The new football head coach has Eagles fans dreaming of glory.
CHASING BIGFOOT
We go deep into the wilderness in search of a mythical American monster.
Artificial intelligence promises to transform humanity. Can we reap the benefits while avoiding the dangers?
FEATURES 22
The Future of AI
Artificial intelligence is poised to transform society. How do we develop it safely?
By Lisa Weidenfeld
Illustrations by Stephanie Dalton Cowan
Making Headlines
For more than forty years, the Eagles who run the Dorchester Reporter have used their newspaper to inform and bring together one of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods. Today, they are a model for the community news publications that are launching all around the country in the wake of our crumbling traditional media infrastructure.
By Tom Mulvoy ’64
Photography by Lee Pellegrini
Tracking Bigfoot
In an excerpt from his new book, BC journalism instructor John O’Connor ventures into the Northern California woods in search of an American monster.
Photography by Caitlin Cunningham
6 Welcome to Chestnut Hill, Bill O’Brien
He grew up rooting for the Eagles. Now he’s Boston College’s new football head coach.
8 Campus Digest
10 Joe Quintanilla
A vice president at National Braille Press and an elite marathoner, Quintanilla ’98 has never let blindness slow him down.
11 Home Cooking
The food videos she shoots in her kitchen have made Mary Bryant Shrader ’80 an unlikely YouTube star.
12 Documenting Giannis Antetokounmpo
In her new film, Kristen Lappas ’09 captures the life of one of the most famous athletes in the world.
14 That’s How Craig Finn ’93 Remembers It
As lead singer of the The Hold Steady, Finn helped to inspire a generation of indie rock stars. Now in middle age, he’s launched a podcast dedicated to memory and the creative process.
15 Sweet Talker
Maile Flanagan ’87 is the acclaimed voice actor behind a surprising number of popular animated characters.
16 True Colors
Engineering students Melanie Cotta and Echo Panana invented a device that identifies clothing color for people with visual impairments.
17 This Drug Enables Breakthrough Organ Transplants
A new pharmaceutical developed by BC alum Steven Perrin’s biotech company helped to make the world’s first pig kidney transplant possible.
18 Dynasty
The BC women’s lacrosse team, appearing in its seventh straight NCAA championship game, just won its second title in four years.
19 Men’s Hockey Soars
Head Coach Greg Brown ’90 led the Eagles all the way to the NCAA title game this season.
20 The Furies
Journalist Elizabeth Flock ’08 digs deep into what happens when women use violence to defend themselves.
Advancing Boston College
What I’ve Learned Harvey D. Egan, SJ
Parting Shot
LINDEN LANE
Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan
Views from Belgium
This painting, François Bossuet’s Ostend. The Plain Viewed from the Top of the Dunes to the West, is one of thirty-six landscapes that the real estate investor and art collector Charles Hack recently donated to the McMullen Museum of Art. The collection includes works from twentythree Belgian artists. The paintings show off the nineteenth-century work of the Tervuren school, whose artists sought to portray beauty in nature as a counter to the rapid industrialization Europe was facing at the time. The landscapes are now part of the museum’s permanent collection. “Besides adorning the walls of the McMullen for the public to enjoy,” Hack said, “these paintings are to be actively used as teaching tools to benefit Boston College students.”
Lisa Weidenfeld
Stephen Kircher’s Wildest Ride
This profile of Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher examined both the past and future of the ski industry.
The article about Stephen Kircher hit home with me. What was not mentioned was the draw to Boyne Mountain in the 1950s that Stephen’s father, Everett, implemented: Olympic medalist Stein Eriksen was their resident skier and promoter. I was three years old, not old enough to ski, in 1953, waiting in the lodge lobby coloring while my parents skied. Every day, Stein Eriksen would come inside with a different sweater that his mother had knitted. Tall and handsome, he was almost like a god to me. When I strapped on skis at Boyne Mountain at age five, skiing became a lifetime passion of mine. My son, Dean, skied on the BC Ski Team, graduating in 2002.
Lucy Somes P’02
Dallas, Texas
It was great to read of Stephen Kirchner’s ski business success, but more than ironic that the title of the article identified a warming climate as a challenge to ski resorts while the article did not address the adverse environmental impacts of ski resorts. Responsible ski resorts are now taking steps to mitigate that impact, and it would have been great if the interview could have probed Steve on that. While celebrating BC successes, let’s not shy away from the ethical challenges that accompany them.
Alan Kreczko ’72
Weatogue, Connecticut
Why Are We So Lonely?
Assistant sociology professor Alyssa Goldman discussed the worrying increase in loneliness and social isolation.
I agree with so many of the points Assistant Professor Alyssa Goldman made in your article. I strongly believe social media has reduced relationships for so many of all ages today to sound bites and an onslaught of continuous visual comparisons. These relationships are, for so many, without depth and compassion, and are more or less adolescent in nature. Furthermore, since the remote work environment has taken on a life of its own post-Covid, that too hinders person-to-person contact, esprit de corps, and a structure in one’s day. All those previous supports are missing now. Thank you for bringing attention to this very real com-
ponent of human emotional, cognitive, and physical wellbeing. Smartphones offer so many wonderful options, but they are also Pandora’s box.
Catherine Johnson ’81
Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia
Mikey Hoag is on a Mission. Alzheimer’s Doesn’t Stand a Chance
Hoag ’86 on her decades of advocacy and fundraising to find a cure for a disease that is afflicting more and more Americans, including members of her own family.
Having lost my beautiful mother to this devastating disease, I applaud your crusade for a cure.
Jill Bruno, MCAS’89
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Mikey is a force and is leading the way to hope. Thank you, Mikey.
Susan Giannino ’70
New York, New York
Jim Curran WCAS’92 Woburn, Massachusetts “
Appreciate Boston College Eagle Mikey Hoag’s work and passion! Better days ahead thanks to her efforts!”
photos: Michael Poehlmann (Kircher); Anastasia Blackman (Hoag) illustration : Michael Morgenstern
The Negotiator
BC Law Professor David Twomey on his decades of advising US presidents on labor matters.
How delighted I was to see Professor David Twomey profiled in BCM. I know that Prof. Twomey likes the low-key lifestyle (he’s told me so himself), so I can only imagine the arm-twisting that must have gone on. I had the pleasure, and the pain, of taking two of his business law classes back in the seventies. I still enjoy remembering that he called everyone Mister or Miss. He was so respectful of our journeys, yet so engaging, so funny, so smart, and helpful. I’m sure he’s done a bang-up job with all those labor disputes over the years—he’s got the track record to prove it—but I believe in my heart that his greatest gift is in the classroom, inspiring and entertaining all those generations of students. Please don’t let him retire until he has replaced himself!
Walter Fey ’75
Arlington, Massachusetts
I had David Twomey for Business Law in 1994. He was one of the best professors I had at BC.
John Comiskey ’96
Seaford, New York
One of my favorite professors (Business Law and Labor Law) at BC. I learned a lot and laughed a lot in his classes.
Lisa King ’81 West Warwick, Rhode Island
I loved Professor Twomey’s classes— Business Law and Labor Law! Such a great learning experience! And fun!
Terri Divine ’81
Barrington, Rhode Island
A Ghost Story
A look at the actor Richie Moriarty ’02, who stars on the hit CBS sitcom Ghosts
Richie Moriarty is incredibly talented and also a truly wonderful person! Grateful to be able to call him my friend.
Katie McManus ’08
Milton, Massachusetts
Love the show. Was so happy when I found out Richie Moriarty was a fellow Eagle!
Mike Bianco ’97
Medway, Massachusetts
The Long Road
Music Professor Ralf Gawlick’s new composition reflects his years-long journey to learn the truth about his family and heritage.
Great story. I had Professor Ralf Gawlick for music back in 2001 and he was an excellent professor. My favorite composer (Sibelius) is because of his class. I’m glad he’s still at BC and happy for him that he met his mother and found out more about his origins.
Lauren Hirs ’05
Fairfield, Connecticut
What I’ve Learned: Maria Estela Brisk
The longtime BC professor, a noted expert on language education, reflected on the lessons gleaned from her life and career.
I love this feature of Dr. Brisk. Another moment to be proud to be counted among the “Brisk Babies” who had the privilege to learn with/from her while at the Lynch School. I am always thankful for her brilliance, encouragement, and care for her students.
Michael T. O’Connor PhD ’17
Cranston, Rhode Island
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He grew up rooting for the Eagles. Now he’s Boston College’s new football head coach.
departing to become defensive coordinator for the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. “There’s no better fit for Boston College than Bill O’Brien,” Boston College Athletic Director Blake James said. “He was our number one choice every step of the way. I wanted a win-
BC fans were equally thrilled. “First great [football] news coming out of the Heights in years,” one fan commented on an article about the hiring. He was hardly alone. As another commenter put it, “Looks like BC FINALLY got it right. Hiring O’Brien was a
His resume certainly suggests as much. O’Brien, now fifty-four, started his coaching career at Brown before moving on to positions at Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, the University of Maryland, and Duke. In 2007, he joined Bill Belichick’s staff with the New England Patriots, staying with the team for five seasons. He was then named head coach at Penn State, where he helped to return the legendary football program to competitiveness and was named Big Ten Coach of the Year. In 2014, he was introduced as head coach of the NFL’s Houston Texans, stayed with the team until 2020, and then spent two years as offensive coordinator at the University of Alabama before being hired for the same job with the
O’Brien was set to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State this season, but he was elated to have the opportunity to instead come to BC—and for reasons
beyond coaching. Both O’Brien and his wife have family in the Boston area, but more important, their oldest son, who suffers from a brain malformation, receives world-class medical care in the city. Taking the BC job not only allowed O’Brien to coach the program he grew up rooting for, it also meant he and his family could abandon their plans to live apart while he coached Ohio State and they remained in Massachusetts.
For all his coaching experience, the landscape has changed significantly since O’Brien was last a college head coach. In 2021, the NCAA approved a policy that allows student athletes to be compensated for commercial use of their name, image, and likeness. The new “NIL” policy has effectively set off bidding wars by schools competing to attract the best players. At the same time, new rules have made it far easier for players to transfer from one program to another. It may be a new world, but O’Brien insisted that he’s ready for it. “I embrace that challenge,” he said. “It’s a part of our game, and NIL is not going anywhere.” On the field, O’Brien intends to construct a tough, hard-nosed squad that stays disciplined and plays as a team.
Since joining BC, O’Brien has been getting to know his new home by exploring the campus, watching the school’s other athletic teams, and attending Mass every Sunday morning at St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s, or, sometimes, St. Ignatius. He’s also learned plenty about Boston College’s culture through his wife, Colleen, a 1992 BC graduate, who is “pretty well-versed in football ... She’ll want to have a game review when I get home [each week], but that’s the way that it’s always been,” O’Brien said with a smile. “It’ll probably be a little more intense now because this is her school.”
In that respect, O’Brien’s new job is a fitting culmination of a love affair with the maroon and gold that began all those decades ago in Alumni Stadium. This, at last, is now his school, too. n
School of Theology and Ministry Renamed for Clough Family
The Boston College School of Theology and Ministry has been renamed in honor of Gloria Clough MDiv ’90, MS ’96, and Charles “Chuck” Clough Jr. ’64, two of the University’s most loyal benefactors. The school is now the Gloria L. and Charles I. Clough School of Theology and Ministry. The Cloughs’ $25 million gift, one of the largest ever given to a school of theology, divinity, or religious studies, will provide tuition support for lay students who otherwise could not afford to pursue a degree at the school. “Chuck and Gloria Clough are wonderful examples of people who have given their lives in service of the people of God,” said STM Dean Michael McCarthy, SJ. “Their gift, therefore, is deeply reflective of who they are.” —Eliz abeth Clemente
BC Law Grad Places Second on Survivor
After charming a national audience for months, Charlie Davis JD’24 was selected as the Season 46 runner-up on the hit TV show Survivor. “I’m so proud of my game, and so grateful to have gotten as far as I did, as painful as it is to lose,” said Davis, a Massachusetts native who attended Harvard as an undergrad and is a noted Taylor Swift fan. Beating out sixteen other competitors while spending twenty-six days on an island enduring grueling physical challenges with limited access to food, hygiene products, and shelter was no easy task. “You really have to have your head in the game from day one,” Davis said. “A
Course Spotlight
NAME: Food and Identity in Latin/o American Literature and Culture
INSTRUCTOR: Ali Kulez, assistant professor of Hispanic studies
FOCUS: The relationship between food and identity in Latin American and US Latino cultures from the 1920s to now.
Taught entirely in Spanish, this new undergraduate course explores food imagery in Latin American literature. Far from experiencing the cuisine just on the printed page, however, students make field trips to Boston restaurants, hear from restaurateurs, chefs, and food-justice activists, and actually cook up some of the dishes they read about. In the classroom, they analyze texts by learning about the social forces behind food in Latin America, and also explore the influence food has had on Latinx identity. “I’m always fascinated by how strongly people feel about their own food,” Kulez said. “It’s often a matter of pride, and shows particular dynamics about the way they imagine their communities.” Elizabeth Clemente
five-second conversation can cut your lifeline in the game, so you have to just be so deliberate about the relationships you’re building.” The show was shot last summer in Fiji, and Goodwin Procter, the Boston firm where Davis will soon be practicing business law full-time, accommodated his schedule when filming interfered with part of his summer internship. He also received ample support from the BC community, including his BC Law classmates, who regularly attended watch parties he hosted around Boston. Asked about his craziest memories from the show, Davis said some made it to air—like the time a castmate melted down after not winning an Applebee’s burger—while others did not, including his tribe’s desperate attempt to hunt, cook, and eat a sea cucumber using only a machete and a pot. “It’s so incredible,” he said. “When people say it’s the adventure of a lifetime, that’s 100 percent true.” Elizabeth Clemente
photos: Lee Pellegrini (Cloughs); Ali Kulez (cooking)
CAMPUS NEWS
Boston College was recently ranked as the twelfth-safest college campus in the country. Academic Influence, the organization behind the rankings, gave BC high marks for the presence of security officers, lighting, student shuttle buses, and mental health offices on the Heights, as well as the University’s surveillance systems and technology.
Karen Bullock, the Louise McMahon Ahearn Endowed Professor in the School of Social Work, received a major award in March in recognition of her long-standing work to improve serious illness care for underserved patient populations. The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine presented Bullock with the Richard Payne Outstanding Achievement in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award for her advocacy related to serious illness care.
Ana M. Martínez-Alemán, an associate dean and professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, was recently named one of forty outstanding women in higher education by the respected publication Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. Martínez-Alemán’s research has explored complex issues such as student anti–sexual violence activism and online racialized aggression, and she wrote one of the first books about social media’s impact on students.
Forbes recently named Boston College one of its twenty “new Ivies.” The group is made up of public and private US universities with high achieving graduates that the magazine says are often preferred by employers over those from Ivy League institutions. BC is the only New England school that made the list.
Lee Pellegrini, director of photography in the Boston College Office of University Communications, was honored last spring with the Boston College Arts Council’s annual Faculty/Staff Art Award. The honor is bestowed upon a faculty or staff member who has made an outstanding contribution to the arts at BC in a variety of ways.
CHARACTER SKETCH
Maggie Rulli ’10
ABC Foreign News Correspondent Maggie Rulli ’10 has spent the past five years living in London, covering some of the biggest news stories in the world. From reporting live outside Scotland’s Balmoral Castle following the death of Queen Elizabeth II to traveling to Beijing to cover the 2022 Winter Olympics and to New Zealand for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, her assignments have given her a front-row seat to history.
Elizabeth Clemente
It wasn’t supposed to be me reporting the death of Queen Elizabeth. Our network’s heavy hitters on the Queen were both out of town. They told me they were going to cut into all ABC programming happening across the country and come to me first. I just remember standing in the pouring rain, six and a half months pregnant, waiting to go live and having this moment like, you cannot mess this up. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.
On one royal tour to Pakistan about five years ago, I found myself on a Royal Air Force plane with Prince William and Princess Kate. We had really bad weather, and were trying to land while experiencing some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever felt in my life. Prince William came to the back of the plane and was joking to calm everyone down.
Working in news makes you appreciate how long ten seconds is. It’s always amazing, the amount of scramble that is happening moments before going on air. If someone’s like, “Oh, you have two minutes until your live shot,” I’m like, I’m going to get a snack and touch up my makeup, because I’m so used to having mere seconds to do something.
I was on maternity leave during the Women’s World Cup, but I wanted to cover it so badly. ABC was great; they were like, ”Bring your daughter, bring your husband.” I had struggled with how to have my career and my family, so to have this moment of, Wow, it’s all happening, and I’m sharing it with my daughter was really impactful
Robert Voets/CBS (Davis); Hazel Thompson (Rulli)
Joe Quintanilla
A vice president at National Braille Press and an elite marathoner, Quintanilla ’98 has never let blindness slow him down.
I have a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. As I got into third and fourth grade, my vision deteriorated and being able to read with my eyes was more challenging. While I was being taught braille, I kind of pushed it away. I wanted to use my eyes as much as possible. Today I work at National Braille Press, where I lead our fundraising department and do some PR and communications. NBP’s mission is to foster a joy of reading among blind children and encourage parents to advocate for braille literacy in the schools. A lot of the school systems will say it’s cheaper and easier to get this blind child a digital recording of a book versus getting it in braille. Listening to a book is great, but it’s not the same as reading. You lose out on understanding sentence structure and how to use punctuation.
I kind of stumbled into fundraising. My roommate ran the Boston Marathon when we were juniors at BC and he had to raise fifteen hundred dollars, so I helped him. I was also running a lot, and I competed in the marathon in the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta.
I’ve always wanted to compete in whatever I did. Not being able to see well enough to catch a ball or throw a ball, my options for physically competing were really limited. But I could run longer and further than the kids that were really good at sports that I couldn’t do. And so that gave me some selfconfidence about being able to be athletic. But I got injured after Atlanta and didn’t make the next Paralympic team. So Joe Collins ’63, SSW ’65, who was the CEO of the Massachusetts Association for the Blind, helped me get a job in the association’s development office.
We face a lot of discrimination as people with disabilities. You get a lot of doors slammed on you. You don’t get opportunities because people think you’re less capable. All that anyone with a disability ever wants is the same opportunity to succeed or fail as everyone else. As told to Lisa Weidenfeld AS TOLD
photo: Lee Pellegrini
Home Cooking
The food videos she shoots in her kitchen have made Mary Bryant Shrader ’80 an unlikely YouTube star.
BY ELIZABETH CLEMENTE
Six years ago, Mary Bryant Shrader ’80 stood in her Texas kitchen and filmed a video of herself explaining how to roast a chicken. That cooking tutorial would soon transform Bryant Shrader, then sixty years old, from a retired tax attorney into an Internet celebrity chef. It became the first video she posted to her YouTube channel, Mary’s Nest, which today has more than one million subscribers and helped her land a publishing deal for a cookbook.
“I figured, okay, maybe a hundred people will be interested in this,” Bryant Shrader said of that video from 2018. “I was shocked at how quickly my channel grew.” Bryant Shrader’s channel teaches her followers how to cook entirely from scratch, with videos demonstrating everything from how to soak grains before baking bread to how to culture dairy while making butter. It’s all part of her belief in the traditional-foods movement, which encourages people to consume fewer processed foods.
Each of Bryant Shrader’s more than 650
videos has been filmed by her husband in their kitchen, with a new one posted every Saturday. In her pleasant, maternal way, she begins each video with her signature introduction of “Hi, sweet friends,” and ends with “Love, and God bless.”
Bryant Shrader, who worked as a tax attorney for nearly ten years, closed her practice in 1998 after she and her husband welcomed their son, Ben. When Ben left for college in 2017, he suggested that Bryant Shrader, who liked to host cooking nights for friends, start posting videos of her cooking sessions to YouTube for fun. Ten months later, Bryant Shrader had ten thousand subscribers.
The secret to her success, in part, is that her videos are about perennially relevant topics (she searches—what else?—YouTube for ideas), like the best methods for long-term food storage and how to make sports drinks at home. That helps even her oldest videos attract new viewers—a 2019 video on how to make flavored extracts, for instance, has built to nearly eight hundred thousand views.
“During the pandemic,” she said, “I received a lot of subscribers who wanted to learn one little thing that I shared, and then stayed with me over the long haul.” All this despite the fact that Shrader’s detailed videos often stretch to an hour long, an eternity in a social media landscape where popular videos usually run for just a few minutes. Her husband, Ted Shrader, said her comforting screen presence helps to explain the channel’s popularity. “We see comments of people saying how much they love her,” he said. “She’s like a mom or a grandmother to them.”
Bryant Shrader, now sixty-six, recently extended her success into a new platform. Last summer, DK, a British publishing imprint that is part of Penguin Random House, released The Modern Pioneer Cookbook, Shrader’s collection of eighty-five traditional food recipes. “It’s just unbelievable. I have a million subscribers on YouTube. Are you kidding?” Shrader said. “I go to Barnes & Noble and Target and my book is on the shelf. I’m like, What? Me? How did this happen?” n
Documenting Giannis Antetokounmpo
In her new film, Kristen Lappas ’09 captures the life of one of the most famous athletes in the world. Here’s how she did it.
BY LISA WEIDENFELD
Kristen Lappas ’09 is the director of a thrilling new Amazon Prime documentary about one of the world’s biggest basketball stars. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, which began streaming in February, tracks the journey of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo from an undocumented Nigerian immigrant in Greece to a two-time NBA MVP. Lappas had plenty to draw on from her own life while making the documentary. Her father, Steve, was a college basketball coach for seventeen years (including nine at Villanova back when the school was battling BC in the Big East), and both sides of her family are from Greece. It all informed her sensitive portrait of Antetokounmpo, who joined the league while still a teenager in 2013 and today is one of its biggest names.
“In my career, with the stories I've chosen to tell, sports are the entry point to talk about something much bigger that’s more of a universal story or theme,” said Lappas, who is a director at the production company Words + Pictures. “For Giannis, it’s the ultimate immigrant story, which I loved so much.”
We asked Lappas to select four important scenes from her documentary and walk us through how she chose to direct them.
On a scene re-created in an internet cafe
“I’m generally not a fan of re-creations, but his childhood was not well documented. So we had to re-create some scenes. We shot all of them in the original places that Giannis lived, breathed, experienced. That was the internet cafe where he and his brothers used to watch NBA highlights.”
On shooting in the Milwaukee Art Museum
“
The museum is like a character in the movie. It’s such a big space and it's quintessential Milwaukee. There are very few people that can fill such a space. But Giannis is this larger-than-life star and he just fills the space and he looks epic in it.”
On the teary championship moment
On Giannis shooting hoops with his brothers
“I just wanted whatever happened to happen. There was a chance that they wouldn’t say anything compelling and we’d have to cut it. But I was willing to just let it go because their chemistry is so great, and it ended up being this really beautiful ending.”
“There are a million moments in films where we have to keep the story going. The narrative has to keep progressing. And then there are other moments that you just want to live in and appreciate. And that minute-plus shot was worthy of that time.”
That’s How Craig Finn ’93 Remembers It
As lead singer of the The Hold Steady, Finn helped to inspire a generation of indie rock stars. Now in middle age, he’s launched a podcast dedicated to memory and the creative process.
BY JOHN SHAKESPEAR
As the lead singer of the acclaimed rock band The Hold Steady, one of the most revered acts of the mid-2000s, Craig Finn ’93 has performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, from Bonnaroo and Coachella to the Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Seth Meyers. But these days, Finn is also finding creative fulfillment from a different project, a weekly podcast, That’s How I Remember It, in which he talks to other accomplished artists about their paths and their pasts.
For a generation of music fans, Finn’s name conjures a bespectacled singer under bright lights, gesticulating wildly to rapid-fire lyrics about wandering souls and salvation. On a bright Thursday not so long ago, though, Finn was sitting quietly at his desk at home, wearing a Minnesota Twins cap and reflecting on his life as a midcareer rock star. He had some budget spreadsheets to review, and he did not particularly look like a man who was preparing for his band’s upcoming series of sold-out shows at a popular New York venue.
Finn, an electric piano at his side, was speaking from his unadorned office in Greenpoint, the Brooklyn neighborhood he has called home for more than a decade. It’s in this space that he writes many of the lyrics for both The Hold Steady and his own solo career, which includes five acclaimed albums. “A lot of it happens right here,” Finn said, gesturing at the office as car horns and sharp afternoon light filtered in from the street. “I’m lucky in that I enjoy every part of my work—even the spreadsheets.”
This home office is also where Finn records many of the conversations for his podcast.
Each week, Finn talks to other artists—from the actor Bill Hader and the fiction writer
pandemic, while he was working on his most recent solo album, the contemplative A Legacy of Rentals, which was released in 2022. At the time, Finn was mourning the death of a friend
George Saunders to the country music legends Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell—about how memory influences creativity, and how misremembering can also spark the creative process.
The idea for the podcast, which just completed its third season, came to Finn during the
and isolating from his romantic partner, Angie Bentfield, a nurse in New York’s overburdened hospitals. Amid loss, he found himself thinking about the past and the limits of his own memory. Was it true—as he wondered on one of the album’s songs—that “memories get
meddled with” when you absorb them into art?
On the podcast, he often asks guests about their musical memories, and about the songs that bring them back to important moments in their past. For Finn himself, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” opens a portal to the fall of 1989, when he arrived at Boston College as a freshman. “If you walked down my hall in Fitzpatrick that year, you’d hear three different Tom Petty songs coming from three different rooms,” he said.
Finn recalls his college years as a time of exploration. He spent hours getting intentionally lost in Boston and devouring books on the Dustbowl, a bygone campus green now covered by Stokes Hall. “When I think of BC,” he said, “I remember that intellectual curiosity, that feeling of searching for something.”
The search continues in Finn’s work as a lyricist. On The Hold Steady’s early albums, he wrote with acuity and empathy about teenage misfits, overconfident gamblers, and soft-hearted drug dealers who chased transcendence and love through barrooms and dim apartments. On his more recent albums, his wayward characters are grown up, but they haven’t stopped looking for redemption in unlikely places.
So do we warp our memories of the past when we turn them into art? Finn’s podcast conversations have largely confirmed his theory that most artists depend on their own capacity to remember. “I think there’s a pride in most writers and creators that’s like, ‘I remember it, and I use it,’” he said in one podcast episode. “It’s something we all use to create.” n
photo: Lee
Sweet Talker
Maile Flanagan ’87 is the acclaimed voice actor behind a surprising number of popular animated characters.
BY ELIZABETH CLEMENTE
Maybe you’ve never heard of Naruto Uzumaki, one of the most beloved Japanese anime characters of all time, but trust us, your children have. The superpowered ninja is the star of the animated series Naruto, which, decades after its debut, remains one of the most popular shows in the world. The instantly recognizable English-language version of Naruto’s voice is supplied by the Emmy Award–winning voice actor Maile Flanagan (who also sometimes appears onscreen herself, as she does as Tina in the ABC sitcom Not Dead Yet). With the recent news that a liveaction Hollywood movie about Naruto is in the works, we asked Flanagan about the many distinctive characters she has voiced in her long career. Here’s a look at how she crafts the unique voices of her animated characters:
A Look at Flanagan's Cast of
Characters
Naruto Uzumaki Naruto
“He was really little when we started—he was a little kid, so you’ve got to sound like a little kid. But then he became a teenager, so there was an adjustment to pitch him lower. Then there was another time gap, and he’s a grown man, and that was a further pitch down.”
Matt Hornsby—Royal Crackers
“He’s not an active child, he’s a gamer. He sits down a lot, and takes his time. He’s also in a big household where a lot of people are yelling and screaming. What does that kid sound like? That kid doesn’t really want to be noticed. It’s a slower, quieter demeanor.”
Amy—The Loud House
“I have an old mouth guard from my dentist that doesn’t quite fit anymore. I did one part where I popped it in the top of my mouth and it was terribly uncomfortable, but it worked for the voice.”
Pinky Whitehead—Harriet the Spy
“If you’re lucky enough to get an artist rendering of the character beforehand, it just hits you. It’s like, ‘Oh, I know this guy.’ Sometimes it’ll be like, he’s mumbling and drooling. So you play around with the mumbling and drooling.”
Piggley Winks Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks
“When I did this movie, I would listen to Irish music on the way in to get myself in the mood for voicing an Irish character. I would sing along a little bit, and get in the mood of that lilting way of speaking.”
Carlotta Lindell—Tiger & Bunny
“She’s pretty sarcastic and direct, so I made her more of a wiseacre on everything she said. You just think of people that answer everything fluently, like someone at the DMV. Take a little bit of that and incorporate it.”
True Colors
Engineering students Melanie Cotta and Echo Panana invented a device that identifies clothing color for people with visual impairments.
BY ELIZABETH CLEMENTE
Last spring, Melanie Cotta ’26 and Echo Panana ’26 traveled to Florida State University to compete in the ACC InVenture Prize, an annual event in which students from Atlantic Coast Conference schools pitch their ideas to a panel of judges for the chance to win $15,000. Cotta and Panana pitched Hue, a device they invented that helps people with visual impairments sort laundry by color.
To use Hue, you place it on an article of clothing and then press a button. The device, using a built-in speaker, announces the item’s color and the correct temperature for washing the fabric. Cotta and Panana came up with the idea last year while taking a class taught by Department of Engineering Chair Glen Gaudette, who encouraged them to enter the InVenture competition. After submitting a video presentation of their device, Cotta and Panana were selected to compete in Florida alongside fourteen other teams of student inventors and entrepreneurs from across the ACC conference.
Hue, Gaudette said, aligns with the mission of the department of engineering, which is designed to help students engineer solutions for crucial human needs. “A lot of times, it’s not complicated devices that people need,” he said. “They need simple everyday solutions. That’s what Hue did. It was an everyday solution to a real problem for a lot of people.”
Though Cotta and Panana didn’t win the competition, they remain excited about Hue’s potential to help people. We asked them to tell us more about their invention.
Where did you come up with the idea for Hue?
Panana: As part of Glenn Gaudette’s Introduction to Human-Centered Engineering class, we visited the Campus
School, which supports students with complex medical needs, on laundry day. The staff mentioned that students who were visually impaired and had low mobility really
couldn’t help with laundry at all, so they wanted to know how they could get them more involved.
How did you build the device?
Panana: I had taken a class on Arduino [an electronics platform] in high school and knew it could hold a color sensor and LEDs, and through research found out it could produce sounds. We built it in the maker space at the Schiller Institute, and ordered all of the parts through the BC engineering department.
You made Hue an entire device rather than just an app. Why?
Cotta: The main advantage of our idea is that it’s accessible. There are a lot of color apps out there that tell you what colors things are for color-blind people, but the advantage of Hue is that there’s something physically there, which allows older people who don’t use apps, or people with limited mobility, to use it. That’s the market we were trying to hit.
How do you make Hue a business?
Cotta: We had a Zoom question session with the judges before we flew out to the competition, and one recommended that we partner with Tide or another laundry brand to try to expand our audience that way.
What stood out about the competition?
Cotta: They had a keynote speaker who had competed in previous years, and turned their invention into an actual company. And afterward, one of the judges talked to us and gave us tips on other competitions to apply to, which we’re going to use.
Panana: Many of the competitors were a lot older than us, and had been to many of these competitions, or founded companies that have been in the works for years. We learned from people who have done it. We got a lot of contacts from other entrepreneurs, and that’s valuable, regardless of whether we continue with entrepreneurship or not.
Did Hue change how you view engineering?
Panana: I’ve personally never thought about assistive technology [products that help people with disabilities] as a field that engineers could be in. The only thing we’re usually exposed to is prosthetics, specifically in a hospital setting, but not in this context of helping students at the Campus School. Being able to talk to the people we’re designing for was a fun, new experience. n
photo: Caitlin
Melanie Cotta and Echo Panana photographed with Hue, a device they invented that identifies colors for the visually impaired.
This Drug Enables Breakthrough Organ Transplants
A new pharmaceutical developed by BC alum Steven Perrin’s biotech company helped to make the world’s first pig kidney transplant possible.
BY CHRISTINA HERNANDEZ SHERWOOD
As sixty-two-year-old Rick Slayman recovered in March from the first-ever transplant of a genetically modified pig kidney into a human, the revolutionary procedure was making headlines around the world. Meanwhile, Slayman’s doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital relayed daily updates on his condition to scientists at Eledon Pharmaceuticals, a Burlington technology company about fifteen miles northwest.
Though Slayman would pass away two months later, the transplant has been hailed as a breakthrough, and Eledon, a biotech company founded in 2020 by Steven Perrin ’88, had an important role in it. The company developed tegoprubart, a drug that formed part of the cocktail of immunosuppressive medications given to Slayman to prevent his body from rejecting the new kidney. (Mass General has said there is no indication that Slayman’s death was related to the transplant.) Tegoprubart, which is in human clinical devel opment and has not yet been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, was made available to
Slayman through the agency’s “compassionate use” program, in which patients with serious conditions gain access to such medical products. Slayman had end-stage kidney disease and was ineligible for a traditional kidney transplant.
Administered via intravenous infusion, tegoprubart is what’s known as an investigational antibody. It works by blocking communication between cells that could cause the immune system to reject the transplanted organ. “I don’t think that transplant could have happened and functioned without our drug,” said Perrin, Eledon’s president and chief scientific officer. “Everything had to come together.”
The drug can be used both in animal-tohuman organ transplants—a process known as xenotransplantation—and in humanto-human transplants.
Xenotransplantation might become more common. Some one hundred thousand Americans are awaiting a kidney transplant, with the average wait around three to five years. Once a patient does receive a kidney transplant, the organ usually lasts about a decade before another one is required and the process begins again. When it
comes to kidneys for transplant, there is “an incredible unmet need,” Perrin said.
That’s where doctors and scientists think xenotransplantation, specifically genetically modified pig kidney transplants like the one Slayman received, can help. Pig kidneys are similar in size to human ones, and can perform all the essential functions of a normal human kidney. Scientists at the Cambridgebased biotechnology company eGenesis, which provided the kidney, use CRISPR gene editing—removing certain pig genes and adding some human genes—to increase the pigs’ organ compatibility with their human recipients.
Still, successful xenotransplantation requires a careful immunosuppressive regimen to prevent organ rejection, Perrin said. “You’re taking this huge piece of tissue from somebody else and putting it into the body,” he said. “The immune system goes absolutely crazy recognizing that’s not you and wants to kill it.” Research over the past decade indicated that the best way to prevent rejection of a pig kidney by a human recipient, Perrin said, was to target CD40 ligand, a protein that is expressed on immune cells and can create an inflammatory response to a foreign presence in the body. Tegoprubart blocks CD40 ligand, he said, creating a more hospitable environment for the new kidney.
Perrin developed his love for medical research as a pre-med biology major at BC, then earned his PhD in biochemistry at Boston University. “It became really apparent to me that what I was passionate about was wanting to develop drugs,” he said. “I jumped early in my career into the biotech space here.” He never found a reason to leave the Boston area. “Every time I wanted a new opportunity,” he said, “I would just pack up my office in a cardboard box and walk two blocks to my next job.”
Tegoprubart, Eledon’s lead drug, is being studied in a Phase 2 clinical trial projected to include more than one hundred humanto-human kidney transplants. Perrin said he expects the clinical trial will prove not only that tegoprubart has fewer side effects than the current standard of care, a drug that was approved in 1994, but that it also promotes superior kidney function. Data from the trial is expected in early 2026.
“We want to see this through in transplant,” he said. “We have incredible conviction and passion in the company that we are going to transform the immunosuppressive part of transplant rejection for the first time in thirty years.” n
An illustration of tegoprubart, a drug designed to help the human body accept transplanted organs.
Dynasty
The BC women’s lacrosse team, appearing in its seventh straight NCAA championship game, just won its second title in four years.
BY JOHN WOLFSON
It’s a curious notion that a program that has appeared in a staggering six consecutive NCAA national championship games somehow has something to prove, but that is where the Boston College women’s lacrosse team found itself on Memorial Day weekend as it prepared for number seven. The issue for the Eagles was that despite making all those title games, they’d managed to win just one actual title, in 2021. This year, they were determined to capture their second, and after a thrilling contest that has already been called an instant classic, that is just what they did, defeating defending champion Northwestern 14–13.
In the process, BC didn’t simply avenge a dispiriting 18–6 loss to Northwestern in last year’s championship game, it shattered the narrative that the program struggles to finish the job. The Eagles have now won two of the past four national titles, becoming just the eighth school with more than one lacrosse championship.
BC fans could be forgiven if the start of the game left them less than sanguine about their team’s chances, with Northwestern rac-
ing to a six-to-nothing lead after the first quarter. “I was a little nervous at 6–0,” head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said after the game, “but my players kept me hungry.” Like their coach, the Eagles never lost hope, outscoring Northwestern 6–2 in the second quarter to end the first half down by just two goals, 8–6.
From there, the game’s momentum shifted back and forth, with Northwestern managing to stay just ahead of BC until the 11:05 mark of the fourth quarter, when Rachel Clark’s goal pulled the Eagles even at 11–11. A little more than a minute later, Andrea Reynolds scored to put BC ahead 12–11, a lead that the team would never give up despite a furious rally by Northwestern.
When the Eagles returned to campus following the victory, they were greeted by a swarm of excited supporters. “Coming home to Boston College is incredible because these girls are so passionate about this school,” Walker-Weinstein said. “To bring the trophy back, literally to the Heights, is a special moment.”
The championship capped a spring season of rewarding developments for Walker-
Weinstein, who in April was named head coach of the US Women’s National Team, an appointment that runs through the 2026 World Lacrosse Women's Championship in Japan. As a player, Walker-Weinstein was a successful part of the national team, winning one gold medal as the youngest member of the 1999 U19 roster, and another with the 2009 senior team.
In the aftermath of her BC program’s second championship, Walker-Weinstein reflected on the bittersweet achievement of having made all those title games only to come up just short so many times. “I think the losses along the way were part of this process—and I’m not glorifying losing by any means,” she told the media. “I do think maybe I, our staff, and our players needed to be hardened a bit to be ready for this moment.” She continued, saying, “It is not easy to get to the national championship, it’s not easy to win, almost impossible. Everything has to be aligned. I think somewhere along the way those heartbreaking losses taught us what we needed to fix and to be better and play smarter.” n
photos: Eddie Shabomardenly (lacrosse); BC Athletics (Greg Brown); Courtesy of Doug Guyer
Men’s Hockey Soars
Head Coach Greg Brown ’90 led the Eagles all the way to the NCAA title game this season.
BY JACOB FELDMAN
With the BC men’s hockey team having just completed its most successful season since 2016—the Eagles lost to the University of Denver 2–0 in the 2024 NCAA championship game—it’s easy to forget that when Greg Brown ’90 took over as head coach in 2022, he was doing so in the shadow of a leg end. Hockey Hall of Fame coach Jerry York had led the Eagles for the prior twenty-eight years, winning four national championships with BC (he won another with Bowling Green), and retiring with more victories than any coach in NCAA history.
How do you follow a coach like that? “The good thing for me,” Brown recalled recently, “is that the numbers he amassed were so big that I just felt like there’s no way anyone could get to those. He was so success ful for so long—it just felt so out of reach.”
When BC hired him, Brown had just one year of head coaching experience, with the United States Hockey League’s Dubuque Fighting Saints, but there was plenty to rec ommend him. First, there were the fourteen seasons he’d spent coaching under York at BC. (He departed in 2018, spending the next three years as an assistant coach with the New York Rangers.) Then there were his on-ice achievements. As a college defen semen at BC, from 1986 to 1990, Brown was a Hobey Baker Award finalist and USA Hockey Athlete of the Year. He played for the US Olympic team in 1988 and 1992 and also for the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Winnipeg Jets.
The team struggled during his first season, finishing with just fourteen wins, BC’s few
est since 1994. “You can play well and lose, that’s not hard to do,” Brown said of the team’s performance that year. “But to play well and win takes a lot of people doing a lot of things very well.”
scrimmage. “You could see the connection immediately,” Brown said.
The Eagles started the year with three consecutive victories. By February, they were 19–4–1 and ranked first in the country. A loss to Boston University in the Beanpot tournament could have been a setback, but it became a motivator. “That was a turning point for us,” Brown said. “They got a little more hardened, a little more intensity. They just upped their game—sometimes you need a loss for that to happen.”
Righting a Boston Marathon Wrong
Former BC quarterback Doug Guyer ’83 fell in love with the Boston Marathon as an undergrad watching runners attack Heartbreak Hill. Which explains the dis appointment he felt after reading about the plight
of Buzunesh Deba, who finished second among women in the 2014 marathon, only to be declared the winner two years later when Rita Jeptoo was disqualified for doping. Deba has been waiting ever since for the $100,000 prize that the Boston Athletic Association agrees she is owed. Following marathoning guidelines, however, the BAA has declined to pay Deba until it gets back the
year with a program-record thirty-four victories, captured their first Hockey Championship since 2012, and made it all the way to the NCAA final. Not long after losing the championship game, Brown exchanged text messages with York. The two men had been behind the bench together when the Eagles lost the 2006 and 2007 title games.
BC followed those defeats by lifting championship trophies in 2008, 2010, and 2012. Just keep going, York told his former protégé. “Even though we lost, you’re going to be a much better coach because of what you went through. The future looks
money it previously awarded to Jeptoo. In May, Guyer decided Deba had waited long enough. A successful businessman, he sent $75,000 of his own money to the Ethiopian runner, who lives in New York with her family. If the BAA doesn’t come up with the rest, he said, he’s considering covering that, too. “What does BC teach us?” Guyer said. “Serve others. Don’t wait for the lawyers’ OK to do the right thing. Take action. Today.” —John Wolfson
The Furies
Journalist Elizabeth Flock ’08 digs deep into what happens when women use violence to defend themselves.
BY LISA WEIDENFELD
When the journalist Elizabeth Flock ’08 was still a student at Boston College, she was sexually assaulted while on a personal trip to Rome with friends. Intimidated by the thought of having to relive the attack while testifying during a criminal case, she chose not to report the crime. But as the years passed, she was haunted by the question of what would have happened if she’d reacted differently during the assault itself. More than a decade later, she started searching for stories of women across the globe who had responded to violence with violence. She wanted to know what happened to them after they used violence to defend themselves. The result is The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice, a meticulously reported examination of what happened when three women fought back against their abusers. The book received substantial coverage in the New York Times and the New Yorker, which had previously published some of Flock’s preliminary reporting that led to it. The Washington Post, meanwhile, praised Flock for withholding judgment about her subjects, finding that “her work is richer and more troubling because of it.” We recently sat down with Flock to discuss her new book.
You write of the agonizing process of deciding whether to report your own sexual assault. What factors influenced your decision not to report it? I didn’t report my sexual assault to the Italian police because I could imagine what would happen. I thought I would just re-traumatize myself and potentially go through a really horrifying trial.
One study found that women who claimed at trial that they’d used violence only in self-defense were twice as likely as men to be convicted of crimes. The disparity was even starker for women of color. The systems are built against women. The criminal justice system is so broken in so many ways. And I think women know deep down that if they fight back, they’re up against that. And then if you do fight back, you’re criminalized for it. That’s what the research shows. Overwhelmingly, women take plea deals and go to prison after fighting back against abusers.
The women in your book come from very disparate backgrounds. One killed her rapist in Alabama, another was a freedom fighter in Syria, and another organized a gang to violently respond to domestic violence in India. Given that so few women fight back, what led your subjects to make a different choice? They all told me similar things: “I just didn’t want to die. I just wanted to protect myself or my community.” Yes, they’re very different, but they are living in the same kinds of challenging scenarios, and they’re doubly vulnerable. They’re women and they’re poor in Alabama and can’t afford better legal representation. Or they’re poor and they’re Kurdish, a people who have been oppressed for generations. Or they’re poor and they’re low-
caste, and so they don’t get justice for multiple reasons. Women who fight back in many cases are women who have nothing to lose.
All of the women you write about start to make choices that complicate the morality of their narratives. For instance, Brittany, the woman in Alabama, was arrested for arson while still on trial for murder. In my own story, I was passive, and I wanted to understand what it looked like when women were more active. But of course, as any good journalist knows, the longer you follow something, the more complex it gets. With all vigilantes, there’s a moment where you’re cheering them on and then all of a sudden you’re saying, “Hey, this might not be quite as clean as I thought.” For each of the narratives, there was a clear moment when things shifted. These are women who are fighting for justice, and they are also really flawed humans like the rest of us, and the situations are really complex. That’s why it’s important to follow these things longterm, because if not, you’re just getting a snapshot.
There are abundant examples from fiction of women seeking violent revenge, like in the movie Kill Bill and the Greek epic Medea. What has made these stories so appealing through the centuries? I think we’re drawn to these stories because we want to be them. It’s partly because so many women have experienced some kind of violation and wished that they fought back. Heroes interest us because they’re extraordinary people, but anti-heroes interest us because they’re extraordinary yet also complicated like all of us. You add in the layer of sexual or domestic abuse, and I think it’s no wonder that women are interested in these stories, whether it’s Kill Bill or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s been an obsession of ours since the beginning of time, as far as I can tell. n
photo: Beowulf Sheehan
We Have Always Been Who We
Are
A hint of the supernatural adds depth to the debut short story collection of Sofia T. Romero MA’96.
When the Pushcart Prize–nominated author Sofia T. Romero MA’96 was an undergraduate at Wellesley College, she wrote a story in a creative writing class that would shape her work for decades. The tale centered on a small town, where two teenagers set out to confirm their suspicions that one of their neighbors was actually a snake in human form. Romero’s classmates loved the fantastical premise, and she went on to publish short stories featuring similar elements of magical realism in publications including Chestnut Review and Electric Literature That process culminated in her debut collection of short stories, We Have Always Been Who We Are. “Just the fact of the book existing has been enormously gratifying,” Romero said. “Having conversations with people who are reading it and hearing what resonates for people is mind-blowing.”
The collection follows characters through their daily lives as fantastical events start to creep in. Most of the characters are women who share a distinctly Latina perspective, inspired by Romero’s own Puerto Rican roots. The opening story’s protagonist is a young girl named Lourdes, who seeks refuge from isolation at school and the turmoil of her parents’ tumultuous marriage by confiding in mystical animals. Another story follows a sorority whose members write their secrets in a mysterious book, only to face the the fallout when the confidential information is displayed for all to see. Romero’s characters tackle increasingly adult themes as the book progresses, such as navigating marital strife and motherhood, all while Romero bends the boundaries of reality. But even with elements of the supernatural, the stories remain grounded in very human emotions like anger, shame, and loneliness. “Humans are tense, and scary, and complicated inside of ourselves,” Romero said. “I love a good monster, but sometimes the monster is us.” Elizabeth Clemente
Keeping
the Republic:
A Defense of American Constitutionalism by Dennis Hale and Marc Landy, BC professors of political science
Hale and Landy counter common criticisms of the US Constitution with this defense of its enduring efficacy as a governing document. Critics contend that the Constitution’s age has left it inflexible in the modern era, but the authors argue the limits on power imposed by the Constitution help preserve a free government in America. By establishing a republic, not a democracy, they write, the Constitution ensures individual rights are protected against the will of the majority.
Final Engagement: A Marine’s Last Mission and the Surrender of Afghanistan by Christopher Izant ’10
In his debut book, Izant, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, gives his audience a firsthand perspective on what it was like to be stationed in 2012 in the country’s dangerous Helmand Province. Izant recounts the difficult conditions and disillusionment he and his team faced as they trained Afghan forces to fight alongside them against the Taliban, ten years before the fall of Kabul marked a total victory for the fundamentalist group.
Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver by Rebecca Valette, BC professor emerita of Romance
languages
Valette tells the story of Clitso Dedman, who took up wood carving at the age of sixty during the Great Depression and went on to create a new Navajo art form. Valette’s history shows the ways Dedman’s sculptures departed from traditional Navajo art, and traces the artist’s journey from a rural childhood in Arizona to the midlife decision to abandon a career as a blacksmith and builder to become a master sculptor who took Navajo art to new places.
WHAT I’M READING
Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia
by Marie Darrieussecq
This is not just a memoir about insomnia, it is a meditation on subjectivity—”Who is it that doesn’t sleep,” Darrieussecq writes, “when I don’t sleep?”—and on the economic and ecological catastrophes of our days: As nature dwindles, sleep dwindles. Wandering through cita tions and stories of famous insomniac authors, through pic tures, memories, and hard facts, Darrieussecq somehow gives us an example of how to deal with the end of the world. It is easy to read, but not at all superficial.
Tina Montenegro, assistant professor of French
Artificial intelligence is poised to transform society. How do we develop it safely?
BY LISA WEIDENFELD
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY STEPHANIE DALTON COWAN
When the company OpenAI released an artificial intelligence program called ChatGPT in 2022, it represented a drastic change in how we use technology. People could suddenly have a conversation with their computer that felt a lot like talking to another person, but that was just the beginning. AI promised to upend everything from how we write programming code and compose music to how we diagnose sick people and design new pharmaceutical remedies.
The possibilities were endless. AI was poised to transform humanity on a scale not seen since the Internet achieved wide-scale adoption three decades earlier. And like the dotcom craze before it, the AI gold rush has been dizzying. Tech companies have raced to offer us AI services, with massive corporations like Microsoft and Alphabet gobbling up smaller companies. And Wall Street investors have joined the frenzy. For instance, Nvidia, the company that makes about 80 percent of the high-performance computer chips used in AI, hit a market capitalization of $2 trillion in March, making it the third most valuable company on the planet.
But amid all this excitement, how can we make sure that AI is being developed in a responsible way? Is artificial intelligence a threat to our jobs, our creative selves, and maybe even our very existence? We put these questions to four members of the Boston College computer science department—professors William Griffith, Emily Prud’hommeaux, George Mohler, and Brian Smith—as well as Gina Helfrich ’03 of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Technomoral Futures, which studies the ethical implications of AI and other technologies.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Helfrich was interviewed separately, with her comments added into the conversation. >>
>> We constantly hear about the wonders of AI, but what questions should we be asking about it?
William Griffith: If you think back to social media, it actually changed the way we operate and interact. I’m wondering how AI will possibly either extend that or go in a different direction. We should look at AI from many ethical perspectives, such as justice, responsibility, duty, and so on. My sense is that is the way to think about most of the challenges that confront us, not only technologically but socially and environmentally.
Emily Prud’hommeaux: One of the big issues is going to be authenticity. When media, images, language, or speech are created through artificial intelligence, it’s getting to the point where it’s so good that it’s difficult to know if that product was produced by a human or by artificial intelligence. That’s one of the big things that people are struggling with right now—how to educate people so that they can tell the difference, because it’s going to get more difficult.
George Mohler: The question I find interesting is, is this an immediate existential threat or is that kind of overhyped? And if you look at the experts who invented this technology, they’re actually split. Some of them believe that in twenty years we could have artificial intelligence that’s smarter than humans. And then the other segment of AI researchers believe we’re very far from that.
Brian Smith: One of the first things that came out was the ethics of how people are behaving with these things. How will students, schools, teachers, faculty members deal with a machine that can essentially just do your homework? The problem is, people were going, “AI is this new thing, and we’re going to be scared of it.” But the reality is, it’s really academic integrity that’s the issue. So there is kind of a value system around academic integrity that has to come in before we start thinking about the technical pieces of things.
Prud’hommeaux: I think most students are using ChatGPT to guide them. And I don’t think many students are wholesale copying text from ChatGPT and popping it in a Word document and submitting it to their class. But I have noticed that I can tell when something was written by ChatGPT because it sounds really dumb in some way. It sounds like it was written by a team of marketing executives.
>> So how do we promote academic integrity in the age of ChatGPT?
Gina Helfrich ’03: I don’t know that professors and university leaders have a great answer yet. It’s all still so new. People are still being extraordinarily creative in the ways that they’re coming up with to use these tools. But the companies who created the tools didn’t have a clear vision of what they should be for in the first place. I don’t think that it’s helpful to assume that all students want to cheat on their essays. It’s more interesting to look at reasons that students choose to cheat or plagiarize, as opposed to singling out AI as somehow special. That being said, there’s this feeling that to stay on the cutting edge, universities should welcome the use of generative AI [which can be instructed by a person to create original pieces of writing, videos, images, etc.]. Yet, so much of what happens in the classroom is still left up to the individual instructor, and some instructors will say, “Yeah, go to town, use generative AI. We don’t mind.” And others will say, “absolutely not.” It must be very interesting from a student point of view to have polar opposite expectations and experiences around these tools, and I genuinely don’t know how they’re navigating it. My sense is that university leaders are really scrambling to try to figure out what line they should take on these tools.
>> How else is AI going to shape the development of our children?
Griffith: How this technology will affect kids cognitively, emotionally, and in terms of their education is going to be a serious issue. You can invent personalities, you can invent things in more realistic ways than ever before, and kids will figure out how to use this technology. I have great concerns about the development of children and the presence of this software.
>> Of course, it’s not just higher ed. Corporate America, Wall Street, the military, and so many other sectors are also struggling with these questions. Should the government step in and regulate AI?
Mohler: There’s so many different types of AI that each type would have its own issues and avenues for regulation. For example, with chatbots like ChatGPT or Llama, the issue is more around copyright issues— they are trained by using other people’s data—and what to do about that. Some people have said, “Oh, we should stop training those models.” That doesn’t make sense to me. It makes sense for people and sci-
entists to be able to investigate the models and then to figure out the copyright issues. On the other end of the spectrum, you have things like autonomous weapons for military use. That’s not going to be regulated by the US—there’s going to need to be some international treaties. Then there are technologies like autonomous vehicles or medical treatments that will need some sort of regulation.
Prud’hommeaux: I was recently reviewing papers for our main professional conference, and I read several that were proposing chatbots for mental health therapy. And for every single paper, there was one reviewer who was like, “I think this is not necessarily
William Griffith Associate Professor of the Practice in the BC Computer Science Department
Griffith, who is associate director of the BC Computing Center, studies the ethics and mindful uses of technology. He is a licensed clinical psychologist.
an ethical application of AI, to replace a human with a machine for a vulnerable person who’s experiencing a mental health emergency.” That’s something I can imagine being regulated relatively easily by the government. I’m teaching a criminal justice class right now, and one of the problems we’re looking at is dealing with recidivism, and how do you predict that? Can a person do a better job at predicting whether someone will commit another crime when they are let out of prison? Can a computer do a better job with that? And that’s something I can imagine being regulated, too. But some of the things that they want to regulate are more complicated—like, how do you force AI to not tell someone how to make a bomb if that’s what they request? There are all these things you can trick AI into doing for you and it will provide really good, accurate information. How is a company supposed to prevent those things from happening within their software? I think a lot of that kind of regulation would be very difficult to implement.
Helfrich: Historically, we’ve seen when there are innovations of various kinds, it can take a while for the gears of government to catch up. But ultimately, I think the public does expect that the government will step in and make sure that things that are being advertised and sold to the public are not going to be grossly harmful. I think we’re getting to that point now where governments around the world are catching up to this big change in the past few years around AI and starting to institute some much-needed regulations. I’m sure it is ultimately going to be an iterative process. Maybe we’ll have this first iteration of the regulations and we’ll find the ways that it’s working and the ways that maybe it’s not working and come back and make changes so that it works better.
>> It’s been reported that AI has been used to select the targets of drone attacks. Who bears responsibility when AI makes mistakes during wartime?
Helfrich: The topic of who’s responsible is huge in thinking about ethical AI. The researcher Madeleine Clare Elish came up with the concept of the moral crumple zone. A crumple zone on a car is designed to take the impact in a crash, so that it protects the person and passengers in the vehicle. The moral crumple zone is essentially the nearest human who can be blamed for whatever is happening with regards to the computer. Keeping with the theme of cars, think about a car like a Tesla that is in a self-driving mode when it gets into a crash. We say this self-driving car
Gina Helfrich ’03
Manager of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Technomoral Futures
Helfrich’s work is focused on the ethical implications of development in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other data-driven technologies. A PhD, she is also the deputy chair of the University of Edinburgh’s AI and Data Ethics Advisory Board.
crashed. Who should we hold responsible? Well, the person who put the car into the self-driving mode, right? That’s the nearest person that we can assign that responsibility to, so they’re in the moral crumple zone. It’s definitely something to be concerned about, because that can be a way of letting some of the companies that are pushing AI tools off the hook. At the same time, there are also decision makers in the organizations that use AI tools developed by tech companies. Those people also need to be held responsible and accountable for any mistakes. If we’re talking about a military use, for example, there has to be someone in the military brass who made the call to say, “We’re going to delegate these targeting decisions to a machine.” If the machine makes mistakes, who decided that the machine is the one that should make
those choices? The question of collective accountability and responsibility around AI tools is something that we have to keep in mind, because they’re so complex, and because the process that goes into their development and deployment goes through many, many hands.
Griffith: Using AI in warfare has complex, multilevel ethical and political implications, ranging from the international to the individual level. When can AI make decisions autonomously, if at all, and when will human intervention be required? It also raises the question: Can a machine be programmed with human ethical decision-making ability? The challenge for policy makers is to develop well-thought-out legal and ethical standards that will be applied individually and internationally. People say, “Well, it was the software that was the problem, and you can’t go after the programmers.” I think that some of these programmers ought to be like licensed engineers, in the sense that you wouldn’t go on the Tappan Zee bridge if it was built by people who weren’t licensed engineers. The software industry needs to think about themselves similarly to the engineering profession when it comes to licensing. That’s maybe part of the responsibility, but there are famous cases where a medical device killed people because the hospital using it didn’t investigate it well enough, and the people using it weren’t trained well enough, and the people that designed it used software stopgaps instead of hardware. You couldn’t ultimately assign responsibility in those cases because there were six players in the game. So I’m not sure how we regulate that. That’s a difficult problem.
>> But what does it mean for us as humans to hand off decision-making to a machine?
Griffith: Certainly, it can make us lazier mentally and otherwise.
Smith: With some of these tools, you go and query something, and it’ll just tell you stuff. Whereas, not that long ago, we would have to go to Google and get links, and then we would have to do a little bit of mental processing to make sense of the search results. Now you don’t even have to think about it. Context becomes really important. At what points does it make sense to use these things to gain some efficiency, to speed some things up, and hopefully not take away from our own ability? And then, of course, it also brings up the question of what is important to know—much like search engines raised the questions of what’s important to know. I remember people say-
ing, “Oh, kids don’t know the dates of the Civil War anymore.” Who cares? What really matters is, why was there a Civil War?
Griffith: The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget said you need a challenge to grow and develop your cognitive abilities. How do you get smarter if these technologies make everything easier?
>> What are some of the obstacles to international standards for responsible AI development?
Helfrich: Those efforts are already underway. There are many different principles that have been developed around responsible use of AI by all kinds of different organizations. But there’s a geopolitical struggle around the race for AI, like the US versus China. Those kinds of tensions lead away from a more unified international agreement. Colleagues of mine point out that we’ve accomplished this for other things that everyone agreed were really important. There are international standards around airplanes, for example. So it could absolutely be the case that we might see something like that with regards to AI. And if we don’t, then we can probably expect there to be differing AI regimes in different parts of the world. What’s expected with regards to AI in China might look somewhat different than the expectations in the US or in Europe.
>> As AI makes it easier and easier to generate authentic-looking imagery, how will we be able to trust anything we find online? Are we entering an unprecedented era of misinformation?
Prud’hommeaux: One of the challenges is it’s difficult for most people to tell the difference between something that was created by a computer and something that was created by a person. Tech companies are always going to be in a race to see who can get ahead of who in AI, but I feel like there’s another role they could take on, which is developing technologies that can help identify things that were created by a computer and then educating people about that. Maybe there’s more of a role for companies to be saying, “Here’s an image. We think it’s not a real image. We think this image was artificially created.”
Griffith: It makes me think of raising children who are subjected to this technology, and how we will teach them to make these decisions and handle these creations that we’re leaving them as we pass on, and I’m not sure the educational system is up to that yet.
J. Fitzgerald Professor and BC Computer Science Department Chair
Mohler’s research focuses on statistical and deep-learning approaches to solving problems in spatial, urban, and network data science.
Helfrich: I think digital literacy is part of the solution, but it’s certainly not sufficient on its own. There are efforts to think about new ways of verifying the provenance of an image. But human beings can only be so vigilant. The first deepfake that I was genuinely taken in by was a viral image of the Pope wearing a designer Balenciaga coat. I just thought, Oh, cool jacket—good for you. But the image was a fake. The reason that things like that fool people like myself is because we have no reason to be on alert or suspicious that a picture of the Pope in a jacket is something that isn’t actually accurate. And so I think that’s where malicious actors are really going to have the edge, because humans just don’t have the mental fortitude to be on alert for every single thing that we encounter and say, “Is this real? Is what I’m looking at a deepfake?” It’s exhausting. You just can’t question your reality every moment of every day like that. And that contaminates
George Mohler
Daniel
our information environment, because we risk getting into this situation where the digital infrastructure that we’ve come to rely on, like Internet search, becomes polluted by AI-generated content. We no longer know how to sift through what’s true from what’s false, because we’re used to being able to go into Google and get good information. But what happens when you go to Google and the top ten results are all AI-generated fluff?
>> The technology to replicate human voices is astonishingly accurate. We read about people being taken in by scammers imitating a loved one’s voice.
Prud’hommeaux: The technology for generating speech is actually really good. It used to be quite terrible and you could immediately tell if something was a synthetic voice. Now it’s getting much more difficult. I can’t even begin to figure out how you would stop that kind of scam from happening, but unfortunately, those kinds of scams are happening. Even without the help of artificial intelligence, people are being scammed all of the time over phone and Internet and text into sending money to places they shouldn’t send money to. I know educated people who have fallen victim to these kinds of scams. So I feel like while it is true that it’s very easy to impersonate someone’s voice now, it might be just a very small percentage of scams that are actually relying on that technology.
Helfrich: We might decide that artificial mimicking of human voices is too dangerous, and if it’s too dangerous, it’s off the table. Yes, maybe there are many ways that that could be useful. Maybe it could give a more robust voice for people who rely on technology for their own voice, like people who can’t speak with their vocal cords anymore. But maybe we decide that the benefit is outweighed by the harm of all the fraud and scams that are enabled by synthetic voices. It remains to be seen how these kinds of questions get addressed at the regulation level, but weighing benefits and harms is going to be a huge part of making those decisions.
>> AI is already allowing workers to offload some tasks to a computer. Isn’t there a risk that the technology could improve to the point where a human isn’t needed to do a job at all?
Prud’hommeaux: The actors and writers strike earlier this year was interesting. A lot of that had to do with artificial intelligence. Would studios replace writers with something like ChatGPT? Can AI create foot-
age of an actor giving a performance they never gave? I think that they were really ahead of the curve by striking when they did, because they recognized that automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning could potentially replace them. I don’t think it’s going to happen soon. We may be bumping up against some natural AI limits shortly. But I do think there’s the potential in other sectors for this same thing. Computer programmers are always worried that they’re going to be replaced by ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot or whatever. And I can certainly see that as a possibility, but right now, if you ask ChatGPT to do a lot of coding things, it kind of gets it right, but then it
Emily Prud’hommeaux
Gianinno Family Sesquicentennial Assistant Professor in the BC Computer Science Department
Prud’hommeaux’s areas of research include natural language processing and methods of applying computing technologies to health and accessibility issues, particularly in the areas of speech and linguistics.
makes stuff up and it gets stuff wrong. You definitely still need a human there to actually make it work and to integrate it into the system. So I can see it having an impact, but I don’t think it’s something that’s happening right now.
Helfrich: What we’ve seen so far is that any company that has tried to wholesale replace human beings with AI has later had to backtrack. The AI just does not perform up to spec in a variety of contexts. Many of these workplace concerns are around replacing employees with generative AI tools, and those tools have no concept of what is true and what is false. They don’t have any sense of what it means to be accurate to the real world. So there is an inherent risk that generative AI tools will make some kind of meaningful mistake that will come back to bite the company that has employed them. A lot of these tools are not ready for prime time in that way, and the hype has perhaps prematurely convinced some companies that they are ready—and these companies are reaping the consequences of those choices. Some kinds of work that people are used to doing will be handed off to AI tools, but in terms of AI operating all on its own to replace a person, that doesn’t seem feasible to me anywhere in the medium term, because this is an unsolved problem.
>> Human biases have been shown to influence everything from outcomes in the criminal justice system to hiring decisions in corporate America. Since humans are designing AI, how do we prevent human biases from making their way into these new technologies?
Griffith: I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of bias. It’s always going to be present because cultures have different values. A bias doesn’t mean negative. But if it becomes a prejudice, then that’s when I start to think about how we have to govern it. How did the biased data get into these files in the first place? People must have asked questions, and the questions are biased in the beginning. They’re value-laden. Look at the biases that are causing prejudicial laws to be made, prejudicial hiring decisions to be made, and so on and so forth.
Prud’hommeaux: It’s not that the algorithms are biased or that the people who made them are prejudiced or whatever. It’s that the data they’re being built on has bias in it. And that may be a bias that exists in the world, or it may be a bias of individuals who are creating content. I actually had my students ask ChatGPT to create a bio for a computer science professor, and
Brian Smith
Honorable David S. Nelson Chair and Associate Dean for Research at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development
Smith studies the design of computer-based learning environments, human-computer interaction, and computer science education. He also has an appointment with the Computer Science Department.
it was like, “He did this. He did that. He has a degree from this place.” And when I asked them to do it for an English professor, it was a “she.” For a nursing professor, it was “she.” For an engineering professor, it was “he.” Maybe ChatGPT is like, Well, this is the way it is in the world, so I’m going to predict the most likely thing. I think a lot of the bias is there in the data and trying to get rid of that is complicated. And a lot of those biases are not necessarily people being prejudiced. A lot of them are just reflecting the way the world is at certain times.
Mohler: With these models that are making decisions, we evaluate their accuracy for different groups of individuals. We can make explicit the models’ weaknesses. And then, because we can inspect the model, we can
try to adjust the model to reduce bias. There’s a whole subfield of computer science that is trying to deal with issues around algorithmic fairness and bias. There are people out there trying to solve those problems. If an algorithm or a human is going to make a critical decision, probably both are biased. Is it possible that with an algorithm in the loop, we could make that decision less biased? I think the answer is yes.
Griffith: And why do these programs have to think the way we do? If they thought differently, would that be a positive? Could they investigate our biases?
Helfrich: It’s a huge difficulty. Right now, a lot of that AI training data comes from the Internet. That leads to the question: Well, who’s most wellrepresented on the internet? The English language, for example, is hugely overrepresented. So even though having a diverse development team could be very helpful in improving problems with bias for AI tools, that is by no means enough, because the data that the AI tools are built upon themselves exhibit social biases. The digitally excluded are not part of the training data for AI tools. It’s a really difficult question.
>> It seems like every day we read another news story about a giant tech company buying up a new AI company. Is it a problem to have so few companies with so much control over this new technology?
Prud’hommeaux: They’re the ones that actually have the resources to be able to build these kinds of models. Something like ChatGPT or DALL-E—a university can’t really build that. We don’t have the resources to do that. The only people who can do that are these huge, huge companies with tons and tons of money and tons and tons of access to computing resources. So, until we can figure out how to make AI require fewer resources, it’s going to have to be them doing it. There is an effort through the National Science Foundation to create some sort of national artificial intelligence research resource that would pool computational resources for researchers in the US that might allow them to have similar resources to these companies.
Smith: I suppose the question is, even with the budget of the National Science Foundation, could you build something like a Google or a Nvidia? The amount of computing power is just so big. I talked to another group of universities who were thinking about whether they could in fact pool research: “We don’t
want to get left behind. How do we band together to build our own infrastructure to create models that are university-led?” I looked at them, I was like, “Well, this is an elite group. So if you guys did this, wouldn’t you effectively build the same problem? It would be the university elite as opposed to the corporate elite.” There lies the problem. I said, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you add to your team? Some historically Black colleges and universities, a couple of minority-servicing institutions?” And this was a panel. So they went, “Right, I believe we’re out of time.”
>> A number of prominent AI researchers have signed on to a statement warning that artificial intelligence could lead to human extinction, and science fiction often portrays AI gaining some kind of sentience that leads to the development of a rival consciousness. How plausible are these scenarios?
Mohler: People should think about what AI technologies do well and what they currently don’t do well. AI can write a plausible college essay. But we don’t have artificial intelligence that can clean your house. I think the distinction there is important, because normally we would have thought, “Well, writing a college essay is much harder than putting away the dishes in my kitchen.” But in fact, we are pretty far away from having any kind of technology that could do that for us. ChatGPT can’t plan. It doesn’t reason in the way you might want it to. It’s just measuring correlations in text and then inputting missing text after that. I think there’s a lot of steps that would need to happen to have movie-level artificial intelligence in our lives, and it’s unclear how you would get to that level of technology.
Smith: Someone asked me, “What about HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and movies like that? And I was like, “So it’s plausible because it happens in movies? Is there a non-fictional example that you can give me of machines trying to kill humans?” And that person got upset, saying, “That’s not funny.” I said, “No, it is. Because you can’t give me an example of this happening.” Mr. Coffee never decided one day, like, That’s it. We’re taking them down. Alexa didn’t say to the room, Trip them, knock them out, give them concussions. It doesn’t happen. It’s a weird thing to me that people would imagine, “Oh, it’s the end of the world,” when there are things that are happening right now in the world that we could actually be paying attention to that need attention, as opposed to thinking about the Roomba getting really mad and going, like, That’s it n
Making Headlines
For more than forty years, the Eagles who run the Dorchester Reporter have used their newspaper to inform and bring together one of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods. Today, they are a model for the community news publications that are launching all around the country in the wake of our crumbling traditional media infrastructure.
by tom mulvoy ’64
photography by lee pellegrini
Dorchester Reporter founder Ed Forry ’69, copublisher Linda Dorcena Forry ’96, executive editor Bill Forry ’95, and associate editor Tom Mulvoy ’64.
Iin the late spring of 2003, I picked up my ringing desktop phone and a good friend, Ed Forry ’69, was on the other end of the line. “Hi, Tom,” he said, “I’m calling to see if you can give me some help in the office.”
Ed and his wife Mary were the owners of the Dorchester Reporter newspaper, which for twenty years had been circulating weekly in Boston’s largest and most diverse neighborhood. I had retired a few years earlier from a thirty-four-year career at the Boston Globe, where I’d been fortunate enough to serve in a number of positions, including the final fourteen years as managing editor for news operations and front-page oversight. At the time of Ed’s call, I had just finished my fourth semester as an adjunct professor at Boston College, leading a seminar on how a large metro daily newspaper, in this case the Globe, comes together each day, from the first news meeting in the morning to the first-edition deadline at 11 p.m.
“How can I help?” I asked Ed. He said he was looking for a backup editor, someone to scour pages for typos, misspellings, layout problems, and so on. “It’ll
only take a few hours a week,” he said. I signed up on the spot. I had been rescued from retirement. I was back in a place where surprise and excitement were readily on offer: a newsroom.
Sadly, the editorial vigor that marked the Dorchester Reporter then, as now, stands in stark contrast to what has befallen so many news organizations across the country’s media landscape over the past two decades.
By the early 2000s, even as I was returning to a newsroom, a slow march to oblivion was underway for newspapers, with the internet setting in motion an inexorable decline in advertising dollars and circulation numbers. Papers large, medium, and small were shutting down, and those that continued to publish were plummeting in value.
It all added up to chaos for the newspaper industry. People working at newspapers with proud old names— the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and Los Angeles Times, to name three of the most prominent—became accustomed to waking up to news of yet another new owner, declining readership numbers, and worries about their jobs and pensions.
Here in Massachusetts, meanwhile, mediumsized papers like the Patriot Ledger in Quincy and the Enterprise in Brockton were undercut in their commitments to quality local coverage when they were bought out by big-chain firms. To save costs, the chains moved many of the editing and administrative responsibilities of these local papers to faraway centralized operations that serviced as many as 250 outlets from coast to coast. Statistics in a report released in 2023 by the Pew Research Center and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism tell a bleak story: The nation has lost nearly a third of its local newspapers—2,900 in total—since 2005, while more than half of all papers in the United States have changed owners since 2013. Through all this upheaval, 43,000 newspaper journalist positions have been eliminated. That’s nearly two-thirds of all such jobs. The carnage has resulted in more than half of the nation’s counties becoming what the report calls “news deserts,” meaning they have either no or very little access to a news source of any sort that covers their area. The problem is particularly acute in poorer and more rural areas, according to the report, and it’s hardly limited to newspapers. Overall employment in newspaper, television, radio, and digital newsrooms dropped by roughly 26 percent, or 30,000 jobs, between 2008 and 2020. And the bad news keeps on coming. Through the first three
months of this year, news organizations across the country eliminated some 2,100 jobs, 48 percent more than the same quarter in 2023, per the outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
All of this has had significant consequences for many more of us than just those who have been employed in the news business. “The significant loss of local news outlets in poorer and underserved communities poses a crisis for our democracy,” writes Penny Abernathy, the report’s coauthor and a Medill visiting professor. Indeed, the erosion of local news organizations has resulted in fewer contested local elections, lower turnout at the polls, and greater polarization, according to Rebuild Local News, a coalition of more than three thousand news and civic organizations. All of which may explain the motivation for a resolution sponsored by thirteen US senators to designate last April as “Preserving and Protecting Local News Month.”
But the news isn’t all bad. As the report points out, people all around the country—many of them with little or no journalism experience—are banding together
Ed Forry and his late wife Mary founded the Reporter in 1983 with a mission to strengthen the sense of community in Dorchester.
to form community news organizations of their own. Using the internet, social media, and good oldfashioned reporting techniques, these outlets are keeping tabs on what’s happening in their local town halls, businesses, and neighborhoods. Some are forprofit ventures, while others are nonprofit. Some publish online, while others still put out paper editions. What they all have in common, however, is a mission to sprinkle a little water into those news deserts.
One of them, the four-year-old California-based online news site Lookout Santa Cruz, which competes against a chain newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for “its detailed and nimble communityfocused coverage” last year of catastrophic flooding and mudslides in California.
These publications are using a formula that the Dorchester Reporter has followed for more than forty years now. Ed and Mary Forry promised from the get-
Neighbors all around the country are banding together to form community news organizations.
That’s made Ed Forry, four decades after he started in the news business, a kind of trailblazer.
go that the Reporter would help revitalize what they saw as a sagging value in public life. The paper would promote continuous and substantial engagement by neighbors and local businesses in the welfare of their shared community. The Reporter, then, has been exactly what the promising news organizations that are sprouting up across the country aspire to be: a mediating influence in bringing residents together to address local challenges collectively.
Somehow, more than four decades after getting started in the news business, Ed Forry has turned out to be a trailblazer.
Save for extended outings fifty and more years ago in service to the United States Air Force in faraway places like Texas and Mississippi, Edward W. Forry has lived and learned and worked in Dorchester,
Massachusetts, his entire life, which will reach eighty years this coming August.
In 1983, when the Dorchester Reporter was founded, Boston’s largest neighborhood was in a state of transition. Longtime residents were moving out in unusual numbers and newcomers of many new ethnicities were moving in. Ed and Mary, who had two children—Bill, who was ten, and five-year-old Maureen—and a mortgage, believed there was an opportunity for a new community paper to help better knit the changing neighborhood together, and to earn a living in the process. Ed, after all, had spent some time writing a column for the Dorchester Argus-Citizen
“I think I always had a calling to put out my own newspaper and cover my neighborhood, telling stories about Dorchester,” he told me. “Mary, as usual, stepped up and said, ‘I’ll support you if owning a newspaper is what you want to do. Just do it!’”
The couple launched their paper from a tiny newsroom that doubled as Maureen’s bedroom, on the second floor of their home in Dorchester’s Lower Mills neighborhood. Ed served as the paper’s reporter, editor, editorial writer, photographer, ad salesman, and circulation driver. Mary wrote for the paper—a particular favorite was her column “The Urban Gardener”—and helped to keep the books. The first edition, at twenty pages, was published in September 1983. “We promised our readers information about your church, your school, your neighborhood, your local merchants,” Ed recalled, “with advertisements for local businesses, and a classified section.”
Over the ensuing forty-one years, the Reporter has established itself as an indispensable part of life in Dorchester. Through the inevitable ups and downs, including Mary’s untimely death from cancer in 2004, the paper has faithfully told the stories of the neighborhood, never straying from its commitment to bring people together and strengthen the sense of community.
If anything, that commitment was only deepened in the mid-1990s, when Bill Forry ’95, P’26, who’d done some writing during his years at the Heights, formally joined the paper as its news editor. He’s the executive editor these days, but as from the beginning, he also reports and writes for each edition, along with his father, who now plays an active emeritus role. Bill is also the copublisher, a position he shares with his wife of twenty-four years, the former state senator (and fellow Eagle) Linda Dorcena Forry ’96, P’26, a Haitian American dynamo whose profile as a business leader
Tom Mulvoy, the former managing editor of the Boston Globe, was teaching journalism classes at BC in 2003 when Ed Forry asked him to help out at the Reporter for a while. He’s still there two days a week.
in the city’s C-suites includes serving as a trustee of the publicly traded utility company Eversource Energy. In her relatively new role as a Reporter executive, Linda is focused on recruiting new business and talent for the newspaper. Meanwhile, Maureen ForrySorrell works in the Reporter’s advertising department, maintains the paper’s website, and oversees a companion publication that the family also puts out, Boston Irish magazine.
There are all the usual comings and goings of a newspaper, but the Reporter generally has a reporting team of five (three full time, including Bill, and two interns), plus freelancing help, to cover Dorchester and neighboring Mattapan. Reporters file stories to both the weekly print edition and the paper’s website,
dotnews.com. As has been the case from the very start, little happens in Dorchester—from fires, crimes, and community meetings to rallies, sports events, and honor roll announcements—that is not recorded in the Reporter. The slogan of this paper, after all, speaks to a commitment to “the news and values around the neighborhood.”
“The Reporter strives to be more than a paper of record,” Bill told me. “On our better days, we’re the common ground, a town square, a place for neighbors to seek, build, and arrive at consensus, or something that approaches it. It’s an imperfect attempt at chronicling and celebrating our corner of this imperfect union.”
The paper takes seriously its obligation to report on the sweeping issues that are shaping the neighborhood, including a serious housing shortage, racial tensions, climate initiatives along the coastal neighborhoods, and the public transportation system. And, as ever, the paper’s dogged reporting often serves the interests of not just Dorchester’s residents, but the entire city’s.
Little happens in Dorchester that is not recorded in print and online by the Reporter’s journalists, photographed here in an edit meeting.
Last year, for instance, the paper broke the story that the city’s high school track teams were being forced to use their schools’ hallways as practice facilities because the world-class Reggie Lewis Center, which is supposed to benefit the residents of Boston first, was instead often being reserved for schools from the city’s affluent suburbs. The Reporter article was picked up by news organizations throughout the city, including the Globe and WBUR, and the Boston City Council eventually passed a resolution in support of greater access to the facility for Boston students.
“The Reggie Lewis Center story might be viewed as one example of the Reporter punching above our weight class,” Bill said. “It speaks to the power of a simple story well-reported and well-told. But it’s also important to note that stories like this are even more potent when carried in a product that has forty years of consistently reliable work behind us. The brand’s reputation precedes us each week—and that’s why the Reporter is looked to as a go-to authority on news far beyond our neighborhood lines.”
With four decades of operating this way, the Reporter offers a road map to the community news organizations taking root around the country.
In their recently published book
What Works in Community News, Ellen Clegg, my colleague for twenty years at the Globe, and Dan Kennedy, a media observer and a journalism professor at Northeastern University, take a deep look at the many local news organizations that have been launched amid the country’s crumbling traditional media landscape.
“It’s so clear that people miss having access to reported information about their communities,” said Clegg, who worked in supervisory positions in a number of departments at the Globe, including a term as editor of the editorial pages. “Cable television is driving a nationalization of news, where both Fox and MSNBC host a parade of pundits giving their views 24/7 on Trump, Biden, and other cultural wedge issues. But we tend to live our lives locally. That’s where we shop, shovel our sidewalks, and educate our children.”
But Clegg isn’t simply an experienced journalist covering this emerging story—she’s actually a character in the story itself. Two years ago, she helped launch Brookline.News, a nonprofit online publication dedicated to covering Brookline, Massachusetts. The idea
Linda Dorcena Forry ’96, the Reporter’s copublisher, is a former Massachusetts state senator whose role at the paper is focused on recruiting new business and talent.
invited their students to the newsroom once a week. “We learned from each other, and the enthusiasm of the students was downright contagious,” Clegg said. “They all wrote live for Brookline.News. It gives me great hope for the future of the Fourth Estate.”
“The Reporter strives to be more than a paper of record,” Bill Forry said. “On our better days, we’re a place for neighbors to seek, build, and arrive at consensus, or something that approaches it.”
came about in 2022, when Gannett Media shut down nineteen newspapers in Massachusetts, including the weekly Brookline Tab. “I realized that there was no reliable source of news about what transpired at the town meeting, and who was up for election,” Clegg told me.
Brookline.News endeavors to keep the city’s residents informed, Clegg said, but also to help strengthen the future of journalism by training tomorrow’s reporters. She and the paper’s founding editor, Sam Mintz, co-taught a class this year at Brandeis University and
In their book, Clegg and Kennedy focus primarily on nonprofit entities that, like Brookline.News, gather funding from reader donations, philanthropic grants, and their own commercial ventures, but they recognize that for-profit companies, like the family-owned Dorchester Reporter, are part of a movement they see as “profoundly positive.”
The reporter continues to be a profitable venture. The paper charges fifty dollars for an annual subscription, or each issue can be purchased at news outlets for fifty cents. On its website, the paper also provides an oppor-
tunity for readers who appreciate the paper’s role in the community to make donations.
“I would not rule out a nonprofit model as at least one pillar of our organization,” Bill Forry said. Still, he added, “I wouldn’t completely abandon the for-profit enterprise, in part because it seems unwise to put all our eggs into one basket.”
He noted that the back-and-forth with the local businesses who advertise in the paper is yet another important method for keeping up with what’s happening in the neighborhood. Ads deliver local news, too. “I’m cognizant of the fact that this symbiosis can sometimes raise the specter of conflict for journalism purists,” he said. Then again, newspapers have been supporting themselves and their employees via advertising revenue for generations. There’s also the fact, he said, that supporting a paper strictly via grants and donations from wealthy donors and nonprofit organizations can come with just as many potential conflicts. “Foundations and boards—as well meaning as they may be—can summon interests that are likewise problematic,” he said. “I also
Bill Forry is the executive editor of what is quite literally a family paper.
He’s the son of Reporter founder Ed, the husband of copublisher Linda, and the brother of advertising sales coordinator Maureen Forry-Sorrell.
worry about the sturdiness of philanthropic pillars and wonder if they will look with favor upon the offerings of smaller outfits as the years progress.”
At present, the Reporter puts all of its journalism for free on DotNews.com. Many papers have abandoned this approach, instead charging for access via digital subscriptions, a process known as setting up a paywall. But the Forrys say that asking everyone to pay will mean that those who can’t afford to do so won’t have access to the same news as everyone else—the antithesis of their mission for the paper. “I am resolved to resist pressures to put a paywall between our neighbors and the news we produce,” Bill said. “I think it undermines the brand and our impact. But it also does injury to our goal of equipping all of our constituents with the same information available to their neighbors. In my view, democratization of the news is critical to an informed citizenry and to our republic.”
It’s been more than twenty years since the phone call that brought me to the Dorchester Reporter, and here I am, still helping out at the paper a couple of days a week. It’s sentiments like the one above from Bill that explain not just what’s kept me around at this place, but also why I will be marking sixty years as a journalist next February.
Over my life, a newspaper has been almost a part of my wardrobe no matter where I’ve found myself. But at age eighty-one, the relentless onslaught of information, essential and not so much so, is overwhelming on too many days now. My suspicion, actually, is that my age has little to do with it. Journalism has been overrun by mass media, and we are all of us the worse for it. The Reporter, however, like so many of its community-news brethren that have more recently sprung up to fill the void, is a place that honors the very best of the grand tradition of newspapers.
Far too many of the national, buzzy sites have become lightly curated mishmashes of considered sentiment and irremediable, offensive blarney, bringing to mind a question that T.S. Eliot asked during the Great Depression: “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” n
Tom Mulvoy ’64 is the former managing editor for news operations of the Boston Globe.
Tracking Bigfoot Tracking Bigfoot
In an excerpt from his new book,
BC journalism instructor
In an excerpt from his new book, BC journalism instructor
John O’Connor ventures into the Northern California woods in search of an American monster.
John O’Connor ventures into the Northern woods search of an American monster.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAITLIN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAITLIN
CUNNINGHAM
CUNNINGHAM
Afew years ago, John O’Connor was casting about for something to do. O’Connor is a successful travel writer who teaches part-time in the Boston College journalism program, but he describes himself as “underemployed” nonetheless. When he finally settled on his next project, it involved writing a screenplay for a movie about the mythical beast Bigfoot.
“It wound up as a very bad B-movie script— a kind of horror-adventure flick,” O’Connor recalled recently. “You know, Bigfoot rampaging through this enclave of environmentalists, and kind of this whole … I’ll spare you the details. But anyway, it sort of grew from that.”
The “it” in question here is O’Connor’s new book, The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster, which he ended up pursuing instead of a movie deal. Published earlier this year by Sourcebooks, it has received considerable attention, including reviews by NPR and the New York Times and Washington Post.
The book examines the history of the Bigfoot legend, of course, meticulously charting purported sightings, important dates and people, and regional variations on the seven-hundred-pound mammal (Florida, for instance, is said to be home to the Skunk Ape, a fourtoed cousin of Bigfoot.) For all his documentation of the myth, however, O’Connor winds up being more interested in the people, known as Bigfooters, who pore over Bigfoot minutiae the way JFK-truthers do the Zapruder film. These are the people, men and middle-aged, for the most part, who excitedly tramp through woodlands in search of evidence of the monster’s existence.
So after more than a year of reporting, what can O’Connor tell us about whether Bigfoot is real? “The challenge of the book,” he said, “was to try not to put my foot down too firmly. There’s this kind of sweet spot of ambiguity. I didn’t want to prove or disprove that Bigfoot exists, but hopefully to remind people as much as possible to be rational, and to be guided by reason and fact-based science. But also to stay in contact with a kind of more enchanted view of the world.”
In the following excerpt from the book, O’Connor takes us into the California woods with a group of determined Bigfooters.
—John Wolfson
Northern California?
Some kinetic force had kept me away. Until now, at the tail end of my Bigfoot year. Coming down I-5, cresting a ridge, I gazed down a long gorge of pinyon-dotted hills. The land began teetering, the trees growing taller. Across upper-west California and southwestern Oregon, covering eleven million acres, runs the Klamath-Siskiyou wilderness. It contains some of our last truly ancient forests, making it a top contender for Squatchiest locale in the country.
Turning off the highway, I was bluntly decanted into a maze of logging roads lightly dusted with pine needles. My target was Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, in the Six Rivers National Forest. Fiftyfour years ago, filmmakers Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin—if “filmmakers” is the noun we’re after; they’d rented a Cine-Kodak K-100 from a Yakima camera shop—recorded a Bigfoot walking through a clearing on the creek’s sprawling sandbar. You’ve seen the footage: a wobbly, sepia-toned fifty-nine seconds of a bearishly stout Bigfoot, darkly furred like an otter, throwing a sidelong glance over its shoulder and holding the camera’s gaze before striding purposefully away. Whatever it is, you can’t quite take your eyes off it. A prelapsarian Adam, or Eve, as it turned out (a close viewing reveals prominent breasts). The film is the single most infamous and contested piece of Bigfoot evidence in existence, with an audience divided between those who’ve dismissed it as a hoax and those who believe it has never been convincingly debunked. Patterson and Gimlin always stuck by it. (Patterson passed away in 1972
at age forty-six. Gimlin is in his nineties.) Their brilliance was in selling us the idea of Bigfoot convincingly enough to last for half a century.
If not for the Patterson-Gimlin film, chances are Bigfoot would’ve faded into history’s back pages, a dustbin relic no better known than the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. From the Pattersonian stage, however, it trod audaciously into the American vernacular, embodying, in its homespun gigantism and subversive charm, the myth of America itself. Such is the talismanic regard for the film among Bigfooters that Bluff Creek has become something of a pilgrimage site, but only recently. The actual location was lost decades ago, misplaced at the foot of a troglodytic gulch. In 2011, a group of researchers calling themselves the Bluff Creek Project (BCP), referencing old sketches and photographs, located the unrecognizably overgrown site.
In the intervening years, the BCP has reshot the film several times to try to determine its veracity. Hamstrung by the fact that the celluloid “Patty,” as she’s known, is only about two millimeters tall and by the film’s poor quality, they’ll be the first to tell you they haven’t succeeded. After the promise of rediscovery, Bluff Creek relinquished a few clues. The film, however, remained dauntingly unknowable, its 954 frames occluded by a pestering question: Could Patty possibly be real? There’s more than the usual tension around the truth. Bigfooting’s guiding credo, it could be said, hangs in the balance. BCPer Robert Leiterman has this to say about Patterson and Gimlin’s legacy: “Either one of the most intriguing wildlife films of all time or the greatest hoax of a complicated century.”
All the same, the BCP illuminated an important popcultural moment at risk of falling into obsolescence.
Wanting to see their work, I reached out. They kindly agreed to let me tag along on a shoot. From member Rowdy Kelley, I’d received a GPS pin to their Bluff
Creek camp, where at last I came upon another vehicle, a sand-colored Dodge Ram, idling in a turnout. Inside, James “Bobo” Fay from Finding Bigfoot and Rowdy Kelley were chewing burritos with hot air blasting. They’d been waiting for me.
“Glad you made it,” Rowdy shouted from the passenger seat. “Any trouble?”
“Eh.”
We spiraled down a rutted lane to a berm roosted high above Bluff Creek. A few trucks were wedged around a four-corner farmer’s market tent. We warmed ourselves at a propane heater underneath. On cue, it began to rain. Rowdy, fifty-four, a film producer and location scout with a grizzled face like the actor Timothy Olyphant, sparked a camp stove for a round of hot chocolates. Daniel Perez, fifty-eight, an electrician who publishes a monthly newsletter, Bigfoot Times, and Robert Leiterman, sixty, a retired park ranger, introduced themselves. Daniel wore a gray hoodie, jeans, and a camo ball cap over shoulder-length black hair. Robert, in wire-rim glasses and fleece vest, leafed through a galley copy of his new book, The Bluff Creek Project: The Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film Site, a Journey of Rediscovery. All were from California and had been involved with the BCP in one way or another for years.
Bobo, though not officially of the group, had been to Bluff Creek a bunch and was instrumental in the film site’s rediscovery. He was much thinner and more rangy looking than on TV. His dark hair was cut short. His deep-set eyes glittered with intelligence and shyness, as if he understood something I did not and never would. He was sixty-one years old and well over six feet tall. Aside from Barackman, his Finding Bigfoot costar, perhaps no living Bigfooter has a reputation to compare with Bobo’s. Before it ended in 2018, the show ran for nine seasons and one hundred episodes, snaring 1.3 million weekly viewers and spawning two spin-offs (Finding Bigfoot: Further Evidence and Finding Bigfoot: Rejected Evidence), despite failing to make good on the promise of its title. It remains one of Animal Planet’s most-watched shows. Bobo couldn’t stay. He had somewhere to be. Before leaving, he loaned me a winter sleeping bag. I’d brought only my summer bag (“It’s California. How cold could it be?”).
In the morning, Robert, Daniel, Rowdy, and his dogs, Chloe, a fox-rat terrier, and Daisy, a Westie, tramped down to the film site. It was in a densely timbered wood of alder and maple. It bore little resemblance to the sun-washed glade in the original film. When Patterson and Gimlin visited in 1967, the place had been scoured by a flood. The BCP had cleared brush and saplings to return the site to a semblance of its former self, but it remained marked by time’s current. Obscurities lingered. Using measurements made in 1971 by Bigfooter René Dahinden, they set themselves the task of reconceptualizing the film site,
laying out a surveying grid, remeasuring, and formulating ideas about what had happened here. “Trying to locate the landmarks through a fur coat in a lousy film is a losing proposition,” a skeptical David Daegling has written. But Daegling, author of Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend, had never been to Bluff Creek and had not seen the landmarks for himself. In fact, the BCP had located landmarks, or “artifacts,” as they called them—tree stumps, fallen logs, a big Douglas fir over Patty’s shoulder in frame 352, taking bore samples to assess their age—and confirmed some of Dahinden’s data, such as Patty’s approximate pathway and the distance, roughly, between her and Patterson (one hundred feet). In 2011, Gimlin came down to eyeball where he’d seen Patty slouching toward infamy all those years ago. It was about twenty feet off the BCP’s estimation.
This afternoon, they were tinkering with camera lenses. Dahinden, who died in 2001, thought Patterson’s camera had a 25-milimeter lens. It’s a signal detail, Rowdy said. If you know the lens size plus focal length, aperture, and distance between the camera and subject, you can guesstimate the latter’s height with something called a field of view formula. Patty’s height has been reckoned at between six feet and seven feet three inches, but no one really knows. “If she’s six feet, it could very well be a man in a monkey suit,” Daniel explained. “But if she’s seven three, then the probability of a monkey suit radically diminishes because how many seven foot three people do you know?” Patty’s height, then, was indicative of the film’s plausibility. “Skeptics want Patty to be shorter so they can throw the whole film out,” said Daniel. The hope was, by reshooting with 15-, 20-, and 25-milimeter lenses, the BCP could, once and for all, settle the question of Patty’s height.
By most accounts, Roger Patterson was a con artist who struck on a Bigfoot “documentary” as a moneymaking scheme and roped in his pal Bob Gimlin to assist (they were scouting for tracks along Bluff Creek when they happened upon Patty, so the story goes). These are suppositions, but to skeptics, Patterson’s case doesn’t look great. The fallout commenced immediately. In 1968, Bigfooter Bernard Heuvelmans was among the first to declare the film a patent fraud, noting an odd likeness between it and an illustration for an old article in the pulp men’s magazine True (the illustrated Bigfoot also had breasts and threw an over-the-shoulder glance). British primatologist John R. Napier, otherwise sympathetic to Bigfooters, thought the biomechanics of Patty’s gait pointed to a hoax—“The creature shown in the film does not stand up well to functional analysis. There are too many inconsistencies.” Although he did admit he “could not see the zipper.” Daegling, after analyzing the film frame by frame with an expert in hominid locomotion, came to an analogous conclu-
sion: “It is a testament to human ingenuity and mischief rather than to the presence of an undiscovered species.” It didn’t help matters when, in 2004, a costume maker named Philip Morris told writer Greg Long he’d sold a gorilla suit to Patterson for $435 shortly before the film came out. Or when Rick Baker, a special effects and makeup artist who created Harry in Harry and the Hendersons, said the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot looked like it was made with “cheap, fake fur.” Or when a Pepsi bottler from Yakima, Bob Heironimus, claimed he’d been the one wearing the suit. Or when Bigfooters Cliff Crook and Chris Murphy, using computer enhancements, enlarged the film to reveal what appeared to be metal fasteners on Patty’s back. Even Robert Leiterman, in his Bluff Creek homage, concedes, “I’d rather it were otherwise, but the case for Bigfoot just isn’t looking strong to me these days.”
Frame 352 from the famed Patterson-Gimlin film that allegedly shows Bigfoot in the wild. The film is the single most infamous and contested piece of evidence for the existence of the woodlands monster.
Admittedly, it’s hard to watch the film and not see a singing telegram. But enthusiasm for it has in no way dimmed. The anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum, in Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, mounts a vociferous refutation of the above. Not only do the gait biomechanics, musculature, and physical dimensions hold up to scientific scrutiny, he wrote, but the costume technology available to Patterson in 1967 couldn’t have fabricated a creature as sophisticated as Patty. Nor could it today, he claims. “Isn’t it curious that such a hypothetically skilled costume designer had never been employed in the Hollywood film history then or since?” For some Bigfooters, Meldrum’s word is enough.
The Bluff Creek Project tended to be more laid-back about the whole thing. They neither wanted to debunk the Patterson-Gimlin film nor make excuses for it but simply to account for how it’d been made. “I just focus on what I know,” Rowdy told me, “which is film.” It
required a stubborn attentiveness to detail bordering on obsession, a near-Calvinist work ethic, and a stomach for truly terrible weather.
The guys had more to do. I puttered around, taking photos of the creek and film site. Bluff Creek was all but cut off from the outside world. Given time, it would return to its old stolidity, to its manifold uselessness. For now, it lay somewhere between pristine and cultivated, wild and tame. You can trace the etymology of “Bigfoot” to this tangle. Just upstream from us, on August 27, 1958, a cat skinner named Jerry Crew found sixteen-inch footprints in the dirt near his bulldozer on Bluff Creek Road, then being cleared for logging access. Other men at the worksite had seen similar tracks. After the Humboldt Times reported the story, the Associated Press picked it up: “Who is making the huge 16-inch tracks in the vicinity of Bluff Creek? Are the tracks a human hoax? Or, are they actual marks of a huge but harmless wild-man, traveling through the wilderness?”
Crew referred to the print’s owner as “Big Foot.” They gradually petered out, along with the news coverage, but the name stuck.
A decade later, Patterson’s film fused Bigfoot into our perceptual milieu. The film’s success lies as much in its medium as in its timing. When it landed in theaters in 1968, packaged as a feature-length documentary, Bigfoot: America’s Abominable Snowman, moviegoing was experiencing a seismic shift away from small, urban movie houses to suburban multiplexes and rural drive-ins. That’s inadequate to describe a decade of white flight, exclusionary zoning laws, and quasi-legal segregation that left African American neighborhoods like Chicago’s South Shore in havoc. But suffice it to say that seven-hundred-seat suburban/rural theaters meant the Patterson-Gimlin film could be seen by millions of Americans.
In its wake came a flotsam of Bigfoot movies, both fictional and non, playing to predominantly white audiences. All but one were flesh-obsessed, bottom-feeder schlock of chartless, tsunamic stupidity, including Schlock! (1973), about a Bigfootesque serial killer who terrorizes a California suburb while falling for a witless blind girl with a heart of gold.
M
Bigfoot reached a cultural zenith in the seventies, captivating imaginations and inspiring several (forgettable) movies.
By the late ’60s and early ’70s, Bigfoot took on an increasingly starring role outside the multiplex too. No doubt emboldened by Patterson’s film, eyewitnesses, seeking validation and perhaps more, sprang forth from Florida glades, the Jersey Pine Barrens, Delta bottomland, the Colorado Plateau, Kentucky hollows, and Texan Hill Country, bearing both cogent and overcooked accounts. John Green, in his migratory treasury of sightings, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, claimed to have dug up fifteen hundred “confirmed” Bigfoot encounters in the United States prior to 1978, including a swollen nine-year sweep from ’68 to ’77. “Bigfoot was entering its halcyon days, the 1970s,” wrote Joshua Blu Buhs, “when it was an entertainment icon, object of ardent devotion, and subject of scientific inquiry.”
Before we left Bluff Creek, Robert shoveled clumps of dirt into sandwich bags for souvenirs, taking care to refill each divot he made. “You wouldn’t want a Bigfoot to twist its ankle,” he joked. We huffed back to camp, Rowdy and I carting a wheelbarrow of filmmaking tackle up and over the Sisyphean ground, every bend revealing a calamitous rock scree or miasmic worm ball of roots and mud.
At my car, I produced a six of Coors, ice-cold and glistening magnificently. I handed one to Rowdy. We toasted the day’s labor. “Very cool” was his verdict. I couldn’t have agreed more. With Bobo’s sleeping bag rolled out in my tent, the aches of the day subsiding, the roar of wind quieted by the trees, I didn’t want it to end. Even in my frozen-catatonic state, it was electrifying. In my notebook I scribbled: “I could stay out here a hundred nights!” n
RECONNECT III: Honoring Yesterday, Celebrating Today, Building Tomorrow
This summer, scores of Eagles will return to the Heights for RECONNECT III, a celebration of Boston College’s African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American (AHANA) alumni community. Founded in 2009 by the late Keith A. Francis ’76, RECONNECT is regarded as the University’s largest gathering of AHANA alumni. A joyful homecoming, honoring the myriad, rich traditions and contributions of our alumni of color, this weekend is an invitation to return to the place where so many special relationships began.
But don’t take our word for it—here’s why some AHANA alums think you should join them on campus July 26–28!
What does RECONNECT mean to you (and the BC AHANA community)?
“BC provided me with a community where I felt I belonged—a community of people who understood me without having to always explain myself and my experience and a community dedicated to uplifting and empowering each other. RECONNECT gives us all a chance to connect with each other and to continue building the community we experienced as undergraduates or grad students.”—Arivee Vargas Rozier-Byrd, Esq. ’05, JD’08, HON’22
What’s your favorite memory from past RECONNECTs?
“On the last day of the first RECONNECT, Keith [Francis] and I stood by Gasson and couldn’t even speak. We were just blown away by what had happened—in terms of the numbers, the people we saw. It was outstanding, a huge success.
It was the first time most of the people going back to the 70s at BC had seen each other. And they were able to pick up where they left off 30 years later, rekindling their relationships and becoming resources for others professionally. We were just overwhelmed.”—Kevin Malone ’78
Why should alumni attend RECONNECT III?
“There’s so much impactful work being done that alumni are not necessarily privy to. RECONNECT is a chance to learn more and get engaged in work that many of us were involved in as undergrads and/or grad students. Lastly, the weekend is a guaranteed fun time, and we all deserve a weekend of fun for ourselves!”—Vargas Rozier-Byrd “Attend RECONNECT for a unique BC experience—see your friends on campus, enjoy Boston in summer, and as a reminder to give back and support the BC community for future graduates!”—Arnie Sookram ’91
“ Why not!?! Returning to campus (which looks MUCH different than when many of us were undergrads) brings back so many memories. It’s important for alumni of color to re-walk the steps that helped mold us into the successful adults we’ve become. This is a time for AHANA alumni to interact in a small, familiar environment designed for connecting with one another.
A s Maya Angelou said, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ Attending RECONNECT will give you a feeling you’ll never forget!”
Dawn Mosby ’82, MEd‘83, H’03
Alumni Class Notes
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1956
John Oteri stated in the Class of 1956 50th Anniversary Yearbook that he was still working as a CPA and will continue working. He is still preparing tax returns and might be the oldest licensed CPA in Massachusetts. His wife, Helen, died in 2020 and joined their son, Mark, in heaven. He misses her very much. Both their granddaughters are now in college at Endicott and Virginia Tech. He is looking forward to BC vs. VT this year. // James Glynn is enjoying retirement after having five daughters and 13 grandchildren (eight girls and five boys), and spending time in Sarasota, Florida, with his wife, Madeline. They are proud to be great-grandparents to their eldest granddaughter’s son. They have been given so many blessings all these years! // Pierre Godefroy of
Del Mar, California, is going to a family reunion in Dublin, where the expected turnout will be 92 family members. The Dublin trip will be preceded by a visit to Paris.
1958
Bill McGurk reported that his wife of 65 years, Ann Andrews, passed away. He continues to be in good health and believes that the good die young! // Ellen Every Yavel is still living in Manhasset. She and her husband, Bob, spend the summer at their house in Harwich Port and February in Puerto Rico. This year, they will celebrate Bob’s 90th birthday, followed by their 60th wedding anniversary.
NC 1958
Kate Glutting Arcand was Patty Peck Schorr’s dearest friend since their days together at Eden Hall in Philadelphia. She was the head of school and a blue ribbon and consistently lived those necessary traits throughout college, marriage, family life, and service in her community. To know Kate was to know commitment, faith, sacrifice, joy, and love. She was predeceased by her husband, Dick, and her daughter, Mimi, and leaves behind four sons and their families, two brothers, two cousins, and innumerable grateful and admiring friends.
Class correspondent: Patty Peck Schorr // dschorr57@verizon.net
1959
65th Reunion
Peter B. Quinn, a Newton native, died on October 8, 2023, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After his US Navy service and a brief banking career, he spent 30 years with the Department of Defense (Office of the Comptroller, Department of the Navy) at the Pentagon. He was the father of two sons and grandfather to six boys. // Pat Mullins died on August 23, 2023, at her home in Groton, Connecticut, surrounded by her family. Pat put her nursing career on hold to be the mother of five: Daniel, Maria, Pamela, Andrea, and John. She returned to nursing at a private nursing home in Connecticut. She then went to work for the state as head of a crisis team, a head corrections nurse, and eventually head psychiatric nurse at York Prison until she retired. She is survived by her husband, Frank; five children; 10 grandchildren; and sisters Bea Love and Michele Rae. Class correspondent: William Appleyard // bill.appleyard@verizon.net
1960
Bob Rudman received an award from the SERRA International Club for his leadership of the communications committee for the past two years. He has been the vocations committee chair and has been instrumental in developing a program to distribute “vocation coins” to people who priests and sisters feel are candidates for religious life. // Fr. Edward Byington passed away on December 7, 2023. He was a diocesan priest of the
COURTESY OF PIERRE GODEFROY ’56
COURTESY OF THOMAS KELLY ’60
Diocese of Fall River and is buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Fall River. // Tom Kelly attended his grandson’s graduation. He is a fourth-generation graduate of BC. Tom will stay on for his 60th class reunion at Tufts University before returning home to Arizona to organize his second RV journey to Alaska for fly fishing. // Leo Shea joined a small group of BC alumni and friends for a week to serve Sophie’s Place, an orphanage for children with special needs in Gordon Town, Jamaica. He was able to visit St. George’s College, Kingston, where he taught as a BC lay missionary in 1960–1961. Class correspondent: John R. McNealy // jmcnealy@juno.com
NC 1960
The class sends their love and prayers to Stella Clark O’Shea on the passing of her husband, Rick, on December 31, 2023. They were married for 63 years and have five children. // Pat Winkler Browne and Patty Prince ’80 chaired the 27th Annual Newton/BC Tea at Congressional Country Club. Class correspondent: Patricia Winkler Browne // enworb1@verizon.net
1961
Pat Bedard Triggs sadly announces the death of her husband of 61 years, Bobby Triggs. He suffered a spinal cord injury five years ago and had been on hospice for the last 13 months. Most mercifully, he was able to be cared for at home, as Pat used every bit of her BC nursing education! // Bob Branca’s granddaughter will be applying to BC next year, and his grandson was admitted to Brown University. // Jane Murphy Cunniffe is getting ready to celebrate her 90th birthday with family and friends coming from Boston and South Carolina. She is still helping friends with medical questions; it keeps her on her toes. She’s also continuing with painting classes. // Jack Keefe and his wife, Rose Marie, still live in Arlington and are well into their second decade of retirement. His latest book, Deathtrap: Boston’s Pickwick Club Disaster, was published in January 2024. His father was at the Pickwick Club that night, but he had the good fortune to leave just a short time before the collapse.
It wasn’t soon enough, however, to prevent every Boston newspaper from including his name in their initial lists of the missing and feared dead.
NC 1961
Missy Clancy and Bob Rudman ’60 attended a get-together in Nashville in early December 2023 with local alumni and BC staff members prior to the BC–Vanderbilt basketball game. It was great to meet more recent grads of BC. Class correspondent: Missy Rudman // newtonmiz@aol.com
1962
The annual Baseball Night at Fenway was a smashing success. Guests for the special evening were Birdball’s own Jake Alu ’19, Emmet Sheehan ’23, and Sal Frelick ’22, who fascinated the huge crowd with detailed experiences of what it is like to be a Major League player. In addition, for the first time, the Pelly Award was presented to a team of three: Eileen Faggiano, Loretta Gailius, and Eileen Novelline, in recognition of their years of commitment and service to the Diamond Club. // Mary Elizabeth Lebreck Kelley passed away. She graduated with a BS in nursing. She pursued master’s degrees in both educational administration and the science of nursing while employed as dean of the Trinitas School of Nursing. Her mission to improve nursing education led to many awards: Fellow of the National League for Nursing, Nurse Recognition Award, Visionary Leadership Award, and Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree.
Our condolences to Todd; Michael and his wife, Tate; and Mary’s three grandchildren. // Joe Dolan is still active and working on his bucket list. So far, he has visited over 48 countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, most recently Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Slovenia in the fall of 2023. He spends the rest of his free time visiting his son in Rye, New York; watching his three grandsons play club and high school hockey; and visiting his granddaughter, a college student in Los Angeles. He still is in contact with a few classmates and would love to hear from others. // Ron Reilly passed away. He began his military career and loyal service to US veterans in the Marine Corps, and after graduation served in the US Air Force. After retiring, he served as National Service Officer for the DAV as well as NH Adjutant. He received many awards for his civic work in impaired driver prevention, Special Olympics, and coaching. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Polly. Condolences to Lisa, Ron, Ross, Ryan, and Ron’s five grandchildren, whom he loved visiting often. Class correspondent: Eileen Faggiano // efaggiano5@gmail.com
1963
Ed Spain, Gerry Ward, John Pellegrini, Bob Reardon, and their spouses met for their annual New Year’s three-day gathering on the Cape, where their wives graciously listened to the same reminiscences they hear every year. // Al Andrea, an emeritus professor of medieval world history at the University of Vermont, saw the appearance of his 20th academic book in April 2024. Expanding Horizons: The Globalization of Medieval Europe, 450–1500, which is intended for use in classrooms and is also aimed at general readers, traces the expansion of Latin Christendom’s physical and imaginative frontiers from the mid-fifth century (the beginning of the conversion of the Irish) to 1500. // Peter R. Blum, JD’63, of West Hartford, Connecticut, has passed away. He was the former chairman of the Connecticut State Retirement Board, a mediator, and an arbitrator. Apart from the law, he was a successful art collector and dealer. He is survived by his wife, Ronnie, and two daughters. // Dom Antonellis is so happy that BC has a new football coach.
COURTESY OF JOHN KEEFE ’61
He is looking forward to the program building to its former winning ways. Dom and his wife, Joan, just welcomed their eighth great-grandchild, Elisabeth, into their family, which now is 28 strong. God bless us all. // Gene Durgin has recently retired from his many years in a volunteer position as chairman of the board of trustees at Bridgewater State University. Under Gene’s leadership, Bridgewater State made great strides, including construction and rehabilitation of the present 25 buildings on the campus. As a tribute and recognition of Gene’s contributions, the university elected to have him give the commencement address at graduation and awarded him a well-deserved honorary doctorate degree. // Bill Moloney ’63, MA’64, is a nationally syndicated columnist for The Hill, America’s most viewed political news site. Previously, his articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, and the Denver Post Class correspondent: Ed Rae // raebehan@verizon.net
1964
60th Reunion
Lester MacLaughlin is currently living in Marblehead. He and his wife, Helen, are approaching 60 years of marriage, with seven children, 13 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Their immediate family totals 31. He is still working as a forensic engineer. Helen is retired as an inner-city K–8 principal and now drives Lester’s truck to faraway events. They have season tickets to BC football and hockey. // Ann Carty Thrailkill celebrated her birthday with a former classmate. She is still doing volunteer work at a few sites after her retirement after 35 years at the VA hospital in Palo Alto, California. Both grandchildren (granddaughter a BC grad and grandson from Harvard) are engaged, so she’ll be returning to the East Coast for their weddings. Both are Wall Street employees. BC is always part of her best memories!
1965
Jerry Rafaniello attended the BC Club of Cape Cod Christmas Party at the Hyannis Yacht Club. He sat with Nancy Brox Jones and Mike Jones and had a great
time sharing stories about BC, family, friends, and career. It was a lively group in a great setting, and he can’t wait until next year. Jerry is still working with Aflac. His wife, Carroll, is fully retired. They maintain homes in Bristol, Connecticut, and East Sandwich. // Nancy Brox Jones and Mike Jones winter in beautiful Scottsdale and were able to get to the two BC baseball victories at the MLB Desert Classic at Salt River Fields. Great games, beautiful weather, and lots of team spirit. Class correspondent: Patricia Harte // patriciaharte@me.com
NC 1965
Marylou and Andy Murphy ’64 spend six months in Kauai each year to stay away from the nasty weather on the mainland. They returned to Seattle at the end of April and plan to attend Andy’s 60th Reunion in Chestnut Hill. Sixty years? Hardly seems possible! Class correspondent: Linda Crimmins // mason65@me.com
1966
Dr. Janice Barrett retired as professor emerita from teaching at Lasell University. During her decades-long career in education, she taught at Wellesley High School, Boston University, Harvard University, Quinnipiac University, Dublin City University (as a Fulbright Scholar), Northeastern University, and Boston
College’s Woods School. She credits the Lynch School of Education with the excellent foundation for her career in education. // Arnold Garber has been married to Marsha Schultz Garber since September 2, 1967. He and Marsha have two daughters, Stefanie and Iris, who are Rutgers graduates. Stefanie has three children, two daughters and a son. Her oldest daughter had a baby daughter, Natalie, in December 2022. She is the first great-grandchild. Arnold retired from a 37-year career with Dunkin’ in 2016 and lives in an adult community in central New Jersey.
NC 1966
Mary Kay Brincko Peterson died on December 30, 2023, in Hartford, Connecticut, after a short hospital stay. After earning a master’s degree in education when her own children were in school, she taught in the Hartford school system for some years. She was a positive force and a good friend to many, a plant whisperer, a prayer warrior, and a Words with Friends regular. Her beloved husband, Rod, died in 2011, but she will be missed by her daughter, Marney, her son, Colin, and her four grandchildren. // Sandra Puerini Del Sesto was awarded the 2023 Excellence Award from the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium for her contributions to the field of behavioral health. Sandra continues to work part time as a national consultant and master trainer in her field, providing all her trainings virtually. She is a proud mother of three and delighted grandmother of five grandchildren, all of whom live near her and her husband, Richard. Class correspondent: Cathy Hurst // catherine.b.hurst@gmail.com
1967
John Hoyle is still working and living in Northern California. He was just awarded the President’s Club Award for Top Producers at Dudum Real Estate Group in Danville, California, for helping friends and family solve their real estate needs. // Paul Hughes’s retirement is still going well. He is looking forward to seeing his son, Moses, graduate from Virginia Tech. Four decades of college bills are finally coming to an end. Go Eagles. //
COURTESY OF JANICE BARRETT ’66
Jack Lambert and Jim Peters attended Pete Osmond’s celebration of life in East Aurora, New York. Pete was a marketing major, originally from Watertown, New York. Pete was in Army ROTC and in Nam. He was in Army aviation, flew helicopters, and retired with the rank of Major. He worked for the FAA and Lockheed Martin after military service. Pete was a great friend to many at BC. // Joe LoBiondo has passed away. Joe was an accounting major, originally from Rosenhayn, New Jersey. Joe and Jan moved to Lewes, Delaware, in 1977 to be closer to their kids. // Paul Scarlata, also an accounting major, passed after a long fight with Parkinson’s. Paul was originally from Quincy but also lived in Wellesley and Westwood. He and Patty moved to Pine Hills in Plymouth in 2005. Paul was for many years the finance director of the Pilgrim Society of the Pilgrim Hall Museum. Paul owned and managed the Colonial Mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for many years. // Alzheimer’s took Bob Slattery. Bob retired after serving as the managing director with Smith Barney Citigroup (Hingham office). Bob is survived by his wife, Anne, and their children, Brendan, Margaret, Matthew, and Kathryn. The class offers their condolences. // Mary-Anne and Charles Benedict were glad to see fellow rink rats Paul White, Tom Marchitelli, Charlie Reilly, Frank Salimbene, and Fred Kinsman at many of the BC men’s hockey team home games. Rumor has it that 1967’s own Jerry York has been seen occasionally as well. Go Eagles! Class correspondent: Mary-Anne and Charles Benedict // chasbenedict@aol.com
1968
James Everett Gilcreast Jr. ’68, MBA’79, MA’81, former employee in what is now University Advancement, died on September 5, 2023. He was the husband of Mary O’Connell Gilcreast ’69; father of Diane, Emily ’03, James, Laura, and Daniel ’09; son; brother; and uncle to many alums. A near-lifelong football seasonticket holder, he never left a game early and loudly and joyfully sang “For Boston” and the alma mater. He was infinitely proud of his BC education. Class correspondent: Judith M. Day // jnjday@aol.com
1969
55th Reunion
Paul Fulchino has been operating partner at AE Industrial Partners, LP, a private equity firm specializing in aerospace/defense, power generation, and industrial manufacturing, since 2015. Previously, he was a strategic advisor to the Boeing Company and led two aerospace companies, B/E Aerospace, Inc. and Aviall, Inc. He has been married 47 years to Pat, an avid equestrian, and has four grandchildren, two of whom have attended BC. He divides his time between Palm Beach, Florida; Boston; and North Conway, New Hampshire. // Steve Calabrese is moving back to Boston’s waterfront after 38 years in New York City, nine years on Nantucket, and the last five in Naples, Florida. Steve and his wife, Patricia, had moved to Naples for health reasons. With her passing, Steve has no reason to remain in Florida. His native New York has too many ghosts, so Boston with its proximity to BC will be both a new and an old home for him. // Barry Green, formerly “Greenspoon,” is semiretired from the legal business and is moving toward full retirement. Barry and wife Joan keep themselves busy with traveling on cruise ships and vacationing, including going to Naples, Florida, to visit their daughter, Pam (who is also a lawyer and a Syracuse Law School grad), and their two grandchildren Lilly and Ingrid. They also spend time with their son, Evan, and grandchildren Chloe, a junior at UMass Amherst, and Ben, who is a senior at Dover/Sherborn HS. // Jim O’Brien of Hingham passed away peacefully on December 8, 2023. Sympathy goes to his wife, Candace; son, Scott; and daughter, Meredith. Jim also leaves four grandchildren: Harper, Julianne, Riley, and Tatum. Jim was a successful businessman, initially commercializing medical technology at Harvard Medical School and the Texas Heart Institute. Jim spent the second half of his career in the investment banking industry. He also served on the board of trustees at Thayer Academy and Rhodes College. // James “Jay” Kavanah ’69 , JD’72 , of Hanover passed away on February 22, 2024. Sympathy goes to his wife of over 50 years, Carol; his son, Jeff; grandson, Sam; daughter, Jen; and
granddaughter, Caitlin. Jay had a successful business career serving as a partner at Coopers & Lybrand and director of corporate tax at BankBoston before his retirement from Waters Corporation, where he served as VP of Tax. Jay was an avid fan of BC football and hockey. // The Communication Department at Boston College is currently attempting to identify the Leonard Persuasive Speaking Contest winner for the 1968–69 school year. Please contact Associate Professor of the Practice of Communication Rita Rosenthal at rosenthr@bc.edu if you or someone you know came in first place that year. // Vince Profy retired in 2014 after over 40 years of teaching, most recently at Holy Ghost Prep, LaSalle University, and Holy Family University. Medical issues from 2015 have limited his mobility, but he travels locally in Cape Cod every summer with grandkids as well as to the Hudson Valley and Chesapeake Bay. Gardening, cooking, books, and writing are part of his day. With his wife, Diane, he enjoys weekly lunch outings and local field trips and staying in touch with friends, students, and teachers. Class correspondent: James R. Littleton // jim.littleton@gmail.com
NC 1969
55th Reunion
Winnie Loving wonders if being a great-grandmother will surpass the grandma experience. She will definitely need to grow more arms to hold all of her joy. // Jill Hendrickson Daly moved to Lakewood Ranch, Florida. She loves the sun and warmth. She volunteers helping children with disabilities experience the joy of horseback riding. // Susan Power Gallagher has a new granddaughter, Stella Maris Gallagher, born on March 3, 2024. // Mary Gabel Costello has a new grandson, Jack Costantino Brown, born on October 20, 2023. Class correspondent: Mary Gabel Costello // mgc1029@aol.com
1970
Dan Cahill, John Farrell, and Jim Bongarra started a pandemic book club in March 2020. A literary antidote for Covid, they met every week and have done so ever since then. They loved reading and
history, so they embraced the “civil” lining to the pandemic: Zoom. The live screen worked from Virginia (Jim) to Maryland (John) to Rhode Island (Dan). The book club has totaled over 40 books and 5,000 pages and going strong. Jim, John, and Joseph Britt have gotten together for dinner regularly since 2005. Nothing spectacular, just a way to keep in touch. // Pat McGrath is primarily living in Key West, Florida, continuing her work as a residential realtor. She summers at her home in Hull on Nantasket Beach, home of Paragon Park! Pat is planning on attending more BC football games this fall, since her granddaughter, Bridget, will be starting her freshman year as an Eagle and a member of the Screaming Eagles Marching Band! She will see you on campus! // Jerry Morris has four grandchildren. His son and daughter graduated from BC. Thankfully, the kids and grandkids are close by, within 15 minutes on the South Shore, so he and his wife can visit. Dad used to be his favorite word; it’s Grampy now. He spends five weeks bodysurfing in the BVI in the winter and considers himself a very lucky guy. He thanks his education at the Heights for great help along the way. He is still not sure how or why they let him in. He hopes everyone is hanging in. // Ann Gordon Walsh ’71 and Bob Walsh are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a trip to Ogunquit, Maine. They will rent a compound on the beach this summer to bring their children and six grandchildren together for a week of fun in Dennis Port. // Mike Towers, JD’70, spent three years touring the country with his wife, Beth, camping their way through many of their favorite states. Two rules: no interstate highways and no cities. They camped in many national parks and state parks. It was inspiring. They now live in an active retirement community near Atlanta. Life is good! Class correspondent: Dennis Berry// dennisj.berry@gmail.com
NC 1970
Patti Bruni Keefe and John Keefe, JD’74 , traveled to Sicily, the birthplace of Patti’s maternal grandparents, where they found original birth documents for Giovanni (1891) and Pasqua (1898) Zappulla located in the Floridia town hall. Patti and John winter in Ave Maria, Florida. Come visit! Jane Garvey Reilly surprised Patti with a visit from Miami. What fun reminiscing
about travel, family, and friends. The Keefes have 35 grandchildren (one a first-year at BC) spread out between Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the UK. That makes for plenty of cousin fun with 11 children and seven spouses enjoying the scene. They are a family of families! // Mary McAllister Fader is asking for prayers for her husband’s grandson, who is battling neuroblastoma. His mom and uncle ran in the Boston Marathon this year to raise money for Mass General Pediatrics, where he is being treated. Team #BraveTheo. On a more positive note, her grandson, Will Morton, is a sophomore at BC, having transferred after a year at the University of Richmond. She visits him there often! // Jane Garvey Reilly visited Poland. She also found National Geographic’s tour of the Galapagos Islands educational and a ball of fun! Easter Island, the most remote island in the world, is amazing. From a population of 11,000, it dwindled to a mere 111!
PMC 1970
Brenda Waters has been taking classes and received another BS in geology in May 2024 after retiring from pediatric pathology in 2016. What a hoot it has been. The students are fascinating to behold.
1971
Gaffney J. Feskoe has been appointed to the board of directors of the Connecticut
Port Authority by Governor Ned Lamont. // Kenneth Daggett is pleased to give back to BC Athletics, as he was asked to speak at the BC men’s varsity soccer team second annual alumni dinner. He’s also been asked to serve as one of the mentors for current BC soccer players. He’d like to extend an invitation to any fellow classmates who participated in the varsity soccer team to reach out to Men’s Soccer Head Coach Ben Thompson for further information. // Grace Marisa Labozzetta is pleased to announce the July 2024 publication of her most recent collection of short stories, Men Who Walk in Dreams (Guernica Editions). The book contains the 2023 New Millennium Fiction Award finalist story, “The Woman Who Drew on Walls.” Visit Marisa at marisalabozzetta.com. // John “the Masher” Mashia welcomed former roommates Russ “Santino” Pavis, John Thomas Flynn, Joe “Jose” Collins, and Tom Henneberry to his winter home in Naples, Florida.They were joined by Vinny Costello, who lives nearby. Activities included pickleball, bocce, golf, and some Trivial Pursuit games. Class correspondent: James R. Macho // jmacho@mac.com
NC 1971
Marie Robey Wood had a wonderful time on her golfing trip to Puerto Rico. While at home in the DC area, she is still active with the Capital Speakers Club. In addition to spending quality time with her two grandchildren, she recently volunteered to assist with an arts and crafts activity in the kindergarten class at Ascension Catholic School in DC. // Christine Moran started off 2024 with a big splash when she participated in the Tod’s Point Polar Bear plunge in Greenwich, Connecticut. Hopefully, she’ll make it an annual event. After that, she went back to her knitting project, because she needed something to warm up. The result was a beautiful longsleeved sweater that looked good enough to wear. // Jean McVoy Pratt stays active visiting friends and family throughout the US and completing 20-mile bike rides with her husband, Don. In spite of the posted warnings, Jean has never seen any alligators. // Melissa Robbins is staying in the US for 2024 after all her travels in 2023: Iceland,
COURTESY OF PATTI BRUNI KEEFE NC’70
Vancouver, British Columbia, and France. She’s spending time exercising and babysitting her four- and 10-year-old granddaughters in Massachusetts and is looking forward to fly fishing in Idaho with her husband, Mike Lombardo, for the month of July. Life is good. Class correspondent: Melissa Robbins // melissarobbins49@gmail.com
1972
Tom Martin remains active in music and theater after retiring from teaching. This past year he orchestrated Dancing Queen: The Big ABBA Concert, produced by Domfestspiele in Bad Gandersheim, Germany. The show will run there again this summer. He has written works for chorus, piano, organ, and Corona Requiem for chorus and orchestra. He won Best Musical Direction for a Professional Theatre from the NH Theatre Awards for his musical direction of The Drowsy Chaperone for the Peterborough Players. // Ken Kolpan, JD’72, is embarking on a second career while practicing law. He is about to publish an intergenerational photography book coauthored with his son, Alex Kolpan, spanning more than 50 years of images, including photos taken during the time Ken attended BC Law School, alongside Alex’s photographs. Their journey, told through pictures and conversations, is a story of love and connection between a father and son, a story for all generations. The book is expected to be published in Fall 2024. // Bill Brodeur retired from the Social Security Administration in 2009 and is living with his wife in North Carolina. Class correspondent: Lawrence G. Edgar // ledgar72@gmail.com
NC 1972
Mary Sullivan Tracy reports that after years of enduring New England winters, Maureen Harmonay has left Concord and moved to the warmth of Miami, Florida. Maureen has a new home there and works for Coldwell-Banker Realty as a real estate agent—her former employer in Concord. // Mary McShane, Gaelic language expert of the class, has not visited Ireland since Covid-19 began. However, Mary was still able to consult with Laurie Loughlin about her trip
there. Laurie’s tornado warning email list for the Memphis area now includes Nancy Brouillard McKenzie. Now, the class will know more about Laurie’s longtime volunteer work assisting others before and after major storms in her area. // Simone Breault Kingsley has gained a master’s degree in psychology at SCSC after a great beginning at Newton College of the Sacred Heart. Following that, she gained certification to teach math in grades 7–12, and has done so for 10 years in Catholic schools and 15 years in public high schools, the last being the Sound School in New Haven. She is grateful to Boston College for giving her a chance to succeed after her tragic accident in 1966 in which three of her classmates from Sacred Heart Academy were killed. She was required to leave due to memory issues but could not abandon her desire to be back in school. After returning to college classes, the first course she tried was psychology, and she got an A! This led her to BC. She feels proud to be included. Class correspondent: Nancy Brouillard McKenzie // mckenzie20817@comcast.net
1973
Sister Mary Coswin, O.S.B., retired from her long ministry in retreat work and spiritual direction recently and her monastery chose to sell its property and close its ministries. They have collaborated with a Catholic organization to build a brand new St. Benedict’s Monastery in the city of Winnipeg. // Rick Palermo and his wife, Jeannette, recently returned from a fabulous 24-day trip to Australia. They visited the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Tasmania. The trip also included wildlife destinations Kangaroo Island and Cradle Mountain. Although exhausting—22 hours to get to Sydney and five domestic flights—it was an experience of a lifetime. // Michael Palmieri has been reflecting since the 50th Reunion on how gracious and welcoming his Jesuit professors were in 1969. In ’68, firstyears arrived in blazers and crewcuts, and the next year Michael and classmates arrived from Woodstock. The faculty understood their fight for social justice and guided them to graduation. Thanks are owed there. The Palmieris
visited Iceland in November 2023—a magical place and amazing for Palmieri’s new career in photography. Class correspondent: Patricia DiPillo // perseus813@aol.com
1974
50th Reunion
Christopher Mehne ’74, JD’77, has retired from the law firm Bowditch & Dewey, LLP, in Worcester, where he was a partner in the firm’s estate, financial, and tax planning group. Chris spent his entire legal career with the firm, beginning with a summer internship following his second year at BC Law School. Chris and his wife, Jayne Saperstein Mehne ’75 , live in Upton, where they look forward to enjoying their two children, five grandchildren, and BC activities. // Bob Grip wrote that he and Diane Hardoby Grip recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary. She is an alumna of Rutgers and Seton Hall. Their honeymoon in Italy included an in-person blessing from Pope Francis! They now live in Fairhope, Alabama. // Congratulations to Len DeLuca ’74, JD’77, who, after a media executive career at CBS, ESPN, and IMG, was honored by the Seton Hall Stillman School of Business as its 2023 “Adjunct Faculty Teacher of the Year,” as well as University-Wide Adjunct Teacher. He teaches sports marketing and sports business analytics and runs the internship program. Since 2019, Len has also taught sports management at NYU Stern School of Business. // Pat McNabb Evans thanks everyone who has sent her class notes for the last 45+ years. It’s been a privilege to be able to keep in touch with so many classmates! Going forward, the best way to ensure that notes are included in the magazine is to go to the “Class Notes Submission Form” on the BC website and enter the note there. There is a space for photos too. Pat can’t believe that it’s been 50 years since graduation! Peace. // Martin Kofman is so impressed with the Boston College C21 department and their work on polarization. It could be life-changing for the world. If you have a chance to read Journeying in Faith Amid Polarization, you will understand. // Joan Corkum Paribello and Michael Paribello announce the birth of their second
great-grandson, Cillian Paribello. Class correspondent: Patricia McNabb Evans // patricia.mcnabb.evans@gmail.com
1975
Mod-mates Judy Johnson Miller, Jane Tarricone Harrigan, and Kathleen Gorman Storey celebrated their 70th birthdays with a trip to Bologna, Italy, in October 2023. They thoughtfully allowed husbands and partners Chris Miller, Jeff Duboff, and Jim Storey to accompany them. All enjoyed the cuisine of the “food capital of Italy,” the wealth of museums and tours, and the side trips to Parma and Ravenna. There was total agreement that the next trip should not require another 10-year wait! // Leon Drysdale has been retired since 2016 and lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. // Kevin McEvoy ’75, MBA’81, has been awarded faculty emeritus status from the University of Connecticut’s School of Business. He retired in 2022. A multiaward-winning professor with two university-level awards, citations for excellence from the Connecticut governor’s office and state legislature, and many others, Dr. McEvoy now teaches as an adjunct from his home in Florida. // Alan N. Ponanski retired after 30 years as a Connecticut Assistant Attorney General and member of the US Supreme Court bar. He now serves on
the East Haddam Conservation Commission as rules committee chairman of the Connecticut River Gateway Commission and as a director of the East Haddam Land Trust and volunteers with arts organizations including the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Alan has been married for 37 years to Susan E. Kinsman, Esq. They have two sons and live in the Boston area. Class correspondent: Hellas M. Assad // hellasdamas@hotmail.com
NC 1975
Joanne McCarthy Goggins was at BC’s Winter Wonderland in December 2024 and ran into Rita Carbone Ciocca NC’75, MBA’77. They both had grandchildren in tow and had a chance to catch up while enjoying all the fun winter activities. // It’s never too early to start thinking about the 50th Reunion in 2025 and planning will start soon! In the meantime, please share your news with everyone. You can submit a note directly online or send it to Karen Foley Freeman, and she’ll be happy to get it into the magazine. Class correspondent: Karen Foley Freeman // karenfoleyfreeman@gmail.com
1976
Bert Keith was featured this month on Happy Song Monday on the Willard Wigan official Facebook page. // Michael
Brosnan published his third poetry book, EMU BLIS, BUMS LIE, BLUE-ISM (Broadstone Books), in February 2024. The book was a finalist for the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award. Judges describe the book as “a highly innovative and experimental exploration of the relationship of the sublime (mystery, ecstasy, terror) with poetry” and “a deep philosophical question in poesia that’s enlightening and engaging.” // Sr. Anne Stevenson, PhD’76, celebrates 70 years in Jubilee as a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur (SNDdeN). She still serves full time as director of communications for the Congregation of the SNDdeN internationally. Her PhD from BC has enabled her through 15 years in this ministry to coordinate the translations of multiple documents in six languages used in her religious congregation. // Bob McAuliffe and Fred Grave rekindle their BC memories on the beach at Siesta Key, Florida, every February. Fellow classmates can look for them on Crescent Beach. Class correspondent: Gerald B. Shea // gerbs54@hotmail.com
1977
Chris Slattery passed away recently. He deserves recognition for being the founder of Expectant Mother Care in New York and has done so much good for others. // Denise Johnston Cypher and her daughter, Catherine Cypher ’10, hiked to Everest Base Camp together in April 2022. This was a bucket list item for Denise since her dad (Catherine’s grandfather) flew the “Hump” in WWII to deliver gas from India to China. It was a consistently perilous journey since they had to fly through the Himalayas because the planes could not get the altitude to fly over them. // F. David Ford published his second international thriller, The Neighbor from Geneva. After The Great Trade, the adventures of former Department of Justice lawyer James Krieg continue as he finds himself once more involved in the world of offshore private banking facing intelligence agencies, money launderers, and international criminals. // Jeff Bauer was sworn in as a Detroit Police Reserve Officer, a volunteer position. Jeff graduated from the DPD police academy. Jeff’s “day job” continues to be serving as the regional chief operating officer for
COURTESY OF BERT KEITH ’76
COURTESY OF BOB MCAULIFFE ’76
1979
45th Reunion
the American Red Cross in Michigan. // Ron Iacobucci and his wife, Elizabeth Cox Iacobucci ’80, recently celebrated the arrival of their fifth grandchild. Ron, a former UGBC President, is a candidate for Governor’s Council in Massachusetts. Class correspondent: Nicholas Kydes // nicholaskydes@yahoo.com
1978
Rosemary Collins Weiss retired as a special education teacher in Fairfield, Iowa. She didn’t realize how much fun retirement would be. She can exercise every day. She plays canasta and mahjong and cooks great meals. Her husband, Terry, is inspired to retire from school administration next year. Their son, Thomas, is a paleoclimatology postdoctoral scientist at the University of Galway in Ireland, where they love to visit. Class correspondent: Julie Butler // julesbutler33@gmail.com
Susan Parrott wants to apologize for being the worst roommate to Joan Krakowsky during their first year and wants to thank Joan for rescuing her without judgment for their remaining roommate years in 218 North. Much gratitude! // Joe Cordo retired at the end of 2023 as the VP of marketing for Bright Horizons’ commercial business. Joe led marketing as a CMO and VP for emerging to publicly traded companies for more than 30 years. He and his wife of 43 years, Terry Wasiuk Cordo, live in New Seabury on Cape Cod. In between enjoying the Cape, they spend their time with their five grandchildren, their BC and Cape friends, Terry’s many community activities, and traveling. Class correspondent: Peter J. Bagley // peter@peterbagley.com
1980
Daniel Casey passed away from lung cancer on October 31, 2023, in his home in Costa Rica. Dan is survived by his wife of 42 years, Sue Topper. Dan and Sue owned a B & B, where he was loved by his community. Dan was an executive producer - media affairs at the Smithsonian and National Geographic and cameraman for the explorer Robert Ballard, as well as sound/cameraman for Major League Baseball and the Patriots. His BC experience created lifelong friends. // Mary Menna was named Massachusetts Broadcaster of the Year in
2023 by the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association and also won a Radio Wayne Award for Market Manager of the Year from Radio Ink Magazine. Mary is on the Radio Ink Most Influential Women in Radio and Best Managers in Radio lists every year. She got her start at WZBC! // Harry Regan is very happy to have reconnected with his old Hillside D26 roommate, Bob Orenstein, after 30 years (he hasn’t aged a day) because they both have daughters at BC. As far as career news, awards, recognitions, accomplishments, etc., Harry has none of those, just basically been living an uneventful life in his original hometown and getting ready to retire and then die. // Stephen Maroon recently retired after serving as director of marketing at the Peace Corps and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. He is residing in Fort Myers, Florida, close to Fenway South where he and his father hold home plate spring training season tickets to the Red Sox. Class correspondent: Michele Nadeem-Baker // michele.nadeem@gmail.com
1981
John Saunders, John Hastings, Mike Deneen, Dan Cotter, Joanne Comollo Cotter, Tom Clayton, and Joan McCormack Clayton gathered, along with their spouses, for their annual BC roomie fall reunion at John Saunders’s home on beautiful Fripp Island, South Carolina, where they enjoyed the Low Country by walking, biking, golfing, beaching, pickleballing, and boating to
COURTESY OF STEPHEN MAROON ’80
COURTESY OF PATTI MARY MENNA ’80
COURTESY OF LAURA CAHILL ’81
COURTESY OF RON IACOBUCCI ’77
Hilton Head. Each day ended with a wonderful meal, drinks, music (from the ’70s and ’80s), storytelling, and much laughter. // Laura Cahill graduated from Harvard Kennedy School in May 2023 having earned a masters in public administration and a certificate in management, leadership, and decision sciences. During the 2023–2024 academic year, Laura worked at HKS as a course coach in two advanced leadership classes. Class correspondent: Alison Mitchell McKee // classnotes@bc.edu
1982
Michael O’Neill had a great tailgate this year with the Mod7A lads, coordinated by Michael Mancini and attended by Kerry Cannon, Tom McDermott , Scott Lopez, Tom Quinn, and others. Michael has been busy working, first in financial services, and most recently as an executive vice president at Zozimus, a Boston-based digital advertising agency. He has also been serving for 15+ years on the Boston School Committee. He was honored to serve as chair of the committee for five years and has now served as vice chair for the past three. He has also been deeply involved with the Council of the Great City Schools. In October 2023, at their annual fall conference in San Diego, Michael was humbled to receive the council’s Green Garner Award, which is given annually for excellence in urban education leadership on a national basis. In his acceptance speech, he said we are all often asked why we do what we do in
education. He said to him, it comes from a value the Jesuits instilled in him at Boston College: “To whom much is given, much is expected.” It is a value he has lived his life by since. // Pat LaMarche has published a new book with Sunbury Press, American Roulette. A Philly-area journalist, this is her 11th book in a decades-long writing career. Pat and her coauthors have written a non-traditional anthology. Each wrote a character and, in the course of the day, these people’s lives begin to intersect. One hundred percent of the book royalties are going to agencies committed to ending gun violence. // Kelly and Barry Lyden are proud to announce that their daughter, Noelle, will be enrolling in the Connell School of Nursing Class of 2028! Their daughter, Shea, is graduating from the Morrissey College in 2024 and son Daniel from the Carroll School in 2025. Four more years of Family Weekend and football games … yay! // Ellen Whalley Eckenrode serves on the board of the Newton Cultural Alliance, a historically significant nonprofit arts organization set in The Allen Center in West Newton. She has recently seen Saint Gaber’s Maureen Bennett , John Blessington, and Anne Murray. Life is good. // Charles Ivers, MSW’82 , retired from the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families in 2007 and celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary in 2022. He has two beautiful granddaughters, especially welcomed by his wife after raising three sons. // Karen De Gregorio is excited to share the news about her novel, love and prayers, Kara. The novel is inspired by her experiences as a recent college graduate living in Peru in the 1980s. It tells the story of a young woman’s search for answers and how she navigates life in Peru while living and working with Jesuits and nuns.
Class correspondent: Mary O’Brien // maryobrien14@comcast.net
1983
Siobhan Murphy has recently become a Grief Recovery Method specialist. Since 100 percent of people are grievers, this methodology can help everyone to get complete with their losses. This leads to less stress and more freedom from the behaviors we use to suppress our feelings of grief. She is still coaching executives
and business owners and has added mental fitness coaching to the services she gets to share. // Maggie O’Hara Swanke is celebrating 40 years of marriage to Karl Swanke ’80 with a trip to Berlin, Germany; Poznan, Poland; and Brno and Prague, Czech Republic. Class correspondent: Cynthia J. Bocko // cindybocko@hotmail.com
1984
40th Reunion
Barbara Ann Lyons has a big Reunion coming up this year, 40 years since graduating from the most outstanding Jesuit university in the world. She has been retired from Verizon Corp for 14 years after 39 years and one week. She is still looking for part-time work, as she is bored. How time marches on. BC Ever to Excel! GO EAGLES! // Michael Sellers has been named director of marketing and communications at the New England College of Optometry in Boston, just three miles from the BC campus. // Rev. Francis McGerity, MTS’84 , is a retired priest of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas. He now resides in Port St Lucie, Florida. // Nicholas J. Trakas passed away unexpectedly on June 21, 2023. Nick lived in Westwood and was originally from Milton. He was a computer science major and lived in the Hillside dorms. He received an MBA and a master’s in computer science from Boston University. He remained close with Mark Christo of Milton. Nick leaves behind his wife, Barbara; son, John; daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Brandon; brother, Chris; and sister, Jennifer Trakas-Acerra, MBA’87, and her husband, Steve. Class correspondent: Carol A. McConnell // classnotes@bc.edu
COURTESY OF PAT LAMARCHE ’82
COURTESY OF MAGGIE O’HARA SWANKE ’83
1985
Mark Arduino attended the #1 BC vs. #10 UMass hockey game and was able to see the newly completed Hoag Pavilion, including the refurbished Conte Forum entrance. BC prevailed 6–4 in a wild third period of lead changes. // Marsha Elixson, now retired 12 years, has been involved with Children’s Heartlink as an educator/consultant in writing sections of the Nurse Residency Program, India. Traveling and teaching in India was an experience. Over the past five years, Marsha has been volunteering at the Georgia Aquarium Education Department. Marsha now lives on a 15-acre farm in Concord, Georgia, with family, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, and a horse, and travels extensively. Class correspondent: Barbara Ward Wilson // bww415@gmail.com
1986
Paul Backalenick, MBA’86, published his third suspense-filled novel, Empty Luck. Kirkus Reviews said, “Each character’s inner sense of right and wrong, balanced against their actions in the moment, keeps the novel barreling toward its inexorable showdown.” A great read, available on Amazon. // Terry L. Poling continues to deliver leadership training, consulting, and coaching services through The Poling Group, located near Asheville, North Carolina. He and his wife, Kathy, spend six months in the mountains of Western North Carolina while enjoying the summer month sunsets on Lake Huron in
Bayfield, Ontario. Terry still fondly remembers carrying his one-month-old daughter across the stage to accept his master’s diploma at BC in 1986. He and Kathy now enjoy their children and grandchildren in Michigan and Vermont. // Teri Anderholm is excited to announce the publication of her writing debut, Inn Mates: An Innkeeper’s Memoir. Inn Mates is a lively chronicle of two Boston corporate escapees who dreamt of owning a luxury inn in Bar Harbor, Maine. The inn was a passion and a prison, while offering five-star hospitality to a parade of guests who taught them lessons of gratitude, humility, love, and laughter in the midst of life’s hurricanes. The book is available on Amazon and at bookstores. Class correspondent: Leenie Kelley // leeniekelley@hotmail.com
1987
Carolyn Elvidge Loucas has been living in the South End of Boston since graduation. Guess who was the first person to be recognized at the 30th Reunion? Her husband, Tom Loucas, by none other than Gerry Frost! After a long career in sales and administration, she followed her dream to start a professional organizing practice. Carolyn and her husband have two daughters, Lindsey (24) and Lydia (21). They live in an old firehouse. // Juan Jurado, MBA’87, joined Theron Advisory Group, a strategic, operational, and smart financial consulting firm headquartered in Germany. As partner, Juan drives the firm’s business in Iberia and Latin America and has been applying many
tools learned at BC. He still misses his classmates and those brilliant old campus days! Reach out to him at juan.jurado@theron.com. // Reena Dela Cruz Bates is now a full-time landscape artist doing business under Reena Bates Fine Art and co-owns an online art education business, Epiphany Fine Art. She lives with her husband of 37 years, David F. Bates ’86, in Easton.
1988
Greg Rogers is starting his 19th season as part owner/manager of a small surf resort on a small remote island in Indonesia. It’s called the Nemberala Beach Resort. If anyone finds themselves in Indonesia, he would love for them to contact him. // Michele Caterina is graduating in May with a master’s in social work from Boston University. Before you gasp in horror at the idea of a BC Eagle becoming a temporary BU Terrier, her husband works at BU and she got a sizable tuition remission benefit! She gives big credit to the PULSE program at BC, which began and fostered her interest in social justice and led her to this social work degree after a few other careers. She looks forward to helping others in the mental health field after graduation. // Bill Fair is now the manager of security services at Omnium Protection Group based in Boston. Bill achieved his ASIS Certified Protection Professional (CPP) certification in May of 2023. The CPP is the gold standard certification for protection leadership professionals. Bill has also been certified
COURTESY OF MARK ARDUINO ’85
COURTESY OF REENA DELA CRUZ BATES ’87
COURTESY OF PAUL BACKALENICK ’86
1990
in executive protection operations through Sig Sauer Academy as well as violence prediction and intervention through the Department of Homeland Security Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. // Steve Sayers has two books coming out in 2024, The Carousel Man, a horror novel set on Martha’s Vineyard, and a travel-related book, 100 Things to Do in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Before You Die. Both are available on Amazon or at stephenpaulsayers.com.
1989
35th Reunion
Debbie Williamson-McCabe graciously hosted six of her Walsh 707 roomies in August 2023 at her home in Little Bitterroot Lake, Montana, as an early 35th reunion. Joann Rude VanDerpoel, Mary Wills Funari, Nancy Trust Johansen, Kathy Young, Lisa DeMayo, and Kristen Dacey Iwai were all in attendance and enjoyed themselves by boating, catching up, and visiting Glacier National Park. ( Jackie Kondel was not able to make it this time.) // Mike Salvato’s daughter, Lucia, will be a sophomore at Virginia Tech, and his son, Rocco, just graduated from there. They enjoy forming friendships that they see could last a lifetime. It’s wild that at least a dozen classmates from Hillside A are in close touch. There’s a hilarious text string regularly with guys Mike has known for over 35 years. What a blessing. Thank you BC. Class correspondent: Andrea McGrath // andrea.e.mcgrath@gmail.com
Hon. Erik P. Kimball, JD’90, became the chief judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida on October 1, 2023. He will serve in that role for seven years. Judge Kimball was appointed in 2008 for a 14-year term and reappointed in 2022 for a second 14-year term. // Michelle R. Peirce is at Hinckley Allen in the firm’s Boston office, where she co-chairs the firm’s White Collar and Government Enforcement Group and Women’s Forum. She continues her commercial civil litigation practice as well. She would love to hear from classmates and friends at mpeirce@hinckleyallen.com. // Melissa Campbell Reid and her husband, Scott, are thrilled that their two oldest children will be graduating from college this spring. Alexander is receiving a bachelor of science in environmental conservation and sustainability from the University of New Hampshire. Heather is receiving bachelor’s degrees in both neuroscience and biochemistry. // Kate Ekins Horrigan, Lori Mercier Roche, Lynn Krawczuk Miller, Krisann Coyle Miller, Julie Ryan Caputo, Jen Miller Masuret , Suzanne Wallace, Amy Murray, Leslie Guglielmo, Ann Marie Mitchell Lane, and Jennifer Scholze Bleakley had a fabulous weekend in Mt. Abram, Maine, reminiscing, sharing belly laughs, and loving the fact that BC brought them all together. This crew was also able to spend part of the weekend with Rob Lally and Tim Walker // Matt McConnell and his wife, Aileen ’91, loaded the wagons and headed from Colorado to the Last Frontier of Alaska, where Matt joined Alaska Communications as president and CEO. Their house is yours, so come explore! Son Jack ’24 graduates in May, and after a summer backpacking through Europe will start his career with Wayfair in Boston. // Greg Montana recently retired from FIS Global after 11 years as chief risk officer. He is in the process of becoming a deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Saint Augustine, Florida. His three children are now in grad school or college and his wife, Karen, is pursuing a masters in theology. Currently, Greg is the only one in the family with “no class!” Greg has joined the board of the Dow Employees
Credit Union and remains on the boards of Catholic Charities of Jacksonville, Florida, and United Way of Northeast Florida. He’d welcome a chance to see any BC classmates if they visit or pass through Northeast Florida! Class correspondent: Melissa Campbell Reid // MissyCReid1@comcast.net
1992
Chris Eidt joined four former roommates, Kevin “Elvis” McCarthy, Pat Reilly, Paul Waldron, and Brian Yee, to recreate their senior year photo in their former Hillsides/Iggy apartment, which happens to be the current home to his son Christian ’24! Strangely, the couch fit six in 1992 better than it fit five in 2023. They will have the chance to do it again in three years if his daughter Allison ’27 gets the room her senior year. Chris lives in Wilton, Connecticut, and enjoys hosting tailgates at BC. // Have you ever filled out an employee survey as part of a “Best Places to Work” program? There is a good chance that it came from Peter Burke. Peter was on the front edge of the “Best Places to Work” wave when he helped start a company managing these programs for media partners in 2004. In 2021, Peter started his own company, Workforce Research Group, to continue that work. WRG now manages over 30 “Best Places to Work” programs in the US, Canada, and the UK. Peter
COURTESY OF ERIK P. KIMBALL ’90
COURTESY OF MATT MCCONNELL ’90
Class Notes // Weddings
Ellen Karen Savran to Paul Coran ’67, 12/29/2023
Jana Holt to Scott Gorman ’02, 9/16/2023 // Eagles in attendance: Nicole Baron ’02; Brad Baron ’02; Gwyneth Landry, MEd’09; Tim Landry ’02, JD’07; Brian Harney ’02; Daniel Sanez ’03; Mark Brown, THM’97; and Ramon Gomez ’02
Kristi Scriven ’09 to Joseph Larkin, 8/12/2023 // Eagles in attendance: Richard Larkin, JD’73; Lucia Austria Patrick ’09; Mary Ceglarski Burns ’09, MEd’11, and John Burns ’11; Lisa Corrado Schruender ’09, MEd’10, and Mark Schruender ’07; Meghan Higgins Szylvian ’09 and Chadwick Szylvian ’09; Margaret Keefe Schultz ’09; Miriam Michalczyk Lobenstine ’09; Elizabeth Rongitsch ’09; and Megan Cox, JD’12
Kate Adams ’16 to Alex Shefrin, 6/24/2023
Sheila Hill ’17 to Michael King ’17, 12/16/2023
Alexandra Krekorian ’17 to Thomas DeVoto ’17, 6/24/2023
Julie Lynch Howe ’19 to Devin Howe, 9/23/2023
Hadley George ’19 to Davis Mattson ’19, 4/15/2023 // Eagles in attendance: Nickie St. Clair ’19, Laurie St. Clair ’19, Joe Bizub ’19, Alex Flores ’19, Alex Ackerman ’19, Jack O’Neill ’19, Ben Herrick ’19, Gretchen Ray ’19, Mary Fitzsimmons ’19, Art Hidalgo ’19, Colleen Doyle ’19, David Schector ’19, Julia Perry ’19, Jacqueline McCormick ’19, Jamie Bange ’19, Rocky Chiu ’19, Michael Stover ’19, Nick Redmond ’19, Colin Gagliardi ’19, Jeff Toomey ’19, Maggie Flaherty ’19, Chris Zaffanella ’19, Connor Hayman ’19, Olivia Zaiac ’20, and Monica Delattre ’84
Amanda Lee ’20 to Jake Jeong, 1/10/2023
Annemarie Y. Arnold ’21 to Ethan J. Starr ’21, 7/29/2023
COURTESY OF JULIE LYNCH HOWE ’19
COURTESY OF HADLEY GEORGE ’19
COURTESY OF PAUL CORAN ’67
COURTESY OF AMANDA LEE JEONG ’20
COURTESY OF ANNEMARIE Y. ARNOLD STARR ’21
COURTESY OF KRISTI SCRIVEN ’09
COURTESY OF KATE ADAMS ’16
lives in Houston. // Darin Weeks led the Bourne Braves to their second consecutive Cape Cod Baseball League championship as general manager. // Rob Piazza serves as poet laureate of Litchfield. His poems have been published in literary magazines, online and in print, throughout the United States and Canada. He recently celebrated his 30th year as a professional educator, currently teaching literature and composition at colleges and universities throughout New England. Additionally, he performs classical guitar at recitals and concerts. He resides in Connecticut with his wife of 25 years and his two adult children. // Ingrid Schroffner recently presented “DEIB Fluency & Understanding Collaborative Intelligence” for MCLE and “Unpacking Motivational and Inspirational Leaders” for UMass Chan Medical School. In addition, a recorded message she made in 2020 continues to be used for the mandatory Practicing With Professionalism courses required for all Massachusetts bar admittees. Ingrid has been practicing law for over 25 years. She joined UMass Chan Medical School’s Office of Management in 2020. Class correspondent: Katie Boulos-Gildea // kbgildea@yahoo.com
1993
Dave Wedge, New York Times bestselling author, will be writing the definitive tale of Brockton-born world champion boxer “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler. A native of Brockton and a
1994
30th Reunion
former Boston Herald reporter, Wedge lives in Milton. News of his next book was recently announced by Ring Magazine. The book hits stores in 2025. // If you’ve been missing Patrick Tuohey ’s opinion columns in The Heights (all six of them!), you’ll be relieved to learn he’s been brought on by The Kansas City Star as a weekly opinion columnist. His pieces appear there and in other McClatchy outlets around the country. Patrick’s daughters would like everyone to know that his views are his own. // Dana Kawalautzki Lauducci was recognized by her New Jersey hometown as the 2023 Branchburg Person of the Year. The award is given to a resident in recognition of his/her “service to the community.” Dana was the high school PTO president for the last four years. She provides free counseling to nursing mothers via La Leche League, and she is president of her community chorus, Masterwork. // Jason L. S. Raia was recently named chief learning officer of the newly formed Founding Forward in Philadelphia, a national nonprofit charity dedicated to educating and empowering individuals to participate in and uphold our system of self-government by fostering an immersive civic education experience for students, teachers, and citizens through an array of in-person programs, historic resources and collections, scholarships, awards, speaker programs, and other unique learning opportunities. Class correspondent: Laura Beck // laurabeckcahoon@gmail.com
John Houle’s second novel, The Siberian Candidate, was released on December 5, 2024. This is the follow-up to his much-anticipated breakout novel, The King-Makers of Providence, which was also published by Book Press Publishing in 2023. // Tracey Hurd, PhD’94 , who respecialized as a licensed clinical psychologist, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis in 2023 as a fully trained psychoanalyst. Dr. Hurd, who sees children, adolescents, and adults in her private practice in Concord, is now at the Boston Institute and Society for Psychoanalysis in the child analysis training program. Dr. Hurd credits her passion for lifelong learning to the mentors she had at BC. // Ron Beaty is running for Barnstable County commissioner after much urging by local community members on Cape Cod. With his many years of experience in the real estate management industry, Ron will focus upon the key issues of affordable housing, clean public water supplies, and wind farming. // Art Swift has begun teaching at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor. He will continue to lecture at American University in DC, where he serves as a senior adjunct professor. In addition to working at the university level, Art is a chief communications officer in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Administration in DC. // Shannon Spring is excited to announce her first book, a memoir about how she became an animal communicator. Open
COURTESY OF JASON L. S. RAIA ’93
COURTESY OF ART SWIFT ’94
COURTESY OF ROB PIAZZA ’92
Mic for Animals: Evidential Fairy Tails was published on February 14, 2024, by St. Petersburg Press. She continues to help animals of all species around the world and to lead humor retreats too. Class correspondent: Nancy E. Drane // nancydrane@aol.com
1995
Kate Calvelo Ingraham and Mark Ingraham met during their first year. They live in Miami, Florida, and have been married for 21 years. Their daughter, Lucy, will be joining BC in the Class of 2028. Go Eagles! // Pete Kotz launched Old Town Equity in 2017 as a private equity and financial/operational consulting firm to invest and partner with private companies. He invites fellow Eagles to consider joining the breadbaking journey via a business he’s owner of, @challengerbreadware. // Steven Santangelo has been named AVP of clinical operations, Virtua Medical Group. He continues to work as a family physician in Pennsauken, New Jersey. // Robin R. Keough, wife of Frank Keough ’87 and mother of Christina Franey ’01 and Erica Spayd ’02 , passed away on July 24, 2023, after a battle with cancer. Class correspondent: Kevin McKeon // kmckeon@gmail.com
1996
John M. Comiskey has been promoted to partner at Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP. He is a member of the firm’s construction practice group. Mr. Comiskey is a resident of Seaford, New
York. // Jennifer Sierveld Doty has published her second book, Find the Right Now Role, a collection of tips and advice to help people find clarity and purpose when looking for a new job, learning to live your life with curiosity, appreciation, confidence, vulnerability, and faith in yourself. // Greg Limperis, MEd’96, is now director of technology for the fourth-largest school district in the state of Massachusetts. He has over 10 years experience in this role.
1997
Gretchen Hunt ’97, JD’00, serves as the director for the Mayor’s Office for Women in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work on gender equity has been recognized at the national and international level. Louisville recently joined the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE), alongside London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Barcelona, and Mexico City. Ms. Hunt was also recently invited to join the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence as a community liaison. // Yasmin Nuñez ’97, MS’99, MBA’09, MS’11, EdD’24 , is set to complete her executive doctorate of education in higher education at the Lynch School in May 2024. This marks Yasmin’s fifth and final degree earned from Boston College, where she has dedicated almost 27 years of service as an administrator. Her academic journey at Boston College includes a BA in psychology from
Morrissey College, an MS in leadership and administration from Woods College, an MBA from the Carroll School, and an MS in finance, also from the Carroll School. // Christopher J. Picard, Esq., principal with the New Haven, Connecticut, law firm Neubert, Pepe, & Monteith, P.C., has taken on two new roles: beginning a term as vice chair with the American Legal and Financial Network’s Amicus Briefs Committee and stepping into the newly created role of judicial officer with National Collegiate Rugby. After completion of his active duty as a diver in the United States Navy, he attended BC, where he served as president of the men’s rugby team. // Chris Duncan became a law partner at Stein Shostak Shostak Pollack & O’Hara, LLP, an international trade law firm in Los Angeles. Chris is also an elected city council member in San Clemente, California, and is currently running for the California State Assembly in District 74. Class correspondent: Margo Gillespie // margogillespie@gmail.com
1998
Renee Biancardi Pierce and her husband, Shane, are excited to share that both of their daughters will be attending BC. Sophia started at the Heights in Fall 2023, and her sister Annabel will join her as a freshman Eagle in Fall 2024. They are so very proud! Class correspondent: Mistie Lucht // hohudson@yahoo.com
COURTESY OF SHANNON SPRING ’94
COURTESY OF GRETCHEN HUNT ’97, JD’00
1999
25th Reunion
Jessica Elias has started a real estate business in the Tampa Bay, Florida, area. If you need any assistance with buying, selling, or investments, simply want a free, no-obligation consultation, or just want to say hi, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Class correspondent: Matt Colleran // colleran.matt@gmail.com
2000
Erin Freyvogel Leland and Jared Leland celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary on New Year’s Eve of 2023 while their four daughters (now ages 12, 14, 16, and 17) overwhelm them with love, faith, and financial demands! // Nicholas Marino has been elected as a shareholder within Foran Glennon. Nicholas joined Foran Glennon’s New York office in 2017, concentrating his practice on civil litigation defending landlords and contractors in various cases, including labor law, premises liability, and toxic exposure claims. // Alissa and Newton Mendys recently moved to Nanuet, New York, where they live with their two daughters, Lilian (13) and Sydney (10). Newton is bureau chief of the Violent Criminal Enterprise Bureau in the Bronx DA’s Office, and Alissa is in private practice with a firm in White Plains, New York. // Lisa Tulipani’s nonprofit Lynn Disability Network was awarded a grant in the sum of $75,000 to fund a “Lynnebago” to help foster
inclusion in the community for those with special needs.
Class correspondent: Kate Pescatore // katepescatore@hotmail.com
2002
Jason Sinnarajah became chief operating officer of the Kansas City Royals in August 2023. He and his family (wife Jessica and boys Taylor and Matthew) moved to KC after spending three years running the business operations of the Buffalo Bills. While they will always be loyal Bills fans, they are excited to call KC their new home! // Ed Mullins recently joined the New Jersey Economic Development Authority as assistant director of legal affairs. Ed lives in the Garden State with his wife, their two kids, and their dog.
Class correspondent: Suzanne Harte // suzanneharte@yahoo.com
2003
Cate Guiney Robbie and her husband, Jason, are delighted to share the news that their oldest daughter, Elle, has been accepted into Boston College’s Class of 2028. Cate celebrates Elle’s journey as she carries on the BC legacy. // Adam Umhoefer was named to Out Magazine’s annual Out100 list, which recognizes the year’s “Most Impactful and Influential LGBTQ+ People.” // Michelle McMahon Klos continues her rewarding journey in real estate and has joined Coldwell Banker in Southern California, where she is passionately helping buyers, sellers, and investors find the perfect property
and creating lasting real estate success stories. // Javi Herrera became the Minority Caucus chair of the American Association for Justice in July 2023. In January 2024, he became president of the San Antonio Trial Lawyers Association.
2005
Dana Vartabedian Nentin, Sarosh Nentin, David Swanson, John Castiglione, and Hung Lam ’06 opened their ninth Playa Bowls franchise location in Wellesley at Linden Square in February 2024. Playa Bowls is NJ’s original acai shop serving freshly made superfruit bowls, smoothies, juices, and more. // Attorney Steven M. Ayr was named a 2024 Go To Business Transactions Lawyer by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Ayr and his fellow honorees are featured in the publication’s February 26 issue. According to the publication, honorees are selected for their record of success, their role as a resource to other lawyers, and their in-depth knowledge, expertise, and creativity in their field as evidenced by their accomplishments. // Ian Michael Forrest, Esq., JD’05 , launched Forrest Environmental Law at the beginning of 2024. Forrest Environmental Law specializes in regulatory compliance, energy and utility law, environmental litigation, permitting, and development. Ian was formerly a VP and assistant general counsel for Google Development Ventures, a joint venture seeking to plan,
COURTESY OF STEVEN M. AYR ’05
COURTESY OF ALISSA MENDYS ’00
COURTESY OF JESSICA ELIAS ’99
develop, and manage mixed-use communities in Northern California. Class correspondents: Joe Bowden // joe.bowden@gmail.com; Justin Barrasso // jbarrasso@gmail.com
2006
Sarah Wellings has been promoted to partner at Sullivan & Worcester, where she is a member of the firm’s REIT Practice Group. She advises public and private REITs in various industries and focuses on structuring and compliance work, including cross-border transactions. Sarah also has experience involving federal and state tax litigation and transactional planning and in advising tax-exempt organizations on all aspects of operations. Class correspondent: Cristina Conciatori // cristina.conciatori@gmail.com
2007
Jay Connolly ’s construction management company, Connolly Brothers Inc., recently received a Design-Build Award from the New England chapter of the Design-Build Institute of America for the firm’s design and construction management work on New England Academy’s new South Shore campus in Marshfield. // Ben Litchfield won his fantasy football league for the fourth time over a number of his classmates, including Michael Lamb, Thomas Wehr, Peter Malone, Matthew Deibel, Matthew Fumuso, Andrew Kalafarski, and Graham Gullans // Jason M. Swergold ’07, JD’10, recently joined Yankwitt LLP as partner and co-head of the firm’s Criminal Defense and Investigations Practice. He previously served more than eight years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted violent and organized crime cases and supervised three different units. Jason focuses his practice on white collar criminal defense, government and internal investigations, and complex commercial litigation. // Stacy Ann Allen Ramdial recently launched her biologythemed business, Copper Key Sciences. The venture offers unique biologythemed gifts tailored to appeal to biology enthusiasts, while simultaneously inspiring budding
scientists and encouraging a profound love for STEM disciplines. // Lorena Ybanez, MSW’07, continues to run a thriving mental health private practice serving a wide range of patients. She recently launched an adjunct to her practice called Therapy Boxes by Mindful Solutions—a collection of therapyinspired items to support mental health and self-care endeavors. Class correspondent: Lauren Faherty Bagnell // lauren.faherty@gmail.com
2009
15th Reunion
Lizzy Robbins McCarthy and Michael McCarthy traveled to West Point for the BC–Army football game and spent the weekend with classmates Casey Barry Holdych and Jason Holdych, Eileen Byrne McKinnon, and their families. // Louis Tullo graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with an MEd in curriculum and instruction, concentrating in independent school educational leadership, in May 2024. As part of this program, he completed a capstone project examining procrastination in 7th- and 10th-grade students and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Class correspondent: Timothy Bates // tbates86@gmail.com
2010
John Paul Dziuba II has been recognized in New Jersey Law Journal’s New Partners Yearbook, as he has been promoted to be a partner at CSG Law. // Amy Fisher
now leads fintech and crypto partnerships for Plaid, headquartered in San Francisco, California. In addition to her executive position at Plaid, she was selected as senior fellow for The Future US in Washington, DC, for The Future of Finance Institute, a policy studio that forecasts the coming tech disruptions, bringing innovators together with policymakers so they can prepare for tomorrow, together. // Sandra Dorsainvil, MA’10, now provides ministry coaching and women’s retreats (via Zoom or in person) through the Center for Career Development and Ministry.
2011
Danielle Dufour, MBA’11, and Carl Legge, MBA’11 , celebrated their 10-year anniversary on April 25, 2024. // Katherine Watt Chan was promoted to vice president, head of portfolio and program management at Disc Medicine, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to discovering, developing, and commercializing novel treatments for patients who suffer from serious hematologic diseases. // Olivia Nguyen, JD’11; Steven Petkovsek, JD’15; and Ethan Rubin, JD’16; have been promoted to principal at Fish & Richardson.
2013
Karl Lockhart recently started work as an assistant professor of law at DePaul University College of Law. He is looking forward to connecting with BC alums in Chicago. Class correspondent: Bryanna Mahony Robertson // bryanna.mahony@gmail.com
2014
10th Reunion
Olga Novitsky is a foreign service specialist with the Department of State, currently on her second tour in Washington, DC. She will be bidding on her next post shortly and is excited to continue traveling and working at US embassies around the world.
2015
Nathaniel Donoghue, JD’15 , was elected to partnership at Stinson. Stinson’s 2024
COURTESY OF SARAH WELLINGS ’06
Class Notes // Baby Eagles
Courtney Beach and Troy Turick ’98, Phoebe Susan, 10/31/2023
Faith and Robbie Bubalo ’00, Bridget Lorraine, 12/21/2023
Stacey and Tony Simas ’03, Elora Jeanne, 11/26/2023
Sarah Stroker Durie ’03 and Ben Durie, Fifer James Lachlan, 12/20/2023
Kristen Terpenny DePesa ’05, MEd’06, CAES’11, and Christopher DePesa ’03, MS’05, PhD’23, Frances “Frankie,” 3/23/2023
Danielle ’06 and Kevin Galligan ’06, Evelyn “Evie” Rose, 1/2/2024
Leah and Rob Crane ’06, Aila June, 2/8/2024
Nadia and Christopher DiSchino ’07, Phoebe Helena, 7/12/2023
Thayer Surette Roberts ’08 and Steve Roberts, Owen Stephen, 11/4/2023
Jackie ’09, MBA’16, and Michael VanHaaften, Oliver, 1/20/2024
Dianne Bacsik Sydorko ’10 and Spencer Sydorko, Sydney Rose, 1/19/2024
Jen Thomasch Applegate ’10 and Ben Applegate ’10, Emery Claire, 12/28/2023
Danielle Keogh Provo ’11 and Ray Provo, Sven, 2/2/2024
Kelly ’13 and Charlie Wood ’12, James Wood, 2/8/24
Aubrianne and Steven Venino ’14, Beau Patrick, 3/5/2024
COURTESY OF KRISTEN TERPENNY DEPESA ’05, MED’06, CAES’11
COURTESY OF TROY TURICK ’98
COURTESY OF DIANNE BACSIK SYDORKO ’10
2017
Jay Megaro, MBA’17, is the cofounder and head of product of Saifr, a RegTech startup out of Fidelity Labs that was named one of the top 100 FinTech AI companies globally by FinTech Global and featured on Bloomberg’s Advancements hosted by Ted Danson.
2018
new partner class spans four of the firm’s 13 office locations. Donoghue is one of the firm’s six newly elected partners. // Mimi Cowan, PhD’15 , accepted a position as director of government affairs at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in late 2023. Her history dissertation end point was the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, which was the birth of the Field Museum, so she’s thrilled to be working in her field, in a completely unexpected and wonderful way. // James Fisher has been busy in his career in finance in New York City but has recently pledged to donate 20 percent of his annual salary to Boys and Girls Club of New York City. He has a little brother in Queens named Jamal who enjoys making homemade popcorn that he sells in his neighborhood. // Emily Stansky has joined some of her classmates as a Double Eagle! She returned to the Heights in the fall of 2020 for a threeyear doctoral program and graduated in May 2023 with a doctorate of nursing practice as a family nurse practitioner. She now works full time in the MetroWest area as an urgent care nurse practitioner. She is also still working as an ICU nurse in Boston. Class correspondent: Victoria Mariconti // victoria.mariconti@gmail.com
2016
Dr. Benjamin J. Brenkert, MTS’16, EdD, LMSW, SIFI, was ordained to the Transitional Diaconate in the Episcopal Church Diocese of Long Island, to be followed by priesthood in September 2024.
Sadie Marshall Salazar, MSW’18, is currently practicing as an LCSW in Chicago. She is the clinical director of Sage Therapy Chicago, a leading mental health practice with more than 65 clinicians on staff. Sadie was recently elected to the executive board of Erie Neighborhood House. Sadie currently lives in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago with her husband, Sammy, and their cherished 10-year-old dog, Shep, who attended the social work program at BC alongside her! // Bronte Kass joined the US State Department as a foreign service officer in 2023! Her first assignment will be at the US consulate in Shanghai, China.
2019
5th Reunion
Lauren Kim, MS’19 , moved from Amherst to Needham. // Angela Kim Harkins, STL’19 , was promoted to full
professor of New Testament and Professor Ordinaria of the Clough School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College in 2023. Her book, An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and its Role in Moral Formation, was published by Equinox Press in 2023. // Roger Schrader marks his five-year anniversary at Good Shepherd Community Care as a hospice social worker in May 2024.
COURTESY OF MIMI COWAN, PHD’15
COURTESY OF SADIE MARSHALL SALAZAR, MSW’18
COURTESY OF BRONTE KASS ’18
2021
Razan Alawadhi got credentialed as an HIV specialist from the American Academy of HIV medicine. She is a family nurse practitioner specializing in HIV, transgender healthcare, and anal health. // Daniel DiCocco, after moving out of Washington, DC, now thrives in NYC as a software engineer and established magician. After honing his coding skills, he followed his passion for magic, relocating to the city to grow his side business. By day, he codes with precision; by night, he dazzles audiences with sleight of hand, embodying the spirit of innovation and pursuit of passion instilled by BC. // Jude Osondu, STL’21, was ordained a priest in his home diocese, Ahiara Diocese Nigeria. He also became vice principal of Pater Noster Secondary School - Ekwerazu Mbaise and diocesan moderator of the Synod. In 2022, he was appointed to set up a digital apostolate for Catholic evangelization, which led to his creating Mater TV, an online channel that he manages for his diocese. In 2023, he was appointed assistant education secretary/assistant manager of schools in his diocesan education board. // After his time at BC, an expiring student visa in the US led Angelos Bougas to a new chapter in Dubai, where he began his career as a real estate agent. After some initial success, Angelos, along with his cousin Odysseas, decided to found their own company, Ocley Group. In under two years, they’ve expanded their business to
include Ocley Homes, managing over 70 holiday homes, and Ocley Properties, with a team of 27 individuals, having sold luxury assets with value exceeding $200 million. // Betul Gaffari is looking to apply to PsyD and PhD programs overseas! // Nic Ferreira has opened for several nationally touring comedians, including Kyle Dunnigan, Baron Vaughn, and Chris Alan. This summer, he’s scheduled to open for Des Bishop, among several other shows in the Northeast. His latest news and shows can be found on his Instagram account (@nicferreira14), which hardly has any followers because he’s still a big nerd. //
Elizabeth McColloch published her first book, Discover What Matters: Find Meaning, Hope, and Love in a SuccessDriven College Culture, in April 2024. In this heartfelt book, Elizabeth invites incoming and current college students to discover what matters to them so they can embark on a purposeful college journey. Throughout the book, she shares stories from her time as a BC student, an experience she is immensely grateful for.
2022
Tim Smyth recently joined the Crime Strategies Bureau of the Suffolk County DA’s Office, serving as a victim-witness advocate. In this role, Tim works closely with victims of crime throughout Suffolk County, and more specifically, he is assigned to the Juvenile Unit. // Emma Roney ’22, MA’24 , graduated from the Lynch School of Education with a master of arts in higher education.
COURTESY OF TIM SMYTH ’22
COURTESY OF RAZAN ALAWADHI ’21
COURTESY OF ANGELOS BOUGAS ’21
COURTESY OF JUDE OSONDU, STL’21
1940s
Ginna Lowrey Brown PMC’40
Dottie Merkel PMC’40
Jeanne Benninghoff PMC’45
Polly Luster PMC’45
Robert Minichiello ’45
Ginny Stockwell PMC’47
Anne Webber PMC’47
Mary Ellen Palmer PMC’48
Patricia Brace PMC’49
William Murray ’49
Elliot Silverstein ’49
1950s
Adrian Bellinger PMC’50
Robert Catalano ’50
Tink Fish PMC’50
Joan Rammel PMC’50
Virginia Wawrzyniak Simoni ’50 MS’60
Thomas Hogan MA’51
Thomas Rexford ’51
Herb Emilson ’52
Annette Lawless Lyons ’52
Eugene McNulty ’52
Timothy Ring ’52
Patrick Ryan ’52 MA’53 STL’60
John Sullivan ’52
Joseph Appleyard ’53 PHL’58 DHL’12
William Buckley ’53
George Ciovacco ’53
Anthony Litos ’53 MSW’61
Lawrence Maher ’53
Robert Quinn ’53 MBA’70
Paul Ryan ’53
Leonard Skaist ’53
Mary Thomas ’53
Aidan Underwood ’53
Sally Buckwalter PMC’54
Maurice Caron ’54
Betty Beaudette Cheever MS’54
Maureen Curry Cohalan NC’54
Paul Dunlap ’54
Charlie Ferris ’54 JD’61 LLD’78
Mary Corcoran Gallagher MEd’54
Philip Grant ’54
John Kohr ’54
Vincent Mazzarella ’54
Frank Saunders ’54
Mary Schmick PMC’54
James Cashin ’55 MBA’61
William Deehan ’55
William Flatley ’55
Jane Quigley Hone NC’55
Joseph Meehan ’55
Austin Moran ’55
Mary Jane Moyles Murray NC’55
Paul O’Leary ’55
Bob Richardson ’55
Claude Colombiere Suzanne
Rinfret MEd’55
Walter Sullivan ’55
John Buckley ’56 MBA’71
Emerson Dickie ’56
Pat Dowling NC’56
Robert Grandfield LLB’56
Millicent Gruyich PMC’56
Joseph Hogan ’56 MEd’60
Jack Leonard ’56
Edward Lynch ’56
Daniel Mitchell ’56
Jerome Perez MS’56
Francis Quinn ’56
Timothy Reardon ’56
John Ridge ’56
Mary McGaugh Schipellite ’56
Lewis Songer MA’56
Richard Ahern ’57
Bill Boozang ’57
Donald Cahalin ’57
Thomas Coburn MEd’57
John Collins ’57
Mimi Esposito PMC’57
Joe Fagan ’57
Don Fox ’57
Marjorie McKeon Frank ’57
Normand Lamoureux ’57 MA’60
Joan Driscoll Lynch ’57
Michelle McGarty Madden NC’57
Joseph McMenimen ’57
Edward Mulvey ’57
E. Ann Sheridan ’57
Arline Smith PMC’57
Heidi Truscott PMC’57
Joseph Williams ’57
Katherine Glutting Arcand NC’58
Kathleen McCann Benson NC’58
Joseph Brennan ’58
Sheldon Daly ’58
Daniel Duggan ’58
Joan Friberg ’58
Robert Hallisey ’58
Jack Harrington ’58
William Kilroy ’58
Brenda Reilly Malloy ’58 MS’60
Paul Maney ’58 MBA’66
Joseph Messina ’58 MBA’65 MA’93
John Moriarty ’58
Maureen Boyle Murphy ’58 MEd’59
Joan Morgan Murray MEd’58
George Olesen ’58
Frances Hetherington Reilly ’58
Joan Sextro NC’58
Joanne Neviera Shalna ’58
Robert Shannon ’58
Wallace Wooles ’58
Barbara Driscoll Alvord ’59
George Burke JD’59
Margaret Cleary ’59 MS’61
Janet Phillips Connelly NC’59
Cornelius Donoghue JD’59
Ann Healey NC’59
Ruth Trainor Lenehan ’59
Thomas Lester ’59
Joanne Murphy Moore ’59
Anne Obolensky PMC’59
Peter Quinn ’59
Marie Keaveney Robins ’59
Charles Ryan ’59 MBA’61
Constance Ryan ’59
John Tammaro ’59
1960s
Edward Byington ’60
Pauline Cashore MEd’60
Roy Colella ’60
James Connor STL’60
Richard DeCesare MA’60 PhD’68
Carol Campbell English ’60
Robert Greene ’60
Mary Derosier Hogan MAT’60
Ella Hurley Houlihan ’60
Robert Kane MEd’60
Richard Maloney ’60
Jim Martin ’60
Elizabeth Curtin McNeff MEd’60 CAES’69
Michael Morelli ’60
Lorraine Renda O’Leary ’60
Kenneth Snyder ’60
Thomas Wynne ’60
Catherine Carpon Zecca ’60
MS’64
Robert Ferreira ’61
Kevin Fitzpatrick ’61 MBA’64
Margaret Lewis PMC’61
John McHugh MEd’61
Patricia Regan ’61 MS’66
Glenn Rogers ’61
Edward Roster JD’61
Robert West ’61, CAES’68
James Bradley ’62
Paul Duffey ’62
Peggy Brennan Hassett ’62
Mary Kelley ’62
David Madigan ’62
Richard McDevitt ’62
Neal Millert JD’62
Cynthia Rabanera ’62
Ron Reilly ’62
Lourene Prendergast Reynolds ’62
Celeste Ringuette NC’62
Jerome Wild MSW’62
Liz Coderre Boyle ’63
Lawrence Carney ’63 MBA’71
Thomas Cloherty ’63
Ann Marie Cronin ’63
John Cullinane ’63
Paul Glasheen ’63
John Golden ’63
Michael Lydon ’63 MBA’70
Ronald McPhee ’63
Vincent Naccaraton’63
Robert Powell ’63
Thomas Shea ’63
Pauline Strout NC ’63
Tom Tierney ’63
Ray Torton ’63 MA’67 PhD’69
John Walker ’63
Noreen Lindner Barney ’64
Ann Brennan NC’64
Martin Buote ’64
James Capobianco ’64
Michael Costello ’64
John Crowley MSW’64
Gerald Dechayne ’64 MAT’66
Stephanie Elliott DeMambro ’64
Ellie Rupp Downey ’64
Francis Flynn ’64
Sarah Frankland MS’64
Charles Goodman JD’64
Philip Grandchamp JD’64
John Hirsh ’64
Martin Kane ’64 MBA’72
Mary Kennedy ’64
Susan Callander Lifton NC’64
Peter Looby ’64
John Marsh ’64
Francis Murphy MBA’64
Kevin Murphy ’64
Robert O’Brien ’64
Joanne Belliveau Oechler NC’64
Elaine Selvitella Young ’64
James Brogan ’65
William Burke MAT’65
Antonio Carrara ’65 PhD’73 PhD’74
Paul Gallagher JD’65
Peter Gauthier ’65 MBA’68
Neal Hunt ’65
Gerry Kiley ’65 MSW’74
Jacqueline Lane MSW’65
Edward Lonergan ’65
Mary Maloney MEd’65
Dermot Meagher JD’65
Russell Melocik ’65
Thomas Mitchell ’65
Alice Fleming O’Brien MEd’65
Carl Pergola ’65
Richard Sedlock MA’65
Ellen Murphy Van Buskirk ’65
Leo Whelan MA’65
Sheila Sullivan Wilson NC’65
Joseph Allendorf ’66
Sylvia Asselin ’66
Richard Barbieri ’66
Daniel Callahan MA’66
Marion Cotty MA’66
Thomas Hanley ’66 MA’69
Joseph Lillyman ’66
Danielle Zenobi Long ’66
Joseph Meehan ’66
Paul Miles ’66
William Murphy MEd’66
Mary Kay Brincko Peterson NC ’66
Martha Roughan NC’66
John Thorne MBA’66
Peter Camarra ’67
Bill Delahunt JD’67
Donna Hayden ’67
Donna Johnson ’67
Donald Joworisak ’67
Joe LoBiondo ’67
Joseph Mason PhD’67
Charles Mellen MA’67
Peter Osmond ’67
David Paul ’67
Paul Scarlata ’67
Niles Schlegel MBA’67
Jeffrey Tauber ’67
Victor Dugan ’68
Robert Durgin ’68
Roland Dwinell CAES’68
Mary Gallaway NC’68
Katherine Mulligan ’68
Edward Nugent ’68
Edward O’Dwyer ’68
Thomas O’Horo ’68 MA’70
James Shea ’68
Patrick Walsh MA’68
Grace Anderson PMC’69
Robert Cheron ’69
Barbara Dowd ’69
James Happy Harrington ’69
Walter Hoffman ’69
Jay Kavanah ’69 JD’72
Jim Lyons ’69
William McCarthy ’69
John Mendel MS’69
Charles Murray JD’69
Mary Naumes CAES ’69
Jim O’Brien ’69
William O’Neil JD’69
Roger Pelissier ’69
Robert Poirier MBA’69
Dorothy Cantwell Sullivan ’69
Joseph Sullivan MEd’69
JoAnne Vernacchio ’69
Dan Wilson MSW’69
Robert Zeuli ’69
1970s
Paul Cable MEd’70
William Carlezon MBA’70
Marie Clement NC’70
John Curran ’70
Michael Driscoll ’70
David Frederick ’70
Peter Nolan ’70
Brenda Smith-Burke ’70
Thomas Sullivan ’70
James Tarmey MEd’70
Benjamin Thorn MEd’70
Ricki Allison PhD’71
Stephen Jones JD’71
John O’Brien ’71
William Ribbens STM’71
Paul Weitz ’71
Matt Botica ’72
Barbara Burns PhD’72
Bernard Cooney JD’72
Marilyn Galambos MEd’72
John Harvey PhD’72
Dianne Lockhart Burke MSW’73
Louis DiFrancesco’73
John Gainey ’73
Michael Garrity ’73
Grace Hamilton MA’73
Richard Kapusta ’73
Gregory O’Donnell ’73
Bradley Schaeffer MEd’73
Anthony Ciampi ’74
Joel Greene ’74
Melissa Himes PMC’74
Ronald Ingalls MEd’74
Nell Margolis JD’74
Terry Martinetti ’74
Kevin McGrath ’74
Marie McLaughlin O’Brien ’74
John Passidomo ’74
Norma Rossetti ’74 MS’79
Mark Rundzio ’74 MA’78
Claire Swarr PMC’74
Dale Turner ’74
Sarah Burger PMC’75
Madeline Cipriano MTS’75
Shelley Draper JD’75
Jeffrey Jankot ’75
William Laverty MBA’75
Martha McDermott Mahoney ’75
Bob Angel JD’76
James Caldarella MEd’76
Elizabeth Falcone PMC’76
Joanne Mattiace JD’76
Judy Cox Marley ’76
Brian Novak ’76
Eleanor Skomro MEd’76
Julia Tortorella MSW’76
Marilyn Verhey ’76, MS’79, PhD’92
Stephen Anzalone ’77
Teresa O’Keefe Berrisford ’77
Victor Caliri PhD’77
Michael Masterson ’77
Marilyn Pevear MSW’77
Mary Remensnyder MEd’77
Paul Sullivan ’77
George Cornell ’78
William Gajewski ’78
Ernie Maier MBA’78
Edward Marek MA’78
Sonja Mason MS’78
Thomas Murphy JD’78
Elizabeth Travers Eagan ’79
Frances Gershwin JD’79
Pat Hillman MBA’79
Brian Kickham ’79
Jeffrey Luellen ’79
John O’Brien JD’79
Carolyn Ripp ’79
1980s
Jon Anderson ’80
Daniel Casey ’80
Dan Conway ’80
Michelle Sullivan Fielding ’80
Peter Fong ’80
Charles Ortolani MSW’80
Hector Vina ’80
Maura Clavin ’81
Sheryl Krafchick Dropkin MBA’81
Patricia Hennessey MA’81
Alice McLaughlin ’81 MSW’83
Barbara Butterworth ’82
Francis Costa ’82
Margaret Goode MSW’82
Marie Jensen MS’82
Leslie Carlson Lippman ’82
Margaret Kirby LaMothe JD’83
Jorge Peirats JD’83
David Alves ’84
Ann Boyd MS’84
Nicholas Trakas ’84
Kathleen Cronin ’85
Ellen Flowers ’85
Francis Keilty MSW’85
Susan Tellier Perticone ’85
Daniel Connor ’86
Michael Hooton ’86
Valerie Libby JD’86
Christopher Botelho ’87
Jeffrey Card ’87
Janet Kiah MA’87
Lisa Cronin-Hennessy ’88
Mark Hebert MS’88
Stephen Kurland DED’88
Marion Sadeghi-Nejad PhD’88
Maura Scully ’88 MA’93
Terence Buckley JD’89
Rebecca Clothier Case ’89 MEd’90
Harry Flad PhD’89
Cynthia Gadziala MA’89
Susan Healy ’89
Cynthia Ouellette MBA’89
Patti Duckworth Sloan ’89
Lanze Thompson MBA’89
1990s
Kris Clow PMC ’90
Kathy Devaney ’90
Brian Fitzgerald ’90
Maureen Mulligan JD’90
Lynn Seaquist PMC’91
Dennis Ahern JD’92 MBA’93
Damon Anastasia JD’92
Kenneth Cox MS’92
Charles Diana ’92
Patricia Dougherty MEd’92
Roberta Glynn PhD’92
Roy Robson PhD’92
Thanda Fields Brassard ’94 JD’97
COMMUNITY DEATHS
Jeanne Hubelbank PhD’94
Kate Nitterauer PMC’94
Billie Swisher MS’94
Pierre Auguste ’95 MBA’03
Robin Keough ’95
Vladimir Trainin MS’96
Renita Attardi PMC’98
Kyong-Mi Kwon ’98
Lisa Hansen MBA’99
2000s
Aimee Comeau ’02
Paul Crawford MSW’02
Peg McGowan MSW’02
Patrick Ryan, S.J., of Weston, MA, on December 26, 2023. He was Associate Professor Emeritus, and Associate Professor, Theology Department from 1964 to 1997.
Brian Ward, of Brighton, MA, on January 3, 2024. He was a Research Associate, Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, from 2011 to 2024.
James Munsch PhD’03
Elizabeth DeMaria Chase MEd’07
Kathleen McKenzie ’07 MEd’08
Brian Mulroney DL’07
2010s
Christina Luddy ’11
Caroline Ouimet ’13 MS’20
Ashley Beckles ’18 MA’22
Max Palmer ’20
The “Fond Farewells” section is compiled from national obituary listings as well as from notifications submitted by friends and family of alumni. It consists of names of those whose deaths have been reported to us since the previous issue of Boston College Magazine. Please send information on deceased alumni to Advancement Information Systems, Cadigan Alumni Center, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 or to infoserv@bc.edu.
Sanford Katz, of Waban, MA, on February 10, 2024. He was Professor Emeritus, and Professor, Boston College Law School from 1968 to 2015.
Marilyn Matelski, of South Easton, MA, on April 4, 2024. She was Professor Emeritus, and Professor, Communication Department, Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, from 1978 to 2017.
Off to the Races
There’s a story behind every first gift to Boston College
$18.63. $19.82. $20.10. $5.
These dollar amounts may seem random, inconsequential. To some, it is loose change in a junk drawer or cup holder. In fact, they represent typical first donations to Boston College, often by members of the senior class who choose a dollar figure that matches their class year or another BC milestone like its founding. Yet no matter the dollar amount, there is a story behind every first gift.
Danielle V. Auriemma ’10, MA’13, made her first official gift in the amount of $20.10 in February of her senior year. “I wanted BC to be in a position to offer more financial aid, because a lot of people in my class had big loans and we were coming out into a not-sogreat financial climate,” says Auriemma about her reason for the gift.
Auriemma was clued into the inner workings of giving because she was a member of the Senior Gift Committee, now known as the Senior Legacy Challenge (SLC), which utilizes events and other initiatives to encourage members of the current graduating class to start a tradition of giving back to BC before they even leave the Heights. A full 70 percent of graduates from the last decade of classes (2014–2023) gave to BC during their senior year.
Donations sometimes come with a benefit—such as admission to senior-only social events throughout the academic year or Senior Week festivities like the Mod500 (see more at right).
Auriemma vividly recalls a conversation with a classmate who refused to give because they didn’t see its value. After some pointed questioning, Auriemma learned they were passionate about a course they had taken and for which they had worked as a teaching assistant: Intro to Feminisms in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. She informed the classmate that supporting that particular
program was indeed possible, and the classmate came through with a senior gift.
“Some people are moved by figures and data, but I think it tends to be more about, ‘why was your BC education so important in your life and how do you want to pay it forward?’” says Auriemma, who is co-chair of the Neenan Society for loyal BC supporters and the inaugural chair for associate membership with the Council for Women of Boston College.
Instead, the “any dollar amount to any cause” approach encourages young alumni to first and foremost build the habit of giving, which hopefully will continue as they establish careers, families, and lives of their own.
Nearly 40 percent of alumni in the Classes of 2014 through 2023 have made at least one gift to BC since they graduated.
Since her own graduation, Auriemma’s philanthropic commitment to BC has grown—along with her engagement—and she sees a correlation between the two.
You could probably give a coffee’s worth, right? Or a monthly streaming subscription? The amount is not as important as the action of doing it.”
—Danielle V. Auriemma ’10, MA’13
Auriemma is quick to point out in conversations with fellow alumni that “any amount makes a difference, and the impact of collective giving is huge.” Indeed, from June 2022 through May 2023, 46,250 donors supported Boston College and $6.8 million came from gifts of $1,000 or less. “Even if people think they can’t give back a lot, I say, ‘You could probably give a coffee’s worth, right? Or a monthly streaming subscription?’” she says. “The amount is not as important as the action of doing it.”
Benefits are not the only draw of SLC, and revenue is certainly not its primary goal.
“From early on I committed to being invested in what is happening at BC. It’s not just that I’m making the gifts but I am reading BC Magazine, I read all of the emails I get about cool things happening on campus, I go to events, and I volunteer,” she says. “[It] keeps me engaged even when I’m not there. I’m very excited about the direction the University is going in and as time and my ability have increased, I’ve always wanted to give more.”
You Gotta Start Somewhere
While Auriemma’s BC philanthropy journey is still in its early stages, there are examples that demonstrate where it could possibly go. Occasionally, a modest donation made simply out of affection for BC serves as a launching point for a lifetime of transformative philanthropy. Back in the early 90s, University Trustee Phil Schiller ’82 had been out of BC for about 10 years and away from campus for the same amount of time. In town for business, he steered his rental car toward the Heights for a trip down memory lane.
“I walked around, I saw the students all rushing to classes and the campus looking more beautiful than ever, as it seems to get every year,” Schiller warmly remembers. “I had forgotten how much I love this place and how much a part of my life it is. I literally wrote a $100 check and walked around campus asking students, ‘Where do I donate?’”
Over the past few decades, Schiller has returned to campus a fair bit more and he and his wife, Kim, have joined the ranks of
BC’s most generous benefactors, even becoming co-chairs of Soaring Higher, the most ambitious fundraising campaign ever for the University. In September 2022, Schiller had a full-circle moment when he traveled from his home on the West Coast to celebrate the opening of 245 Beacon Street, home to the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
“We walked around the building, saw those incredible facilities, met all the incredible faculty, and, best of all, saw students demonstrating the innovative things they were working on. I could not have felt more proud, more excited for the future of the school,” he says. “It all came back to the same thing for me that first trip—the students’ energy, their brilliance, their creativity inspires me every time I’m on campus.”
You Never Know Where It Will End Up
Collective giving is important, but young alumni giving needn’t be small, and it needn’t be immediate. Adding just one sentence to your will can be all it takes to start a legacy, and it counts toward the Soaring Higher campaign, too. Estate commitments are flexible, nonbinding, and practical, because they can have a large impact without touching current assets.
That last part was a particular draw for Mike Delsesto ’08, whose first gift as an alum was for $5 to the BC Fund. When Delsesto made an estate commitment in his early 30s, he immediately became a member of the Shaw Society, which recognizes those who have made bequest intentions or planned gifts to BC. Today, there are dozens of alumni under age 40 in the Shaw Society.
“Cash is precious to me at this point; I reinvest my capital into my business to keep growing,” explains Delsesto, a real estate entrepreneur. And as his personal worth
increases, so does the value of his bequest. “I see myself as being able to have a more significant impact on Boston College by long-term giving versus short-term.
“People my age think they’re too young to make an impact. But I disagree. They may have more to give in terms of time than they do in terms of money, but now’s the time to start the relationship—because we are the future of this economy, and we are the future of philanthropy.”
Putting the “Fun” in Fundraising
The 10th annual Mod500, one of the biggest Senior Legacy Challenge traditions, took place on Friday, April 26. Teams of six dressed up in costume and mounted kidsized tricycles for a relay race around the storied Mods complex. The competition is open only to donors to the Senior Legacy Challenge who earn the chance to vie for the top prize—Cityside Tavern gift cards—as well as coveted bragging rights. As you might imagine, it is as comical as it is competitive!
PHOTO: REGINA MURRAY
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
Harvey D. Egan, SJ
Professor Emeritus Harvey Egan, SJ, MA’65, STL’65, is Boston College’s longest currently serving Jesuit, having been a member of the faculty for forty-nine years. Egan, who joined BC’s Theology Department in 1975, teaches systematic and mystical theology, a subject on which he has written more than a dozen books. Despite officially retiring from the classroom in 2010, Egan has hardly slowed down. At eighty-six, he’s still exercising, cooking, and shooting photographs, and last August he published Rethinking Catholic Theology: From the Mystery of Existence to the New Creation, a lengthy examination of how Catholicism has evolved since Vatican II in the 1960s. Elizabeth Clemente
You never know when life will change directions. The turning point in my life came in college, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Three of us used to go to Sunday Mass and I’d do some prayer, but I wasn’t pious by any means. Then one day, the girl next door said to me, “Are you going to be a lukewarm Catholic all of your life?” It took me aback. That summer I began going to Mass almost daily, and the feeling grew. Later, I read an article in the Saturday Evening Post that said wherever Jesuits are, they find God in all things. That really struck me. I was working as an electrical engineer when I
decided, I’m gonna go with the Jesuits. And I never looked back.
A great teacher can have a lifelong impact. I completed my PhD dissertation in Germany, under the direction of Karl Rahner. A close friend of mine had Rahner as his dissertation director and told me to reach out. I said, “this is one of the world’s great theologians, he wouldn’t be interested in me.” But I wrote to him, and sure enough, I went to Germany. Listening to him, I felt like Moses at the base of the mountain. He would march up and down the room, and I can still see him dig-
ging his toe in as if he were going to pull the wood out of the floor. I still have forty volumes of his writing in my room today.
Prayer should be deep. A beautiful theologian writer once said, if a person prays with meditation, it engages the mind and the imagination. After a while, this tiny flame of love arises in a person’s heart, and they should put everything in a cloud of forgetting, even thoughts about God, and just pray with this naked love. Most parishes when I was growing up never talked about experiencing God, or deeper levels of prayer. It’s like a marriage. After you’ve been married for a while, you don’t have to say a lot, but there’s that intimacy there.
Out of pain can come growth. Several years ago, I was crossing the street on Comm Ave and got hit by a car. I was pretty banged up— it took about a year and a half to get back on my feet. Then I went into the classroom one semester and said, “no, I can’t do this,” so I retired. But that was only sort of a retirement, because I wrote five books after that.
A Jesuit serves for a lifetime. One of the great things about being a Jesuit professor is you teach students, and often you perform their weddings. You baptize their children, and you bury their parents. It’s a very long relationship, and a very close one. So it’s nice to get a letter or an email from them. Any marriages I’ve done, I send them a card on their anniversary.
That “99 percent perspiration” saying is correct. During Covid, I finished a 630-page book. One Jesuit made a remark when the book came out, saying, “Oh, Harvey’s brilliant.” Then another Jesuit, correctly, said, “No, he’s not brilliant, he’s focused.” The paradox is when I was growing up, I hated writing and I hated languages. But I ended up in Germany to study under Rahner, so I learned French, German, and a bit of Italian, and of course did a lot of writing. That’s the discipline part.
A setback is just a beginning. I don’t let things happen. If I want something, I go after it. In academia, sometimes you’re bloodied up. As Henry Kissinger had it (sort of), there’s so much politics in academia because there’s so little at stake. I’ve known people over the years that get one, or two, or three blows and they just quit, or stay at a certain level. But I haven’t quit yet. n
Parting Shot
Power Wheels
Miles Hester ’24 crosses the finish line last semester during the annual Mod 500 tricycle race fundraiser. For more on the event, please turn to page 71. Lisa Weidenfeld
As one of the Alumni Association’s signature events and the largest gathering of AHANA alumni at the Heights, RECONNECT III is a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends, network with new ones, and share unforgettable experiences on the campus where so many special relationships began.
