Magazine
Celebrating Women Writers / 2010 Annual Report
Administration Ruth A. Knox ’75
President of the College
Vivia L. Fowler
Dean of the College/Vice President
for Academic Affairs
Patricia M. Gibbs
Vice President for Student Affairs
C. Stephen Farr
Vice President for
Enrollment Services
Richard P. Maier
Vice President for Business
and Fiscal Affairs/Treasurer
Deborah J. Smith ’76
Vice President for Institutional
Advancement
Wesleyan Magazine Staff Susan Welsh, Editor
Director of Communications
swelsh@wesleyancollege.edu
Brandi Vorhees, Art Director Mary Ann Howard, Staff Writer Ryan Smallwood, Student Researcher Cathy Coxey Snow ’71
Director of Alumnae Affairs
csnow@wesleyancollege.edu
Lauren Hamblin ’06
Associate Director of Alumnae Affairs
lhamblin@wesleyancollege.edu
Wende Sanderson Meyer von Bremen ’80
Class Notes Editor
Printing Panaprint Photography Special thanks to Neal Carpenter at inWard Studio, Jason Vorhees, Woody Marshall, Paolo Deste Fanis, Lynn Lane, plus alumnae and friends for providing photos. Wesleyan Magazine is published twice a year by the Wesleyan College Office of Communications 4760 Forsyth Road Macon, GA 31210-4462 phone (478) 757-5134 fax (478) 757-5104 Contents may be reprinted with permission of the editor.
from the president Throughout this issue of the Wesleyan Magazine, we celebrate women writers who have been recording and shaping history for more than a century. From novelists, poets, and songwriters to historians, speech writers, and journalists, Wesleyan women are proving the value of the written word and winning national awards along the way. In keeping with this celebration of alumnae writers, we are welcoming several extraordinary guest authors to our campus community this year. Recently, Southern fiction fans packed the Porter Memorial Fine Arts Auditorium to help authors Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor launch the paperback release of their New York Times bestselling memoir of pilgrimage and metamorphosis, Traveling with Pomegranates. Soon we will host the award-winning children’s book author Carmen Agra Deedy, who will be the Carnes Lecture speaker on January 27, 2011. Join us if you are in the area. We also were thrilled to celebrate the inauguration in October of the recently established Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program at Wesleyan. Endowed with a generous gift from our own Kathryn Stripling Byer ’66, this program brought both Kay, who just concluded a five-year term as poet laureate of North Carolina, and Cathy Smith Bowers, the current holder of that prestigious position, to campus for three days filled with Southern poetry. You’ll want to read more about this wonderful program on page 24. 2011 marks the beginning of an exciting year for Wesleyan College, the 175th anniversary of our founding on December 23, 1836. We’ll celebrate the history and the future of the College through dozens of events, including the grand re-opening in January of Taylor Hall as the new home for our popular business, education, and psychology programs. A massive renovation has restored this jewel of the 1928 campus to its classic grandeur while meeting today’s high standards for energy efficiency and technology. We are proud
that this renovation of Taylor Hall will achieve Silver certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design by the United States Green Building Council. Please come to campus any time and take a look for yourself. In the second half of this issue, we thank each of you who supported Wesleyan College in Fiscal Year 2010 with your gifts for scholarships, endowment, special projects, and the Annual Fund. Once again, we have combined the feature articles and content of our Wesleyan Magazine with the donor information of our Annual Report. Not surprisingly, we continue our efforts to use our precious resources wisely, and we are extraordinarily grateful to you –– our loyal donors –– for the gifts you share with us. In early December, Wesleyan’s 175th anniversary celebration took us to New York City where I was thrilled to have a personal visit with Betty Thompson ’47, who is featured in this issue. Just as exciting was the young alumnae event the previous evening. These sharp, energetic women are at schools like the Pratt Institute of Art and Columbia University. They are pursuing promising careers in banking, law, and the arts –– one is already an associate pastor in a United Methodist Church near the Hudson River. During this special time in the College’s history that naturally includes honoring the legacy of all the women who have come before us, these young alumnae remind us that we celebrate equally the promise of the extraordinary women we continue to send out into the world. We also celebrate all of you who make this Wesleyan experience possible!
Contents Wesleyan Magazin e W int er 2010
2 8 10 12 14 20 24
Wesleyan Women Writers Generations of writers shaping history
An Ecumenical Journey Meet a prophetic force in religious journalism
Face of FOX5’s Health Watch The rise of Medical Reporter Beth Galvin
A Signora of Italian Cooking Gourmet Jo Bettoja serves up a third career
Magic Girl Modern lyricism of Mary-Charlotte Young
A 19th Century Poet & Patriot A critical look at the work of Loula Kendall Rogers
Poet Laureates offer Advice Wesleyan’s new Writer-in-Residence Program
28 Carnes Lecture Series 33 Goalkeeper Sets NCAA Record 40 Alumnae Club News 45 Annual Investors’ Report
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L I
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Throughout many decades, Wesleyan women writers have not only recorded history but also shaped history. Many have been writers by profession, while many others leveraged their writing talents to advance primary careers, advocate change, or enrich their personal lives. From novelists, poets, bloggers, songwriters, and playwrights to historians, nonfiction authors, speech writers, and journalists, Wesleyan women writers are winning awards and proving the value of the written word. From its earliest days, Wesleyan College prepared women to be extraordinary writers. During the mid-nineteenth century it was mandatory for each graduating Wesleyan woman to orally present a written composition. The graduates publicly read their papers in front of Macon notables, clergy, trustees, faculty, family members, and friends. In a 2006 Wesleyan Magazine article, Julia Stillwell Ketcham ’58 describes the compositions as a rare window into the minds of educated nineteenth century women. “The rhetoric,” Ketcham noted, “sounds self-assured, forceful, and clear. The papers have an academic content revealing something a graduate of any time would want – to be current, informed, prepared to take part in the cultural milieu of her time.” The papers never have a misspelled word and the grammar is perfect. 2004 Georgia Women of Achievement Inductee Louise Frederick Hays (class of 1900) was one of these educated nineteenth century graduates. She was the state of Georgia’s second female historian and archivist and is known for 2
her dedication to many social causes and her commitment to women, humankind in general, and her beloved Georgia. She was president of the Philomathean Society, editor of the College’s first yearbook (The Phi Mu Annual of 1900), and valedictorian of her class. After graduation, she began fighting for women’s suffrage, promoting the idea of coeducation, encouraging women to be leaders in Georgia, and serving with the Federated Women’s Clubs. She wrote acclaimed histories of the FrederickRumph families and Hero of Hornet’s Nest: A Biography of General Elijah Clark. Louise was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from UGA in 1924 and was the first woman in the United States to receive an honorary degree for club work. Louise’s legacy set a high example for other Wesleyan historical non-fiction writers including Jane Anne Mallet Settle ’47 who recently recorded her family’s history in The Women of the House: One Hundred Years, One Georgia Family, and Sue Lott Clark ’46 who wrote Southern Letters and Life in the Mid 1800s about her mother’s family
and Lott-Bailey Families and Their Relationship to Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, about her father’s family. Former Wesleyan Trustee Arline Atkins Finch ’56 co-authored a book in the Library of Congress, P.E.O. Fifty Years in Florida, a historical account of the women’s educational philanthropic organization to which she belongs. Most know Dr. Virginia Sumerford York ‘60 as an internationally recognized economist who has studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Schule Klessheim, Salsburg, Austria; the University of Texas; and Georgia State University, among others. But as a nonfiction author, she wrote The Gene Sumerford Place: Memories of Childhood on an Americus, Georgia Farm and also co-authored the book Historical Churches of Mobile, Alabama with another member of the Mobile Historical Society. Another Wesleyanne, Anne McGee Morganstern ’58, documented the historical significance of tombs in her book, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England.
Whether recording history, shaping history, or blending history with fantasy, Wesleyan women writers are earning recognition through high levels of dedication to the craft. English Major Betsy Hopkins Fancher ‘49 won Wesleyan’s Creative Writing Award for a volume of poetry she authored during her senior year. The poems were later published under the title Blue River River, the first of her four books. Fancher enjoyed a successful career as a daily columnist and book editor for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, senior editor of Atlanta Magazine, and associate editor of South Today. During her life, she contributed to such publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, and Saturday Review. As an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church, Jennifer A. Johnson ’92 writes daily –– sermons, Sunday school curriculum, and devotions. Writing romance, however, is something she also has done since junior high school. “Writing sermons is my most important writing. But thankfully, the Lord has given me a talent for romance writing,” said Jennifer, who won a poetrywriting contest in the first grade. “It is my stress release and a hobby that has been recognized in the publishing industry with four books (a fifth due out next year) from three different publishers.” Her latest novel, Rescue Me, is publisher Turquoise Morning’s bestseller. Poet and Novelist Elizabeth Johnson McCaslin ’44 claimed she “cannot not write.” In fact, Elizabeth has been writing since she was a child and, with her ninetieth birthday just around the corner, she still tries to write every day. Although she now is preparing her second novel, The Monkey Stance, for publication and her first novel, Christ! Amy Lowell, received spectacular reviews when published in 2005, Elizabeth maintains that she is a poet first. “I write both fiction and poetry and find they interact in amazing ways,” she said. Her first published book was a collection of poetry entitled First Came the Night. The title of Elizabeth’s first novel, Christ! Amy Lowell, refers to the last line of a poem written by Amy Lowell, an early twentieth-century poet. In the poem, “Patterns,” Lowell leaves her readers with the question, “Christ, what are patterns for?” Elizabeth uses Amy’s cry as a starting point for her novel, which she describes as a “kind of prayer for women who have fallen into destructive patterns” or feel a sense of emptiness.
“Being in touch with people in crisis as a counselor, I discovered many truths about humanity,” she said. “Writing fiction demands such truths; they fill writing with a reality that all fiction deserves.” Retired History and French Teacher Dr. Giulia LaCagnina Saucier ’60 worked in Italy and Greece, as well as in public and private schools in the South. Now in Mississippi, she has published her first book, a memoir entitled Missed Generations, and is working on a second, The Making of a Mississippian. Other writers of memoirs include Margaret Garnett Harris ’30 who wrote Pioneer Daughter and Barefoot Milkman’s Kin, and Donnie Donaldson Porterfield ’54 who wrote of her life as a minister’s wife in Where Were You When the Parsonage Fell Down? Helen Anne Richards ’80 always wanted to be a writer. Her first job was writing copy for The Corner Pantry Food Mart in Decatur, Georgia, where she worked in advertising and public relations. After graduating from Wesleyan, she earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. From 2000 to 2006, Helen Anne wrote about the newspaper industry for the newspaper industry trade publications and also was a contributor to Athens magazine. Helen Anne said, “I know a little bit about a lot of things which is good because you never know what you’re going to get handed.” Fellow Journalist Pat Ondo Snyder ’69 continues to add markets for her humor column, Balancing Acts, which has been running in newspapers since 2000. She also maintains a blog by the same name. Retired Warner Robins High School Math Teacher Mary Ann Burke Gore ’66 won Georgia’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics for her book, Work Smarter Not Harder – Calculus Activities and Labs. Another scholar, Lynn Lamberton Long ’70, is the author of several textbooks, including Sexuality Counseling and Couples Counseling and Therapy: An Integrative Approach. Lynn once served as the first female chair of the Counselor Education Department at Stetson University. Today, she owns a private practice specializing in marriage and family counseling. Lucy Anne Fisackerly Adams ’80 teaches private piano and composes new hymns for the church where she serves as music director. She has authored Shout for Joy!, a solo songbook, and Songs for the Heart, new hymns for the church. She co-authored Chronic Illness and
the Christian with her husband Todd. Both Todd and Lucy Anne have multiple sclerosis and speak to groups about handling chronic illnesses as Christians. The late Betty Atwater ’49 also used her gifts as a writer to benefit others and share a message of faith and love. She was the author of The Most Excellent Way, a book of devotionals. Proceeds from the book benefit her church, Cherokee Heights United Methodist Church. Roanoke Rock Muddle, the first novel of former Miss Georgia Lucia Hutchinson Powe ‘53 actually was written in 1976 as a play for the bicentennial celebration of Martin County, North Carolina. Lucia earned a B.F.A. in speech and drama at Wesleyan Conservatory and later pursued post-graduate study at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and East Carolina University. Lucia was a soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Shaw, but many remember her as “Miss Lucia” from the syndicated program, “Romper Room.” Lucia taught creative writing, drama, music, and art history at both the college and high school levels. In 2008 she founded “Kids Notes,” a pre-school music program based on the theory that playing the violin helps develop the left and right sides of the brain which helps children become better readers and writers. Currently, she is working on a second book, which will be a continuation of her first. From history making writers like former North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer ’66 to award winning playwrights like Sandra Deer ’62, Eugenia Rawls ’34, and Amanda Jacobs ’84, Wesleyan women represent a wide spectrum of writing genres. Some, like songwriter Mary Charlotte Young ’04, knew from the start they would pursue careers involving writing, while others, like poet Pam Wynne Fellers ’67, published work later in life. Despite the awards and honors, the Wesleyan writers featured in this issue are united in their desire to encourage and inspire others to embrace the power of the written word. Statesboro Herald Columnist Kathy A. Bradley ’78, for example, suggests the following to aspiring writers: write anything that anyone gives you the opportunity to write. “From silly poems for children’s birthday invitations to speeches for academic gatherings, each embraced opportunity,” she claimed, “helped me develop my skill and my voice into clearer tones.” Enjoy the wisdom and wit of ten more inspiring Wesleyan writers...
N on-Fiction When Michele Arduengo ’88 applied to Wesleyan, she intended to major in English or communication. Instead, she fell in love with biology and changed her major to pre-med. When she could, she took elective courses in speech communication, music, and photography. Wesleyan’s liberal arts emphasis strengthened Michele’s love of writing, prepared her for post-graduate study in biochemistry, and helped her combine two different fields of interest into one enriching career. In 1997, Michele earned a Ph.D. through the Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology Program at Emory University. In 2002, she earned an ELS Certification by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences. Currently Michele is a scientific communications specialist at Promega Corporation, a worldwide leader in applying biochemistry and molecular biology to the development of innovative, high-value products for the life sciences industry. She is editor of Promega Technical Publication Portal, editor and writer for Promega Education Resources Site, and author/editor of Promega Connections blog. She is the first author of a book chapter in Cell-Free Expression, published in 2006, and is the author of more than thirty scientific articles. She also has taught nearly a dozen writing workshops, four science writing and ethics courses, and eight biology and laboratory methods courses. Until recently, most of Michele’s professional writing had been scientific and highly technical. But, she has another, more creative voice and claims that her favorite kind of writing is creative non-fiction. “I’ve dabbled in poetry and short fiction, but that isn’t where my muse leads me,” she said. “I still have letters and poems that I exchanged with my maternal grandmother when I was a little girl.” After her mother passed away a few years ago, Michele returned to journaling and writing personal essays with a renewed vigor. “In some ways I wrote my way through grief,” she said. The first essay she published in Wisconsin Woman magazine was a letter to her daughter about her mother. That essay led to a weekly newspaper column, “Cheese Grits,” which she has written for the Milton Courier in Milton, Wisconsin, since 2008. The column has expanded 4
to the “Grits and Purls” blog, a writing endeavor Michele shares with a friend and fellow science writer from Promega.
The prize that year went to Florida native Marjorie Rawlings for her book, The Yearling.
In 2009, Michele helped pilot a Wisconsin writing program, “Telling My Story,” modeled after the Imaginative Writing Program in Macon, which was described in a 2008 Wesleyan Magazine. Through these writing programs, elementary age children have the opportunity to write, illustrate, and publish their own books. The programs are designed to instill self-esteem and also engage young students at a higher level. According to Michele, the “Telling My Story” program was such a success that she immediately began writing grants to fund round two.
Like her contemporary Margaret Mitchell, Evelyn used the Civil War as a setting for her romantic fiction and, like Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, Blackberry Winter was touted by The Atlanta Journal as a ‘possibility for screen entertainment.’ During the 1930s, when these books were published, women novelists were not only enjoying much success but also reinventing the genre of Southern fiction. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for GWTW in 1937, and Caroline Miller’s Southern historical novel, Lamb in His Bosom, won the Pulitzer in 1934. Later, when Blackberry Winter was released in paperback, the title was changed to A Blaze of Glory. Evelyn’s second novel, Sugar in the Gourd, was published in 1942.
R omance In 1932, when Wesleyanne Evelyn Hanna Sommerville began writing her famous and highly acclaimed novel Blackberry Winter, she had to “hide and sneak off to work” on the book, “because my mother did not approve of my interest in writing,” she said. “I would tip-toe off to the backyard and write while sitting in the back seat of the car.” Evelyn slipped out of the house at odd hours to meet her typist so often that her mother was convinced her daughter was having a clandestine affair with a married man. In fact, it wasn’t until E. P. Dutton Company accepted the manuscript for publication that Evelyn told her mother about the book. “Naturally, I was terribly excited when the telegram of acceptance came one afternoon,” she said. “It was about three o’clock and my mother, like any true Southern lady, was taking her after-dinner nap; but I decided to brave all and ran upstairs to her room.” Evelyn’s mother read the telegram then put her head back on the pillow and said, “Did you finish watering my camellia japonicas?” Evelyn said she began writing “because there was nothing to do at home except play – play the piano, play bridge, play golf.” She co-authored History of Upson County in 1930, a project sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and it inspired her to dramatize the lives of people embroiled in the Civil War. Blackberry Winter was published in 1938 and missed winning the 1939 Pulitzer Prize by just one vote.
While promoting Blackberry Winter in England in 1939, Evelyn met Robert Sommerville who was a news editor for London News-Chronicle and a British agent for E.P. Dutton. They married after World War II and settled in Georgia in 1948. By then, Evelyn was an internationally known Atlanta columnist who submitted her stories from London. The state of Georgia benefited greatly from her commitment to literacy as she was one of the founders of the Roswell Public Library in 1956 and also served on the board of the Atlanta Public Library in the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Thomaston in 1900, Evelyn Hanna Somerville died in Roswell, Georgia, just before her eightysecond birthday.
S uspense Sara Elizabeth Smith ‘47 graduated from Wesleyan with a degree in English and a strong desire to read as many novels as possible. She intended to be an English teacher, but instead found a career as a secretary in her native Atlanta, where she lives today. In 1987, Sara retired from a prominent Atlanta law firm and began taking music classes on Mercer University’s Atlanta campus. She continued this course of study at Georgia State College and now teaches piano lessons from her home. Sara always wanted to write a novel. So, she did. In 2006, the eighty-year-old published her first novel, Castle in the
Carolinas. Sara claims the novel is the kind of book that she likes to read – a story filled with music, mystery, lost love, new love, and danger that even castle walls could not keep out. “I wrote it for fun,” she said. “It’s not what I would call a serious novel, but it is a fun read.” Sara completed her second novel this past summer and is in the process of finding a publisher. This second book is quite different from her first in that it is historical fiction written mainly for young adults and intertwines actual historical figures with fictional characters. Now, she is working on novel number three. Sara tries to write every day but claimed, “As most writers know, sometimes writing is exciting and other times you have to take a break and step away until the excitement returns.” During her breaks from writing and teaching piano, Sara gardens and reads.
M emoir The forward of the late Louise Dodd’s cookbook sums it up: “With a Southern drawl as slow as the cane syrup that Georgians pour on their biscuits, Louise is fiercely loyal to her native Georgia. She grew up under the tutelage of good cooks, her mother and grandmother and aunts, and has written, sometimes comically, about many of her small town experiences.” Louise Futrelle Dodd ‘49 spent her childhood in Guyton, Georgia, a small town of nearly 2,000 people located twenty-five miles north of Savannah. At the young age of sixteen, she enrolled at Wesleyan College. In 1950, she married and moved to Wrightsville, Georgia, where she lived for thirty-five years. Her husband practiced medicine and together they reared two children. Louise began her writing career with The Courier Herald in Dublin where (over the course of twenty-five years) she became an award-winning writer and the creator of a weekly food column, From the Kitchen of Louise Dodd. In 1986, she moved to Macon and began writing for Macon Magazine. During a career spanning four decades, Louise wrote more than fifteen hundred food columns and, along the way, she dined with Jimmy Carter in the White House, Bill Clinton in Arkansas, Gladys Knight at her desert home in Las
Vegas, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Willard Scott, and many other high profile people. She even dined with Sheriff Ray Wilkes in the Bibb County Jail. This extraordinary range of dining experiences led to her 2004 cookbook, Eating from the White House to the Jailhouse. Bending the recipe, Louise blends the genres of memoir and travelogue into her unique cookbook. On page 79, Louise shares the recipe of Mrs. McAfee’s Wesleyan Dressing, first writing: “When I was in college, there was a charming little brick building across the road from the college entrance gates. Called The Pharm, and run by one of the finest cooks in the world, the spot was a favorite destination for college girls who were always hungry. Mrs. McAfee had so many special recipes, but this is the only one that has endured the passage of years (in my possession anyway).” Readers devour the fascinating stories that complement Louise’s recipes, like traveling and dining in New York, Brussels, Luxembourg, London, Dublin, Ireland, and Paris. Her adventure of judging the world’s most famous barbecue contest held along a mile of the Mississippi River in Memphis sets the stage for one recipe. While her experiences judging Georgia’s Barbecue Contest in Vienna, the Big Pig Jig, and other contests in schools and churches add spice to her many concoctions.
H umor Helma Wood Clark ’90 tried her hand at many careers before she discovered her true passion. She’s been described as a woman who never met a career she didn’t like, having worked as a registered nurse, an attorney, a real estate agent, and a mediator. Although she loved all those careers, Helma never felt the fit was exactly right. But when she discovered writing, everything came together. “I think writing chose me,” she said. “I had some characters in my head, then the story developed whenever I had a moment to myself. I decided I might as well write it out and be done with it.” Helma loves to write romance, but claimed plotting suspense is what keeps her addicted to “the laborious process of writing.” “(The characters) actually come to me before the plot does,” she said.
“They appear in scenes, here and there. Eventually, I have to sit down and tell the story, just so I know how it comes out!” Fed up with big publishing houses and frustrated over a file full of form rejection letters, Helma shared her manuscripts and publishing woes with friends and family. In 2000, with the support of a few family members and friends, Helma formed her own publishing company, Jersten Press. To date, Helma has independently published all of her own books. She is the author of two novels, The Big Game (2002) and The Counterfeit (2003), but is gaining great recognition for her humorous non-fiction work. Her highly acclaimed book, Snot Bubbles! A Football Primer for Moms, Wives & Significant Others, was a 2003 Benjamin Franklin Award Winner, one of the highest national honors in small and independent publishing. Helma published a second edition of Snot Bubbles! and, in 2006, released A Girl’s Gotta Know Football, which was the beginning of the trademarked A Girl’s Gotta Know series. Helma’s work as the campaign manager for Calvin Rhodes, who recently ran for Georgia State Representative, along with her experiences in Washington and at the Georgia State Capitol inspired her newest book, A Girl’s Gotta Know Politics (available in October 2011). Now, as an independent publisher, Helma knows what it’s like to send out rejection letters to authors. “Thankfully,” she said. “I have only had to do that twice. Both times, the manuscripts were great, but I didn’t feel we had the funding to give the work the push it needed. Publishing is an expensive endeavor, and the margins, even in the best of circumstances, are extremely tight. Ironically, I’ve had to reject my own work. I’ve written two other novels, but am not convinced of the commercial potential of either. So, no deal.” “A more difficult experience is when someone sends me work for critique and it doesn’t move me at all,” she said. Helma reads just about everything but claims character-driven books tend to be her favorites. Her advice to aspiring writers who fear the process may be too hard is to just stick with it. “When it gets to the point that you have to write it, you will,” she said. “Just don’t let yourself know the ending until you write it… at the end.” Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
T ravel Winner of the 1982 North Carolina Award for Literature and author of fifteen published books, Willie Snow Ethridge ‘20 initially became a writer to learn more about the journalism and newspaper career of her fiancé, Mark Ethridge. While Mark was in Europe during World War I, Willie studied journalism at Wesleyan and worked as a human-interest feature writer at The (Macon) Telegraph. After graduation, she worked for one year as a reporter, covering federal court proceedings. Willie and Mark married in October 1921 and, afterwards, she gave up her regular job as a reporter. Mark gave Willie a typewriter for Christmas that year so she continued to submit feature stories as a freelance reporter, often writing for The Atlanta Georgian, a Hearst paper famous for yellow journalism. “I did anything for The Georgian,” she said. “Especially scandal and murders and people running away with other women’s husbands and things like that. The Hearst papers loved scandal.” When her children were in school, Willie found time to write in the mornings or afternoons. But, she claimed, the minute the children or Mark came home she would hide her writing under the mattress. “If anything went wrong with the house they always accused me of writing instead of doing housework.” In 1934, the Ethridge family moved to Washington D.C. and Willie decided to write a book covering one year of her life. As I Live and Breathe was a compilation of her newspaper columns, daily activities and thoughts, accounts of people she met, and other personal things of interest. The book was successful, so she decided to write a novel. Mingled Yarn, a fictional story about the textile mills in Middle Georgia, was released the same week as Gone With The Wind by the same publishing house (Macmillan). Her novel received little attention but Willie pushed on and published more than a dozen other titles covering topics of travel, history, and biography. Willie Snow Ethridge died at the age of eighty-two in Key West, Florida. Born in Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century, Willie was an only daughter with three brothers and grew up knowing she would go to college. Her family lived across the street from the Wesleyan 6
campus and her brothers went to Mercer. “I don’t believe my mother was particularly ambitious for me to ever become anybody special like a writer or evangelist or a great singer or anything,” Willie said. “She just hoped I would be a good Baptist girl.”
F iction According to Mary Ann Taylor-Hall ’59, anyone who finds a voice as a writer understands what a very dramatic process it is. “It’s a process that practically requires confrontation of your own DNA. Finding your voice as a writer,” she said, “is like finding yourself.” Mary Ann has spent more than thirty years on a farm north of Lexington, Kentucky, where she penned three novels, a collection of short stories, a volume of poetry, and edited Missing Mountains, an anthology of Kentucky writers opposed to mountaintop removal coal mining. Barnes & Noble honored her first novel, Come and Go, Molly Snow, with their Discover Great New Writers Award. Published in 1995, the book was heralded as a “remarkable first novel… a literary touchstone…belonging in most public libraries.” Lee Smith of The Journal of Country Music said, “Come Come and Go, Molly Snow is not only one of the best novels ever written about music, it is one of the best novels ever written, period.” Mary Ann was the recipient of the 1979 PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award for her long story Winter Facts and also was awarded ForeWord Magazine’s 2001 Book of the Year in Short Fiction for How She Knows What She Knows About YoYos. She received a grant from Kentucky Arts Council and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her short stories have appeared in several periodicals, like The Paris Review and The Hudson Review, and in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories. After the publication of her most recent novel, At The Breakers, Mary Ann said that one of the cardinal rules of writing is to never write about a writer, which is exactly what she did. The main character, Jo, learns she must get up early in the morning to find time to write. For the first time in her life she is able to consolidate her sense of self and to contemplate the possibility that she can actually do what she is meant to do. Writing becomes her
salvation. “Jo becomes a writer similar to the way I became a writer,” Mary Ann said. “I had to learn to get up at four in the morning in order to find a time to write that wasn’t full of distractions.” After two years at Wesleyan, Mary Ann completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Florida. She earned a Master of Art in English Literature from Columbia University, and has taught at Auburn University, Miami of Ohio, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Kentucky. At work on her next novel, Mary Ann said two of her Wesleyan professors, Dr. George Gignilliat and Ann Munck ‘38, were absolutely pivotal in her beginning as a writer.
S piritual As a young girl, Lucy Neeley Adams ’56 felt music in her soul. In the third grade, she even wrote a book entitled Hymn Stories and Pictures. She envisioned herself as a movie star wearing beautiful dresses that swirled as she danced and sang. Lucy’s father had been a performer and her sister was a talented singer and dancer who became Miss South Carolina in 1945 when Lucy was in the fifth grade. With her own dramatic flair plus natural acting, speaking, and singing talents, Lucy also was destined to entertain. Forty years later, Lucy returned to her childhood ambition of music and entertainment. Using her third-grade project as a starting point, she began researching the origin of popular hymns and telling the “back stories” on the Nashville, Tennessee, Christian radio station WWGM. In her program called The Story Behind the Song, Lucy answered the question “Why do people write songs?” The program began as Lucy sang six words, “I love to tell the story,” and said, “Hi friends, this is Lucy Adams and I tell the story behind the song.” Each five-minute segment told the who, what, where, and why of a Christian hymn along with a verse or two of the music. “I was amazed that I had saved that book from childhood,” she said. “I believe God was directing my steps toward this wonderful music ministry.” The radio segments aired for several years throughout the state. Later, when Lucy moved to Cookeville, Tennessee, she continued to tell the story of the origin of hymns in the local newspaper, the Herald-Citizen. Her column Song Stories
ran for five years and, in 1998, Cookeville Creative Writers chose Lucy as the Writer of the Year. In 2000, Lucy compiled much of her research and published a book, 52 Hymn Story Devotions, through Abingdon Press. It includes fifty-two stories surrounded by scripture and a prayer. Each devotion closes with the words of the hymn’s first verse. Lucy also includes examples of how the hymns have enriched her life. Although she never became that movie star, Lucy is thankful for the love of music that fueled her writing career. Her journey included music ministry within the Methodist church to radio personality and newspaper columnist, and finally book author. Although Lucy has told many stories in the past seventy-plus years, she claims they are all variations of one theme – “the story of Jesus Christ, what He means to me, and what He could mean to others.” “I haven’t written a thing that hasn’t already been said somewhere, except for the personal illustrations about what a hymn meant to me,” she said.
H istorical Jacquelyn Burton Cook ’54 is well known for the thorough and accurate research she does when writing the historical novels for which she has become so famous. What her readers may not know is that the story of the American South runs in her blood. Born into a family that’s been Georgia-bred for generations, Jackie’s heritage includes stories handed down from her great grandmother who experienced Sherman’s march first-hand. For more than twenty years, Jackie has told stories of the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction period of the American South. Her thirteen novels have sold close to 500,000 copies. Jackie sold her first story to Home Life magazine in 1963. While home with her two children, she freelanced for a wide assortment of newspapers and magazines. Articles on history, religion, humor, and fiction have garnered Jackie numerous awards from Georgia Writers Association, Southeastern Writers Association, Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists, and others. Her first novel, The River Between, was published in 1985 and was the first of a five-volume, multi-generational Christian romance saga known as The River Series. In 2002, Barbour Books published them as an anthology in one
volume called Magnolias. Last year, Cook’s current publisher, BelleBooks. Inc., re-released a beautiful new edition of The River Between and the rest of the series was released every two months in 2010. “My readers have continued to request Magnolias,” said Jackie. “so I sold the rights to a new publisher, BelleBooks, thinking they would print a new edition. Instead, they decided they could present a more readable book if they went back to the original single format.” Jackie’s other books include The Gates of Trevalyan, an epic Civil War novel set in Madison, Georgia, and Washington D.C., and The Greenwood Legacy, the true story of Thomas and Lavinia Jones who built Greenwood in 1840 and started the plantation culture that still exists between Thomasville, Georgia, and Tallahassee, Florida. Her latest novel, Sunrise, is the true story of the builders of Macon’s landmark Hay House and was written at the request of George Felton, whose great grandparents built the house. Felton entrusted Jackie with his grandmother’s honeymoon journal and a packet of letters to ensure she got the facts right. Jackie is past president of the Georgia Branch of the National League of American Pen Women and past president of the local United Daughters of the Confederacy. In 1970, the Atlanta Writers Club named her Writer of the Year. In 1987, Jackie took second place in a national competition from the National League of American Pen Women in the adult book category for her novel Image in the Looking Glass. In 1995, she won first place from the Georgia National League of American Pen Women for The Gates of Trevalyan. As the keynote speaker at the Georgia Council of Teachers of English annual conference in February, Jackie had a few tips for the attendees. “First, build a reputation in the smallest things you write. Get your facts straight. Write nice things about people. Whenever possible, let them proofread. Next, find subject and theme. Outline the whole book, especially the first and last pages.” Jackie said she writes the last sentence first and the whole book moves toward it. “Write a bio of all main characters to refer to when you are writing quickly and forget a detail. And write as fast as you can get down thoughts. Finish the book and let it cool. Edit. Polish. Do it again. Good writing is not in the writing. It is in the polishing.”
S elf-Help Born eighth of nine children in a farmhouse without indoor plumbing or electricity in the small farming community of Roberta, Georgia, Dr. Luleen Sandefur Anderson ’58 was the first person in her family to go to college. She attended Wesleyan on a full scholarship. She was interested in journalism but decided to major in psychology. During her senior year, Luleen was voted Miss Wesleyan. She graduated and went on to earn a master’s degree from Emory University and a Ph.D. from Boston University where she received a stipend from the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1965, she began a successful career in private clinical practice. In addition to her practice, Luleen also taught at the graduate school level, supervised trainees in a child guidance center, directed a family unit in a large mental health center, and served sixteen years as coordinator of psychological services for the Quincy, Massachusetts, public schools. Her lifelong passion for people led Luleen to pen a monthly column in Wilma!, a women’s magazine published in Wilmington, the North Carolina town where she has lived since 1991. The author of more than eighty articles in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals, Luleen also has written several books including The Knack of a Happy Life: Nine Lessons Along the Journey. Two books, Sunday Came Early This Week and Fill Me Up to Empty, are accounts of cases she handled in her private clinical practice. Colleagues describe her work as dazzling, poignant, masterful, fascinating, inspiring, brilliant, and difficult to put down. After years of writing about other people’s life experiences, Luleen’s grown son suggested she write about her own life. “That evening, I just took him up on that,” she said. She began by writing fond memories of events in her small Georgia hometown, including one that inspired the book’s title, Under the Covers, about old time quilting bees and how, as a little girl, she would crawl under the quilters’ work as they were sewing. “No matter where we’ve come from or where we’re going, we are all stories. Added together our stories make up one book we call life,” she said.
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
The Ec u meni cal Jour n ey o f BETTY ETTY THoMpSoN ’47 In her book, Turning World: An Ecumenical Journey, Betty Thompson ’47 writes, “I embarked for Europe on the Queen Mary in 1955. I was traveling with my friend Sarah Parrott. Sarah was a colleague and editor at the Board of Missions as well as a neighbor and a Georgian. We had already planned to take a European vacation. Then I had the opportunity to work in Geneva. We went ahead with our trip. We stopped at Geneva first where I met my colleagues. After that we resumed our holiday in Europe. I returned to Geneva and began working at my new job, and Sarah returned to New York City.” 8
In 1994, the United Methodist Association of Communications (UMAC) saluted Betty Thompson ‘47 as their Communicator of the Year. Appearing on videotape in her native Georgia while recovering from knee surgery in New York, Betty had actually received the top UMAC award two weeks earlier. She was presented the award while in her New York office by retired New World Outlook Editor Arthur Moore and against the backdrop of an enlarged World Outlook magazine cover. That was fitting because, for twenty-two years from 1965 to 1987, Thompson was responsible for publishing both New World Outlook and Response, the mission magazines of The United Methodist Church. In truth, Betty Thompson is much more than the communicator of a single year. She was a prophetic force in religious journalism for more than four decades. Before her retirement at the end of 1994, she gave thirty-five years of distinguished and dedicated service to the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). After her retirement, Betty continued to garner recognition. In 1998, The World Association for Christian Communication designated her a life member. And, in 2001, she was inducted into the Methodist Communicators Hall of Fame. Growing up, Betty’s main pursuits were reading and writing. She attended Wesleyan, her mother’s alma mater mater, and graduated cum laude in 1947. As a Wesleyan undergraduate, she edited the College paper and was a correspondent for the Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Macon Telegraph. After graduation, she remained on campus for two years and served as Wesleyan’s public relations director. She left to pursue graduate study in literary criticism at Kenyon School of English in Gambier, Ohio, where she was a Rockefeller Scholar. Beginning in 1950, as a young journalist arriving in New York fresh from graduate school, Thompson worked five years as staff writer for the Methodist Board of Missions – at a starting salary of $3600. From there, she worked almost a decade with the World Council of Churches (WCC), where her career launched. As a WCC information officer from 1955-56, Betty traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, and wrote articles
that were published throughout the world. She returned to New York in 1956 and served as the WCC public relations director until 1964. In that role, she initiated public relations projects, advised on network television shows, and authored hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles (including a TIME magazine cover story). She rejoined the GBGM in 1965. There, as an executive of United Methodism’s largest general agency, Betty served first as assistant general secretary for communications (1965-74) where she headed a publishing operation that produced 300 titles a year, hard cover and paperback, with annual sales of $1.5 million. Later, she served as associate general secretary for Mission Education and Cultivation (1974-87) where she managed a budget of five million dollars, directed two monthly magazines, and raised thirty-four million dollars in designated gift programs annually. In her final role, as director of public relations (1987-1994), Betty was chief spokesperson for the agency with an annual budget of $100 million and work in one hundred countries. In her public relations role, she often found herself plunged into controversy, with little or no warning; yet her reconciling spirit and sparkling wit were highly effective at clearing up confusion and turning away wrath. Two months before her 1994 UMAC award, Betty Thompson received another signal honor. She became only the fourth person in twenty-eight years to win the William B. Lipphard Award – the highest honor the Associated Church Press (ACP) can bestow – for distinguished service to religious journalism. Thompson also was the first woman to be appointed editor-at-large of The Christian Century. Betty Thompson has performed throughout her career on a world stage. “I knew Mother Teresa before she was a star and Desmond Tutu before he was a bishop,” she noted in her Lipphard acceptance speech. Former WCC General Secretary Philip Potter has praised Thompson “for her firm and radiant Christian faith, her astute and sensitive analysis of issues on the basis of that faith, and her
capacity to write well and truthfully.” The GBGM’s Director of Production, Promotion, and Design Roger Sadler observed that “her integrity and sharp insight have shaped the church’s view of mission.” Arthur Moore noted that “her role in encouraging and supporting talent is legendary.” Others have praised Betty for creative genius, support of innovation, and in-depth knowledge of the ecumenical church world. At the Lipphard Award luncheon, Leon Howell – editor of the no-longer published Christianity and Crisis – summed up by citing “the personality, the character, the presence, the sense of humor, the wit that punctures pomposity and pretense, and the courage that lets her speak out when others might hold back.” In her Lipphard speech – noting the change between the 1950s, “when print was still dominant and religion played a prominent part in the culture and on the front pages,” and the present – Thompson observed: “Despite continuing declines in church attendance, all polls report that a stunning ninety-five percent of all Americans believe in God. The part religion plays in the daily life of most Americans is rarely reflected in film or video, on TV, or in the 1500 daily newspapers. As the traces of religion disappear from the mass media and the culture, the task of church communicators becomes more challenging.” Betty Thompson set the standard for meeting the challenge with unflinching courage, uplifting spirit, and abiding faith. She is author of three books: The Healing Fountain, A Chance to Change, and Turning World: An Ecumenical Journey. Her third book was published in 2009 and chronicles her journey through life. Generously, Betty has decided to donate her personal papers to Wesleyan. Special thanks to the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church for granting Wesleyan College permission to update and reprint this article, originally written by Alma Graham and printed in the January-February 1995 issue of New World Outlook Magazine.
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Photo Courtesy of: FOX5 Atlanta
The Face of
FOX5’s Health Watch
“Wesleyan prepared me for lifelong learning and gave me a foundation to do more with my life.” As a kid, FOX Medical Reporter Beth Galvin ’87 wrote stories to entertain her father. Later, she wrote for her high school newspaper and also served as the copy editor for the yearbook. Beth entered every writing contest she could find, delving into a wide variety of subjects, because she loved the prizes: plaques, savings bonds, and, once, a trip to Washington, D.C. Because Beth’s father served in the U.S. Army, her family moved often. During her junior year of high school, her family relocated to Ft. Stewart, Georgia, and the summer she turned sixteen, Beth landed a job as a “sortof” reporter at the county newspaper, The Coastal Courier. The editor gave her a used Canon and paid her ten dollars per photo and fifteen dollars per article. “I loved it,” she said. “I wrote about my high school and about the training at Ft. Stewart. My father saved every article. Looking back, they are a little cringe-worthy. But, being a reporter gave me the sense of belonging and connection I was missing. I had somewhere to go every afternoon, and I felt connected. That’s when I first started writing on a regular basis.” By her early twenties, Beth knew journalism was the career she wanted to pursue. As a senior at Wesleyan, she interviewed with WXIA TV in Atlanta and, in 1989, she started working for the station answering the phones as an assignment desk assistant. Soon, Beth began producing stories for the weekend anchors. Using the best examples of her work, she compiled a resume tape, sent it to nearly fifty stations, and found a field position with a station in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There, as a general assignment reporter covering daily news, she “learned more in the next two and a half years than [she] had in the first twenty-five.” In the early 1990s, Beth accepted a special assignment to cover the famine in Somalia and the U.S. Air Force’s response to that crisis. “We flew with
crews delivering food to emergency feeding camps in the desert, and that had a pretty profound impact on me,” she said. “I had seen famine only on television. I was meeting children half their normal body weight, seeing mound after mound of unmarked graves on the edges of villages. Schools were closed at the time, and I remember children following us through one village saying, in English, to me, ‘Please, may I have your paper? May I have your pencil?’ It was both humbling and heart-wrenching.” After two and a half years in Chattanooga, Beth landed a job back at WXIA TV and returned to Atlanta. “It was an exciting time because Atlanta was gearing up for the 1996 Olympics, and the station was the hometown affiliate,” she remembered. “I was a nightside general assignment reporter for three years at WXIA and then moved to WAGA, Atlanta’s FOX affiliate, where I have been the medical reporter for ten years.” Today, Beth is an award-winning journalist and the regular face of FOX5’s Health Watch. Her inspiring and informative reporting style quickly caught the attention of viewers and also media and medical professionals. She won a regional Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Reporting and an award for Specialty Reporting from the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters. The Georgia Physicians Association/Atlanta Medical Association also presented her with an award for Outstanding Health Reporting. “I dig up a lot of the stories we cover,” she said, “and I also rely on sources and media contacts at the different hospitals and health organizations in our area.” Once, for example, Beth covered a heart transplant step by step from beginning to end. Working with LifeLink of Georgia, an organ procurement agency, Beth and a camera crew followed a heart surgeon
through the surgical procedure to recover the heart from a man killed in a shooting as well as the surgical procedure to implant the heart in the recipient, a nineteen-year-old college student who was quickly running out of time. “That moment in the OR when the surgical team removed the donor’s heart was so powerful and spiritual,” Beth said. “The recovery team of surgeons and nurses was completely silent, and reverent, in that moment when the donor’s life ended. We knew one family was grieving a powerful loss, and yet giving another family a second chance.” Beth’s advice to aspiring reporters and journalists is simply, get started! “Get your foot in the door,” she said, “and everything else will fall into place. My first job involved answering the phones on the assignment desk. Not exactly glamorous, but it gave me a chance to observe and learn and develop my skills. Take advantage of internships, even if they don’t pay, and be willing to work hard. Push yourself. Set goals. Write whenever you can. Don’t be intimidated –– everyone has to start at square one. Be willing to work extra hours, schlep equipment, and do whatever it takes to stand out. Always be gracious because the friendships and connections you make along the way can help you later in your career. Finally, read. Read anything and everything, the good stuff, the classics, the thriller everyone is hooked on because being a reader makes you a stronger writer.” Beth credited Wesleyan for building her confidence. “Being around so many smart, gifted women and the liberal arts education at Wesleyan prepared me for lifelong learning. It gave me a foundation to do more with my life,” she said. “Right now health takes up most of my professional focus, but I would like to expand into other topics. I’d like to branch out and do more print journalism, maybe some documentary writing.” Wesleyan Wesleyan Magazine Magazine Summer Winter 2009 2010
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Photo by: Paolo Deste Fanis
After she opened the world-renowned Lo Scaldavivande cooking school, her publishing career began.
Award-winning Cookbook Author Jo Patterson Bettoja ’47 begins each day walking the streets of Rome and shopping the city’s open-air markets. Although she was born in Millen, Georgia, Jo has felt at home five thousand miles away in her Roman kitchen since 1952, five years after graduating from the Wesleyan Conservatory. Her years in between were filled with travel throughout Europe as a high-fashion Vogue magazine model. While working in Italy, Jo met a dashing fifth generation Italian hotelier, Angelo Bettoja. They fell in love, married, and reared three children in the heart of Rome where the Bettoja family’s 1000-room chain of premier hotels is recognized as the largest private hotel group in Italy. According to Jo Bettoja, South Georgians and Italians both share a love for family, food, and entertaining. She claims there is a common affinity for pork, chicken, and greens, and that a gracious hostess in both lands can add another place setting to the table at a moment’s notice and have enough to serve everyone. When Jo lived in Millen, many cooks grew their own vegetables or went to the curb market for fresh produce. Today in Rome, cooks still shop for one day’s eating at a time. She describes the street markets as “offering an embarrassment of seasonable produce amid scenes of bustling daily life, at once uniquely Roman and utterly universal.” The vendors’ old pushcarts, she writes, “are heavy with mounds of fresh greens...all crisp and glistening with dew, their pronounced perfumes already mingling with the heady bouquets of Mediterranean herbs.” Occasionally Jo even finds the sweet potatoes needed to make her
Christmas specialty, Georgia sweet potato soufflé. Butchers with local beef, veal, and pork are in the same square with poultry and rabbit sellers. Not far away, Jo buys cheeses, salamis, and crusty Roman breads. After her children were grown, Jo became interested in starting her own business and recognized the need for a cooking school for members of the Italian aristocracy. She attended L’Angolo Delia Gastronomica, Ada Parasiliti’s famous cooking school in Milan, and traveled the country collecting family recipes from traditional Italian homes. In 1976, she and her friend Anna Maria Cornetto opened Lo Scaldavivande (which translates to dish and cover). For more than a decade, the internationally renowned and hotly fashionable Lo Scaldavivande was the most celebrated cooking school in Rome. Students from around the world attended and enjoyed mastering classic Italian recipes as well as traditional Southern dishes. Jo also developed a unique program for traveling gourmet cooks called “Gourmet Adventure.” The nine-day tour included cooking classes, shopping, sightseeing, and a sumptuous last-day lunch at the Bettoja’s 17th Century Villa Monte Venere, north of Rome. Jo’s first cookbook, entitled 135 Recipes from Italian Cooking Schools, was the collaboration and shared recipes of ten women. In 1982, she co-authored Italian Cooking in the Grand Tradition with her Lo Scaldavivande partner Anna Maria Cornetto. In 1991, Jo published Southern Italian Cooking, which was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Italian Cookbook.
In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City, released in 2003, explores the delights of the rich Roman culinary heritage with a spectacular tour of markets, ingredients, and classic recipes. Complementing more than two hundred sophisticated yet accessible recipes, Jo describes grand meals of days gone by and gives personal insights on ingredients, all enriched with traditional Roman sayings and aphorisms. Jo is widely considered one of the three signoras of Italian cooking, along with Masha Innocenti in Florence and Ada Parasiliti in Milan. Her extraordinary recipes have been featured in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, McCalls, and Town & Country. In 1986, Jo honored Wesleyan’s sesquicentennial celebration by hosting a three-day cooking class in the Taylor Hall Amphitheatre. That same year, the Wesleyan Alumnae Association presented Jo with the Distinguished Achievement Award. Jo now lives not far from the Trevi Fountain, a famous tourist attraction in Rome, where she watches visitors toss coins and wish for good luck. Once a year, she tries to get back to Millen. In between trips home, she may long for a bowl of southern-style butter beans, rutabagas, and a hot-buttered biscuit but not Southern hospitality because that, Jo claimed, abounds in Rome. She traveled half way around the world for the Grand Tour of art and architecture, but remained because of the people, who are so like her fellow Southerners – talkative, eccentric, generous, friendly, and very fond of food.
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
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Photo by: Lynn Lane
The nom de plume Magic Girl describes singer-songwriter MaryCharlotte Young ’04. A songwriter since about the age of fourteen, Mary-Charlotte sang in her church’s choir as a child and recently played the Whiskey a Go Go in Los Angeles. She is influenced by a wide spectrum of artists, including Otis Redding, Jeff Buckley, Tommy van Zandt, Emmylou Harris, and Neil Young. Her songs serve as a living journal and preserve her memories, which she describes “as bookend stories following in the folk and classic country tradition of the 1960’s, but with modern lyricism.” Sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction, she said, “My songs are mine. They are personal. If they aren’t about me, they may be about a loved one. Some parts are true, some are made up.” Mary-Charlotte majored in studio art and, after graduation, headed to College Station, Texas, to begin a music career. Her first album, The Petunia Mailbox Demos, was selfrecorded through a do-it-yourself label in College Station. The album’s title is a tribute to the name her older sister (Dr. Erin Young, class of 2000) wanted to give her when she was born, Petunia Mailbox. MaryCharlotte later released two other albums under the SinkHole, Texas, Inc. label –– Poor Man’s Queen in 2009 and Dove and Raven in 2010. Critics describe Dove and Raven as a “new album of trailer trash lullabies
delivered with a Texas alt-country kick, but this time taking on plaintive folk, delta stomp and the sweet soul blues along with her signature oil field grit and moxy.” Magic Girl’s fan base represents a broad demographic sampling of followers from housewives to punk kids to cowboys. Mary-Charlotte does most of her own arranging and plays guitar, harmonica, banjo, and a little dulcimer. Although she usually performs as a solo act, she also performs with a band called The Ex-Husbands. A rich alto tone and impressive range characterize her voice, which is never forceful or earnest, and makes the lyrics believable. Her MySpace page describes her sound as “tough as nails, supple as willow, and sexy as Saturday at 2 AM.” Currently, Mary-Charlotte is living in Los Angeles where she is attending massage therapy school and enjoying seeing parts of the country she’s not seen before. Well-known in College Station where she played gigs sometimes seven nights a week, she now is working to establish her name in the West coast market. She doesn’t mind the offbeat work hours of a performing artist and said, “I feel really lucky to be playing music for a living because there are so many people who don’t have the opportunity to work at something they really enjoy.”
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
WESLEYAN
WOMEN in the news!
or generations, Wesleyan women have excelled in the field of journalism. Many prepared specifically for writing careers while undergraduate students by majoring in English or communications. Others embraced the profession later in life. Pauline “Polly” Pierce Corn (class of 1918) was the great granddaughter of Lovick Pierce, one of Wesleyan’s founders, and she served as a trustee of the College for several years. She was well known for many things including the achievements of her five children, her love of the arts, and her passion for gardening. At seventy-one, Polly became a professional writer and, from February 12, 1967, until December 3, 1972, wrote “Garden Ventures,” a weekly gardening column for The Macon Telegraph and News. 16
s Polly’s column grew in popularity, she expanded her gardening content to provide her readers with elements of local history and human interest. She never wrote about her own garden but instead highlighted community beautification projects and gardening topics designed to increase civic pride. Her Sunday columns reminded readers of the role gardens play in the life of the community. In 1989, two years after Polly’s death, the Federated Garden Clubs of Macon published Selections of Garden Ventures featuring more than one hundred of Polly’s newspaper columns. s a high school student, Cynthia McMullen ’76 knew she wanted to pursue a career in journalism. During her senior year, she searched for a college that was coed and offered journalism as a major. “So ending up at Wesleyan,” she said, “was really kind of a fluke.” An admission counselor from the College visited her high school and spoke to only two students from Cynthia’s 600-member senior class. “I was getting all this personal attention,” she remembered. “I’d never been south of the Mason-Dixon line. I didn’t even have a chance to visit the campus until my first day of school!” Although she was determined to major in journalism, Cynthia found that Wesleyan’s liberal arts emphasis refined her natural writing talent and prepared her for a successful career. At Wesleyan, Cynthia doublemajored in English and French with a concentration in journalism and later earned a master’s degree in literature from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her first full-time job was director of information services for Wesleyan. At the time, twenty-five-year newspaper veteran Bud Paine was Wesleyan’s director of community relations and helped Cynthia refine her news-release writing skills and story-pitching abilities. She also
“People who told me I didn’t have to major in journalism to be a journalist were right. But you do need to be able to communicate well. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
–Cynthia McMullen ’76
coordinated, hosted, and wrote scripts for two monthly public service television shows for the College.
journalist were right,” McMullen said. “But you do need to be able to communicate well. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
advantage of the opportunity to write for newspapers, magazines, and businesses across the United States.
While writing has been an integral part of every job Cynthia has held, her eight-year stint as a features reporter and columnist with the RichmondTimes Dispatch has been her only full-time writing job. She was one of many applicants vying for the position, but the only one who prepared a David Letterman-styled list of “The Top 10 Reasons You Should Hire Me.” A year after she was hired, Cynthia was offered the opportunity to develop a weekly column. She called it “Whatever” because she was told she could write about anything she pleased. She also wrote the weekly “Eye on R-Town” column in which she featured quick observations on things going on around Richmond.
Bottom line, she said: “Read. Write. Read. Write. Learn good grammar, keep up with the King’s English, love what you do, and if the kind of writing you lust after doesn’t come easily, pursue other options in related fields. I could have spent my life indulging my literary fantasy and penning really bad novels – you know, the kind you can buy six months later on amazon.com for 98¢ plus $3.99 shipping. Instead, I’ve had half a dozen interesting jobs, each one of which has challenged me as a writer, but in very different ways.”
Her writing appeared in many publications including The Brunswick News, The Villager, Coastal Illustrated, Golden Isles Life Magazine, Georgia Journal, O, Georgia!, and Kalliope. The topics she wrote about were varied but included travel, history, nature, art, music, theatre, food, antiques, fashion, and advice. She became widely known for her personal experience and humor columns before she turned her talents to the field of fiction writing.
Currently, Cynthia is director of public relations and communications for Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy in Richmond where she coordinates public relations plus internal and external communications. “People who told me I didn’t have to major in journalism to be a
efore Sharon Smith Henderson ’54 was born, her father edited a newspaper. While she was growing up, he owned a printing company and Sharon would help by writing copy for brochures, community events, and historical sites. She studied music at the Wesleyan Conservatory and after graduation was a professional classical concert singer for many years. When Sharon married an engineer whose career involved frequent relocation, she took
In 1997, Sharon published a book containing a selection of her newspaper columns entitled From My Veranda: The Wit, Wisdom and Whimsy of the Small-Town South. Just three years later, she was winning major awards for literary fiction. At the 2000 Southeastern Writers Association Conference, Sharon won first place in novel writing for Just the Two of Us, first place in advanced fiction writing for her novella In the Dead of Summer, and second place in short fiction for Journey in August. She also garnered the Anderson Award, which is the Conference’s top prize and presented to the best all-around Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
writer. In 2002, she was named to Who’s Who in American Writers and Poets; and in 2004, she won the Eugenia Price Award for Excellence in Writing. Today Sharon leads a writer’s critique group, and contributes to the Harbour Sound. hen Emily Chase Cook ’70 was in third or fourth grade in Huntsville, Alabama, she started a neighborhood newspaper that she sold for a nickel. A close family friend was the publisher of the Huntsville Times and, as far back as she can remember, Emily wanted to write for the newspaper. She thought she would study journalism in college, then found out the Times editor was not a fan of journalism schools. He advised Emily to get the very best liberal arts education she could possibly get and then he would train her to put out a newspaper.
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journalism courses. Those courses were the early stages of what is now Wesleyan’s communications department. Despite major transitions in the media industry from print to television to online content, Emily claims that she has always preferred a printed newspaper but said, “I am lucky to have worked through some remarkable changes in technology.” efore leaving her home in Florida to attend Wesleyan, Jeanne Norton Rollberg ’79 intended to prepare for law school. She majored in history but then switched her focus to a career in journalism and earned a master’s degree at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1980. Today, Jeanne is an associate professor of journalism in the School of Mass Communication at University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR ) where she has taught since 1983.
Emily looked at several small, Southern women’s colleges including Sweetbriar, Agnes Scott, and Randolph Macon, but fell in love with Wesleyan. Soon after, she fell in love with her future husband and never returned to her Huntsville newspaper aspirations. After graduating with a degree in English, Emily applied for a job at The Macon Telegraph. “They asked me where my journalism degree was,” Emily laughed. With help from mentor Blythe McKay, society editor for the Macon Evening News, Emily began writing feature articles for The Telegraph. She worked full-time for three years and then part-time while her children were young. Over the course of thirtyfive years, Emily wrote several columns including 50 Years Ago and Southern Sunday and also was editor of The Telegraph’s Neighbors tab. She is best known for Strictly Social, a society column about the comings and goings of Macon’s social elite.
During her tenure at UALR, Jeanne has served as interim director of the School of Mass Communication and as chair of the department of journalism. Last spring, Jeanne was selected by a national panel of judges as winner of UALRs $5,000 University Faculty Excellence Award for Public Service sponsored by Bank of America. In 2005, the Arkansas Press Association named her the state’s Outstanding Journalism Educator of the Year.
During the 1980s, Emily served as an adjunct professor at Wesleyan and taught introductory and intermediate
Through the years, she has served as president, vice president, secretary, and a board member of the Arkansas chapter of
Before joining the UALR faculty, Jeanne was an instructor at Texas A&M and the news director of KAMU-TV/FM in College Station. Although her teaching responsibilities were demanding once she joined the UALR faculty, she continued to work as a part-time television reporter in Little Rock and spent ten years producing news and public affairs programming on KLRE/KUARFM for which she won many national and state awards.
the Society of Professional Journalists. She served two terms on the board of directors of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the largest organization of electronic journalists in the world. She also was head of the RadioTV Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the nation’s largest organization of educators in mass communication. Colleagues say Jeanne’s service is uniquely relevant to a metropolitan campus. She was the first UALR professor to serve at the Clinton School of Public Service where she helped shape a public image for the school, conducted market research, edited the newsletter, and played a key role in admissions. She also assisted the office of development in setting up a scholarship for minority students funded by KTHV-TV and Hola! Arkansas. hough she doesn’t make her living as a writer, Kathy A. Bradley ’78 hopes that one day she will. “Writing, at this point at least, is an avocation or, in better words, my passion,” she said. For the past ten and a half years, Kathy has been an assistant district attorney for the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit of Georgia and the sole juvenile prosecutor on a nine-lawyer staff covering four counties. But in 1996, she began writing a bi-weekly column for the Statesboro Herald, where the parameters of content are left totally up to her. Her column appears in the Sunday Lifestyles section and usually focuses on topics like family and friends, life on a farm, the exploration of nature, and spiritual themes. She also maintains a blog that often features variations of her newspaper columns. The blog greets its readers with these words: “You have arrived at Sandhill, a tiny speck in the coastal plains of southeast Georgia. Whether your arrival is by invitation, navigation or accident, you are welcome.”
Fans of her columns often invite Kathy to speak at various church and civic events. She is a favorite among Wesleyan students and has delivered the opening convocation address and the Baccalaureate Marker Ceremony speech. Kathy served as President of Wesleyan’s Alumnae Association from 1991-1994, and then served a three-year term as Alumna Trustee. “I have always been a writer,” Kathy said, “though it took me years and years to actually call myself that. It was easy to identify myself as an attorney because I had ‘credentials.’ To use the term ‘writer’ to describe myself, however, seemed a bit braggadocious.” In high school Kathy wrote poetry and was on the staff of her school’s creative magazine. She was the editor of the Wesleyan Magazine as a senior and was elected to membership in the Scribes honor society. Through blogs, speeches, and other projects, Kathy’s writing continues to evolve. Three years ago, she recorded a CD reading a year’s worth of columns for a friend who was losing his eyesight and was no longer able to read. She decided to manufacture enough CDs to sell and entitled it Dispatches from Sandhill. Also, in 2009, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition broadcast a StoryCorps interview of Kathy talking to her father, Johnny Bradley, about his life growing up in Georgia as the son of a sharecropper. StoryCorps is an independent non-profit organization and its interviews are produced in conjunction with the Library of Congress where all StoryCorps interviews are archived. Inspired by Wesleyan alumnae and personal friends Julia Stillwell Ketcham ’58 and Kathryn Stripling Byer ’66, Kathy views her writing as “not just art and certainly not just craft, but soul.” She said, “It is the tangible expression of myself that I offer to the world.”
Make Things Happen Adelaide Wallace Ponder ’46 entered the newspaper industry with full force in 1957 when she and her husband, Graham Ponder, purchased The Madisonian, one of the oldest newspapers in the South and the only paper serving Morgan County. As the weekly’s new editor, Adelaide was stepping into big shoes. The Madisonian began in 1840 as Southern Miscellany –– edited by award-winning Georgia Journalist William Tappan Thompson –– and was one of the oldest continuing businesses in the county. As co-publisher and one of just a few women editors in the state, Adelaide maintained a high level of excellence and produced a journalistically sound newspaper that was recognized as well written and responsible. Under her leadership, The Madisonian consistently won prestigious awards from the Georgia Press Association and became one of the Southern region’s most respected weeklies. The Ponders were pioneers in the field of journalism and among the first in Georgia to transition from letterpress to offset printing. Their offset presses became the foundation for Greater Georgia Press, which at the time printed several weekly newspapers including The (Athens) Observer. In a 1979 Atlanta Journal feature article, Adelaide commented on her role as editor of the award-winning paper. “It was hard for the public to accept a woman editor,” she said. “I used to be embarrassed to cover county commission and City Council meetings. There are certain things men didn’t want to talk to a woman about. I was just around all the time, and they finally accepted me.” By 1979, Adelaide had earned statewide recognition for leadership in not only her industry but also her community. “That’s the thing I love about having a newspaper,” she said. “You can be part of the future of your community. You can make things happen.” In 1977, Georgia Governor George Busbee invited Adelaide to accept the Governor’s Award from the Georgia Council for the Arts and Humanities on behalf of the MadisonMorgan Cultural Center. She had served as chairman of the committee to raise funds for the preservation and restoration of the Cultural Center and then acted as chairman of the building committee. Sixteen years later, Adelaide was invited to accept another Governor’s Award. In 1993, she was honored as a community cultural leader by Georgia Governor Zell Miller and received the prestigious Governor’s Award for her volunteer efforts to preserve the historic character of her native Madison, restore several historically significant sites, and communicate understanding of the area’s rich history.
Loula Kendall Rogers
Photos by: Neal Carpenter
Wesleyan College Class of 1857 By Dr. Stewart Varner
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When the American Civil War began in 1861, Loula Kendall Rogers (class of 1857) was already a fervent patriot for the Confederate cause. She was very active in organizing the women in her area for the tasks of collecting food and medical supplies for the Southern troops. According to her own accounts, she crafted the first Confederate flag in Georgia after a family friend who was present at the Confederate constitutional convention sent her a sketch of the adopted design. After the war, she dedicated herself to what she saw as the legacy of the Confederacy. In 1896 she founded the Willie Hunt chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.) in Barnesville and served as its president for the next fifteen years. A prolific writer throughout her life, she was named poet laureate of the Georgia Division of the U.D.C. and many of her surviving pieces were composed for that organization. In addition to the work she produced for the U.D.C., she frequently contributed poetry and essays to newspapers and journals and published three collections of poetry;
Goldenrod and Cypress, The Harvest and Mayflower and Mistletoe. The extensive Rogers archive, housed in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University, contains poetry, prose, letters, journals and assorted papers from and related to Loula Kendall Rogers. [The texts referenced in this article are available online through the Emory Women Writers Resource Project, and come from a variety of sources including both hand written and typed manuscripts as well as photocopies and originals of pieces published in periodicals. In addition to fully searchable texts of this work, digital images of the original pages are also available on the Emory University site.] Loula Kendall Rogers was born August 31, 1838, near Thomaston, Georgia, and spent her childhood on the family’s plantation, Bellwood, in rural Upson County. Her father, David Lane Kendall, was a physician and plantation owner. She attended Wesleyan College, where she was a member of the Adelphean Society, and she graduated on July 16,
1857. On January 3, 1863, she married James Henry Rogers, an officer in the Confederate army. The couple had seven children. After her husband’s unexpected death on September 3, 1875, Rogers began teaching and, in 1879, she took a position in the primary school at the private Gordon Institute. She died June 14, 1931, at the home of her daughter, Helen Graham Rogers Franklin, in Tennille, Georgia. Many of the pieces included in the Emory Women Writers Resource Project seem to have been produced specifically for the U.D.C. in Rogers’ capacity as the poet laureate for the organization’s Georgia Division. An example of this is ”A Tribute of Love,” a poem written to commemorate the death of Mildred Lewis Rutherford, the historian for the Georgia Division of the U.D.C. Other U.D.C. related work conforms to the mission of the organization that was to preserve what they saw as the “true history” of the Confederacy. For example, the poem ”The Battles of Georgia,” which was included in the program for a 1923 meeting, recounts the
numerous battles of the Civil War fought in Georgia. The prose piece “The Importance of Teaching History To Our Young People” also seems to have been written for a U.D.C. function and describes several games that can be played with children to help them learn Confederate history. Rogers’ literary work was not confined to U.D.C. functions. For example, the poem “The Spirit of the Southland,” is included in the Emory Women Writers Resource Project as it appeared in the Barnesville newspaper in 1927. This piece is very similar to another poem in the collection, “The Spirit of the Confederacy,”though it is unclear if one is a revision of the other. Scholars may be particularly interested in the way that both versions of the poem pointedly reject the term “slave” in favor of the euphemistic identifier “dependent friends.” As with much of her work, this poem shows how Rogers involved herself in the process of negotiating an explicitly pro-Confederacy, white Southern identity in the post Civil War era. This task seems
to be very much on Rogers mind in her brief memoir Incidents of the War Between the States which details her experiences during the Civil War. This piece is of particular historical interest for its extensive retelling of Rogers’ sewing the Confederate flag as well as her memories of Miller’s Raid when Federal troops looted her home during their advance through the state. In this piece, as in much of her work on the subject, Rogers sought to explain both the origins of the war and the South’s defeat. Echoes of the arguments she deploys can still be heard from contemporary apologists for the Confederacy; these texts can be seen as early moves in the development of the rhetoric that is at the center of contemporary white Southern nationalism. Similar arguments are repeated in other poems such as ”The New Star,” “The Gallant Old Boys in Gray,””Hark! Our Boys are Coming Home,” and “A Soldier’s Victory of Faith.” The texts in the Emory Resource Project illustrate Rogers’ understanding that her versions of Confederate history and of white Southern identity were not the only ones available. She complains repeatedly about Northern accounts of the Civil War that she felt unfairly criminalized the South and inaccurately identified slavery as the sole reason for the war. In ”The Importance of Teaching History To Our Young People,” she argues that Southerners “should not be satisfied with the records of only one side of that War, and give credence to all that is said of the Federal Army by their own historians, but should be thoroughly posted on the actions of both sides.” In the same essay she is also critical of those in the South, and particularly Southern women,
who were not as interested in this history as she was. She writes, with palpable disdain, “Some mothers, who are not members of the Daughters of the Confederacy, say that they wish to forget these things and actually try to keep it from their children. Teachers are often surprised at the ignorance of some of their pupils who know nothing whatever of the history of their own country.” Rogers’ scorn for these mothers needs to be understood in the context of what she saw as the role of white women in the post war era. In her book, Blood and Irony: Southern White Women’s Narratives of the Civil War 1861-1937, Sarah Gardner argues that in the years after the War, white Southern women took on the unofficial roles of keepers and disseminators of Confederate history. Rogers herself seemed aware of this role and wrote, in an essay titled “Honoring Our Veterans,” that “as long as a Southern woman can speak, she will tell the old, old story of our loved ones on the battle field, of their chivalry, their knightly daring, and their loyalty.” This interest in a specifically female experience is a consistent concern of her work. Two pieces that address the issue directly - “The Aim of Our Girls” and “Hannah More’s Influence” - appear to have been prepared for the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, a journal of the particularly progressive trade Union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Before being elected Secretary Treasurer of the union in 1880, the famous labor organizer Eugene Debs served as editor of this magazine and is credited with creating a space in it for women’s views. Because the copies of Rogers’ articles for this publication exist
H is guns we heard on Upson H ills, Full sixty miles away, “O, God,!”Icried, “a vert the storm And spare our boys in gray.” Still nearer-nearer comes the roar Toward Ocmulgee’s tide, And Macon, queen of lovely homes, The vandal hosts defied. only as clippings, their dates of publication cannot be determined but the fact that the pieces appear under the section heading “Womankind” suggests that she began working with the magazine during or after Debs’ editorship. The circumstances of her affiliation with this journal should be of interest to scholars of labor history, southern studies, and women’s studies. One recurring theme in Rogers’ work concerning women is the ideal of “usefulness.” As a professional educator of young children, she seemed particularly concerned with instilling this sense of usefulness in young girls. Three poems in the Emory collection represent this concern explicitly. The piece “Useful Little Girls” is a curious manuscript comprising four short, onestanza poems, each referring to an individual girl and describing how she can grow to be more useful. The short piece “Helen Willis” seems to be a similar text in that it refers to a single girl, is only one stanza in length and concludes with the same partial Bible verse; “and a little child shall lead them.”
Even the heart wrenching poem “Little Julia’s Mission” written to commemorate the death of Rogers’ infant niece, tries to make sense of the personal tragedy by pointing to how the child’s short life served a purpose for her family. A robust understanding of exactly what Rogers’ meant by usefulness is not available in these texts as she depends on generalized virtues such as “goodness” and “thoughtfulness” which are contrasted to equally general vices such as “frivolity” and “superficiality.” However, it is possible to identify concern for service to the family as a virtue for women. She describes the virtue of helping family members in “The Aim of Our Girls” and, in the short poems directed at specific girls, she consistently refers to helpfulness as a goal. This article was reprinted with permission from the author and The Beck Center at Emory University. To access more information about the work of Loula Kendall Rogers, and many other women writers, visit: http://womenwriters.library. emory.edu.
Wesleyan Wesleyan Magazine Magazine Fall/Winter Winter 2010 2008
Storytellers extraordinare Rebecca Caudill ’20 was an American author of children’s literature, publishing over twenty books including Newbery Honor Book Tree of Freedom and Caldecott Honor Book A Pocketful of Cricket. In a 1963 lecture delivered to students and faculty of Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Kentucky, children’s book author Rebecca Caudill ’20 said, “What life has said to an individual is the only thing he has to write about that is worth writing about.” Although Rebecca loved storytelling from an early age, she was forty-four years old when she finally published her first of eighteen children’s books, Barrie and Daughter, which was a Junior Literary Guild Selection. Born in Poor Fork (now Cumberland), Kentucky, in 1899, Rebecca was one of eleven children born to educators George and Susan Caudill. One year after graduating from Wesleyan with a degree in history, Rebecca received a fellowship to attend Vanderbilt University where she earned a master’s degree in international relations. She then trekked to South America, where she taught English at a girls’ high school in Rio de Janeiro, then to Europe, Canada, and Newfoundland. Two years later, she moved back to Tennessee and worked as an editor of a girl’s magazine for Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, helping to put her younger siblings through college.
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In 1931, Rebecca was preparing to move to Turkey when she met and married James Ayars. The couple had two children and lived in Urbana, Illinois, where Rebecca taught writing workshops and served on the board of trustees for Urbana Free Library and the Pine Mountain Settlement School. She was co-founder of the Champaign-Urbana Peace Council. In 1951, she attended a peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Rebecca dedicated a major portion of her life to writing books for children and young adults. Wind, Sand and Sky is a book of Haiku poetry. However, her other books are set in Appalachia and portray ordinary people in everyday situations, living the richness of the mountain culture of the pioneer era during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rebecca threads themes of leadership characteristics in four of her young adult novels. The first characteristic is kindness, which encompasses hospitality and a tolerance for others. The second is freedom implying independence, self-confidence, and pride. A moral code of integrity is the third characteristic and refers specifically to her strong female characters. The fourth is the importance of education, which was instilled
Inspiring Children to read, write, and dream For fifteen years Alaine Thomas Bowman ’86 taught first grade and kindergarten at James H. Porter Elementary School in Macon. To encourage her students to read, write, and dream, Alaine helped her students write, illustrate, and publish their own book, entitled The Farm. The book won awards at the local, district, regional, and state levels. On her own, Alaine has written and illustrated four children’s books and is finishing the fifth. A portion of the sales her first book, Fire Station #6, benefit Wesleyan. According to Alaine, her Wesleyan professors told her to write about what you know. “Wesleyan taught me to write when I was a student in early childhood education. God has made an author of me,” she said. by her parents at an early age. Many of Rebecca’s books are loosely autobiographical, pulling stories from her childhood with characters based on people she knew. Caudill won many awards and honors for her books. In 1950, Tree of Freedom was a runner up for the Newbery Medal. In 1964, A Pocketful of Cricket was named a Caldecott Honor Book, honoring the illustrations by Evaline Ness (wife of well-known FBI Detective Elliott Ness). In 1988, three years after Rebecca’s death, The Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award was developed to honor the literary appeal of her books and for her contributions to Appalachian literature. This annual award is given to the author of the book voted most outstanding by students in grades four through eight in participating Illinois schools. The first award was presented to Lynne Reid Banks for Indian in the Cupboard. Other winners include Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, Holes author Louis Sachar, and Ella Enchanted author Gail Carson Levine. In her memoir, My Appalachia: A Reminiscence, Caudill writes that she learned from her father that “what you carry in your head, nobody can take from you.” Rebecca herself said, “The first essential in any book is that it have something significant to say - a book that leaves the reader with bigger ideas than when he began reading - that stimulates his thinking, stretches his mind, deepens his feelings. A good book sticks to your ribs.”
Wesleyanne Arrin Freeman ’02 relied more heavily on her talents as an artist when she published her first children’s book. “I’ve always wanted to surround myself with children and the arts, so publishing a children’s book was a major goal I set for myself right out of college,” said Arrin. She wrote and illustrated Look-A-Likes Don’t Act A-Like, which was published in 2007. The book tells a charming story of growing up as a twin sister. A twin herself, Arrin felt well-prepared to address the topic of individuality and the issue of each twin trying to establish her own identity and her own set of likes and dislikes, when everyone expects them to be exactly the same. The book encourages the reader to see each twin as a unique and special human being, while emphasizing the bond that twins enjoy. Begun in 2001, Arrin credited the success of her six-year labor of love to her own childhood and the children who have inspired her along the way. She tested her manuscript and sample images on a critical audience of elementary school students and received the green light, which encouraged her to find a publisher to take on the project. “I had no idea how to prepare a manuscript, a book dummy, or a presentation packet to represent my project,” she said. After much research, she submitted her manuscript with just one illustration to a locally owned publishing company who showed immediate interest and requested additional sample illustrations. As a recent graduate with limited resources and no studio space, Arrin used pens and markers to illustrate the forty-page picture book. After a busy month of illustrating and finalizing her project, an entire year passed before she received news of the book’s publication. Arrin, former art director at the Georgia Children’s Museum, credited the children she was teaching for the book’s bold vivid color palette. She said, “I draw so much inspiration from children that I chose colors toward which they naturally gravitate.” Many first-time authors self-publish books, and Arrin encourages other artists and writers to consider that option. She said, “Luckily, with my first experience, I found a publisher who picked up the project. Having a great publisher who markets the book and provides professional expertise really ensures success.” While at Wesleyan, Arrin majored in studio art and she continues to work as a freelance muralist, painter, and illustrator. She returned to campus as a lecturer with advice and encouragement for other students with similar goals. Currently Arrin is working on her second book, tentatively titled Fanny Granny, in honor and in memory of her late grandmother.
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
Southern poetry A C e l e b r at i o n o f
Celebrating Southern Poetry and Wesleyan’s newly established Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program Former North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer ’66 offers powerful advice to aspiring writers. “Begin where you are,” she said. “I would give that advice to writers entering the fifth grade just as I would to adult writers. Set up a dialogue –– a connection –– with your readers. I want writers to bring their own experiences into the art of poetry. Then, it’s fresh. From traditional forms of poetry to rap lyrics, it must be fresh and authentic.” Kay, along with current North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, returned to her alma mater this fall to advise dozens of students during a weeklong celebration of Southern Poetry. Special events included lectures, writing workshops, public poetry recitations, and individual visits with students. The visit also marked the beginning of Wesleyan’s newly established Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program, an initiative Kay began several years ago. “After my father died, I sat down with my mother and brother and we discussed the possibility of directing some money toward a meaningful
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project to honor my father’s family. As it turns out, the program will honor both my father’s and my mother’s families,” said Kay. “I thought for a number of years that Wesleyan needed a writerin-residence program, something that could attract really exceptional writers from around the country. I knew that if students could interact with a living, breathing woman writer –– someone who could give advice and inspiration –– it would be something special for everyone involved.” “It has taken about three years to plan, fund, and establish our writer-inresidence program,” she continued, “because I wanted Wesleyan to be able to offer an honorarium that would attract high caliber writers and a wide variety of writers –– poets, fiction writers, and especially writers of all ethnicities to ensure a diversity of voices. Aside from the stipend, Wesleyan’s beautiful setting also is a draw. The campus is a wonderful place to work, reflect, and gain inspiration. During a weeklong residency, writers will have time to work on their own writing and interact with students.” As an artist-in-residence herself, Kay has taught at several colleges and universities including Converse College and Appalachian State University. She served as the poet-in-residence at Western Carolina University and
Lenoir-Rhyne College. She also is a former poetry instructor in the Master of Fine Arts Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has spoken and taught workshops on the Wesleyan campus and also served as the Inaugural Poet in 2004 commemorating President Ruth Knox’s inauguration as the College’s first alumna president with the poem “The Still Here and Now.” In 2005, Byer was appointed North Carolina’s fifth poet laureate by Governor Mike Easley. She was the first woman to hold the post and served five years as ambassador of the state’s literature. “The Governor was conscious of selecting a woman poet laureate,” said Kay. “He felt a feminine voice was needed at that time in the state. I think a minority voice also is needed and I hope to see the first African American fill the role as North Carolina’s poet laureate.” During her tenure as poet laureate, Byer fostered the literary community of her home state through the design of longterm programs and projects of special interest using resources from the Arts Council and other partners. She also participated in public events and wrote poems commemorating occasions of historic or cultural importance. “It is a very important role,” she said. “To make the case for poetry, to engage people, you must be committed to literacy,
literature, and education. Poets are not isolated. We are always learning from one another.” The last time Kay returned to Wesleyan she served as the 2006 commencement speaker and captured the attention of nearly 150 graduates with an inspiring call to action. Commemorating the occasion with a poem written for the graduating class, Byer challenged the women of Wesleyan to recognize the authenticity and vitality currently within them and to find the courage, Coraggio, to retain these precious qualities as they leave the safety of Wesleyan sisterhood. “Forty years later I’ve come back to say, simply, always be ready to welcome the green, all that’s verde within you. Have the courage of your corazon, have esperanza…” she instructs through the poem’s fifth stanza. In the first rank of contemporary poets, Kay has been recognized both regionally and nationally for her work. She has received the Brockman Campbell Book Award, Thomas Wolfe Award, Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Southern Independent Booksellers Award, and the Ann Sexton Poetry Prize.
Carolina at Greensboro. Byer is the author of several award winning collections of poetry, including Black Shawl, Wildwood Flower, Catching Light, and most recently, Coming to Rest. Her first collection, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, was chosen for the Associated Writing Programs Award Series in 1986. Her poems and essays have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. Essays have appeared in Shenandoah, Boston Globe, Carolina Quarterly, as well as newspapers across North Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in journals ranging from The Atlantic to Appalachian Heritage and was recently featured in Six Poets from the Mountain South, by John Lang. Basing much of her work on her heritage as a Southerner and the area in which she lives, Byer brings to life the stories of women and the lives they lead. Her poetry has been set to music by composers Harold Schiffman, Martin Bresnick, and William Bolcom. Falling, based on two of her poems along with one
by David Bottoms, premiered at Wesleyan College in 1995. Blood Mountain for soprano and piano premiered in New York in 2008; Alma, a cantata, in Gyor, Hungary in 2007; and Four Piedmont Songs in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, by the Piedmont Chamber Singers last year. Jacar Press in Durham, North Carolina, will be publishing her sonnet sequence Southern Fictions, which appeared originally in Callaloo: Confederate Flag Issue. The poems take on the subject of race relations during the 1960s in her home county of Mitchell and neighboring Baker County. Kay and her husband, James, live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. He retired as the head of the English Department at Western Carolina University; together, they have one daughter, Corinna. Although Byer has been a resident of Cullowhee, North Carolina, most of her adult life, she is originally from Mitchell County, Georgia, and is the daughter of C.M. and Bernice Stripling of Camilla, Georgia.
In 2001, she received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the highest honor a citizen of that state can receive. Byer also has received fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Kay also is the 1993 recipient of Wesleyan’s Alumnae Award for Distinguished Achievement. After earning a bachelor’s degree with major concentration in English from Wesleyan College in 1966, Kay later earned a Master of Fine Art in Writing from the University of North Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
Contemplation Grove
There once was a young girl who made a habit of climbing trees with a stack of books and a jar of peanut butter where she would read for hours on end.
Although Wesleyan’s beloved Professor of English Dr. Darlene Debault Mettler passed away in 2008, her spirit lives in Contemplation Grove. Dr. Mettler taught English for twenty-one years at Wesleyan College where countless students were inspired by her passion for 18th Century British literature, Irish literature, and the writings of Iris Murdock. During her courageous fight against metastatic breast cancer, Dr. Mettler struggled valiantly to come to campus each day because of her great love for the College, her colleagues, and her students. She spoke openly about her personal experience with breast cancer to encourage other victims and increase awareness of the disease.
Twice, in 2006 and in 1991, Dr. Mettler was the recipient of the prestigious Ann Munck Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award was established in 1988 by the past students, colleagues, and friends of former Wesleyan Professor of English Ann Munck ‘38 and is given each year to the Wesleyan College faculty member who best exemplifies excellence in knowledge, method of instruction,
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rapport with students, teaching behavior and attitude, concern for teaching, stimulating classroom environment, achievement of one’s students, and loyalty to Wesleyan.
Dr. Mettler was loved by many and has been honored through several meaningful gifts to the College. In August of 2007, Wesleyan announced the plans for a historically significant grove of trees to be planted in her honor. In May of 2010, the Darlene Debault Mettler Contemplation Grove was dedicated. Family, friends, faculty, students, and trustees gathered at the edge of Foster Lake during the ceremony. “In 2007,” said Wesleyan President Ruth Knox, “I received a touching letter from Mr. Robert L. Dean of Brownsville, Texas, a long-time friend of our beloved Darlene Mettler. He wanted to give Wesleyan eight historic trees to be planted in a grove where our students could study and relax, all to honor his dear friend from college –– who, in his words, ‘has inspired and blessed my life in ways too numerous to mention.’”
During the summer of 2007, Wesleyan received several tiny little sticks that were carefully potted and cultivated under the care of our Physical Plant staff. Over the course of several months, the small trees became mature enough for planting and were incorporated into the grove near Foster Lake, behind Jones Hall. Each tree is marked and designated as part of the Contemplation Grove honoring our dear friend and colleague. The eight historic trees are from the American Forests Historic Tree Nursery. Each has been grown from seeds or cuttings taken from the original tree at the home of a famous woman, and certificates of authenticity accompany them all. Wesleyan’s Contemplation Grove includes the following trees: Susan B. Anthony Sycamore, Lady Bird Johnson Southern Magnolia, Clara Barton Redbud, Harriet Beecher Stowe Live Oak, Eleanor Roosevelt White Ash, Helen Keller Mimosa, Pearl Buck Crabapple, and Juliette Gordon Lowe Southern Magnolia.
Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor Authors kick off national book tour at Wesleyan Sue Monk Kidd became a household name with her New York Times bestselling novel, The Secret Life of Bees, which has sold over six million copies to date. Since then, Fox Searchlight Pictures released a box-office hit movie based on the novel, featuring a star-studded cast, and her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, reached the number one spot on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list. But before this whirlwind, from 1998 to 2000, when Sue had recently published Dance of the Dissident Daughter and the idea for Bees was just an image in her head, she traveled around the world with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. Each woman was at a crossroads in her life, and together they undertook a journey to redefine and rediscover themselves, which they share in their new poignant and compelling memoir. Both Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor began a seven-city book tour at Wesleyan College this fall. The event, held in the College’s Porter Auditorium, was the official launch of the paperback version of the New York Times bestselling memoir of pilgrimage and metamorphosis, Traveling with Pomegranates. Hundreds of fans
attended the event, which included a special presentation and dual book signing. Part travel story, part spiritual quest, and part induction into feminine passages, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France is a memoir told in two voices. Set against the awe-inspiring backdrops of France and Greece, this intersecting autobiography chronicles an intimate mapping of these two fascinating women as well as the moving metamorphosis of their motherdaughter relationship. Attendees of the Wesleyan College event enjoyed photographs and personal stories from the authors’ travels to sacred sites in Greece and France. Set in the age old grandeur of these inspiring and deeply symbolic places, from Athens and Eleusis to Paris and Rocomador, and places in between, Sue and Ann’s presentation chronicled an intimate mapping of two women—a fifty something and a twenty something, a mother and a daughter. Photographs captured the authors traveling as pilgrims, exploring sacred sites, and pondering myths and symbols.
Traveling with Pomegranates is a truly distinctive book, featuring alternating chapters from both authors. Mothers and daughters will see themselves on every page, as Sue and Ann offer insights into the intricacies and bonds of this powerful relationship. The book imparts vivid portrayals of the places they visit and how those places changed them, as well as illuminating often unexplored passages into young and older womanhood, and revealing inside glimpses into Sue’s and Ann’s pursuits of writing and creativity. Candid, deeply personal and mindful of the symbolism all around them, Sue and Ann’s account is moving and unique, and universally resonant. Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, has spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs and the recipient of numerous literary awards. Sue’s daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, is a graduate of Columbia College. She has written personal essays for Skirt! magazine. Traveling with Pomegranates is her first book. It also is Sue Monk Kidd’s first book since her last blockbuster novel, The Mermaid Chair.
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
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C arnes Lecture features
Carmen Deedy Wesleyan College anxiously awaits the arrival of award-winning Children’s Book Author Carmen Deedy, who will be the Katharine Payne Carnes Lecture speaker on January 27, 2011. Carmen Agra Deedy has been writing for children for over two decades. Born in Havana, Cuba, she came to the United States as a refugee in 1964. She grew up in Decatur, Georgia, where she lives today. Deedy began writing as a young mother and storyteller whose NPR commentaries on All Things Considered were collected and released under the title, Growing Up Cuban In Decatur, Georgia. The pithy collection of twelve stories soon garnered awards, among them a 1995 Publishers Weekly Best Audio and a 1996 Parents’ Choice Gold Award.
Carmen’s books have won numerous awards. The Library Dragon received various children’s state book awards and has sold nearly half a million copies. In 2003, the book was chosen to represent Georgia at the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival. The Yellow Star was the recipient of the 2001 Jane Addams Peace Association Book Award, presented to Ms. Deedy at the United Nations by Mrs. Kofi Annan. It also received the 2001 Christopher Award, the 2000 Parent’s Choice Gold Award, the 2001 Bologna Ragazzi Award (for best international children’s book), the 2002 WOW Award (National Literary Association of England), among other notable awards and honors. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach was presented with the 2008 Pura Belpre Honor Award, the 2008 NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Book Award, the 2008 Best Children’s Books of the Year (Bank Street College of Education), the 2008 International Latino Book Award, the Irma Simonton and James H. Black Award, the 2008 E.B White Award Nominee, and the 2009 ALA Odyssey Audio Award, among others. Deedy’s newest children’s book, 14 Cows for America, is based on an astonishing gift Americans received from a Maasai village in Kenya, following the events of 9/11. The book was released in September of 2009. The Wall Street Journal described it as a “ . . . moving and dramatically illustrated picture book.” Deedy has spent the past twenty years writing and telling stories. She has been an invited speaker at venues as varied as The American Library Association, Refugees International, The International Reading Association, Columbia University, The Smithsonian Institute, TED, The National Book Festival, and the Kennedy Center. An ardent supporter of libraries, she was the 2008 National Spokesperson for School Library Media Month. She has spoken before Noble Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners, CEOs of major corporations, and heads of state. Over a span of twenty years, Deedy has told stories to hundreds of thousands of school children. They remain her favorite audiences.
About the Carnes Lecture Series Katharine Payne Carnes, class of 1913, served as Wesleyan’s Librarian for forty years. In 1919, when Miss Carnes returned to her alma mater as Wesleyan’s first professional librarian, she found a limited number of books in locked cases and a few catalog cards housed in shoe boxes. She began the card catalog and the systematic building of a book collection and from this small beginning, succeeded in developing a college library of the first rank. She designed the Candler Library Building, now the Alumnae Center, and supervised its construction brick by brick. The American Library Association and The American Association of Universities recognized her outstanding work in the areas of building design and collection development. She received professional honors and awards from the Southeastern Library Association and the Georgia Library Association. In 1983, the Wesleyan Alumnae Association established the Katharine Payne Carnes Lecture Series to honor this woman of strength and character who, by her example, inspired students and faculty. Join us for the following Carnes Lecture Series events:
Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:00 PM / Porter Auditorium Carmen Deedy meets with children and parents for a storytelling time and book signing. Thursday, January 27, 2011 11:15 AM / Porter Auditorium Lecture by Carmen Deedy 12:30-2:00 PM / Oval Hall Reception and book signing
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
Internships 101
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Photo by Neal Carpenter
More and more employers claim real world experience can be the key to landing a job, giving one graduate a definite advantage over another. Though an internship is not required of all majors, it is an important component of a Wesleyan education and the College actively encourages all students to have at least one internship experience before graduation. Last spring, fortyeight students completed internships, an increase from the thirty-two students who interned last fall. Sixty-nine percent of the internships last spring were off campus, and that number continues to grow. A Wesleyan student may register for up to twelve hours in internship credits in a semester, allowing her the opportunity to work full-time. The College’s Office of Career and Internship Services has established relationships with nearly seventy-five organizations that offer internships, including nine new sites added during the last academic year. According to Director of Career Development Monica Moody, students are encouraged to use resources provided on campus to identify an organization or opportunity that fits within their career goals. Students also research companies on their own to find one that offers a paid or non-paid program. “It’s really a collaborative effort,” Moody said. “Some of the most unique opportunities Wesleyan students have found, they found themselves. All internships are spearheaded through the Office of Career and Internship Services, but we maintain an outreach for partnerships through the Dean’s office, faculty members, alumnae, and the community.” Full-time internships are available locally, during the summer, and through the College’s newly developed Atlanta Semester program. “The Atlanta Semester provides an extraordinary opportunity for students to live, study, and work in Atlanta for an entire semester, with support from faculty, staff, Atlanta alumnae, trustees, and friends of the College,” said Dean of the College Dr. Vivia Fowler. “The purpose of an Atlanta Semester is to provide a small, select group of students with a semester-long leadership development program that includes a full-term internship in Atlanta. Whether the student is interested in the arts, government, health care, business, or a myriad of other fields, she will find centers of activity and leadership in the
Atlanta area. The semester begins with a three-day intensive seminar designed to introduce students to the history, economy, government, and culture of Georgia.” Students live in Atlanta in an apartment provided by the College, and may work twenty hours per week to earn six internship hours, thirty hours per week for nine internship hours, and forty hours per week for twelve internship hours. Faculty mentors make occasional weekend trips to take students to museums, discuss internships, and make site visits, and Atlanta alumnae and trustees assist where possible. At the end of the semester, students complete final assignments and reports. Wesleyan offers three Atlanta Semesters per year during fall, spring, and summer. Chemistry and Biology Double-major Soshawn Blair just finished an Atlanta Semester internship at Emory University’s Vaccine Centre where she was integrated into the ongoing projects of a lab that works primarily on b-herpes viruses. Soshawn intends to attend The Laney Graduate School at Emory after graduation in May. “I would like to be a pharmacologist, which is essentially a research scientist developing treatments for diseases,” Soshawn said. “To develop a treatment and its interactions with pathogens and the body, you need to know the details of the disease.” Her recent internship, she said, had everything to do with her major and career path. Soshawn has thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of learning and growing at her own pace, surrounded by professionals who are more than willing to help. Getting hands on experience also allows an intern to become part of a team. According to higher education experts like Jeff McGuire, author of The Importance of Internships to College Students, “As the global economy becomes more global, the competition for good jobs continues to increase. You no longer have to simply be more qualified than the person next to you. You have to be more qualified than countless others all around the world. The importance of internships to college students in terms of networking and gaining new resources cannot be overstated. Building a network of ‘who you know’ through college student internships can pay great dividends upon graduation.”
“I have learned a great deal about the workplace, the positives and negatives of the scientific field,” said Soshawn Blair, a Wesleyan student who recently interned in Emory University’s Vaccine Center. “I have learned about the joys of a published paper and the despair of a rejected one. What I have learned so far is something that no classroom could teach. The real world doesn’t have clear answers as presented in the classroom. Theories are sometimes murky and you sometimes have no idea what direction your project will take.” Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
Externships Third Year Student Kelly Coquerel is working toward a double major in advertising and marketing communications and studio art with a minor in French. She intends to pursue a career in graphic design and participated in a new Externship pilot program that helped her narrow her focus. As part of a Wesleyan-arranged Externship, Kelly shadowed alumna Katy Bryant ‘71, a graphics account manager at International Paper in Atlanta. During her Externship, Kelly met several designers and observed each step in the process of producing professionally designed and printed marketing tools. According to Kelly, her alumna host Katy gave her valuable advice. “I definitely enjoyed the Externship,” said Kelly. “It helped me visualize realistic possibilities in my desired field, as well as allowed me to make connections with professionals.” Kelly was one of four students to participate in the pilot program during Spring Break 2010. The program aims to assist students with making informed career decisions by providing unique short-term real world experience. Through the experience, students are introduced to an organization’s goals, mission, and processes. Students attend meetings, perform assigned tasks, shadow employees, and meet with various members of the organization and other industry professionals. Wesleyan Student Mingqian “Daisy” Dong also participated in the pilot program and shadowed Mary Cay White McCullough ’93, Director of the Georgia Children’s Museum. “Daisy was a delight… and a real trouper,” said Mary Cay. “I think she got a true sense of what happens at a non-profit business.” Mary Cay encourages other students to consider externships and would welcome them at the Children’s Museum. Other participants were Feiya Zhao who shadowed Lyubena Savova Smith ’93, First Vice President for SunTrust Bank, and Yiwei Han who shadowed Joy Moten-Thomas ’96, Director of External Affairs at Fort Valley State University. As a result of a successful pilot experience, Wesleyan’s Office of Career Services & Internships is expanding the program for Spring Break 2011. If you are willing to host a student in your workplace, then please call (478) 757-5224 for details.
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Wesleyan Senior Li “Sherry” Guanrong agrees. When she graduates in May with a major in business administration and a minor in accounting, she’ll be prepared to begin a career in the financial service industry. She seized two internships that integrated classroom coursework with real life experiences. Interning from May through August with Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) in New York, Sherry worked on financial performance presentations, evaluated corporations based on financial statements by Bloomberg, collected and analyzed client data in development of financial strategies by Merrill Lynch, investigated existing holdings and prospective initiatives, and developed Cando mortgage campaigns to 10,000 high net worth prospects. Honored as the “Best Intern of the Summer” by BAML, Sherry recognizes networking opportunities and broad exposure to business training as important to her future. “In one conference held by Merrill Lynch,” she said, “I had the opportunity to meet and speak with CEOs from Expedia. com, Symantec, and Linkedin.com. It was very exciting!” After completing her Bank of America Merrill Lynch internship, Sherry learned of an opportunity to intern with Nova Partners and remained in New York for an additional semester. She spent long hours at NASDAQ opening and closing bell events interpreting English into Chinese and vice versa. She also is studying ways to better
tailor the needs of Chinese companies that want to go public in the United States. Last fall, Cristiana Baloescu ‘09 began her post-graduate studies at Dartmouth Medical School. She claims an internship at the Medical Center of Central Georgia Emergency Center in Macon sparked her interest in the specialized field of emergency medicine. After completing her medical studies, Cristiana plans to pursue a master’s degree in public health and enter the field of disaster medicine. Jessica Albrecht ’10 is confident her internship with The Medical Center of Central Georgia in the Emergency Center and Children’s Healthcare Center, Newnan Hospital, and two other regional clinics helped her application to physician’s assistant school. Jessica also spent summer semesters abroad and interned with Santiago Missions in Chile (2007), Guatemala Medical Mission (2009), and Albertinen Hospital in Germany (2009). “A career library maintained by the Office of Career and Internship Services contains information about majors and career planning, specific occupations or occupational categories, current trends, employment opportunities, and graduate schools,” said Monica Moody. “Students benefit from the “What Can I Do With This Major?” intranet resource which provides important information on all majors and minors offered at Wesleyan. Plus, opportunities to attend career fairs are provided several times each year.” said Monica.
Wesleyan College Goalkeeper Emily Epperson broke the NCAA all divisions career saves record on Sunday, October 24, 2010. Tallying twenty-three saves in her final home game against Great South Athletic Conference power Salem College, her career total currently stands at 1,118 saves. The previous record of 1,114 saves was set by Amanda Cobb of New Jersey City College in 2000. “I didn’t think that I would make it before the season ended, so it was a surprise to say the least,” remarked Epperson. “It’s a bittersweet record, but it’s a personal accomplishment so it’s something that I’ll always have with me. It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t back it up with a couple of winning seasons, but I can’t be anything but ecstatic about it and I’m happy with how I’ve performed over the past four years.” The record breaking save occurred in the eighty-fifth minute of play when Epperson blocked a shot in the box by Salem’s Alana Carroll. “She’s a great goalie,” stated Amber Campbell, the only other senior on Wesleyan’s roster. “I’ve never seen a better player or
“I’ve never seen a better player or someone who puts so much into it and she really deserves this recognition.” someone who puts so much into it and she really deserves this recognition. From the moment we came in as freshmen, she was a go-getter. She wanted the team to do as well as it could and she knew what she had to do to contribute. She’s made to lead a team.”
been voted as a captain for two years now, and I think people look to her for her strength in leadership. She has a lot of strong character traits, including a personality that’s open and hard working, and she has a lot of goals and she strives to work hard to accomplish them, which she did this year.”
Wesleyan President Ruth Knox presented Emily with a ball signed by the team at the first dead ball following the save. Her teammates and the campus community took the opportunity to celebrate alongside her.
The leader now finds herself atop the NCAA record books, separating her from great players all the way from Division I powerhouse North Carolina to Wesleyan’s rivals in the Great South Athletic Conference.
“We’re excited for her,” stated Wesleyan Head Coach Michael Spivey. “Her work ethic represents everything you want to see in a student-athlete as far as her balance between her studies and soccer. To me, the leadership she shows off the field is just as important as how she leads on the field. She’s
“It’s kind of surreal –– I never even thought it was possible or that there was a record for it or that it was that important, so it’s kind of cool that it’s mine now.” –– Sara Wilson, Wesleyan Sports Information Department Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
Photo by: Jason Vorhees
Epperson Sets NCAA Record
Emil Holzhauer EvidEncE Evid EvidE Enc ncE E of His Macon LifE LifE
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When Emil Holzhauer arrived on Wesleyan’s campus in 1942, he was already an accomplished, prolific artist with a national reputation, and the veteran of thirty years in the New York art scene. His tenure at the College was just a decade, but his paintings capture a timeless story about the beauty of everyday life in Macon. From 1942 to 1953, while Holzhauer was Professor of Art at Wesleyan College, he explored local alleys, markets, backyards and neighborhoods and portrayed varied subjects, landscapes, and gathering spots. Although he lived and painted around the world, Emil considered the South his adopted homeland and the region in which he is most closely associated. As an artist, he sought out remote, offbeat areas to depict Southern life. He was drawn to scenes of everyday life, always finding the beauty in simple settings. His style and sensibility were ahead of his time and his aesthetic was modern. Born in Schwabisch-Gmund Germany, a small town of city factories, Holzhauer arrived in New York as an eighteenyear-old in 1906 without knowing a soul and unable to speak the language––a quintessential immigrant’s story. He quickly found work as a draftsman and designer for a jewelry manufacturer based on his apprenticeship at a metals factory in Germany. He worked six days a week in New York factories as a highly skilled designer. Emil’s talents and work ethic made him sought-after by factory managers, but his real dream was to study art. The aspiring artist saved money until he could attend evening classes at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, and later at the Henri Art School. Holzhauer’s teacher and mentor, Robert Henri, was a leader in the Ash Can school of realism, a group of eight New York artists who rejected formal standards of beauty and chose to depict common subjects and urban settings. Henri’s art reflected the life of real people and he celebrated diverse socio-economic classes with integrity and character. He advocated experimentation and encouraged his students to develop a sense of
beauty in subjects of daily life. Henri was loved and praised by his students. Holzhauer’s style was rooted in vernacular realism, and his approach was strictly Henri—streamlined form and detail with the use of intense, expressive, impressionist color. Living in New York and studying under Henri, Holzhauer developed a multi-cultural visual awareness. He experienced the influence of the European modernists’ 1913 New York Armory Show in New York, the influx of European artists and ideas, and the first wave of American abstract expressionism. During his thirty years in New York he was a frequent exhibitor and he garnered favorable reviews. His influence widened to a national audience and his career advanced through exhibitions, although he was extremely self-conscious about his work and anxious as he hung every exhibit. He would routinely threaten to remove his paintings before they were even shown, a perfectionist rarely satisfied with his work. Like Robert Henri, Holzhauer wanted to teach. Despite a successful career in New York, he moved to Macon and joined the Wesleyan faculty. Wesleyan alumnae remember him as a demanding and gifted teacher with the uncanny ability to see beauty in the commonplace and everyday. He stressed composition and the fundamentals of art and encouraged each student to realize her full potential. Daytime classes covered the basics of drawing and painting and Saturdays were spent with his students setting up easels in Macon’s remote, offbeat neighborhoods and diverse communities. Subjects included the downtown Farmers’ Market, an industrial area off Broadway, the brickyard kilns, and small, undistinguished alleys and street corners of Macon. Within the historical context of World War II, Holzhauer –– a German-born artist with a German accent in the rural South –– often was suspected of spy activity and humiliated in front of his students and colleagues. Sometimes
while painting en plein air, he was asked to leave, to explain his motives, and taken in by police for questioning. Holzhauer was always polite, but not always diplomatic. He continued to paint and exhibit and Wesleyan College received a great deal of publicity from his exhibitions, speaking engagements, and recognition. There was no question of his popularity with Wesleyan students. He was described as “one of the few inspired artists who was also an inspired teacher.” He painted spontaneously and smoothly with impressionist colors and contrasts that shade and define his forms, and he created beautiful, compact compositions with the training of a metal designer. He favored working in watercolor and pastel, but just as many of his works are done in oil. Holzhauer became known for his Southern images and an idealistic interpretation of his subject matter. Few art exhibitions have shown Emil Holzhauer’s Macon work, although a large oeuvre exists, and there has not been an exhibition or symposium dedicated to his life in Macon. Wesleyan proudly presents Emil Holzhauer: Evidence of His Macon Life, an exhibition rich in material and long overdue.
Join us for Emil Holzhauer: Evidence of His Macon Life opening Reception & Symposium Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 6 pM Enjoy presentations by an art historian, a Macon collector, and a curator. Art Exhibition: January 27 through March 4, 2011 Wesleyan College’s East Gallery Emil Holzhauer’s Macon-themed work includes rare paintings, watercolors, and pastels on loan from regional museums, community members, and his former students. Gallery hours: M–F, 1– 5 PM. Free and open to the public. For more information call (478) 757-5189.
Wesleyan Magazine Winter 2010
WOW! A Day For Macon This year, Wesleyan organized its largest WOW! A Day for Macon community-wide service event in the history of the College. A record-breaking 225 volunteers completed multiple projects simultaneously at twentyfour separate work sites throughout the city of Macon. Through lots of small efforts -- from picking up trash along the Ocmulgee River Walk and reupholstering chairs for Rebuilding Macon to drawing and playing basketball with residents at Wesley Glen -- Wesleyan women made a big impact. Wesleyan’s Lane Center for Community Engagement & Service coordinated students, faculty, staff, and community volunteers in the mass effort. The volunteers gathered in the College’s historic Anderson Dining Hall to eat breakfast together and receive their assignments before setting off to complete various community projects with participating nonprofit organizations. Just a few of the local community sites benefiting from the event included Habitat for Humanity, Aunt Maggie’s Kitchen Table, Magnolia Manor, Ronald McDonald House, Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries, and Loaves and Fishes. 36
“We are very excited to see so many of our students interested in serving the community. Student interest in this one event has doubled,” said Lane Center Director Rhonda Green-Barnes. “Students signed up for the event willing to perform a wide variety of tasks. Some, for example, sorted clothes at Goodwill Industries, while others cleaned Aunt Maggie’s Kitchen Table and prepared meals at the Ronald McDonald House. A group of our music students even performed for seniors at John Wesley Villas.” WOW! A Day for Macon is an integral part of Wesleyan’s goal to promote service-based learning among its students while building upon Wesleyan’s mission to be “first for women’s education—striving for excellence, grounded in faith and engaged in service to the world.” Twice yearly, the Lane Center coordinates the mass-volunteer service effort. Service can’t be limited to the efforts of a single day, but the accomplishments of WOW! projects provide an enriching introduction to the power of engagement, inspiring many students to make longer-term commitments. Although service is not a requirement at Wesleyan, two-thirds of the students remain actively engaged in the community through Lane Center initiatives at dozens of local agencies throughout their college careers.
Special Events & Meetings at Wesleyan Host your next meeting or event at the world’s first college for women. Wesleyan’s meeting space varies from elegantly appointed parlors and ballrooms to high tech conference spaces. Our central Georgia location is ideal for meetings, reunions, special
events, camps, and conferences. On-site catering, expertly provided by Aramark Food Services, can accommodate anything from a simple coffee and pastries bar to casual themed buffets or elegant seated dinners. Call our Director of Auxiliary
Services at (478) 757-5233 to book your next event or request more information about Wesleyan’s facilities. View available spaces online under the Community section at www.wesleyancollege.edu. We look forward to helping make your next event special!
our daily bread
Nourish your alma mater with a dollar a day. With a minimum gift of $1 per day — or $365 per year — you’ll join our newest giving society, Our Daily Bread, and let today’s students know that Wesleyan is in your heart each day! Membership is renewable annually. Gifts may be given online at:
www.wesleyancollege.edu/give Every annual fund gift makes a difference!
PURSUE AN ADVANCED BUSINESS DEGREE WITHOUT INTERRUPTING YOUR CAREER
Accelerated curriculum. Exceptional faculty. Flexible schedule. Classes scheduled on alternate weekends over 19 months. Next Cohort begins in January!
E xe c u ti v e M BA Individual Attention, Global Perspective
WWW.WESLEYANCoLLEGE.EDu/EMBA 478.757.5225 MACoN, GEoRGiA
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The 175th Anniversary Tour As part of the College’s recognition of the 175th anniversary of its founding in 1836, President Ruth Knox will meet with alumnae in cities throughout the country during the next 18 months, sharing news and plans for Wesleyan’s future as the College moves forward into its next 175 years. This academic year, the offices of advancement and alumnae affairs have planned an Anniversary Tour that includes cities in North Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Florida, and Georgia. Come celebrate Wesleyan’s historic past, current achievements, and vision for the future with Ruth Knox and other Wesleyan women in your area. Visit www.wesleyancollege.edu/alumnae for a schedule of Anniversary Tour events near you.
North Carolina
Raleigh
Charlotte
Charlotte-Metrolina area alumnae and guests met with President Ruth Knox at Myers Park Country Club for an Anniversary Tour kick-off luncheon in November. Other Wesleyan guests included Susan Allen, senior advancement officer, Cathy Coxey Snow ’71, alumnae director, and Lauren Hamblin ’06, associate alumnae director. Alumnae hostesses for the event included Ann Frost Copeland ’61, Evelyn LeRoy Fortson ’52, Kathryne Meeks Sanders ’65, and Diane A. Lumpkin ’63. Area Young Alumnae also met for Cocktails and Conversation with Ruth Knox and Lauren Hamblin at the Charlotte Marriott SouthPark Hotel.
In November, North Carolina Triangle Area alumnae and guests met for a Luncheon with the President at the Carolina Country Club. Alumnae hostesses Pamela Henry Pate ’71, Linda Brown Walker ’73, Karen D. Garr ’69, and Sarah Turnbull Snow ’74 welcomed Ruth Knox and Wesleyan guests Susan Allen, Cathy Snow, and Lauren Hamblin to Raleigh for the Anniversary Tour event. Area members will meet in January at the home of Pam Pate for a New Year’s club kick-off event that includes a WOW service project. Contact Pam at jpate35@nc.rr.com for more information.
Alumnae Weekend 2011: April 15,16 & 17 Special Reunion Classes: 1926 1941 1931 1946 1936 1951
1956 1961 1966
1971 1976 1981
1986 1991 1996
2001 2006 2010
Calling all Alumnae! Please mark your calendar now and plan to join us next spring as we celebrate Wesleyan’s 175th anniversary.
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Now is the time to nominate. Nominations for Alumnae Awards are due January 11, 2011. For nomination forms contact the alumnae office (478) 757-5172 or download forms from our website: www.wesleyancollege.edu
Welcome to the Alumnae Board of Managers Alumna Trustee
Beverly F. Mitchell ’68, Woodstock, GA Advanced Degree: PhD in Motor Learning/Motor Development, Florida State University Occupation: Professor and Associate Dean for Assessment and Accreditation, Bagwell College of Education, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA Alumnae Activities: Atlanta Wesleyan Alumnae Club Community Activities: Sandy Springs Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church, Sandy Springs, GA Professional Activities: National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Board of Examiners and chair; GA Professional Standards Commission (PSC) Board of Examiners and chair; President-elect of National Association of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education (NAKPEHE); various district and national committees to identify accomplished award recipients in education.
Member-at-Large for Nominations
Leigh Lambert Goff ’78, Atlanta, Georgia Occupation: Special Events Coordinator; Retired from Delta Air Lines Alumnae Activities: Board of Managers Community Activities: Member of St. John UMC; Board of Directors, Georgia Women of Achievement; Colonial Dame Professional Activities: Destination management expertise for Atlanta, including City Tour, World of Coke, CNN, Georgia Aquarium, Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta History Center, and the Swan House.
Now is the time to Nominate! The Alumnae Association’s Board of Managers continues to update our database of alumnae leaders. Identifying women who will be good candidates for future service on the board is our on-going goal. If you are willing to serve or would like to nominate a Wesleyanne to serve on the Board or on board committees, please contact Leigh Goff, member-at-large for nominations, at lgoff@bellsouth.net or click on Get Involved under the alumnae section of the website (www.wesleyancollege.edu) to download a nomination form.
Society
Join the Thousandfold
Your $1,000 contribution to the 2010 Annual Fund will benefit Wesleyan a thousandfold - helping to sustain a thousand hopes and dreams. Membership is renewable annually. Gifts may be given online at:
www.wesleyancollege.edu/give Wesleyan is blessed by your loyalty and love.… Thanks a thousandfold!
Stock up on:
all shades of purple! Shop the campus bookstore for a wide variety of Wesleyan logo merchandise. Sweatshirts and t-shirts in all class colors, plus other fine gifts are available online. The bookstore will ship items to alumnae and customers off campus for a standard shipping fee of $6.00. Contact the campus bookstore: (478) 757-5233. Shop 24/7 online: under News & info at www.wesleyancollege.edu.
Alumnae Connections
Connecting – to current students, classmates and friends, and the College – what better way to strengthen the Wesleyan Sisterhood than by providing support for each other as sisters and colleagues! Whether you are involved in student recruitment efforts, reunion activities, mentoring opportunities or participate in social or networking events, rekindling your own Wesleyan spirit through service helps build a strong support system for the Wesleyan family that brings us all together as sisters of the Oldest and Best.
Georgia
Wesleyan College Alumnae Association
The Atlanta Club held a Fall Luncheon in November at Lenbrook. Guest speakers from the college included Alumnae Director Cathy Coxey Snow ’71 and Admission Counselor Parrish Smotherman Jenkins ’06. Jane Mulkey Green ’42 served as alumna hostess for the event, where members were updated on plans for the College’s 175th Anniversary and received a “crash course” in Admission 101.
In September, Wesleyan College Alumnae Association President Susan Woodward Walker ’70 welcomed the Board of Managers to Retreat 2010 to discuss goals and plans for the upcoming year. Vice President for Development Carol “Moon” Burt ’64 and Treasurer Melanie Filson Lewis ’93 coordinated plans for the annual planning session that was held at the home of Trustee Gayle Attaway Findlay ’55 on Sea Island, GA.
Atlanta
Macon
WCAA Board of Managers Retreat
Macon Young Alumnae helped the alumnae office host a Tailgating Party for students and soccer fans in October at the Mathews Athletic Center. Lauren Hamblin ’06, the new associate alumnae director, coordinated plans for the event, along with tailgating hostesses Keisha Lowe ’03, MariaKristina “M.K.” Stanley ’06, and Amy Smith ’06. Students, alumnae, faculty, and staff celebrated with Wesleyan senior Emily Epperson ’11 when she set the NCAA career saves record (with a total of 1,118 saves) on Sunday, October 24th at this last home soccer game of the season.
Alumnae Travel Program
Massachusetts
The WCAA welcomed new students to Wesleyan, including new international students who received special “goodie” bags. The WCAA also welcomed the Class of 2011 back to campus at the annual Senior Midnight Breakfast held in September. Cathy Snow and Lauren Hamblin spoke to seniors about staying connected to the college and participating in Wesleyan traditions such as Candlelighting. In November, the alumnae office sponsored a fall House Party, where reunion leadership committees met and finalized class reunion plans for Alumnae Weekend 2011. Plans for local club WOW Days (Women of Wesleyan service days) are underway. For more information on how to start a WOW Day in your community and help raise awareness of the College in your city, contact Ashley Garrett ’90, WCAA president elect, at agarrett@armc.org or the alumnae office at 478.757.5172.
Boston
In May, Boston area alumnae enjoyed dinner at the Ivey Restaurant, where they met with President Ruth Knox ’75 and students, faculty, and trustees participating in the 2010 Wesleyan Leadership Institute. Area Young Alumnae also met with President Knox and Susan Allen, senior development officer, for Cocktails and Conversation. Leadership Institute Trustees Alexis Xides Bighley ’67, Lynda Brinks Pfeiffer ’63 and Judy Woodward Gregory ’63 were on hand to mentor students, as well as Dr. Wanda Maynard Schroeder ’80, PhD, professor of biology, and Phil Taylor, PhD, professor of economics, who led the 2010 Institute.
Alumnae and guests enjoyed a 10 day Canadian Rockies by Train tour in October sponsored by the WCAA. The trip was a mini-reunion of sorts for members of the Class of ’60 who brought spouses and friends along with them to enjoy majestic mountain views. Gloria Boyette ’60 and Virginia Sumerford York ’60, co-chairs for the travel program, are busy planning for next year’s trip. Suggestions for destinations are welcomed!
Alumnae Office
February 26 & 27, 2011
Sponsored by Wesleyan’s Admission Office and the Alumnae Association Board of Managers
If you’ve ever wanted to show off the College you love so much, now’s your chance! Bring your daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece, or neighbor to visit Wesleyan and introduce her to the traditions that make our Wesleyan experience unique: songs of sisterhood, class competition, STUNT and more! Register soon for Welcome to Wesleyan Weekend – our newest fun-filled special event. You and your guest will stay in Jones Residence Hall on STUNT night and enjoy lots of Wesleyan hospitality, including a full line-up of activities. For more information, contact Amanda Hayward Giles at (478) 757-5139 or ahayward@wesleyancollege.edu
A SPECIAL OVERNIGHT EVENT FOR ALUMNAE AND PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS
club facebook 1. “Go ’Neers!” (From left) Amy Smith ’06, MariaKristina “MK” Stanley ’06, Keisha Lowe ’03, and Lauren Hamblin ’06 met at the Alumnae-Student Tailgate to cheer on the Pioneer soccer team. 2 Bye, Bye, Boston! Leadership Institute trustees, faculty, students, and lobster mascot pose for the camera before leaving Boston. 3 Tribute to Thoreau. Boston Leadership Institute seniors and participants at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. (From left) Trustee Judy Woodward Gregory ’63, Krystal Rogers, Amber Campbell, Belle Thomas, Dr. Wanda Maynard Schroeder ’80, Caitlin Donnelly, and Lisa Ohman. 4. Meet me at Retreat. WCAA Board of Managers met on Sea Island, GA, to set alumnae association goals for the year.
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5. Giving Back. Members of the Board of Managers donated juice boxes to the Lane Center’s children’s program as part of the board’s fall WOW project 6. Wesleyan Rafters. (From left) Janice Boland Smith ’61, Ginger Sumerford York ’60, Gloria Boyette ’60, Anne Harp Cason ’60, and Polly Pollard Houghland ’60 outfitted for a raft adventure in Jasper, Canada. 7. Canadian Rockies Train Stop. Alumnae and guests enjoy the majesty of the Columbia Glacier in Canada. 8. Celebrating 60! (From left) ’72 GKs Dianne Claussen, MC Collins O’Kelley, Debbie Dye Gigliotti, Marianne Graeme Fortuna, Susie McDonald Sheehan, and Eileen Vickery Thurmond marked their 60th birthdays with a vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. 9. Inaugural Delegate. (From left) Mt. Holy- oke’s new President Lynn Pasquerella, PhD, with Patti Henry ’76, who represented Wesleyan at the presidential inauguration held at Mt. Holyoke in September. 10. Fountain Friends. PK ’82 classmates met at Wesleyan in October for a “Big Girl Weekend.” (Bottom from left) Gretchen Schulz, Linda Johnson, Annie Cook Oxford, Patti Stanukinos McCullough. (Top from left) Lisa DiMuro Gosnell, Becky Moore Robbins, Leslie Buice Carson. 11. GKs take DC. A contingency from the Class of ’80 enjoy a mini-reunion in Washington, DC. — complete with matching t-shirts! (From left) Shannon Lindsey Hudson, Jan Lawrence, Helen Anne Richards, Wende Sanderson Meyer von Bremen, Kathleen Barth Renee, Gena Odom Masciello, Allison McFarland Wilcox, Wanda Maynard Schroeder, and Mindy Fraiser. 12. Think Big. Polly Pollard Houghland ’60 with the brown trout she caught while fly fishing in Utah.
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Sympathy The Wesleyan College Alumnae Association extends sympathy to: Elizabeth Martin Jennings ’42 of Gainesville, GA, and Martha Martin ginn ’45 of Mableton, GA, on the death of their sister, Carolyn Martin Craft ’36, also of Gainesville, on August 16, 2010. Jane Methvin Jones ’45 of Matthews, NC, on the death of her husband, Thomas “Tom” Moore Jones, Jr., on October 16, 2010. Mary Standifer Meadors ’45 of Valdosta, GA, on the death of her sister, laura Marjorie Standifer ’40, also of Valdosta, on September 4, 2010. Mary Frances w webb Nall ’45 of Thomaston, GA, on the death of her brother, Rev. James R. Webb, Jr., of Little Rock, AR, on May 30, 2010. Jean Bosman t tuttle ’47 of Madison, AL, on the death of her husband, Rev. Henry W. Tuttle, on May 13, 2010. Mary Astumian ’48 of Macon on the death of her brother, Brigadier General Raymond Astumian, in October 2009. Peggy w worrell Murphy ’51 of Savannah, GA, on the death of her husband, Walter B. Murphy, Jr., on September 9, 2009. Martha Bielmann Hastings ’52 of Birmingham, AL, on the death of her husband, James C. Hastings, on May 21, 2010.
Joan Cordova w walker ’54 of Macon, on the death of her husband, Clifford N. Walker, on May 29, 2010.
Mary lindley Rumph ’63 of Marshallville, GA, on the death of her sister, Jeanne lindley Rives ’66, of Macon, on November 18, 2010.
Sonya t tomlinson Holland ’72 of Riverdale, GA, on the death of her mother, Irene Merriweather Tomlinson, on June 2, 2010.
gayle Attaway Findlay ’55 of New Canaan, CT, on the death of her husband, Cuyler W. Findlay, on July 19, 2010, and on the death of her sister-in-law, Mary Ellen Findlay Schmich ’45, of Eugene, OR, on July 2, 2010.
t trudie Parker Sessions ’65 of Macon, on the death of her husband, James Brandt Sessions, on August 1, 2010.
Carroll Ricketson Bolton ’73 of Bainbridge, GA, on the death of her mother, Lavonia Sparks Ricketson, on June 27, 2010, on her 85th birthday.
Carolyn Sims Brooks ’56 of Stone Mountain, GA, on the death of her husband, John Louis Brooks, on October 6, 2010.
Amelia Halley ’66 of Reynolds, GA, on the death of her cousin, Anne Halley Marshall ’47, also of Reynolds, on August 24, 2010.
Jean Adams Carswell ’56 of Americus, GA, on the death of her husband, Cliff Carswell, on May 13, 2010.
Helen Harwell Smith ’67 of Washington, DC, on the death of her aunt, Mary Ellen Findlay Schmich ’45, of Eugene, OR, on July 2, 2010, and on the death of her uncle, Cuyler W. Findlay, on July 19, 2010.
Beulah “Bootsie” laslie Brinson ’58 of Monticello, FL, on the death of her husband, Edward Bailey Brinson, on August 18, 2010.
Victoria “Vicki” Page Jaus ’68 of Charlotte, NC, on the death of her mother, Margaret “Bunny” Page, of Madison, FL, on July 27, 2010.
Nancy Peterson Shaw ’58 of Atlanta, on the death of her husband, William Henry “Bill” Shaw, Jr., on July 10, 2010, and on the death of her mother, grace Hendricks Peterson ’30, of Ailey, GA, on November 16, 2010.
Katherine wilson Johnson ’68 of Macon, on the death of her aunt, wilda Maddox wilson ’40, of Columbus, GA, and Charlotte, NC, on May 25, 2010.
Victoria wilson logue ’60 of Brooksville, FL, on the death of her aunt, wilda Maddox wilson ’40, of Columbus, GA, and Charlotte, NC, on May 25, 2010.
Mayson Thornton Bissell ’53 of Cordele, GA, on the death of her husband, Robert “Bob” S. Bissell, on March 10, 2010.
Jo Anne Fagan Hanft ’62 of St. Simons Island, GA, on the death of her mother, Celetta Clarke grice ’36, also of St. Simons and formerly of Marshallville, GA, on September 17, 2010.
Elizabeth Perry Bryan ’53 of Marietta, GA, on the death of her cousin, Emily Perry grier ’51, of Macon, on July 22, 2010.
Katherine “Betty” Joseph Kucewicz ’63 of Ogden, UT, on the death of her husband, William J. Kucewicz, in February 2010.
Ellen Beard Martin ’68 of Greenville, SC, on the death of her father, Dr. Joseph R. Beard, of Anderson, SC, on August 9, 2010. Becky Farthing ’69 of Alpharetta, GA, on the death of her father, William O. Farthing, of Dunwoody, GA, on December 31, 2009. Ann Beard Shahid ’69 of Harleyville, SC, on the death of her father, Dr. Joseph R. Beard, of Anderson, SC, on August 9, 2010. Debbie Hall loftiss ’71 of Thomasville, GA, on the death of her mother, Mary Claire Cofer Hall, of Augusta, GA, on September 12, 2010.
Marian Elliott lewis ’74 of Macon on the death of her father, Samuel Aubrey Elliott, of North Myrtle Beach, SC, on June 18, 2010. l lynn Bissell Reed ’76 of Raleigh, NC, on the death of her father, Robert “Bob” S. Bissell, of Cordele, GA, on March 10, 2010. Sharon w webb ’76 of Stow, MA, on the death of her father, Rev. James R. Webb, Jr., of Little Rock, AR, on May 30, 2010. Celetta grice Callaway ’77 of Cypress, TX, on the death of her mother, Celetta Clarke grice ’36, of St. Simons Island, GA, and formerly of Marshallville, GA, on September 17, 2010. Connie Newman Allen ’78 of Lake Worth, FL, on the death of her father, Harry Newman, on October 3, 2010. Janet Friberg Jarrett ’78 of Louisville, KY, on the death of her husband, Henry Kinzer Jarrett III, on June 2, 2010. loretta l. Pinkston ’84 of Atlanta, on the death of her father, David Elliott Pinkston, Sr., on August 2, 2010. Alaina garcia Steele ’02 of Columbus, GA, on the death of her four year-old daughter, Sara Beth Steele, on May 22, 2010. Hillary Jarrett ’08 of Auburn, AL, on the death of her father, Henry Kinzer Jarrett III, of Louisville, KY, on June 2, 2010.
Class Notes in between are GOinG GREEn!
please enjoy reading all class notes submitted to the College since our last magazine online at www.wesleyancollege.edu. our next magazine with full class note coverage will include notes submitted from october 2010 to April 30, 2011. To submit class notes online go to www.wesleyancollege.edu and click on “update My information” under the alumnae section or mail to: Alumnae office, Wesleyan College, 4760 Forsyth Rd. Macon, GA 31210. 42
Marriages
The Wesleyan College Alumnae Association extends congratulations to: Beth Hastings ’93 of Tampa, FL, who married Doug Hoover on June 12, 2010. Heather Rae Goodwin ’96, who married Garrett Grahek on October 2, 2010. Heather and Garrett reside in Tampa, FL. Stephanie Dunbar ’06, who married James Alexander Lee on September 12, 2009. Shelly Walden ’06 was a bridesmaid. The couple lives in Woodstock, GA.
Shelly Kay Walden ’06, who married Michael Gable on October 24, 2010, in the Benson Room at Wesleyan. A reception followed in Oval Hall. Shelly and Michael live in Macon. Crystal Church ’10, of Columbus, GA, who married Corey Tanner on May 30, 2010. The couple lives in Atlanta.
Births & Family Additions The Wesleyan College Alumnae Association extends congratulations to: Barbara Summers Blevins ’93 and Cameron of Knoxville, TN, on the birth of a daughter, Anna Kathryn Blevins, on October 24, 2009. Rachel Viets Fortuna ’97 and Kenneth of Macon, on the birth of their second child, Caleb, in December 2009. Lisa Bridges Hines ’98 and Casey of Norcross, GA, on the adoption of a daughter, Rebecca Judith, born April 22, 2010. Amy-Chris Vinson Smith ’99 and Jonathan of Charlotte, NC, on the birth of a daughter and future Wesleyanne, Jordan Ellison Smith “Jes” on August 18, 2010. Nartaya Jumpasorn Miller ’98 and Ryan of Chula Vista, CA, on the birth of a son, Grayson “Gray” Tyler Miller, on November 20, 2009.
Bianca Venuto Towler ’98 and Jason of Marietta, GA, on the birth of a daughter, Althea Jean Towler, on April 21, 2010. Althea joins big brother Elden (3). Dana Karstensen-Bryan ’99 and Chris of Suffolk, VA, on the birth of a son, Christopher Nolan Bryan, on March 28, 2010. Catherine O’Kelley Fore ’02 and Brooke of Signal Mountain, TN, on the birth of a daughter, Mary Corinne Fore, on August 15, 2010. Proud grandmum, Mary Catherine “M.C.” Collins O’Kelley ’72 and greatgrandmum, Frances Oehmig Collins ’47, are beside themselves with joy! Danielle Ducharme Wunn ’05 and Chris of Flowery Branch, GA, on the birth of a daughter, Arabella Paige, on May 3, 2010.
Welcome to the new Associate Director of Alumnae Affairs Lauren Hamblin ‘06 Lauren Hamblin ’06, has joined the alumnae office as associate director of alumnae affairs, where her focus will be on young alumnae. Previously, Lauren served as director of foundation relations and donor stewardship at Wesleyan, after working as the marketing/communications manager for The Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce following graduation. As a student, Lauren served as president of her Purple Knight Class. She was a Wesleyan Disciple and a member of Mortarboard, among her many other campus activities and leadership positions. As an alumna volunteer, Lauren served on the Board of Managers of the alumnae association and as a co-leader of the Macon Young Alumnae Club. She is a graduate of Leadership Macon and a member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Macon. Lauren’s excellent communication skills, diplomacy, winning personality, and loyalty to Wesleyan make her an excellent addition to the alumnae office staff. In December, Lauren will marry Chris Gibson, and so we extend best wishes to our new Associate Director Lauren Hamblin Gibson.
In Memoriam 1918 1919 1930 1933 1934 1935 1936 1938 1939 1940
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Grace Beatty Furlow Consuelo Proudfit Dickson Grace Hendricks Peterson Halcia Cross McGirt Pauline Willingham McGurk Marion Elizabeth Harris Collier Sue Rollins Longino Carolyn Martin Craft Celetta Clarke Grice Josephine Riley Michael Margaret Harrell Miller Martha Henry Shirkey Juanita Patterson Nail Carolyn McKenzie Truesdel Yvonne Walker Stuckey Mildred “Millie” Sprowl Wolfe Anne Ridley “Catie” Alexander Maria Lewis Harrell Laura Marjorie Standifer Wilda Maddox Wilson Judith Van Buren Bryan Mary Lou Williams Bryan Betty Livingston Bruner Jeanne Susong Chambliss Patricia “Patty” Frederick Murray Mary Ellen Findlay Schmich Sandford Mallary Birdsey Ellen McKinnon Reeder Frances Kelsey DeShong Jean Luttrell Anne Halley Marshall Elizabeth Truitt Billings Emogene Thames Lacey Betty Talkington Boyette Louise Futrelle Dodd Laurel Norden Lenfestey Carolyn Eidson McCollum Eva Lowe Baisden Skipworth Mary Adelaide “Dixie” Haffenden Stewart Emily Perry Grier Tekla Davis Hall Betty Bailey Eckles Alice Ann Hamilton Patsy Culver Hurst Patricia Hammond Klefeker Martiel Ellis Rountree Barbara Hendrix Egan Marie Butler Neel Tommie Jean Ladson Judith Roe Phillips Lucretia Rodgers Young Jeanne Lindley Rives Melissa Stephens Stuck Lois Davison Mann Donna McGraw Paulk
Amazing Grace Grace Laramore Hightower ‘20 closed her letters to Wesleyan with “every good wish.” Mrs. Julian Hightower was a member of the Board of Trustees and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Wesleyan in 1980. Over the years she was a generous donor to Wesleyan, particularly during difficult economic times, but her greatest interest was always in music. She was educated, gracious, and talented -- a classic Wesleyan woman and widely known on campus as Amazing Grace. Her correspondence with the College reveals a spirited, progressive thinker eager to replace white gloves with work gloves. Her vim and vigor still resonate on the campus today, through the endowed Hightower Faculty Chair of Music, an endowed music scholarship, many successful capital projects, Hightower Residence Hall, and two nine-foot Steinway concert grand pianos.
Photo by: Woody Marshall
Internationally Acclaimed Pianist and Wesleyan Professor Edward Eikner remembers her careful selection of one of those Hightower pianos. He traveled with Grace to New York City in 1975 where they met John Steinway and selected the extraordinary instrument for Wesleyan College. Once delivered, the piano required the brawn of eleven men to carry the 1,700-pound instrument up the stairs of Candler to its home in Oval Hall. Later, the piano was relocated to the auditorium where Eikner performed a concert to celebrate the acquisition.
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Over the years, the revered piano has hosted many acclaimed pianists. This year, the Hightower piano was restored to its original glory. To celebrate its return to campus, Eikner performed another concert --almost exactly thirty-five years to the date of the original dedication. This time, as the guest soloist in concert with the Ocmulgee Symphony Orchestra, Eikner filled the auditorium with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 12. Those in attendance claim his performance was inspired, although he credited the masterpiece instrument, “The restored piano is an 88-key symphony unto itself, as that of the soprano Amazing Grace.”
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Wesleyan College 4760 Forsyth Road Macon, Georgia 31210-4462
uPCOMinG EvEntS The international Conductor’s Workshop with the ocmulgee Symphony orchestra Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 3 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium For information call (478) 934-9575. Exhibition of Wood Fired pottery By Associate Professor John Skelton January 20 – February 22, 2011 Opening reception: January 20, 2011 at 6 PM Wesleyan’s Murphey Art Building Gallery Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5189 Carmen Deedy, Bestselling Children’s Author Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:15 AM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium Presented by the Alumnae Association Katharine Payne Carnes Lecture Series. Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5172 ART ExHiBiTioN & SYMpoSiuM Emil Holzhauer: Evidence of His Macon Life January 27 – March 4, 2011 Opening reception and symposium: Thursday, January 27, 2011, 6 – 7:30 PM Cowles Myles Collier East Gallery Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5189 STuNT! Saturday, February 26, 2011 at 7 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium $5 tickets available at the door.
Filmmaker Khadijah al-Salami February 10, 2011 at 11 AM & 7 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium The First Woman Filmmaker of Yemen will discuss her work at 11:15 AM. Film screening at 7 PM. (478) 757-5228 Wesleyan Art Students Exhibition March 17 – April 15, 2011 Cowles Myles Collier East Gallery Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5189 pianist Margery McDuffie Whatley A Benefit Concert for Wesleyan College Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 3 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium For tickets call (478) 757-5259. paintings by Dennie McCrary April 5 – May 20, 2011 Opening reception: April 5, 2011, 6 PM Wesleyan’s Murphey Art Building Gallery Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5189 Wesleyan Market Saturday, April 9, 2011 9AM-1PM Wesleyan College, Front Campus Locally grown produce, baked goods, jewelry, art & fun. Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5233.
LeAnne Nicholson, Senior Voice Recital Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 6:30 PM Wesleyan College, Burden Parlor Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5259 Miriam oakes, Senior Voice Recital Sunday April 17, 2011 at 6:30 PM Wesleyan College, Burden Parlor Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5259 Wesleyan’s Annual Spring Recital Monday, April 18, 2011 at 7 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5259 Senior Studio Art Major’s Exhibition April 21 – May 14, 2011 Cowles Myles Collier East Gallery Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5189 Dead Man’s Cell phone April 28, 29 & 30, 2011; all shows at 8 PM Wesleyan’s Grassmann-Porter Studio Theatre For tickets call (478) 757-5259. Wesleyan’s Annual Spring Concert Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 4 PM Wesleyan College Porter Auditorium Free & open to the public. (478) 757-5259