’07 Even though our group worked as hard as we could, it also feels like we barely did anything. There is just such a tremendous need for manpower and resources there. I highly doubt most people outside of these areas realize just how bad the situation remains.

I’m very glad I went on this trip; it was an experience unlike any other I’ve ever had. It was humbling. The hardest part might have been returning home.

And there’s more . . .

The night I returned, my girlfriend (who As you will see below, Albion’s spring break service efforts were not limited was also on the trip) and I went grocery to the U.S. Gulf Coast. shopping, and it hit us how easy we had Organization for Latino Awareness (OLA): Eleven students and an things while many people in Louisiana adviser traveled to Comayagua, Honduras to work on improvements to a and Mississippi had no home and were boarding school and interact with the students there. Assisting this school eating at a relief kitchen in a tent in a has been a long-term project for OLA. Wal-Mart parking lot. I only wish we Service Project Appalachia: Rehabilitating a residential trailer in need of could return and do more for the people insulation, painting, and plumbing was the focus for 16 students who went of the area. to Bybee, Tenn. They also worked on the surrounding property and did Nic Clements, ’06 fence repair.

WINGS: Six students and an adviser spent the break planting trees and doing painting and clean-up in and around the city of Heredia, Costa Rica.

Thom Wilch, geology faculty

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Summer 2006 | 17

Returning to the Well Bill Ritter, ’62, looks back on 40 years of life and learning at Albion College

By William Ritter, ’62 During spring semester 2005-06, trustee and alumnus Bill Ritter served as the inaugural Joe H. Stroud Visiting Scholar for Albion’s Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Policy and Service and as the Executive-in-Residence for the Carl A. Gerstacker Liberal Arts Institute for Professional Management. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, Ritter retired in 2005 after a 40-year career in pastoral ministry with the Detroit Conference of the United Methodist Church. He served parishes in Dearborn, Livonia, and Farmington Hills before becoming senior minister at the First United Methodist Church of Birmingham in 1993.

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D. TRUMPIE PHOTO

While taking Arthur Munk’s History of Philosophy course as an Albion College student, I learned I would never be able to step in the same river twice (Greek philosopher Heraclitus). An idea confirmed by Joseph Irwin in his class entitled Modern Life and Letters when I was told I could never go home again (North Carolina novelist Thomas Wolfe). Which explains why I often found Homecoming less than satisfying, given that reappearing on the scene never quite replicated the original experience.

Be that as it may, I am grateful that a quarter century as a trustee has regularly returned me to the campus, albeit with a new role and responsibility. I have a reason for hanging around that goes beyond nostalgia. The poet is right. New occasions really do teach new duties. A response to South African apartheid one year.

A new academic vision the next. Along with presidential comings and goings, coupled with a need to find them, hire them, and break them in.

Still, trustees see Albion putting its best face forward. The grass is always cut.

The meals are always good. And the students on our committees always show up in heels and neckties. The scrubbed and polished look is appreciated, hinting of administrators and students who care. Warts inevitably surface. But without the warts, especially those that are monetary, the trustees would have little to do.

This spring, I returned to the academic side of Albion, accepting an offer to teach and lecture for the Ford and Gerstacker Institutes, which, depending on the day (or the hour), was either a challenge, a chore, a high honor, or a source of higher anxiety. As invitations go, this one was well-timed. I retired last summer after 40 years of ministry. I tested my return to academia as a visiting faculty member at Duke last fall. Comfortably removed from 40 years of “daily grind,” I am still light years from being “out to pasture.” And the Jungian archetype of “sage” is one that fits nicely, however self-measured and proclaimed.

Summer 2006 | 19

Still, I was nervous. First, because it was Albion.

Doing a similar stint at Hope or Kalamazoo would have fallen into the “piece of cake” category. Second, because I was tiptoeing the naked edge of my comfort zone. I was not talking “church.” Neither was I addressing clergy. Economics and political science majors are, no doubt, very nice people. But when I was at Albion, they were not my people. My people studied religion and philosophy. My people wrote themes for English teachers. My people sang in Dave Strickler’s choir. Third, I knew Joe Stroud, and being the first lecturer linked with his name brought flames uncomfortably close to my toes. When I asked Peter Mitchell, “Why me?,” it helped not one iota when he said, “We wanted to launch Joe’s lectureship with a slam dunk.”

So what did I learn? About myself, a lot. I learned that “professing” is hard work. In preparation, I read widely, reflected deeply, and wrote painstakingly. It is one thing to toss out a few ideas. It is quite another thing to harness them into an argument. My goal was to do both in three different arenas of inquiry. And whether it be true that hard work never hurt anybody, it certainly didn’t hurt me. Indeed, it stretched me.

And stretch marks look good on retirees.

Moreover, it proved the value of a liberal arts approach to learning. Knowledge mocks every attempt to box it. Subjects bleed into one another. As a child, I loved compartmentalization, favoring dinner plates with ridges so that my peas never touched my potatoes, nor did my gravy contaminate my Jello.

But as a theologian, I discovered I did have things to say to public policy types, and my pastoral definition of “the good life” had important implications for work/life balance and a consideration of careers versus callings.

I also learned it is easier to prepare a good lecture than facilitate a good discussion. The former takes longer, but the factors are totally under my control.

Forty years of preaching sermons have lessened the dread of lecturing. Microphones are old friends.

Audiences seldom intimidate. But a lively discussion has more to do with asking a good question than with making a good point. I pondered, what if nobody bites on the question? Or cares about the answer?

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Fortunately, Albion students were interesting and interested. It was easy to get something started, especially the afternoon we talked about leadership challenges facing Duke’s president, Richard Brodhead, in responding to the raw and bleeding crisis involving the Duke lacrosse team and an allegation of sexual assault. As a class, we identified two dozen issues demanding attention and then prioritized them as to their urgency and weightiness. Alas, CNN never showed up to record our findings. Nor has President Brodhead hired us as consultants. But for an hour, it was engaging and real, with everybody in the room contributing an opinion. Similarly energized was the discussion of money and our deeply-rooted attitudes concerning it. Less so was the presentation of H. Richard Niebuhr’s five classic paradigms concerning the relationship of Christ and culture. While fascinating to me, they raised very few blips on the radar screens of students, late one sleepy afternoon.

Additionally stimulating were my informal interactions with the student body. An opening lunch at the Ford Institute allowed me to dispel early anxieties as to why a preacher was invited to talk about public policy. It was strangely sobering to realize that the title of my first public lecture (“The Religious Right and American Politics”) led more than a few students to misalign my sympathies, thereby rendering me “suspect” until proven otherwise. Sixty minutes killed off several pizzas while enhancing my credibility. Another lunch with students considering careers in religion gave me a chance to tell more of my story and expound upon something I knew well, namely post-graduate preparation for ministry. It also reinforced my conviction that whereas my generation went to seminary to learn the practice of ministry, today’s undergraduates go to seminary to discern a call to it. Especially fascinating was my conversation with a first-year Jewish female who is desirous of becoming a rabbi.

Other conversations covered the waterfront. One student with a slew of options wanted to ponder the priesthood. Another sought my opinion concerning the relative merits of seminary life at Yale, Boston, or Wesley. Still another asked me to wear my trustee hat while he probed my interest in a plan to market Gerstacker students as consultants. A fourth came to talk about his plan to sell flash-fried ice cream at regional street fairs in northern Michigan, only to

be amazed that I knew the Glen Arbor entrepreneur whose business plan he greatly admired. And I sat open-jawed the night a sophomore talked passionately about the pair of Habitat houses he had already built in the city of Albion.

When not otherwise engaged, I ate spaghetti in support of a mission trip to Mississippi, served Holy Communion at the Wednesday night chapel service, addressed Rotarians in the city of Albion, and engaged in a lively interchange with the Albion Ministerial Association. Other meals with administrators exercised my colon and enriched my calendar, including late-night pizza with Peter Mitchell at Cascarelli’s. A trek to Albion Machine & Tool led to a lovely afternoon with fellow trustee and the city’s chief cheerleader, Bill Stoffer, ’74. And a stroll downtown introduced me to a delightful septuagenarian, Dorothy Hoisington Dickerson, ’54, who owns Books & More. Through it all, I was the guest of Dick Lewin and Mary Slater, who have given Albion what it has needed for years, an incredible bed-andbreakfast inn (Albion Heritage Bed and Breakfast), a mere two doors west of Susanna Wesley Hall.

Ask for the caramel apple French toast and feel free to drop my name. More interesting still, Dick is a United Church of Christ clergyman who preaches in Dearborn, a community that is 85 percent Muslim.

Saving a pair of serendipities for last, let me report on visits with the past and the present of religious life on Albion’s campus. The present is represented by Albion’s chaplain, Dan McQuown. What can I say? He cares. He believes. He relates. Better yet, he has a vision. His door is as open as his mind.

But neither is as open as his heart. All we need to do is keep him around and give him some tools.

Which brings me to Bill Gillham who, more than anybody, once filled my toolbox. Now retired from teaching in the Department of Religious Studies, he has a mind well worth picking. Relaxing in his living room on Martin Road, I recalled, for the first time all semester, what it once felt like to be an undergraduate. Neither of us thinks the same way or believes the same things we did 44 years ago, but it was good to discover that upon returning to the well, I could still draw water. Which is true all over Albion’s campus, really. Few of the wells are dry, and most of the reservoirs are overflowing.

D. TRUMPIE PHOTO

M. Arvoy Photos

Bill Ritter’s stay in Albion allowed him to revisit mainstays of the local business scene, like Cascarelli’s, and discover some recent additions, including Books & More and Albion Heritage Bed and Breakfast.

Bill Ritter, ’62

Joe H. Stroud Visiting Scholar Program The Joe H. Stroud Visiting Scholar Program in Albion’s Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Policy and Service was inaugurated in spring 2006 with the appointment of Bill Ritter, ’62, in this role.

The visiting scholar teaches a seminar and works individually with students. The program honors the memory of the late Joe Stroud, who served as Ford Institute director from 1999 until his Stroud passing in 2002. Stroud enjoyed a long and respected career as a newspaper journalist. Prior to his tenure at Albion, he was editor of the Detroit Free Press for 25 years. Stroud was widely regarded as a man of great wisdom, wit, and passion for issues which he considered important, including civil rights, education, the environment, and mental health. The Joe H. Stroud Visiting Scholar endowment was established in 2002 by friends, colleagues, alumni, and family in his memory.

Executive-in-Residence Program Bill Ritter also served as Executive-in-Residence in the Carl A. Gerstacker Liberal Arts Institute for Professional Management. This program brings a business executive or other professional to campus to teach and interact informally with students planning to pursue management careers. It is structured around the executive’s particular area of expertise and may involve career mentoring as well as classroom teaching.

In addition to teaching classes, Bill Ritter offered three public lectures on topics in religion and politics, and on balancing professional and personal responsibilities.

To learn more about Ritter’s stay on campus during spring 2006 and for copies of his lectures, go to: www.albion.edu/ford/stroud/ .

Summer 2006 | 21

A l u m n ! A ssoc ! at ! on N e ws 50 Years of Liberal Arts at Work A Symposium Hosted by the Class of 1956 Friday, Oct. 13 10 a.m.-4:20 p.m., Science Complex All alumni are welcome to attend this symposium.

Advance reservations are necessary. More details are available at: www.albion.edu/homecoming/1956_Reunion.asp .

CLASS OF

1956

Opening Session 10 a.m.

Panel Discussion Dick Vitek, ’56, Moderator Our Class of 1956 “came of age” during the creation of a new world order that demanded the newest and the best that life had to offer. In these past 50 years, we have witnessed upheavals in social, religious, philosophical, and economic thought, as well as momentous scientific discoveries. We all took part in these changes and in some small way contributed to the lasting effects. Our liberal arts education taught us that we could achieve if we put ourselves to the tasks and, in turn, help forge the future as positive role models.

Join members of the Class of 1956, many of whom are Distinguished Alumni Award winners, in exploring current issues and breakthroughs along with their effects on our lives and those of our children and future generations.

Noon

Boxed Lunch

Constitutional Amendments Proposed

Homecoming 2006 October 13-15

Make your plans now to attend Homecoming 2006, Oct. 13-15. Reunion class members (classes ending in “1” and “6”) have received special reservation forms by mail; information will be sent to all alumni later this summer. In the meantime, for a complete schedule and online reservation form, go to: www.albion.edu/homecoming/ .

Friday, Oct. 13 9 a.m. Tenth Annual Briton Classic Golf Tournament, The Medalist Golf Club, Marshall Join alumni and friends of the College for a great day of competition and camaraderie on the links. Shot gun start at 10 a.m., following registration at 9 a.m. Go to: www.albion.edu/sports/britonclassic/ for more details.

6:15 p.m. Athletic Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction Ceremony, Baldwin Hall Help us honor this year’s Athletic Hall of Fame inductees for their contributions to athletics as students or alumni.

9:30 p.m. Alumni and Student Bonfire and Pep Rally, Canoe Livery

Saturday, Oct. 14 7:45 a.m. Briton Homecoming Bicycle Ride, Sprankle-Sprandel Stadium/“A” Field NOTE NEW DAY AND TIME Biking enthusiasts are invited to participate in a bicycle ride through the countryside of Calhoun and Jackson counties. The design of the bike trails will allow riders to do as little or as much riding as they desire. (Light refreshments provided.)

Classes without Quizzes

9:15 a.m. Distinguished Alumni Awards Ceremony, Kellogg Center The reception begins at 9:15 a.m. in the Alumni Conference Room, and the ceremony follows at 10 a.m. in Gerstacker Commons.

1 p.m.

An Update on the Middle East: Is Peaceful

Coexistence Possible?

A discussion of current political and economic issues facing Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Presenter—Vivian Johnson Bull, ’56

11:15 a.m. Prayer Gathering, Dow Center Classroom, Dow Recreation and Wellness Center Alumni from all Christian traditions are invited to join current students in prayer. Come and share your joys and concerns.

1:50 p.m. Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Age

of Terrorism Just as persons who find themselves in need of help from others differ, so Samaritans come in as many forms as the needs they must meet. Explore the implications of the “good Samaritan” in the modern world. Presenter—Nolan Kaiser, ’56 2:40 p.m. Building an Ethical Community What are examples of ethics at work in today’s world? How can there be ethical communities in the future? Real-life examples and dialogue will provide a basis for discussion. Presenters—Hannah Provence Donigan, ’56, Jack Hanford, ’56, Kate Randall Reeves, ’56, Ruth Holland Scott, ’56.

3:40 p.m. Giving Lives/Giving Life/Volunteerism Firsthand experiences will provide a basis for discussion regarding how our giving can impact the future. Presenters— Maynard Bowers, ’56, Connie Blessing Burt, ’56, Don Dempster, ’56, Hannah Provence Donigan, ’56, Ann Dustman Ferrell, ’56, Virginia Smith Hinkle, ’56, Ruth Holland Scott, ’56.

38 | Io Triumphe!

11:30 a.m. Break the Silence Homecoming Reception, Location TBA Break the Silence, Albion’s gay-straight alliance, invites alumni who are allies or members of the GLBT community to learn about past campus initiatives and upcoming plans. For more information or to be added to our GLBTQA mailing list, please contact Rachel Freedman-Doan at ref10@albion.edu .

Noon All-Class Picnic Luncheon for Alumni, Faculty, and Students, Lomas Fieldhouse, Dow Recreation and Wellness Center 1 p.m. Football vs. Olivet, Sprankle-Sprandel Stadium Pre-game festivities include presentation of the Hall of Fame inductees.

Halftime will feature the Homecoming Court, the British Eighth, and the Alumni Band.

Post-game Presidential Reception, Science Complex Atrium Celebrate Homecoming (and hopefully a victory over the Comets) with President Peter T. Mitchell, ’67, at a post-game reception. Enjoy snacks and mingle with alumni, parents, faculty, and staff as you experience Albion’s newly renovated science complex.

Post-game Delta Tau Delta 130th Anniversary Open House, Delta Tau Delta House View a display of significant objects from Delta Tau Delta’s history while enjoying a light buffet. A brief ceremony, including the unveiling of a new commemorative plaque, will also take place.

Saturday Class Reunions For classes ending in “1” or “6,” 1951-2001. Reunion information will be posted on the Web as details become available at www.albion.edu/homecoming/ .

Open Houses Several departments and fraternities and sororities are having open houses throughout the day on Saturday. See also www.albion.edu/homecoming/ .

Sunday, Oct. 15 Worship Services will be held at the First United Methodist Church, 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., Wesley Chapel.

4 p.m. Homecoming Choir and Orchestra Concert, Goodrich Chapel The Albion College Choir, Alumni Choir, and Albion College Orchestra will present their traditional Homecoming Concert.

2006 Homecoming Award Recipients Albion College will honor the following individuals during Homecoming Weekend for their contributions to and passion for Albion College, their communities, and their professions.

Distinguished Alumni Award Robert A. Armitage, ’70 Theodore H. Fleming, ’64 Paul R. Lawrence, ’43

Ann M. Lewicki, ’56 David G. Moore, ’68 Richard B. Smith, ’60

Athletic Hall of Fame Inductees Individuals Scott A. Ammons, ’91 Larry B. Colburn, ’66 Lance C. Coleman, ’91 Joe J. Felton, ’87 Michael J. Grant, ’87 James P. Knudson, ’76 James S. Russell, ’63 Suzanne K. Rustoni, ’92 (deceased)

Eileen Steward, ’85 Mary Washburn Suphan, ’71 Teams 1963 Swim Team 1990 Football Team Special Recognition Joseph R. Cooper

Patrick Ryan, ’06, and Kathleen Sutton, ’06, sport Homecoming 2006 T-shirts. You may purchase a shirt on your class reunion form or by calling the Alumni Office at 517/629-0448.

All alumni, parents, and friends are invited to tour Albion’s newest additions to campus, the recently expanded science complex (pictured) and the Nancy G. Held Equestrian Center.

The proposed constitutional amendments that appear below are published in Io Triumphe! as called for in the Alumni Association constitution. Changes are noted in italics. If you have questions about any of the proposed amendments, please contact the Office of Alumni and Parent Relations at 517/629-0448.

ARTICLE VI—DIRECTORS Proposed: Section 1. The Board of Directors of the Albion College Alumni Association shall be comprised of up to twenty-one [Current wording: eighteen] members (the “Directors”). The twenty-one Directors shall include the President, the Vice President for Alumni Campus Activities, the Vice President for Alumni Off-Campus Activities and the Secretary-Treasurer. [Addition:] The twenty-one Directors shall also include three recent graduate directors (“Recent Graduate Directors”), one from each of the prior graduating classes of Albion College (winter and spring graduates shall be deemed graduates of the same spring class). The eighteen non-Recent Graduate Directors shall be referred to herein as the “Alumni Directors.” . . .

Section 2. The student body of Albion College shall be permitted one person from its number who shall serve as a director of the [Addition:] Student Association for Alumni for one year. Such director shall be appointed by the Director of Alumni Relations, [Addition:] may attend the meeting of the Association and shall not be included in the twenty-one Directors.

Sections 3, 4, 5. No change.

Section 6. The [Deletion: fifteen appointed] Alumni Directors shall serve on the various committees required by the Association. . . .

Section 7. No change.

[Addition:] Section 8. The directors of the Association may, by a two-thirds vote of directors present and voting, elect up to one additional director from the present year’s graduating class, for three consecutive years, for the three Recent Graduate Director seats. The Recent Graduate Directors shall each serve one three-year term in the Recent Graduate Director seats and then must be replaced by a new Recent Graduate Director for their seat from that year’s graduating class. Each Recent Graduate Director appointed by the Board of Directors may, by majority vote of the Board of Directors, be elected to serve one additional three-year term in an Alumni Director seat. Said seat shall be removed from the slate of available seat(s) submitted to the board, pursuant to the nominating procedure set forth in Article VIII, Section 2. In no event shall a Recent Graduate Director serve for more than two consecutive terms. The Recent Graduate Directors appointed by the board pursuant to this section shall have the same rights and privileges and shall be subject to the same limitations, as the members of the board appointed pursuant to Article VIII, Section 2, except that the Recent Graduate Directors may not serve on either Committee described in Article VIII, Section 1.

ARTICLE VIII—NOMINATIONS OF OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, AND RECIPIENTS OF DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDS, AND MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARDS Proposed: Section 1. No change.

Section 2. The Board of Directors Nominating Committee shall solicit from the Board the names of Alumni Directors seeking to serve an additional threeyear term, as provided in Article VI, Section 4 [Addition:] and the names of Recent Graduate Directors seeking to serve an additional three-year term, as provided in Article VI, Section 8. The Board of Directors Nominating Committee shall also solicit from the Association the names of possible candidates for appointment to the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association [Addition:] as Alumni Directors, as well as names of present-year seniors at Albion College who either graduated in the winter or are scheduled to graduate in the spring, for appointment as a Recent Graduate Director. The slate of Alumni Directors [Addition:] and Recent Graduate Directors seeking to serve an additional three-year term and candidates for appointment to the Board of Directors shall be prepared by the Board of Directors Nominating Committee at least two months prior to being submitted to the Board for approval. The Board of Directors shall first vote on those Alumni Directors seeking to serve an additional three-year term, pursuant to Article VI, Section 4, [Addition:] and Recent Graduate Directors seeking to serve an additional three-year term, pursuant to Article VI, Section 8. The slate of candidates for appointment as Alumni Directors [Addition:] and Recent Graduate Directors shall contain a number of candidates at least equal to twice the number of positions remaining to be filled, if any. The Board shall then vote for the candidates for appointment as Alumni Directors [Addition:] and Recent Graduate Directors. Each Director shall cast one vote for each position remaining to be filled, if any. . . .

Section 3. In addition to candidates for appointment to the Board of Directors proposed by the Board of Directors Nominating Committee, nominations for the twenty-one [Current wording: fifteen] appointed Board Members may be made by any member by mail, to be received by the Director of Alumni Relations by Homecoming, provided each nomination is supported by signatures of any ten members.

Summer 2006 | 39

B O A R D U P D AT E

Y O U R A L UM N ! A S S O C ! AT ! O N

Board Appoints Two New Members

The True Value of Your Albion Education

The Alumni Association Board of Directors has appointed two new members and reappointed four incumbents to fill terms beginning July 1, 2006. Named to a second term were: Lyn Ward Healy, ’72; Joshua Merchant, ’96; Timothy Newsted, ’78; and Douglas Shepherd, ’98. The following are new to the board.

Cheryl Henderson Almeda, ’91. After graduation, Almeda began her teaching career at Springfield North High School in Springfield, Ohio. While in Springfield she twice received the Exemplary Teacher Award, and she earned her master’s degree in English literature from Wright State University. She moved “back home” to Michigan in 1998. Currently, she is a part-time professor of English at Western Michigan University and has also received an award for teaching excellence there. Almeda devotes much of her time to Spring Valley Wesleyan Church where she is involved in youth ministry and sings in the choir. She and her husband, Ramie Almeda, ’91, have served as class agents for Albion and are in regular contact with the English and Music Departments on campus. They reside in the Kalamazoo area with their three children.

Wanda Read Bartlett, ’60. Bartlett has devoted much of her time since graduation to her community. She has worked as a school and hospital volunteer in Massachusetts, California, and Michigan. In 1980, after her family relocated to Ann Arbor, Bartlett worked in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and in 1986 earned a master’s degree from Eastern Michigan University.

She has also volunteered at the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital, and she has been involved with numerous philanthropies and as a strong supporter of musical organizations.

Bartlett has been involved at Albion in the organizational planning of the 40th and 45th reunions of the Class of 1960. She and her husband, Bob Bartlett, ’60, have three grown children and four grandchildren and reside in Ann Arbor.

Retiring from the board were James Cox, ’87, board president for the past four years, and Kenneth Hollidge, ’67, who served on the Distinguished Alumni Awards selection committee.

To see the entire Board of Directors roster, go to: www.albion.edu/alumni/alumni_board.asp .

By Keith James, ’86 Alumni Association Board of Directors

Almeda

Merchant 40 | Io Triumphe!

Bartlett

Newsted

Healy

Shepherd

Another generation of students has now successfully completed the journey from student to graduate of Albion College. I am left wondering, however, how many graduate without a clear sense of the long-term value of an Albion College diploma.

In a professional sense, it is difficult to quantify the value of an Albion education that teaches you to think critically about the world in which we live. Today, the term is called “thinking outside of the box.” One of my favorite cases as a trial lawyer involved a suit brought by a professional jockey who was thrown from a thoroughbred racehorse. The jockey maintained that a kite dangling from a nearby tree spooked his horse and caused the horse to run wildly around the racetrack until it ejected the jockey, thus causing him to suffer severe back injuries. Our theory in defending the racehorse’s owner was fairly simple—horseracing is a rather dangerous sport—so dangerous that the jockey was required to sign a release before riding the horse. Beyond that, the state legislature had adopted a law to bar such claims from persons engaged in this sort of activity.

We promptly moved to throw the case out of court. The first judge refused to consider the written release that was signed by the jockey. She actually thought that the case justified a jury trial. Following a court reorganization, the opposition laughed at our second motion to dismiss the case. Their irresponsible sense of humor required me to make good use of my Albion liberal arts education and consider all my options—to think outside of the box. I solicited an affidavit from the state law’s sponsor to support our position that this case should not go to trial. Upon reconsideration, the second judge tossed the case out. Ultimately, the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed that the case did not warrant a trial because of the release signed by the jockey. However, it was the thinking outside of the box that captured the second judge’s attention.

To think critically within a certain paradigm is exactly what Albion teaches its graduates to do. The value of such an education greatly exceeds the cost of tuition. Even so, the true value of the Albion Experience is about far more than critical thinking. It is about those lifelong relationships that inevitably prove to be invaluable. Early in my career, Albion graduate Susan Sadler, ’77, was instrumental in recruiting me to join her law firm. Without this relationship, I would not have had the many great opportunities that have since followed and would not have this story to remind you of the merits of a liberal arts education.

To our recent graduate and newest alumni members, congratulations and welcome!

L ! ’l B R ! T S

Connecting Body and Mind These activities to enhance learning were provided by Thomas Johnson, chair and associate professor of physical education at Albion. Johnson is the creator of Project First Step®, which teaches physical movement skills that support academic learning. As you can see, these activities are also fun and engaging for the entire family.

Johnson has taken Project First Step® to schools in 25 states as well as to Canada and China. For more information, e-mail him at: trjohnson@albion. edu.

Body moves that lead to better learning

Balance

Body Image

Laterality

Improving the sense of balance— whether static (not moving), dynamic (moving), or in relation to external objects—is crucial for concentration.

Understanding how to move the body through space also aids learning in math and reading.

Laterality involves knowing top from bottom, back from front, and, most importantly, right from left.

Everyone has an imaginary line which goes through the center of one’s body. Learning to cross that midline without difficulty, and to work both sides of the body equally, is critical for developing the coordination needed for reading and other visual activities.

Activity: This activity, called “Scarecrow,” teaches balance using external objects. One person is the “scarecrow,” and the others put the “crows” on the scarecrow. For the crows, use items such as bean bags, pencils, cotton balls, etc. Have the scarecrow stand with legs apart and arms out to the side, while the others put the crows all over the scarecrow’s arms, shoulders, feet, head, etc.

Everyone can take a turn as the scarecrow. See who can balance the most objects.

Activity: This activity, called “The Human Knot,” is a lot of fun for all ages. Use smaller groups for children. You will need either ropes or pieces of fabric cut into about 2-foot lengths. Everyone stands in a circle, facing the center and holding one end of a rope in their right hand. With their left hand, they will grab the bottom of someone else’s rope. They may not hold the rope of the person who has the other end of their rope. Now everyone twists, turns, steps over, or whatever else they have to do to form one large unbroken circle or two smaller unbroken circles. Laugh, talk, and have fun.

Have fun getting fit!

Take advantage of the warm summer days with family fitness activities.

Activity: Ride a bike, skate, or walk in “figure eights.” Finger paint using both hands. Dance the “Macarena” or “Grapevine.” Walk with your right hand on your left knee and your left hand on your right shoulder. Do “log rolls” in both directions. Do “toe-touchers” or “windmills.” Draw a picture in the air. Weave in and out around other family members as you take a walk. These exercises will bring a smile to your face!

Web Sites www.getupgetout.org/todo/101activities/Document_view www.shapeup.org/pubs/99tips/index.html

• Take a walk . . . around the neighborhood, in a nearby park, on the beach. The point is to get off the couch and get moving!

geoparent.com/health/wellness/familyfitness.htm

• Learn new activity games or introduce your kids to games from your childhood like hopscotch or tag or jumping rope.

www.family-friendly-fun.com/family-fitness/index.htm

www.familybiking.com/

• Set aside a weekly “family fitness night” and go biking or roller-blading or swimming.

• Sponsor friendly contests for elapsed time, distance, or number of rounds: egg toss, Frisbee toss, hula hoop For more fitness ideas, check out the resources at right.

Books Rose R. Kennedy, The Family Fitness Fun Book: Healthy Living for the Whole Family (Healthy Living Books, 2005) Julia Sweet, 365 Activities for Fitness, Food, and Fun for the Whole Family (McGraw-Hill, 2001) Summer 2006 | 41

Ringing in the New

IoTriumphe!

T he M agazine

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A lumni

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F riends

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A lbion C ollege

M. ARVOY PHOTO

The 53-foot-tall William K. Stoffer, ’74, Clock Tower takes shape in Albion College’s science complex. Adjacent to the southwest corner of Norris Center, it will mark the main entrance to the newly renovated science facilities. The tower will feature 5‑foot-diameter clock faces as well as an electronic carillon with bronze bells. It also will function as a solar timepiece, with a device that will track the progress toward the earth’s solstices and equinoxes.

Communications Office 611 E. Porter Street Albion, MI 49224-1831 Address service requested

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID RAVENNA, MI PERMIT NO. 320