DePauw M A G A Z I N E
Spring 2021
The How-To Issue
IN THIS ISSUE: Alums tell how they do all sorts of things / DePauw and Greencastle seek more than their common ground / DePauw’s contribution to conquering COVID-19 / and more
THE BO(U)LDER QUESTION
By the Rev. Dr. Maureen Knudsen Langdoc
What do you say to those who wonder why God would inflict this on the world?
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don’t think God inflicted the virus. As a Christian theologian, I see Jesus – fully human and fully divine – healing sickness, not causing it. So the initial question makes an assumption I do not affirm. I am especially suspect of theological explanations or justifications that attempt to offer solace through a sort of “everything happens for a reason” rationale. As if, despite the fact that we might not understand it, for some reason God needed millions of people to die in order to achieve a “larger” purpose. Are we more compassionate than God? More dangerous still seem the attempts to actually name the specific reasons – to offer a moral of the story or to say the lessons we have learned are, in fact, God’s intention: more time with family, a re-evaluation of priorities, slowing down, learning to live with less, or even the ways the pandemic may have opened space for significant national and global conversations, or how stay-at-home orders benefit air and water quality. While all of these are good, and I’d go so far as to
name them gifts, I do not think a good giver offers gifts by way of destruction. God desires the flourishing of all creation. Yes, God can make beauty out of chaos, but God doesn’t inflict a virus so that you might finally slow down and put together more jigsaw puzzles this winter. Of course, this still doesn’t answer why the pandemic. While I don’t think God caused the virus, I do think God grants creation free will. Such freedom is not limited to human beings, which means genetic material has the ability to change, or mutate. But I admit this doesn’t seem a very satisfactory answer. I wonder if that’s because what often lies beneath both the question why and the moral-of-the-story responses is not so much the search for causality, but for meaning. If we can’t make sense of tragedy, can we make meaning in the midst of it? The work of meaning-making, or finding purpose, or – said bluntly – hoping this past year has not been a total waste seems better supported by questions that begin with how, when, what, where and
Photo: Vickie S. Black
For more than a year, the COVID-19 virus has ravaged the world, killing more than 2 million people; sickening millions more; overwhelming health care workers and systems; putting people out of work; and separating us from our loved ones. We asked Knudsen Langdoc, university chaplain and associate dean:
who than those that ask why. How can we be present to ourselves and others when so much has been restricted? Where do we see abundance while living with less? When do we adjust our perspectives, priorities and plans? What language do we need to process this experience and where can we find it? Who are we becoming, and to whom do we bear a responsibility to show up, even when it’s so very hard? These sorts of questions invite us to wonder about our own agency and the ways we exercise our free will in the midst of uncertainty and pain. A friend of mine often says: “If it can’t be happy, make it beautiful.” Surely no explanation for the virus could make the pandemic happy. But perhaps the ways we engage these other questions allow us not to justify, explain or dismiss the pain, but to create beauty and make meaning in the midst of it.
DePauw
M A G A Z I N E
Spring 2021 / Vol. 83 / Issue 3 depauw.edu/offices/communicationsmarketing/depauw-magazine/ STAFF Mary Dieter University editorial director marydieter@depauw.edu 765-658-4286 Kelly A. Graves Creative director Joel Bottom Staff videographer/photographer Brittney Way Staff photographer Donna Grooms Gold Nuggets editor dgrooms@depauw.edu
IN THIS ISSUE The Bo(u)lder Question 2 DePauw Digest 3 Letters to the Editor 4 Book Nook 6 First Person 7 The How-To Issue 34 Town-gown: How to find common ground on common ground 40 Gold Nuggets 48 Leaders the World Needs
EDITORIAL BOARD: Deedie Dowdle, vice president for communications and marketing; Sarah McAdams, internal communications manager; Leslie Williams Smith ’03, executive director of alumni engagement; Mariel Wilderson, assistant vice president for university communications and marketing; Dawna Sinnett Wilson ’82, interim associate vice president for development and alumni engagement; Wendy Wippich ’04, director of alumni engagement for campus and volunteer programs; Chris Wolfe, social media manager.
Photo: Seniors Sarah Hennessey and Emma Rees reconnect at the start of their last term at DePauw. Photo: Brittney Way.
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DEPAUW DIGEST ’18 alum wins competitive foreign service fellowship Maya Cotton ’18, whose studies and academic acumen resulted in several global experiences when she was a student, has secured a highly competitive Pickering Felllowship offered by the U.S. State Department. The fellowship will support Cotton’s pursuit of a master’s degree in international affairs with a specialization in economics and business. After she completes the degree, she will serve at least five years in the foreign service, a requirement for Pickering fellows. Cotton was a Bonner scholar who studied in France in spring 2017 and then, after winning a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, in Thailand that fall. A month after she graduated from DePauw, she won a Fulbright award that sent her to Morocco to teach business English. (Photo: Johnny Shryock)
Maybe next year DePauw was well represented in the AFC Championship game Jan. 24 between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs. Unfortunately, our guys lost. Rob Boras ’92, the Bills’ tight end coach, has coached 17 years in the NFL after 11 years at universities. Joe Schoen ’01 is the Bills’ assistant general manager; he previously was the Miami Dolphins’ director of pro personnel and spent a number of years scouting for the Carolina Panthers. The Bills finished the regular season 13-3 and won a wild card playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts and divisional playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens before falling to the Chiefs 38-24.
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Bottoms writes about DePauw tenure, leadership Former DePauw President Robert Bottoms has written a memoir that his publisher calls “half life story and half leadership parable.” In “A Story of Vision and Values: Memoirs of DePauw University’s 18th President,” published last October, Bottoms writes about his rise from a childhood in Alabama to become the longest-serving president in DePauw history, 1986 to 2008. He then became the first director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics. Bottoms’s publisher, Bilbo Books Publishing, writes that Bottoms brought “a liberal and more inclusive perspective” to DePauw. It was challenging, it says, to make Greencastle “a place where world leaders and prominent writers and lecturers speak,” but “Bottoms proves that with determination, some financial resources and unshakable faith, anything is possible.” The book is available at Eli’s Bookstore and on Amazon.
LETTERS Documentary recounts life story of a storied life “Vernon Jordan: Make It Plain,” a documentary about the life of the 1957 DePauw graduate, civil rights leader and adviser to presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama, aired nationally in late December and is available to rent on Amazon Prime. The documentary, a chronological retelling of Jordan’s life, was directed by Dawn Porter, who recently made a documentary about the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis. It features interviews with President Bill Clinton, scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and others. DePauw sponsored the WFYI-Indianapolis presentation of the documentary Feb. 18. “We were honored and delighted to be presenting sponsor of Vernon Jordan’s amazing life story,” said Deedie Dowdle, vice president for communications and marketing. “He has shared many moments of that life in his personal interactions and involvement with our DePauw community over the years, including his memories of his time as a student, and his story is one no one should miss.”
Pen to paper More than 1,000 letters have been exchanged between 90 DePauw students and 500 Greencastle kids through Tiger Pals, a pen-pal program developed after the pandemic thwarted DePauw’s volunteer mentoring. Some “moving and beautiful” relationships have developed between the correspondents, said Chelsea Naylor ’14, the program’s creator and coordinator of community-based learning. When a fifth grader said he didn’t get along with his sister, his DePauw correspondent told him to keep the faith; their relationship will improve with time. Another DePauw student and his Tiger Pal chose to greet each other in a different language in each letter.
DePauw M A G A Z I N E
Fall 2020
IN THIS ISSUE: The Public Servants: DePauw influences alums to serve others / Reflections on racial justice / Success stories from 40 years of DePauw nursing / and more
The Public Servants
TO THE EDITOR: Thank you so much the article on DePauw’s School of Nursing in the fall issue. I’m so glad the university is remembering this part of their history! It brought back good memories to see the pins, caps (did we really wear those things?) and the students in uniform outside the Indianapolis dorm, Wile Hall (nicknamed by us “Wild” Hall!) I have often thought through the years how well DePauw’s nursing school prepared me for my career. My classmates remain some of my closest friends and I’m very proud of their accomplishments and impact on our profession. – Jane McEwen ’77 “The Public Servants” focus for the fall issue was spot on. I really enjoyed reading your well-crafted profile stories of the alumni/faculty who have contributed meaningfully to our society. The pairing of the Veronica Pejril and Jane Noble Luljak stories was brilliant! – Bob Steele ’69
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BOOK NOOK Is a recent read occupying your thoughts? Has a book indelibly imprinted your life? We want to hear from you. Send your recommendation to marydieter@depauw.edu.
President’s Bookshelf / What We’re Reading
Book choice and conversation, plus president’s presence, pleased participants in first-ever book club More than 40 alumni and parents of alumni participated Jan. 13 in the firstever President’s Book Club, a Zoom gathering in which they discussed Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents.” The participants represented a large swath of DePauw graduates – from the Class of 1964 through the Class of 2016. According to its publisher, the book “examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.” President Lori White said she chose the book because she had read Wilkerson’s previous bestseller, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” and “found Wilkerson to be an incredible storyteller who provides well-researched, historical context for issues of race.” White opened the discussion by asking the participants to summarize their impressions of the book in one word. “Overwhelmed,” said one. “Enlightening.” “Timely.” “Appalled.” “Provocative.” “Thought-provoking.” “Powerful.” “Humbling.” Melinda Haag ’81 recalled that, as a political science and English major at DePauw “who took a ton of philosophy and ethics and history” courses, she participated in many class discussions about
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“class,” but not “caste,” a distinction Wilkerson makes in the book. “Every institution we’ve created, whether it is secular or sacred, has this caste system embedded in it in some way,” Haag said, causing her to wonder “does it mean we have to blow all of it up and start over again?” María Garriga, parent of a 2016 alumnus, was dismayed that the author said Nazi Germany patterned its system after America’s caste system and also found similarities between the American and Indian caste systems. “The average American out there thinks it’s horrible – that Nazi Germany was horrible and the Indian caste system is incomprehensible – but then I had never thought to compare it to our own history,” she said. “That is the biggest gift that I got from the book –
to think of it on those terms.” Said Anne Ballentine ’86: “It makes it feel like it’s going to be hard for Black people to overcome that level that they’ve been forced into, like the caste system in India. It made me feel like the work was going to be even more difficult and challenging, but, hey, we’ve got to embrace it.” The book club met a week after the riots at the U.S. Capitol, causing participants to draw comparisons to Wilkerson’s observations. “What we have seen is the dominant gender of the dominant caste, although not the highest of the caste – more middle and low – reacting to the subordinate caste. Period,” said Kate McQueen ’71. Deep in her book, Wilkerson noted that historian Taylor Branch asked, “if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” “That just nails it,” said Cindy Tibbetts Frey ’84. “That’s what happened last week.” Craig Adams ’90 said that reading the book caused him to recognize that “I suffer from an incomplete history … that I have to work hard to understand so that I better understand the issues.” Black history should be taught in high school civics classes or in courses at DePauw, he said. As a
DePauw student, he studied in Hong Kong and he later lived in China, experiences that “helped me look at things through a different lens.” A participant asked White if she had experienced subtle racism like that described in the book; White said she had experienced that during her lifetime, and provided several examples. However, “I’ve been so warmly welcomed by the DePauw family,” she said. Several participants said they were pleased that DePauw had chosen White to be its 21st president. “Your appointment has given me renewed hope for my alma mater,” said Rick Born ’83. “We need you,” Ballentine said. “ … I think this is a really important point in time to have a strong, smart Black woman at the helm.” Afterward, several participants said the hourlong format was too short but
that the experience was valuable. “I think our first book club was a smashing success,” Born said. “Even before it began, I was just thrilled that the new president of my alma mater was willing to sit down with l’il ol’ me and talk about a book! We had a lively and meaningful discussion, and, as an added bonus, we all got to see firsthand many of the qualities that will make Dr. White an outstanding president: First, she’s a reader! But beyond that, she thinks deeply, has a wonderful, positive energy about her, a great sense of humor and is an excellent listener.” Both Heidi Hunsberger McFadden ’84 and Margarita Villa ’12 said the event made them feel like they were back in class discussions like they had at DePauw. “I loved being able to discuss such a thought-provoking book with the new president and much older alums,” Villa said. “I wish
more of my fellow alums of color would have participated.” Mercedes Condy ’65 said “Caste” was “a painful book to read, but so necessary to have a more clarified understanding of our history so that we can participate more effectively in the healing of individuals and our nation today.” The discussion, said Bob Steele ’69, “was stimulating and substantive. It was enhanced by Dr. White connecting her personal experiences and professional journey to Isabel Wilkerson’s thesis on the influence of a caste on our society.” Rick Ferrell ’65 found it “so good that everyone was on a first-name basis across generations; that’s the way it should be among friends. I have long believed that one of the great attributes of higher education is that we are all students and we are all teachers. This event was a great example!”
The Book Nook features notable, professionally published books written by DePauw alumni and faculty. Self-published books will be included in the Gold Nuggets section.
Deborah Douglas, Eugene S. Pulliam distinguished visiting professor of journalism “Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events that Made the Movement”
Priscilla Pope-Levison ’80 “Models of Evangelism”
Doug Riley ’91 and Sheryl Teeguarden Riley ’92 “Killer Lead: A Duplicate Bridge Club Mystery”
Susan Diamond Riley ’85 “The Sea Island’s Secret: A Delta & Jax Mystery”
Joe Sanders ’62 “Michael Bishop and the Persistence of Wonder: A Critical Study of the Writings”
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FIRST PERSON
By Nate Spangle ’19 We asked Spangle, a communications major who played football for three years and then became the team’s social media manager, to tell us how to be the tireless multitasker he is.
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hen I toured DePauw’s campus in the winter of 2014, my tour guide said, “You can truly be involved in everything.” DePauw is a place where you can be on an athletic team, host your own radio show or be the student body president, and still be active in Greek life. That message stuck with me through my four years at DePauw, and it remains an influence on my life two years into my professional career. Since graduating in 2019, I have been working a full-time job at Apex Benefits in Indianapolis. I got this job through an organization called the Orr Fellowship, which is a two-year program that DePauw alums have been a part of since Angie Hicks ’95 helped start it in the early 2000s. In typical DePauw fashion, my activities haven’t stopped there. I have invested in a rental property with Zach Williams ’19, started a successful e-commerce brand, coached varsity high school wrestling and started a philanthropy to raise thousands of dollars to support local service workers who are struggling due to impacts from COVID-19. A large portion of that – $1,500 – came from a livestream on Instagram that Cole Taylor ’19 and I staged. These opportunities may seem completely unrelated, but there is one thing that ties them all together, and that
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is the influence my DePauw education has had on them. In my senior year, I sat in the library of Delta Tau Delta with my fraternity brother Matt Labus ’19 and talked about starting our own business. We hatched an idea: allow baseball and softball players to show off their personality through their equipment. That’s when the idea for our business, Bat Hats, began. Fast forward to July 2020, and that idea turned into a business. Even during a global pandemic, when the number of baseball and softball games was down, we were able to grow our brand and expand to 43 states and several countries. While I was working my full-time job and growing Bat Hats, there was still something missing. I loved being around athletics my whole life, and the idea of coaching had always been in the back of my mind. My high school coaches made some of the greatest impacts in my life, and I figured it was my time to pass it on. Through a friendship I had cultivated with Graham Wilkerson ’12, I began coaching wrestling at Bishop Chatard High School. All the incredible opportunities I have had the last two years have come from the relationships I cultivated at DePauw. My
job, business and even the service work I do start with the friends whom I made in Greencastle. I am inspired by the many esteemed alumni who graduated before me and the effort they put into their professional fields, as well as the passion they put into making their communities better places.
GOLD WITHIN
The How-To Issue
Barbara Kingsolver’s recent collection of poems includes one titled “How to Be Hopeful.” It’s the same title as her 2008 commencement address at Duke University. Who better to contribute to DePauw Magazine’s How-To Issue than someone who has ventured there? Well, there’s that, plus she’s the bestselling author of 16 books. And who better to tell us how to save a life than an emergency room physician; how to find peace at death than an end-of-life coach? DePauw has a fascinating array of accomplished alumni and faculty members. We imposed on a few of them to tell us how they do what they do. SPRING 2021 DEPAUW MAGAZINE I 7
How to
save a life
By Mary Dieter
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he paramedics have radioed in to say the victim of a vicious car crash is unresponsive and his vital signs are unstable. So when they wheel the man into the emergency room, the nurse skips the usual triage process and the patient is rushed back to the room where Jeff Bohmer ’95 is ready to practice his ABCs. “Those are the three first steps we take to stabilize any trauma patient,” said Bohmer, an emergency room physician and vice chairman of the Emergency Department at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois.
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“My goal is to get them out of the emergency room, to get them to the CAT scanner, identify what the injuries are, then start consulting with the appropriate consultants and specialists who need to intervene to get them the treatment they need right now and get them on the road to recovery.” Bohmer, like emergency room physicians everywhere, uses the ABC algorithm:
A
AIRWAY: Bohmer determines if the patient’s airway is open; if not, “that may mean I need to put a breathing tube down their throat
into their trachea and put them on a respirator to breathe for them. Sometimes that’s not an option because they have such bad facial trauma, so we need to do … a cricothyrotomy, where we basically open up the spot right near the trachea to put a tube in.” A respiratory therapist helps with the procedure.
B
BREATHING: “Then we put them on a ventilator, make sure we can actually get them breathing on their own.” By now, the hospital has paged a trauma surgeon, the blood bank, the
radiology team and the in-house pharmacist – all of whom must be ready when Bohmer needs them. He may eventually call other specialists too. Three nurses are with him – one to pull medicines, one to get the IV line going and administer the meds and one to record the action.
Photo: Northwestern Medicine
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CIRCULATION: Bohmer and his team measure blood pressure and examine visible, bleeding wounds to “establish whether or not the patient has enough cardiac drive and has enough blood in their system, really, to be able to circulate and provide life to their vital organs,” he said. When the team is confident that is happening – a result of the first three steps, which happen simultaneously – they address other issues.
DISABILITY: The medical team assesses whether something else, more than the trauma, is affecting the patient. Did the car accident and resulting trauma occur because the patient was having a heart attack or a stroke?
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EXPOSURE: When the patient is stabilized, the team exposes him to search for other signs of trauma. Does he have a broken ankle? Femur? Back?
With breathing and circulation stabilized, the patient can be taken to the CAT scanner, which will reveal injuries to the brain, skull, spine and internal organs and vessels. Though he is not a radiologist, who can identify subtler injuries, Bohmer can look at a CAT scan and recognize bleeding on the brain or in the abdomen, and he’ll inform the trauma surgeon. If he detects brain or spine injuries, he calls a neurosurgeon. “They’re still my patient until they leave the emergency room,” Bohmer said. “The trauma surgeon will assume some of the care of that patient once they arrive,” which is required within 30 minutes of the hospital’s page. Together, Bohmer and the trauma surgeon decide on a course of action. “They have their expertise and I have my expertise, so we share the duties once they come into the emergency room,” he said. “They also realize that I’m also managing eight or nine other patients at the same time.” To manage the care of so many people at once, “I’m always having to run a checklist in my mind,” he said. “The way our emergency service is set up is that I’m responsible for 10 rooms, so I make a checklist of who’s in what room and what am I waiting on for that person, what does that person need and what am I anticipating with that patient.” Bohmer sees about 5,000 patients a year. On a recent shift, he saw an eightweek-old infant who had COVID-19; a 93-year-old woman who had lost so much blood to a bleeding ulcer that she needed a transfusion; a man having a heart attack that was not revealed by an EKG; and a 30-year-old woman who fell while walking her dog and had blood on her brain. He occasionally sees victims of violence but,
when possible, paramedics take such patients to Level 1 trauma centers; Central DuPage is Level 2. “We see everyone who walks in the door, no matter what their complaint is or what their underlying issue is. … It’s a pretty wide breadth, which is what I like about it,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m seeing when I walk into the shift every day.” The ABC – and D and E – algorithm is prescribed by Bohmer’s advanced trauma life support certification and becomes second nature, he said. The emotional toll does not. “I’ve learned over the years that if I’m going to be able to live my life and be able to do my job and do it well, you have to put somewhat of a façade up, a little bit of a barrier or you’ll never be able to go on to the next patient, let alone the shift,” he said. For the emotionally wrenching cases, such as the chronically ill 10-year-old who died despite the team’s long resuscitation efforts, the hospital invites the medical professionals to attend debriefing sessions with a social worker. Still, Bohmer knows he’ll never forget certain cases: The 14-year-old who died from an undetected congenital heart defect (“this was 15 years ago and it still makes my heart race when I think about this”). The woman attacked by a pack of stray dogs. “There are certain ones who definitely stick out that I’ll take to the day I die,” he said. “And those are the ones that shape us and make us who we are.”
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How to By Mary Dieter
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PROLOGUE: “I get ideas everywhere,” she said. “On a walk in the woods, in the grocery. I’m a chronic eavesdropper. I love listening to people’s language, their points of view. … “Nothing ‘just comes.’ I spend years evaluating ideas for their literary potential. For a novel to be worth a reader’s time (and mine), it needs to be about something extremely and universally important, so I lean into my biggest worries. Some examples from my past novels: climate change, partisan divides between rural and urban people, cultural paradigm shifts, the history of colonial arrogance, child abuse. … The hard part is finding a way into a story that will ask big questions, guiding a reader through a compelling exploration of the subject.” Early in a book project, Kingsolver spends time “choosing and honing a subject, sketching the architecture of the plot, inventing the characters and finding
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Photo: Steven L. Hopp
o you want to write a novel. Be prepared for intense preparation, exhaustive research, careful writing and meticulous revision. That’s what you can expect, anyway, if you follow the lead of Barbara Kingsolver ’77, bestselling author of eight novels and eight other books. Though engrossed in work on a new one, she responded in writing to DePauw Magazine’s questions about how to write a bestseller. The plot thickens:
write a bestseller the story’s voice. I usually spend a year or more on those things before I write the first sentence, the first scene, so I’m very clear about where it’s all going.” THE SETTING: Kingsolver works on a desktop computer in a book-lined, upstairs office in her family’s Virginia farmhouse. It’s quiet; “any kind of music or noise is distracting, because I’m listening to voices in my head,” she said. “Does that sound, um, crazy? To be honest, fiction writing might be a carefully controlled lunacy.” A map of her novel’s location – real or drawn by her – hangs on a nearby bulletin board, surrounded by photos “that resemble important images in my mind – my characters (faces or body types), crucial possessions, articles of clothing, views out a window. It grows into a giant collage. If my novel has an exotic location that’s far from the real view out my real window – like the Congo, Mexico or the 19th century – these visual cues help to get me centered in the world of my novel. I’ll often begin my writing day standing in front of that bulletin board, letting my focus go soft and walking in. Like Alice’s looking glass.” She begins by creating computer files to store descriptions of her characters and their histories; timelines; themes; and “a big, expanding plot outline.” When she has worked out the plot, she creates a file for each chapter, starting with a few sentences
about what will happen in it. “As the story develops and I know more, I can fill these out in greater length,” she said. “By the time I actually begin writing the novel scene by scene, I never start with a blank page. … “Once I’m well into the book, I’ll jump around a lot. Ideas come to me for scenes that happen at various points mid-novel, and I can write them and put them in
“I’m always creating on the page, even if I’m working within a planned plot.” place. At some point, usually pretty early on, I’ll get a clear vision of the book’s final scene, and write it. The end is always written long before I reach that point in the first draft. That way, I can aim everything else toward that focal point, making sure it all adds up just right.” THE INITIATING EVENT: Kingsolver majored in zoology at DePauw (the precursor to biology), figuring it would lead to a “secure livelihood.” Writing, she said, “was a private passion that grew out of my love of reading. Novels opened the windows of my brain. I started keeping a journal at age 8, and never stopped. I had no ambition to become a professional
writer … I just wrote every day, as a way of processing my experience.” By college age, “I was reading very consciously, noticing how Dickens constructed his plots, how Steinbeck used point of view to reveal character. Doris Lessing blew my mind, showing me that a novel is – or can be – not just about plot and character but also the biggest problems in the world, like sexism and racism.” RISING ACTION: “I’m always creating on the page, even if I’m working within a planned plot,” Kingsolver said. “The creation is craft. Choosing the exquisitely right words, making sentences that sing, finding the poetry of language.” She is not influenced by public acclaim or reader expectation, she said. “You don’t get a backlist like mine by trying to please an audience. I mean, let’s face it: climate change, racism, death by snakebite – these things do not scream ‘marketable.’ I just concentrate on doing my best work, even if it takes me into dark and scary places, and trust readers to follow me. “Many years ago I wrote these words of advice that are now popping up every day in my Instagram feed, so they must be ringing true: ‘Close the door. Write with nobody looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you. Figure out what it is you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.’”
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CONFLICT: When she embarks on a new book, even after writing 16, “I struggle all over again with the sense that this is too hard, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, I won’t be able to pull it off,” she said. “When I start feeling daunted, I have to take a deep breath and give myself permission to write a bad first draft. … That permission is very liberating.” Some of her best thinking occurs in bed, “when I’m first awake in a dreamy state. Often, when I have a tough writing knot to untangle, I’ll set the specific intention of knowing the answer the next morning. And usually, I do.” Other times, she’ll take a five-minute walk, using “basically the same techniques that are helpful in amicably settling disputes with a spouse. “In some ways, writing a novel is like a marriage. You have to keep showing up, enjoying the company and, when problems arise, you trust the process of working them out.”
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CLIMAX: “For me, the real art is in revision,” Kingsolver said. “It’s most of the work I do. Honing the language, finding new insights into character, rearranging scenes and events to build the story more perfectly. … I promise you, every paragraph of mine is rewritten at least a dozen times before it’s published. Some are rewritten a hundred times. The first page, probably two hundred.” FALLING ACTION: The time it takes for Kingsolver to complete a novel varies. Some were written in two years; “The Lacuna” took about seven; “The Poisonwood Bible,” 20. “I also worked on other things during that time, but I was actively writing that novel for two decades,” she said.
DENOUEMENT: When a book is finished, “it’s a cathartic ritual to take down all those pictures and start again with a clean cork surface, waiting to be filled,” she said. In between books, she works on smaller projects – travel articles, magazine pieces, essays. “It’s therapeutic, looking forward to these projects as small treats, because finishing a book is strangely sad,” she said. “There’s a postpartum letdown, the painful farewell to these people who’ve been living in my head for several years.” She has no plans to retire. Writers “tend to hit our stride in middle age and could actually do our best work in our 70s or 80s,” she said, “because our stock in trade is not just language, it’s wisdom. Isn’t that what readers are really looking for? And wisdom can’t be rushed; it only accrues with time and experience.”
How to H By Sarah McAdams
appiness is not always about being in a good mood or having a smile on your face. It’s about having an underlying and predominant sense of wellbeing, said Doug Smith ’68, whose 2004 bout with leukemia caused him to quit work as a food industry executive and to
be happy
study happiness, well-being and resilience in the face of setbacks. Since 2006, Smith has taught a winterterm course at DePauw that focuses on happiness. He is the author of two books, “Thriving in the Second Half of Life” and “Happiness: The Art of Living with Peace, Confidence and Joy,” and co-founder of Positive Foundry, an organization dedicated to enabling individuals and their organizations to flourish. One can achieve happiness, he said, by developing and practicing skills that lead to peace about the past, confidence in the future and joy and exuberance in the present. Here are his specific steps toward happiness: THE PAST: • Forgive. Forgiving yourself is the ability to learn from your mistake. Forgiving someone else is releasing the desire for vengeance. • Feel gratitude. Stop focusing on what you don’t have and be thankful for what you do have. THE PRESENT: • Do now what you’re doing now. Stop multitasking. Have your head be where your feet are. • Honor mind, body and spirit. Pay attention to what you
• • •
• •
watch, read and eat, and with whom you socialize. Be altruistic and kind. Before you take an action, ask yourself, is this kind? If it isn’t, think of another action. Think with abundance. Stop comparing yourself to everybody else. Master your stories. Most of us have a little voice in our head that’s talking to us from the second we wake up and often long after we’d like to go to sleep. It’s saying things about you and others that you’d never say out loud. How do you stop listening to that voice and start telling better stories? Find meaning and purpose. Figure out what you want to do with your life and get about it. Cherish relationships.
THE FUTURE: • Practice faith. • Find optimism. • Be flexible. • Exhibit openness. • Be inspired by love. Your life is either based on love or on fear – the fear that you won’t be enough or won’t have enough. Smith said those fears drove him “to get up really early in the morning and work really hard.” But if you’re driven by those fears, it’s hard to be happy. And there’s a better place to be: Inspired by love.
Photo: Marilyn E. Culler
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How to By Mary Dieter
T
wo bidding wars. And a headline that says NBC “nabs” his medical drama. Marqui Jackson ’00, it would seem, has reached the pinnacle. “Nooo,” he said, drawing out the Os. “I’m just getting started. … The pinnacle? Not even close. When you have a billion shows on the air, like a David E. Kelley or Shonda Rimes or Ryan Murphy, then you can say you’ve done something. But I’m still on my way.” His 18-year journey of persistence, resilience and humility – of “a lot of getting lunch and coffee, personal errands and all of that” – has brought him here: Three production companies competed to produce his show, “Family History,” the story of a Black family of physicians who buy a hospital. Imagine Entertainment, a company owned by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer, won. And then NBC beat out Fox to be the network where the show, if made, will air. Jackson, who is co-executive producer on “The Resident” and has worked on other popular television shows such as “House” and “Rosewood,” is writing a script and waiting to hear if NBC will make the pilot and, ideally, more episodes. This puts him closer than he’s ever been to being an executive producer of his own show, a goal toward which he has worked since, two years out of DePauw, he earned a master’s degree from Texas Christian
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University and “started from scratch” in Los Angeles. So what lessons do Jackson’s experiences teach? TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET: Jackson had been working as a temp when he landed a job as a production assistant on “Half and Half,” a sitcom. Not his thing. “I took the comedy jobs just to get into the industry, to get to know people,” he said. “And just to find my way. I’ve got to eat, and so if I’m going to be working at a job that’s not what I want to do, at least it’s in the industry. And I did learn a lot.” Later, he worked as an assistant to an agent at Creative Artists Agency LLC.
Again, it wasn’t ideal, but he learned a lot. And his end goal was to demonstrate to folks at CCA that they should take him on as a client, something that is “extremely hard to do, to get an agent,” he said. Ultimately, that happened, leading to Jackson’s first job as a professional writer for “The Forgotten,” a Jerry Bruckheimer procedural. LEVERAGE CONNECTIONS: About that first comedy job? “One of my professors at TCU had a student who had a husband who was a writer’s assistant,” Jackson said. “I got my resume to him, he got it to his bosses, they brought me in, they interviewed me and I got the job.”
break into TV Later, when he was assistant to the executive producer of “Ugly Betty,” Jackson applied for a fellowship with the Walt Disney Television Writing Program, a big deal in the television business. His boss made a call to recommend him. A colleague who was already a Disney fellow sent an email to the head of the program, and Jackson got an interview. When Jackson learned that Brian O. Harvey ’94 was then working with Disney-connected ABC, he asked Harvey to meet for coffee. They did, and Jackson asked if Harvey would recommend him for the Disney fellowship. “And then he did,” Jackson said of Harvey, who now is a development executive with Amazon Studios. TAKE RISKS: When Jackson became an assistant on “Ugly Betty,” he hoped he’d be asked to write an episode, something that happens now and then. But it struck
him that “everybody has an assistant; I’m literally assistant No. 8,” he said. “And I’m going to have to wait 10 years to get my shot.” That’s when he decided to leverage his relationships with ABC people and go for the Disney fellowship. When he hadn’t gotten word about the semifinal round of interviews – two friends who also applied had landed interviews and Harvey told him things looked good – “I did something that I ordinarily wouldn’t have done,” he said. He emailed a highlevel executive at ABC, “a guy who helped decide what you guys see on ABC at home. I get coffee and answer phones.” The executive had, at some time, offered what may have seemed a gratuitous line – “if you need anything” – but Jackson took him at his word. The exec responded with news that Jackson was supposed to be interviewed, but someone accidentally failed to call him. Jackson got the interview and the fellowship. “Had I just accepted my fate, my life today would be completely different,” he said. “I always tell that story to upand-coming writers because, when you’re getting close to an immediate goal, when it’s so close you can see it – you can almost taste it – sometimes the journey requires that you dig a little deeper.” Years later, Jackson began work on the “Family History” script after learning that Lee Daniels Entertainment wanted a show about Black doctors. The Daniels
company ultimately passed on the script, as did 20th Century Studios, producer of “The Resident.” “It was late in the year in terms of developing stuff for broadcast, so I was like, I’ll just shelve it and pitch it next year,” he said. Then, in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and was disproportionately affecting people of color, Jackson revived the concept, and the bidding wars ensued. HAVE A PLAN/SET A GOAL: He tells young people who ask his advice, “Don’t just have one plan, have multiple plans. Have five. And have them all working at the same time because you just don’t know how you’re going to break in.” Having worked his own plan, his goal now “is to sell and get my own shows on the air,” he said. “I came out here to write my vision, not everyone else’s. But there’s a process in that. There’s a grooming and refining period … “It’s a tough and competitive business, so to sell something, let alone to get something on the air, is like lightning in a bottle.”
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How to By Mary Dieter
16 I DEPAUW MAGAZINE SPRING 2021
Photo: Penn State Harrisburg
T
he legend was wrong: Jimmy Hoffa’s body wasn’t found buried under the end zone when Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010. Maybe it was cremated in a trash incinerator or crushed in a compacted vehicle sold as scrap. It might be buried in concrete under a skyway in New Jersey. Perhaps it was fed to Everglades alligators. Or maybe two federal agents pushed Hoffa out of an airplane as it flew over the Great Lakes. For more than 45 years, a lot of people – including the FBI – have devised hypotheses, advanced theories and tried to solve the mystery of what happened to Hoffa, the former Teamsters president, after he disappeared July 30, 1975, from the parking lot of a restaurant outside Detroit. David Witwer ’85, a professor of American studies at Penn State Harrisburg who is writing a book – his fourth – about Hoffa, is less interested in searching for Hoffa’s physical remains than he is about searching for who Hoffa really was. Champion of working people or “corrupt, criminal, ruthless, violent, vile” union leader? Hardworking advocate for the little guy or mob collaborator? Family man with a modest lifestyle or all-powerful organized crime figure? Working-class hero or a symbol of corruption? Unsolvable mystery or mythic figure?
“What the book is about is looking for that Hoffa, that Hoffa who’s so hard to pin down,” Witwer said. As the Penn State laureate for 2020-21, Witwer lectures about his research into union corruption, organized crime and labor racketeering, subjects he has pursued since obtaining his doctorate degree. His first job out of DePauw – investigative analyst for the New York district attorney – sparked those interests. He has conducted research at the National Archives, poring over eight boxes of reports by investigators pursuing Hoffa at the behest of Robert F. Kennedy, who as a Senate committee counsel and U.S. attorney general, styled Hoffa as “totally corrupt,” Witwer said. The union boss, who was born in Brazil, Indiana, in 1913, finally was convicted in 1967 of fraud, conspiracy and jury tampering and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 1971,
however, he won clemency from President Richard Nixon on one condition: He had to resign the Teamsters’ presidency, to which he had been re-elected while incarcerated. After he was released, Hoffa began seeking support to run again anyway. Then he disappeared. Theories – and legends – abound about what happened. Witwer dismisses as nonsensical the suggestion that the mob killed him to stop him from running for the presidency; not only would the Nixon administration likely put Hoffa back in the penitentiary, but the historian can’t imagine why organized crime intentionally would invite the public and law enforcement attention that the disappearance precipitated. Witwer said another theory that “makes some sense” is that, when the mob opposed his candidacy and tried to dissuade him from running, he threatened
find Jimmy Hoffa retribution: Snitching to law enforcement. He thinks the mob planned to intimidate Hoffa, not kill him. But he ended up dead, and after the panicked functionaries did something with the body, their displeased bosses moved it for “a double layer of security.” So will Hoffa be found? “I don’t
think you do find Hoffa’s body,” Witwer said, though some are still trying. That includes the FBI, though those who know what happened likely are dead and thus can neither provide information nor be charged with a crime. But the mythic figure lives on, primarily because the mystery endures.
“Some people have talked about Hoffa’s significance as a folk figure, a mythic figure, … the kind of working class Everyman who defies the authority and the establishment,” Witwer said. “Myths matter because they tell us something about how we explain our world.”
View in the crowded caucus room in the Senate Office Building as James R. Hoffa (on right), began his testimony before the Senate Labor Rackets Comittee. Beside him is attorney George S. Fitzgerald. Aug. 20, 1957. Courtesy: CSU Archives/Everett Collection.
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How to By Mary Dieter
W
illis “Bing” Davis ’59 sees art everywhere. Hears it too. “It’s never far from my mind,” he said. “It’s a way of existing and being.” When he spotted a shredded tire on the side of the interstate, he was reminded of the necklaces an African dancer might wear. So he pulled a u-turn, stopped and tossed the tire – which will someday adorn one of his anti-police brutality masks – into his car. When, ensconced in his basement workshop, he heard the footsteps of his wife from above as she entered their Dayton gallery, he beat out a rhythm with his fingertips. “Once you get tuned into that, you collect information all the time,” he said. When, as a high schooler, he saw an
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create art
iridescent oil slick in a mall parking lot, he knelt to observe the colors, prompting queries from his peers. “It used to bother me when they’d think I was crazy,” he said. But “once you get into that mode of working and thinking, then you make it a part of your life.” And when he recently entertained a visitor to his gallery and “caught a glimpse of the leaves making patterns in the window,” he did not miss a beat in the conversation. “I’m actually concentrating more and I’m picking up more,” he said. At 83, Davis makes ceramics, paints and sculpts using found objects such as the shredded tire. He learned his broad approach to art from Richard E. Peeler ’49, for whom the DePauw art center is named and who was Davis’s teacher, academic adviser and, when Davis taught at DePauw for six years, his colleague. Peeler, he said,
asked the question: “How do you use art to enhance growth?” Davis’s answer: “Once you open up to it, it’s unlimited what you can do.” Davis said he will never stop making art. “You don’t do that,” he said, his tone incredulous. “You find time. You stop the other stuff so you have more time to do the art. Because that’s really a lifeline.” He officially retired from teaching in 1998, but still participates in and sponsors workshops, summer camps and art lessons for children and teens; volunteers for community projects; and operates his gallery. He recently was hired as an aesthetic consultant to place African symbolism on a bridge in Dayton. He said he wants to stop all those things – but provides no timeline for doing so – and “just enjoy making art and enjoy being alive.”
Here are some of Davis’s other thoughts about art: IT REFLECTS VALUES: “Art is a reflection of spiritual, cultural and social values of all people,” Davis said. “And so you can look at any culture or any people, and look at the art, their music, their dance and their drama, and you understand their whole way of life.”
Photos: Brittney Way
IT TEACHES SKILLS: Teaching children art “enhances self-concept and confidence, increases goal setting,” Davis said. A young person who creates art learns critical thinking; creative problem-solving; fluency of thought; instrumental behavior to solve a problem; and assessment and evaluation – “all qualities an individual will need to enhance their success on the job and in life.”
IT PROVOKES ACTION: Art can be an “agent of change,” he said. That’s why much of the art created by this friendly, upbeat man addresses violence. “Sometimes art can say things that you have a hard time saying in words or can stimulate a conversation,” he said. “I want to find as many ways as possible of putting the viewer into the position of thinking and taking action on a serious problem.” Davis has a series of sculptures labeled as “antipolice brutality masks.” He recently completed “Colin Kaepernick and George Floyd Cushion,” a sculpture that
juxtaposes former quarterback Kaepernick’s taking a knee to protest police abuse of Black people with the death of George Floyd, who died when a police officer knelt on his neck. And he is working on a multi-media piece centered on the August 2020 shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the killing of other Black people by police officers. IT PROMPTS LEARNING: “Clay is still my favorite medium, but I was accustomed to working in and teaching a variety of techniques and a variety of mediums, and I just keep it up professionally,” he said. “So when an idea comes, sometimes I transfer that same idea to a variety of mediums to see the different effects. And sometimes when I get an idea, it already suggests a technique. If I don’t know the technique, I’ll learn it.”
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How to
write a love letter
Photos: Brittney Way
By Sarah McAdams
Y
our heart beats faster; your palms sweat. You get butterflies in your stomach. And you’re smiling a lot. You’re in love. So how do you communicate your feelings to the object of your desire? Jen Adams, associate professor of communication and theatre, has some thoughts on that. For her doctoral dissertation, Adams studied 400 love letters she found in the attic of the Victorian home she was renting. The deceased owners had written them to each other in the 1930s. “They wrote every day, and their relationship is detailed in these letters,” Adams said. “I was able to study the 20 I DEPAUW MAGAZINE SPRING 2021
progression of how their relationship developed, which was historical and very romantic.” Adams did not publish her work immediately, thinking the letters too personal. But after her DePauw students persuaded her to search for the couple’s children, Adams found their daughter, who was thrilled to learn of the letters and who gave her permission to publish them in a book. Here’s what Adams saw demonstrated in the letters: BE AUTHENTIC: “You should try to be as authentic in representing yourself and your feelings as you possibly can,” she said. “We are not all poets, nor can we write Shakespearean prose, and that’s probably not what our loved one wants to hear anyway. They want to hear our voice.” REFLECT SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS TOGETHER: Adams suggested writing about anything that relates to your past together. “I think it is a useful way of communicating the love and importance
of that person,” she said. ADDRESS THE FUTURE: “If it’s a true love letter, you want to encourage them to also think about your future together. It doesn’t have to be, ‘Let’s get married,’ but, ‘I hope we can continue to have these shared moments.’” WRITE BY HAND: It takes effort and time, but do it anyway, she said. “I imagine that, for some people, that might be frustrating, but I also think that it’s a really valuable exercise,” she said. “… Most of us aren’t used to it, so we have to slow down.” That doesn’t mean the letter will automatically be more thoughtful, but it allows time for reflection. CREATE ATMOSPHERE: Use language to create an atmosphere for your loved one to read the letter. “That’s something that my letter writers did all the time,” Adams said. “They would share, ‘when I got your letter, I sat down in my bedroom, dimmed the lights and read it.’”
How to F
run for your life By Sarah McAdams
or every day of 20 years, 10 months and 16 days, Pat Babington ran at least a mile. His streak stopped when he hyperextended his knee while attaching a camper to his truck. Arthritis aggravated the injury and, “ultimately the pain was too great to walk, let alone run,” he said. So the DePauw associate professor of kinesiology took a year off running. “Stopping wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be,”he said, but he nevertheless started back up in January 2020, and now runs about three miles every other day. He shared tips he learned along the way for anyone contemplating running:
WORK THROUGH THE DAYS when you don’t feel like running. “There were many. Basically the hard part was getting out the door. If you get out the door then everything ends up being OK. Some of my best runs were on days that I didn’t feel like going out. … Ended up, I always went further on those days.”
DECIDE TO START. It wasn’t initially Babington’s idea to run every day. His wife Cindy “offered the challenge of ‘let’s try to run every day for a year,’” so they started on New Year’s Day 1998.
DON’T GET SICK OR INJURED. “If you do, back off and fix the problem. In 20 years, I ran with the flu and colds many times. I also had non-running related injuries that I had to work through. Normally, some strengthening exercises helped me get through the injury.”
HAVE A PARTNER to whom you can be accountable, at least initially. “You end up being accountable to a whole host of people once word gets out that you have a running streak.”
PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOU FEEL so you know when something is wrong. “Running every day hurts. If something hurts more as you run, then it’s not good. If, as I ran, a pain lessened, then it wasn’t a concern, but I paid attention if the pain got worse.”
PICK A TIME OF DAY to do your run. “I always ran at noon.” PLAN FOR THE WEATHER. “If you are running outside every day, then there will be snow, rain, heat and cold. I ran when it was minus-10 and when it was 95. For freezing rain or icy streets, I suggest investing in a pair of Yaktrax.”
FAMILY SUPPORT HELPS. “My daughter woke me up one night at 11:30 p.m. with the statement, ‘Dad, you haven’t run today.’ I had the flu, but off I went for my mile run in the dark.”
DECIDE IF TREADMILL RUNS COUNT. “I never did. For a run to count it had to be outside. If I ran inside, I still went outside for the daily run of at least a mile.”
Photo: Cindy Babington
DECIDE A DISTANCE that counts as a run. “I chose a mile. There was no real reason for this distance. Other people have counted less as a run, some more.”
PLAN AHEAD FOR TRAVEL and stay on the time where you live. “When I went to Vietnam during winter term, I stayed with local time so I may have picked up an extra day. I also ran at 3 a.m. before our return trip just to make sure I got a run in. In Australia during another winter-term course, I ran on Indiana time. It was much easier to figure out how not to lose a day.” SPRING 2021 DEPAUW MAGAZINE I 21
How to H
e donned his dark grey pinstriped suit – the one he always wears for Supreme Court arguments – and fixed his cuffs with the “D”-monogramed links that had been his grandfather’s. And then, aware of the “pretty narrow window of what is acceptable attire in court,” he chose a tie that, “while understated and appropriate, does have a little bit of pink in it.” Pink, the traditional color of the LGBTQ movement, “a signal of defiance and resilience,” he said. With that, Douglas Hallward-Driemeier ’89 was ready to argue the most momentous case of his career, the one that would result in the 5-4 decision that legalized marriage between two people of the same sex. Hallward-Driemeier has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 17 times, including earlier in the same month, April 2015, of the Obergefell v. Hodges argument. While preparing for the latter, “the highlight of my career,” he followed many of the routines that he follows for every case, though with extra emphasis on a few steps. Ultimately, he said, “it’s all about preparation,” which includes: COLLABORATING AND STRATEGIZING. Chris Stoll ’91, a friend from DePauw and Harvard Law School,
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Photo: National Center for Lesbian Rights
By Mary Dieter
brought Hallward-Driemeier into the marriage case in November 2014. The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals had ruled against the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where Stoll is a senior staff attorney, sanctioning Tennessee’s refusal to recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples who were married elsewhere and moved to the state. Hallward-Driemeier and the team designed their case thinking the high court might require states to recognize marriages that occurred in other states, a “baby step” toward equality. But then the court said it would consider two issues raised in four cases – the constitutionality of samesex marriage bans and the recognition issue. That, he said, “increased the level of collaboration we had to have with the other counsel. We were all collaborating very, very closely anyway, but once it was agreed that I was going to argue for all of the plaintiffs
on the second question, it was more formalized. I am now speaking for them as well. I need to be engaged with them and taking their points and suggestions, but I also had to know the facts of their plaintiff ’s case better than I had.” While his associates surveyed marriage laws across the country, HallwardDriemeier and other team members anticipated issues the justices might ask him about. “You have to say, if I were coming to this totally fresh and I was just a really super smart person and very, very curious, what are the questions that I would have?” he said. IDENTIFYING THE TARGET: During preparation, “everybody knew that the entire case was about Justice
argue before the Supreme Court (Anthony) Kennedy,” he said. “We had written our briefs for Justice Kennedy. We had thought long and hard about how to pitch it. We pitched our case as a marriage case, not an equal protection case, because we thought that was how Justice Kennedy would respond.” Indeed, during the arguments, “every question that every justice asked was designed to sway Justice Kennedy,” who ultimately wrote the majority opinion. STEPPING AWAY: After “trying voraciously to just suck in as much information” as he can, “at some point you have to step away from that so that you’re dealing with it at a higher level
of generality; you’re thinking about your themes; you’re thinking about, how am I going to articulate that? How am I going to pivot that question? If it’s a hostile question, how am I going to turn it? “… At the end of the day, there’s only one person who’s at the podium, and it’s you. So, first of all, you have to have it in your brain. Second of all, you have to be confident about it.” PREPARING THE MANILA FILE FOLDER: Instead of memorizing lengthy answers to specific questions that may or may not be asked in just that way, Hallward-Driemeier homes in on topics. He handwrites his notes, because there is “something about the process of going from the brain to
the fingers that helps in the memory.” Then he repeats the process, writing on the inside of a manila file folder, “my cheat sheet, because if I’m going to quote from a cases, I want to make sure I get the quote right. … That way I don’t need to have memorized those pages. That doesn’t seem like a good use of brain space to me.” HOLDING MOOT COURT: For most cases, Hallward-Driemeier practices in two moot courts. For Obergefell, he and the team held four formal moot courts and various informal sessions. They started a month before oral arguments were to take place, unusually early for moot court, he said. TAKING A WALK: As an oral argument nears, “I go on a long walk. I don’t have any papers,” he said. “I just am on a long walk and thinking it through in my head. … “For the marriage case, rather than doing that on my own, I had three colleagues who were working very, very closely with me and whom I just trusted absolutely, each of whom brought something different.
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questions,” he said. “… I don’t really like giving speeches and so I always feel much more comfortable once the questions start, because then I’m in conversation with the justices. “If I’m the respondent or appellee, I’ll always prepare opening remarks, but I almost never give them as prepared because what I’m looking for is an opportunity to jump into an ongoing conversation. … For me, that’s how to make it more natural and how to engage them. You have to see oral argument as a discussion.”
SETTLING IN: When the arguments have begun and opposing counsel is speaking, Hallward-Driemeier takes notes, especially of the questions the justices have asked. “I’m looking for an opening in those
SETTLING DOWN: While his cocounsel was arguing the constitutionality question, Hallward-Driemeier experienced something that has not happened before or since: “I started to experience a very
Image: Dana VerKouteren
They came over to my house and we went on a long walk together and, as it happens, it was at the peak of cherry blossom bloom. There’s a neighborhood very nearby with beautiful cherry trees and we just walked around and around and around this neighborhood, talking through the case.” After that, he avoided the office for the days leading up to oral arguments, preparing at home “because I needed to be in my own head. I needed to be thinking it through myself because, again, you own it yourself at the podium. I couldn’t take any more input at that point.”
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tight chest. … “I thought to myself, this would be a very, very bad time to have a heart attack. I said to myself, OK, the chance of my having a heart attack was almost nil, but it sort of felt like that. I really went through this process: OK, you’re feeling the pressure. I hadn’t been focused on that; I’d been focused on the argument prep. All of a sudden, sitting there, the weight of this hit me. And I had to go through a process. I had to let it go. “It’s not the weight of all of these people on me. … I had friends, clergy friends, who were outside the court praying for me. I knew that. And I thought, they’re there. All of these people are lifting me up. And I thought about that and, with that, I was going to let it go, and the pressure went away and I was able to focus again on the case.”
How to sell pot (legally)
J
By Mary Dieter
How does a guy who didn’t use pot when he was growing up in tiny Winslow, Indiana, evolve into a big shot at a growing cannabis company? “I didn’t use for moral reasons and, to be honest with you, I was uneducated about it. You’d see Nancy Reagan says don’t use drugs in the ’80s and cannabis was one of those. Marijuana was one of those. I think after a lot of research and spending time with people and really understanding what a wonderful, wonderful industry it is, and it does a lot of good for people, the stigma wore off for me and it’s wearing off for America. “If you look at who’s coming into the category, it’s folks who are seeking pain relief, better sleep. There’s a whole host of things it can help with – the plant in different forms – and you know, simply having a relaxing Friday evening or a Saturday evening, versus having a glass of wine, people can have a gummy or can participate with the plant in different Photo: Schwazze
ustin Dye ’94 had had a long and successful business career in an array of industries, but when it came to his most recent career move, he consulted his grandfather. And his father. And his minister. He asked his grandfather: “Do you think worse of me if I get involved with this? Here are the things we’re thinking about. Here are some of the stories I’ve heard about this. Here’s a growing industry. This plant does a lot of good for people. And it’s been ostracized and there’s a lot of stigma to it. Do you think I’m a bad person?” Grandpa, age 94, a conservative, retired high school principal who is Dye’s hero, told him: “Absolutely not. I have friends here in Idaho who go to Oregon and use cannabis regularly.” Dye’s dad, who was awarded the Purple Heart for being wounded in Vietnam, admitted he used pot back then. The minister said he should go for it, and ended up investing in the company. So in December 2019, Dye became chairman and chief executive officer of Schwazze, a Colorado firm that cultivates cannabis; manufactures cannabis-related products for wholesale and retail sale; owns and operates 17 dispensaries; and consults in 22 states.
ways. So that stigma wore off for me as I got educated.” Dye said his DePauw friends reading this likely are shocked. If he could have a “good, old-fashioned conversation” with them, he would tell them “what the opportunity is. This industry today is a little over $10 billion. It’s going to be $100 billion by 2030. It’s projected that. It’s probably the fastest-growing industry in the United States and it does a lot of good for people. “… You’re helping change people’s lives and you’re making the world a better place. And you’re getting to professionalize and build an industry, and that’s incredibly, incredibly satisfying. It’s hard work and I have the privilege here. We’ve recruited a fabulous team here and it’s fun to come to work every single day, trying to change the world.”
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How to By Mary Dieter
L
auren Clark ’11 was doing standup comedy and improv on a New York City stage, buoyed nightly by the laughter, when the COVID-19 pandemic ripped her from her moorings. “My tiny Brooklyn apartment was not going to be pandemic-proof,” she said, so she moved in with her mother and stepfather in Charlotte, North Carolina, and began to contemplate how to survive outside the “bubble of comedy” in which she had lived for nearly a decade. “I was very upset because it was like, I don’t know the next time I’ll be on the stage again. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t create,” she said. Here’s how she does it: “MAKE DO WITH WHAT WE HAVE”: Early in her pandemic-induced quarantine, she said, “the idea of just like, OK, now I have a year ahead of me and all I can do is write; I can’t actually take it on stage or turn it into some kind of short film or anything – that was a bummer at first.” But as the quarantine has dragged on, “we all seem to collectively realize we’re going to be in this situation, the pandemic, for a little while, so we have to adjust; we have to make do with what we have. That’s where I’m at.” ESTABLISH A ROUTINE: Clark, who moved into her own place in August, gets up as early as 4 a.m. and, after getting
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be creative in a crisis
Photo: Mike Baker
ready for the day, sits down to write for four hours. (Her remote work as a customer experience representative for a New York-based startup comes later.) “If I do it based off of my feelings, I’ll never write,” she said. “I never actually feel like writing. … I’ve gotten really, really strict with the routine in a way I really haven’t before. And I think because of that it has really, really helped my creativity.” TAKE RISKS: After graduating from DePauw, Clark had had the courage not only to move to New York, but to study improvisation and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and perform stand-up comedy. “I really had no idea what I was doing but I knew very, very intuitively that you have to start before you’re actually ready,” she said. “I had so many bad performances when I first began in school but I didn’t care because I just had so much fun.” Later, she co-founded a sketch comedy group called My Mama’s Biscuits out of frustration that the theatre, which since has folded, did not give Black comedians much stage time. With the pandemic preventing her from performing on stage, Clark has diverted her creativity to producing the Black Creator Connection podcast, on which she interviews a Black artist each week about his or her work. She also is writing personal essays and a script for the pilot of an autobiographical television show.
“I had always wanted to do a podcast and truly I always had so many excuses for why I didn’t,” she said. “My main thing was just perfectionism. Perfectionism truly stopped me, just like oh, I know all of these other people who are podcasting out of a studio, and they have the best equipment and they’re booking these guests and giving them incredible snacks. Like, who lets snacks stop them? I did. “But I realized people are going to be a little more forgiving now, with the pandemic. Everybody is doing the interviews over Zoom, so even if I have the best equipment but something sounds a little off because of Zoom, nobody’s going to belittle or come down on me for that. But then, also, if they do, who cares? People are always going to be judging. So you might as well let that be liberating and just do whatever you want.” PURSUE A LARGER PURPOSE: “The work that I’m doing right now, a lot of it feels very mentorship-y,” she said. “I’m starting to coach people and help them on a one-on-one basis. And the Black Creator Connection is essentially that as well, where I’m just motivating people and making sure everybody is staying positive and inspired … “I just genuinely want people to have a space where they can share their experiences and we just have a conversation about the creative journey, the creative life. Hopefully, for whoever is listening, it unlocks something for them too.”
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How to By Mary Dieter
T
do well by
wo years out of DePauw and newly graduated from the Thunderbird School of Management, Jim Alling ’83 just wanted a job. “It’s not that I didn’t have a curious mind when I came out of DePauw and a desire to learn,” he said. “I just don’t think ‘purposedriven’ and ‘profit’ landed in the same sentence for me. I have to be honest with you: If I was looking for a purpose-driven job, that meant I didn’t feel I could do a job where I could make money. It would just be a getting-by job.” He landed at Nestle, where he worked 12 years and rose to become a vice president, then in 1997 moved to an 11-year stint at Starbucks, a company whose mission is to sell responsibly produced products and invest in educational and communitybuilding causes. It was his first exposure to doing well by doing good, an achievement he ultimately accomplished by:
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FINDING THE RIGHT COMPANY: After Starbucks, Alling
spent almost six years as chief operating officer at wireless communications company T-Mobile USA and was not looking for a job when he was headhunted by TOMS Shoes. He was reluctant to move from Seattle to Southern California, but after a conversation with TOMS’ founder Blake Mycoskie, “I was in, hook, line and sinker.” Mycoskie started TOMS in 2006 with a plan to produce casual footwear and, for every pair sold, give a pair of shoes to a needy child living in a developing country. TOMS has given 97 million pairs of shoes away since. Alling was drawn by the company’s purpose – to improve lives – as well as its leaders, finding that “genuinely good, committed people are drawn to companies with a purpose,” he said.
RECOGNIZING “THERE IS NO MISSION WITHOUT MARGIN”: TOMS was struggling
financially when the owners, then Mycoskie and Bain Capital, brought Alling in to tighten business operations. That included some difficult choices, including laying off employees and making other cuts. “Doing that in any company
doing good is hard, but in a purpose-driven company, you have to go back to the mission of the company,” Alling said. “And if the business aspects of the company aren’t working, we have to make sure we do something to make that a sustainable business so that we can continue to fulfill our mission of improving lives.” Alling left TOMS at the end of 2019, when its creditors agreed to take over the company in exchange for restructuring its debt.
that “if you’re doing right by your people, you will do well financially. … “An executive has a tremendous responsibility to recognize and work for the people on the front line of the organization. … While they may not get the notoriety, if you’re set up right, they’re set up to be the stars of the show, and they will be engaged and inspired and really believe in your purpose, believe in your mission and help you to continue to drive that forward.”
KEEPING THE CUSTOMER IN MIND: “It’s naïve to think you
BEING RESPONSIVE: TOMS
can only pick your shareholders as your key constituent and do things only to maximize your share price without doing something to endear and engender support from your customers,” Alling said. “So by doing good in that broader ecosystem of contact, you should put yourself in a position where you’re driving your share price up, where you’re driving your business up, because people are loyal to you. Your business partners are loyal. Your customers are more loyal. Your employees are more loyal and more engaged, and they help lift your results.”
DOING RIGHT BY YOUR EMPLOYEES TOO: Alling said
that, while at Starbucks, he recognized
changed its giving model while Alling worked there, largely in response, he said, to the suggestions of the organizations that helped TOMS give away shoes. The giving partners wanted the company to expand its largesse to other needed items and services, he said. While the company still gives away shoes, TOMS now dedicates a third of its net profits to provide clean drinking water; pay for sight-saving surgeries and eyeglasses; advocate for measures to end gun violence; support organizations that battle community violence and mental illness; and promote educational opportunities to children in poverty. In addition, the company, which was criticized for creating dependency on its shoes but failing to create jobs where they were needed, responded by building
manufacturing plants in several countries where shoes are distributed.
STAYING COMMITTED: “The
last thing you want to do,” Alling said, “is create a sustainable model, have giving partners build an infrastructure around that model and then say ‘hey, we’re bored with this; we’re going to step away.’” Fulfilling the philanthropic mission in a sustainable way means “embracing criticism, seeking feedback and then not getting defensive,” he said. It also means maintaining the philanthropic commitment even during financial troubles. “It would be difficult to do good if you’re not willing to stay committed to doing good in the hard times,” he said. “… It’s not necessarily easy to stay the course in the difficult times, but if you choose not to, it’s very hard to get back on that course after having taken a tour off and gone off in a separate direction and then try to come back. It’s just really difficult to have trust and credibility when you do that.”
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How to By Mary Dieter
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Photo: Frank Simkonis
T
his is the story of how Tip Moody gave away his life. It’s the story of how his promising career in power politics was halted – relinquished, really – because the 1982 graduate made a choice. And it’s the story of how he is reckoning with the mistake that held him in thrall for nearly half of his 60 years. Moody was a bored junior executive at an Indiana department store when a friend beckoned: Join her at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Moody, who majored in political science, heeded her invitation and in the mid-1980s headed to Washington D.C., where he got a job writing fundraising letters for the committee. About 18 months in, he was recruited to raise money for Bob Dole’s ill-fated campaign for president. The candidate quit in early 1988, leaving Moody “in a period of flux” until another friend invited him to help clean out the U.S. Senate office of Dan Quayle ’69, the 1988 vice presidential nominee, and, after Quayle’s election, to work on the inaugural committee. Then Moody worked a year for the Republican National Committee. Along the way, he tried methamphetamines. “It was in a sexual situation … For the gay population in big cities on the East Coast, it was starting to become a part of their social life and, of course, sex was a part of social life,” he said.
He recalled thinking, “‘I like this; I need this more often.’ So I’m going to say the addiction began with the first-time use.” For a while, his drug use didn’t affect his work, he said. But as he worked a series of private-sector jobs, it took its toll. An employer tried her version of therapy, refusing to pay him so he couldn’t afford to buy drugs. His family staged an intervention and forced him to enter a locked-down rehabilitation program. A friend offered him a place to stay until Moody’s behavior became intolerable. Meanwhile, his habit was costing $1,000 a month. “I was good at my job and I gave it away,” he said. “… I actually gave my life away.” In 2000, when his father had a stroke, Moody moved to Kentucky to help out. He stopped using meth – “when you have no contacts and no cash, you should be living drug-free” – and switched to
alcohol. He found work, and the drinking continued. Then he went to graduate school, and the drinking continued. “Then my drug use started again,” he said. “And when that started again, that’s when everything swirled out of control. It had spiraled out of control previously, but there was always some place to land, only this time it was really descent into maelstrom.” He was arrested for possession in April 2017 and again in July; in May 2018 he pleaded guilty to one felony and made an Alford plea, a guilty plea but a claim of innocence, on the second. He was sentenced to two years’ probation. “Daily life didn’t change, and that was a real mistake on my part,” he said. Three months later, “I didn’t use my turn signal and I was pulled over and again I had something in my pocket,” he said. Moody pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge, and the judge sentenced him to 120 days in jail.
reckon with the past “That was my ‘qualifying event’ that made me step back and say, you know what? You really have reached rock bottom,” Moody said. “… I had to run into a brick wall full stop before I would ever think about the harm and the sorrow and the pain that I had put around me, primarily on my mother.” He spent hours thinking and more hours putting his thoughts into letters he sent to his mother, who had lived alone since his father died. After 90 days, Moody was released early for good behavior and, on a cold November 2018 Saturday that he said was simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful, his 87-year-old mother came to fetch him. He promptly deleted 200 contacts from his phone, and has not used drugs or alcohol since. Moody, whose father was a United Methodist minister, said “the good Lord gives me that strength every day. … Having grown up the progeny of clergy, I always knew the precepts that were necessary for a healthy life but, in the mind of an addict, you’re always greater than your addiction. I finally had to learn the true meaning of surrender. … I’m not as smart, I’m not as good, I’m not as great, I’m not as powerful as I always thought I am.” He’s not one for programs such as
Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, but therapy has helped him figure out what drove him to use meth and alcohol. He has apologized to many of the people he harmed; some have rebuffed him but many have supported his journey. He is “doing my best to forgive myself ” and learning to be humble.
“Part of that humility is understanding what it is that you’ve done wrong, how you’ve affected people directly.”
harmful. But they don’t destroy the ones around me. So I have become stronger.” He volunteered at a recovery center until the pandemic hit and hopes to find a job when it is over, though that “is a Sisyphean task for any convicted felon – especially one with a professional career,” he said. He recently volunteered for the League of Women Voters, which seeks to change the Kentucky Constitution so a felon’s right to vote is automatically restored upon completion of his or her sentence. Moody’s voting rights, and those of 140,000 other Kentuckians convicted of nonviolent offenses, were restored by Gov. Andy Beshear’s December 2019 executive order. Moody said he mourns the life he lost, but does not regret what happened. “If you live with any regret, it means you didn’t learn the lessons of the experience,” he said. “So I can be sad about it. But I certainly can’t regret it.”
“You get used to – at least I did – being wanted and being recognized and being appreciated and that becomes a part of your life and it sometimes becomes difficult to remain humble about it,” Moody said. “It just becomes a given; you expect it. Part of that humility is understanding what it is that you’ve done wrong, how you’ve affected people directly.” He still smokes a pack of cigarettes and drinks two liters of Mountain Dew every day, addictions that “I fully realize are
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How to T hey are the last words one wants to hear from a doctor: “It’s terminal.” “There’s fear. There’s panic. There are the ‘what ifs?’” said Julianne “J” Miranda, a certified end-of-life coach and a part-time faculty member in DePauw’s university studies program. “When a person is first facing that diagnosis … it’s really about first acknowledging what’s present in this moment for you. “One of the challenges that we have culturally and societally in dealing with death, and grief as well, is that we see it as a process that leads somewhere. And that’s really counterintuitive to what is needed in the moment of anguish, if you will, or what’s needed in the moment of recognition.” Miranda helps clients – people facing death or their loved ones – by listening, asking questions, delving into what is important to them under the circumstances. She takes it slow – “this is not a process that can be rushed” – and “a lot of those values, a lot of those concerns, a lot of those wishes will emerge.” Her role, she said, is to “be a companion, to be a guide, to be a witness and to really help the person ask the question and live into the answers. I could tell you what I think and it doesn’t mean anything. … Allowing them to ask and answer their own questions brings them closer to what they value, to what is important to them, to them owning their perspective on death and their perspective on the relationships they have with others
die peacefully By Mary Dieter
in the process of dying.” Ideally, people should make decisions about their death when they’re healthy, and she works with healthy clients who are doing just that, she said. “We’re biological entities; we can’t really control how the body dies. But we can think about quality of life and end of life, so that’s a large part of what I try to do with individuals and families, even before a diagnosis.” She asks clients, “What does a good death look like for you? What would it mean for you to have a peaceful death, to have a loving death? And so talking about what you want your family to know, who is the person who will make decisions for you when you can’t – that’s really called the advanced care planning process. And that’s a large part of what I do with individuals and families.” But “the fundamental hurdle is people don’t want to talk about death,” she said. “We’re afraid of it. We’ve stigmatized it. We made it uncomfortable.” A good death, she said, “is well prepared. … All those things that we need and want to say in terms of closure, with those other parts of our life, those become possible when we think about death. I think when we become more in control of all the parts we can
control – obviously we can’t control how the body dies – we can control our mind, our spirit, our attitude. When we have that control, fear lessens. … “All of the work that we have to do toward a peaceful death is within … There are wonderful resources about death and dying, but there’s no better expert on your life than you.”
Photo: Brittney Way
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LEADING THE DEPAUW WAY
LEAVING A DEPAUW LEGACY
CARING FOR STUDENT NEEDS
CONTINUING STUDENT SUCCESS
From our student days to today, we’ve appreciated the fact that the broad and strong foundations of our adulthoods were significantly and positively influenced by DePauw. We decided to make an investment in a life insurance policy naming DePauw University as beneficiary, allowing us to make a gift that could be meaningful to DePauw in the long term, yet would have a manageable out-ofpocket impact for us in the short term.
DePauw gave me the opportunity to explore my interests, to learn from the experiences of others around the world during my winter term trips and to share my passion for service. Giving back looks different to everyone but I choose to make an annual gift to DePauw through my employer’s matching gift program, multiplying the impact I make each year for DePauw’s students.
The experiences I’ve gained through my liberal arts education have shaped me into a well-rounded individual who can think critically, communicate effectively and contribute great work ethic to a team. Please know how much of an impact your support for DePauw’s students has and will have on my time here.
Without your generosity, I would not have been able to attend DePauw, and I am forever grateful for your support. In my time at DePauw, I have been blessed to have amazing opportunities such as undergraduate research and attending a winter-term trip to Ecuador where I worked in medical clinics in underdeveloped areas.
– Tyler Hufford ’22
– Claire Jarrett ’21
– Jim Emison ’71 and Kathy Holmes Emison ’72
– Jessica Anderson ’02
To affect the lives of DePauw students today, go to depauw.edu/give or contact the office of Annual Giving at 765-658-4085.
Get more details about ALUMNI REUNION WEEKEND, happening June 10-13, at depauw.edu/alumni. SPRING 2021 DEPAUW MAGAZINE I 33
TOWN-GOWN I
t seemed to Joyce Taglauer Green ’75 and her late husband Judson ’74 that a wine bar serving pizza and pasta should bear an Italian name. But nothing struck them as they pondered what to call their new Greencastle establishment. Maybe, they thought, the name should have something to do with the city and its environs. “Our goal, we kept saying, is to connect people, to bring people together,” Green said. “… We came up with ‘Bridges’ because bridges do connect. There are multiple covered bridges around the area, and that cinched it. We said, this would mean something to the community.” When Bridges Craft Pizza and Wine Bar opened in August 2017 at 19 N. Indiana St. on the square, not only did it represent the Greens’ first venture into restaurant ownership, but their latest contribution to improving the towngown relationship between Greencastle and DePauw University. Such investments are “truly a magnet for visitors from outside the county,” said Eric Freeman ’84, tourism director at the Putnam County Convention & Visitors Bureau. “In promoting the county to prospective visitors, we
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heavily leverage the high quality of life here. The neat thing is we all get to live that life every day in this unique and enjoyable place.” Freeman’s advice for improving the town-gown relationship? “Rarely is ‘maintain the status quo’ a positive answer, but to continue improving relationships within the community, everyone needs to keep doing what they’ve done for the last decade,” he said. “In the last 10 years, the university and county leaders have done so much to intentionally engage each other and their constituents that Putnam County has become an awesome place to both visit and reside.” The Greens, who had given significant sums to the university in 2005 and 2013, shifted their focus in 2015 when they invested in the city and explicitly tied the investment to DePauw. They bought the former Goodwill building at 21 N. Indiana St.; renovated it to become Music on the Square, a performance center for faculty recitals, student performances and storytelling; and then gave it to DePauw. Thereafter, Joyce Green mused that it’d be nice for people who attended a concert to be able to get a glass of wine afterward. That led to Bridges. Then last
How to find common ground on common ground By Mary Dieter
October, BreadWorks by Bridges, the Greens’ retail and commercial bakery and lunch bistro, opened at 2 E. Walnut St. In between, the Bridges team took over operations at TapHouse Burgers at 24 S. Indiana. The couple, who met at DePauw and were married nearly 45 years when Judson died last Aug. 31, were aware that colleges and the small towns in which they are located don’t always get along, so they invested specifically to improve DePauw’s relationship with Greencastle. “When we were at DePauw, the town-gown issue was there,” Green said. “It was there very strongly. We referred to someone as a ‘townie.’ It wasn’t very nice … Things that the School of Music has done – more performances that are offered to the community – strengthen the connection. For me and for Judson, we wanted to strengthen that connection and make it a more positive situation.” Lee Tenzer ’64 likewise has invested in community assets to benefit DePauw. He bought three downtown buildings and in one created the Tenzer Hub for Entrepreneurship, a business incubator where entrepreneurs, especially DePauw graduates, can collaborate. The COVID-19 pandemic has thwarted the plan, however, and at the moment the hub rents space to all comers.
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Tenzer invested in Almost Home, a restaurant on the square. And he purchased the Windy Hill Country Club golf course, renamed it Tiger Pointe and is renovating its clubhouse to provide event space. He said it’s unlikely he would make those investments if he didn’t have the ulterior motive of supporting DePauw. Tenzer said he is interested in improving towngown relations because too many universities and their communities “just don’t really see eye-to-eye, and they should because they can help each other.” DePauw President Lori S. White and Greencastle Mayor Bill Dory, however, do see eye-to-eye on the need for a good town-gown relationship. “We have grown up together – the city and the university,” White said. “Our success as a university depends upon the success of our town, for it to be a vibrant, thriving place to live, to work, to shop, and I know the town hopefully takes full advantage of all of the things the university has to offer.” Said Dory: “When I was doing economic development, the fact that DePauw was here was at the top of my list in selling the community. … It is very important that we have a great working relationship, and certainly Greencastle would not be the community it is if DePauw did not exist here in the community. It is a wonderful asset and I encourage our citizens to take advantage of it whenever they can.” In 2011, the state chose Greencastle to receive a Stellar Communities grant, from which the city realized about $15 million in benefits, Dory said. DePauw partnered with the city to apply, and the grant was used to spruce up the Anderson Street gateway to the university, do streetscaping on Vine and Indiana streets and beautify storefronts on the square. It also provided the funds to co-locate Starbucks and the Eli’s Bookstore there. These days, the city provides DePauw with fire protection, street repairs, snowplowing on public streets that intersect campus and some street lighting. The city and DePauw’s police departments back up each other. Putnam County provides ambulance service to campus. “We’re trying to do our best here at the city to support campus,” Dory said. One project, construction of a community center on the east side of town, will include a YMCA fitness facility. It is set to open in January 2023 and “will offer that family programming that a new faculty or staff member can enjoy and become integrated in the community,” Dory said. Meanwhile, DePauw, with 664 full- and part-time employees, is the third- or fourth-largest employer in Greencastle, depending on seasonal employment of local companies. The university contributed intermittently to the city’s fire department and last year began what is intended to be an
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Photos, starting with top left, then clockwise: Bridges Craft Pizza & Wine Bar; BreadWorks by Bridges; Conspire: Contemporary Craft; Eli’s Bookstore; Tiger Point event center; Tenzer Hub for Entrepreneurship.
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Photos: Top left, then clockwise: DePauw Nature Park; Starbucks; Greencastle’s square seen from atop Bridges; First Friday; Music on the Square.
annual contribution of $25,000-$30,000, said Bob Leonard, DePauw’s vice president for finance and administration. The Inn at DePauw and Ashley Square Cinemas, both owned by DePauw, benefit the city, Leonard said. So do the DePauw Nature Park, the Richard E. Peeler Art Center, newsmakers’ lectures and music and theatre performances. Even Hoover Dining Hall was open to the public until the pandemic hit. Music students often sing or play at churches and other students volunteer through various academic programs, centers and Greek organizations. Some teach Spanish, others read to school children. Most participate through the Hartman Center for Civic Engagement, which reported that, in 2019-20, 243 students volunteered through the Bonner Scholar Program, the Jane and David Stone First-Year Civic Leadership Program and other initiatives, giving 16,696 hours of time that was worth $121,046. The community also is served through coursework. For example, in a winter-term course taught in January 2020 by marketing professional Vin Hoey ’65, students developed marketing plans and consulted with six Greencastle businesses and nonprofits. “I was very impressed with the plan the students put together,” said J.D. Grove, owner of Conspire: Contemporary Craft. The university considers good town-gown relations so important that Leonard meets monthly with the mayor. Among other things, they’re discussing ways to create housing that will help DePauw recruit faculty and staff members. Town-gown relations also are a topic under discussion during the ongoing strategic planning process, in which Eric Wolfe ’04, a Greencastle real estate broker who volunteers for several DePauw organizations, wanted to be involved “to ensure the plan included a focus on the community and campus connections, and addressed local housing concerns.” Wolfe said the town-gown relationship “is much better than it was 10 years ago. So much has happened in the last decade: We have seen DePauw engage with the local schools more; DePauw and its alumni brought the town big economic development wins with downtown restaurants and the bookstore and coffee shop being relocated to the downtown square; and there seems to have been more communication and outreach from both the town and DePauw leadership in tackling issues of mutual interest. … “We will have achieved the best relations between DePauw and the local community when people in both groups see themselves as members of both groups,” he said. “I believe this is best realized when there is a critical mass of DePauw faculty, staff and alumni living in Greencastle and investing in the daily life of the town in such a way that an outsider wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a ‘DePauw person’ and a ‘Greencastle person’ because we are all engaged and caring neighbors.”
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GOLD NUGGETS GOLD NUGGETS publishes submitted updates about DePauw alumni’s careers, milestones, activities and whereabouts. Send your news to DePauw Magazine, P.O. Box 37, Greencastle, IN 46135-0037 or dgrooms@depauw.edu. Faxes may be sent to 765-658-4625. Space considerations limit our ability to publish photos. Group photos will be considered if you include each person’s name (first, maiden and last), year of graduation and information about the gathering or wedding. Digital photos must be high-quality jpegs of at least 300 dpi. Submitted hard copies cannot be returned. Questions? Contact Mary Dieter at marydieter@depauw.edu or 765-658-4286.
Shore Arts gallery at the Center for Visual & Performing Arts in Chicago, Sept. 24 through Nov. 1. She is known for her landscapes of the unexpected beauty in the industrial backgrounds and the natural beauty of the dunes in Northwest Indiana.
Jean MacRae Jones ’44
1944 Jean MacRae Jones celebrated her 98th birthday Sept. 30 in Decatur, Illinois. Joining the celebration were her three daughters and three of her eight grandchildren, while her 12 great-grandchildren sent along birthday wishes. While enjoying her birthday cake, Jean was treated to tunes by a Scottish bagpiper who played her favorite music. (See photo.)
1951 Mary Lou Van Buren, retired religious organization administrator, was recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Educators for dedication, achievements and leadership in religion education.
1952 Barbara Miller Meeker was featured in a career retrospective at The South
1969
1973
Philip A. Scheidt is the author of “Holy Wood: Movies Doing the Bible.”
Bradley K. Buettin is the purchasing director for Fishman & Associates.
Chris Wurster reports that he and his Phi Kappa Psi pledge brothers have been keeping in touch monthly via Zoom and “I have gotten to know them all so much better than when we were students.” After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jan Hoey initiated the Zoom gatherings, which usually draw nine or 10 attendees.
William F. Carroll Jr. is the author of “Ranking the Albums.” The link to his website for a description and a video tour is http://ranking.rocks/the-albums.
Barbara Zaring is one of six artists exploring their worlds in isolation. Their art work was featured in “Art In This Time” at the Bareiss Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, in October.
1956
1972
Norval D. Reece and his wife Ann exchanged gifts with the Dalai Lama. Norval is one of 15 people from different faiths who take turns writing a column for Bucks County’s (Pennsylvania) largest newspaper every Sunday.
Bob Alston is trying to find out who created the REDBOL computer language that was used in the computer course in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His professor told him three students wrote the program. If you know, email him at bobalston@gmail.com.
1963
Scott H. Decker is co-author of “Competing competing for Control: for control GANGS AND THE SOCIAL Gangs and ORDER OF PRISONS the Social Order of the Prison.” The book was recently named Outstanding Book by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the largest professional association of faculty and researchers who work in criminology and criminal justice. (See book cover.)
Anita L. Johnson has retired after 40 years as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, first in the Office of Consumer Litigation in Washington D.C. and then as assistant U.S. attorney in Boston. She previously worked at Ralph Nader’s Health Research Group and the Environmental Defense Fund. She lives with her husband, John Harris, in Brookline, Massachusetts.
1967 James M. Taylor and his wife Geri were virtually awarded the Perennial Hero Award by the Alliance for Aging Research in Washington D.C. Geri was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012, and since then the couple has spoken to more than 10,000 people around the country and Europe to educate others about the disease.
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DAVID C. PYROOZ AND SCOTT H. DECKER
Karen Werner Connolly is the director of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care’s 2021 board. She is a licensed health care professional with more than 40 years of organizational leadership in diverse health care settings.
1974 Michael J. Christie, a Nashville, Tennessee, orthopedic surgeon, received the humanitarian award from the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons for founding Walk Strong, a nonprofit that provides free knee and hip replacements for patients in developing and underserved countries. James R. Stewart, chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Doctors for dedication, achievements and leadership in thoracic surgery.
1975 David C. Carr has self-published a book, “65 at 65: 65 things I know for sure by Seizing the Day after 65 years!” Mary Elizabeth “Beth” Jaeger has retired to Fort Collins, Colorado, with her partner, Vicki Vennell. Beth serves on the board of directors of The Family Center/La Familia, a child care and family resource agency and has been appointed to the city’s Human Relations Commission. Mary B. McClendon Johnson has completed a five-year research project, “The Faith-Charity Scale or the Success Scale,” which examines the educational process for college students and Christian rights. She also has completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychology. She produces a television program, “Word of Encouragement,” and has written two books, “These Little Ones” and “How to Overcome Depression: A Woman’s, A Christian’s, A Psychological Viewpoint.” She also has written entries
based on her dissertation for the YMCA blog. Melinda Schneider Snyder is a member of the Charlotte Symphony’s board of directors. She is a wealth adviser at the Charlotte, North Carolina, Wells Fargo private bank office. Peter Vaky worked as a poll watcher in early voting and on Election Day for the Jan. 5 runoffs for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia. He reported that, “as I was trying to keep pace with the rapidly moving traffic, it felt like the moral arc of the universe was moving slowly and it was bending toward justice.”
1977 Andrew B. Sandler and his wife Gaye moved from Nashville, Tennessee, to San Antonio in 2019. Andrew is the executive director of Franklin Park Alamo Heights, an upscale retirement community with 200 residents.
1979 Nancy Duesing Takaichi was featured among “11 Artists to Collect Now: The Emerging Plein Air Painters You Need to Know” in the October/November 2020 issue of Plein Air Magazine. Nancy lives and paints outdoors in northern California. She shows in two galleries and has won best of show in several plein air events. Her website is www.nancytakaichi.com. Nancy says, “To this day I am still in contact with the professor who influenced my work the most – Robert Kingsley. Getting academic training in the ’70s, it turns out, was not typical of most art programs. And those basics have been essential to my growth. But moreover, to be in contact this many years later with the instructor who mentored me speaks volumes of the personal connections made at a small university; they last a lifetime.”
1980 Samuel Ardery, a Bloomington, Indiana, attorney who focuses on conflict
mediation, has published a book, “Positively Conflicted,” about his time “leaning into” situations of friction. Gregory L. Holzhauer, an attorney with Winderweedle, Haines, Ward & Woodman P.A. in central Florida, was selected by his peers for inclusion in “The Best Lawyers in America” for 2021. Priscilla Pope-Levison, associate dean for external programs at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, is co-principal investigator on a second $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. She and a colleague will focus on “Testimony as Community Engagement.” Priscilla’s latest book, “Models of Evangelism,” was published by Baker Academic Press. Elaine Schurr McCardel’s new address is 26002 N. Palomino Trail, Scottsdale, AZ 85255. Daniel M. Winter has retired after 40 years in industry to become the executive director for the Friendship House MSU, a faith-based nonprofit supporting graduate students and their families while they are either at Michigan State University or back in their respective home country. He can be reached at friendshhiphousemsu@ gmail.com.
1982 Thomas C. Weibel is a regional sales manager for Schneeberger Linear Technology.
David W. Hasenbalg ’87
Leslie Davidson Jaworski ’90
Morehead, Bruce R. Holladay, Timothy L. Weadick, Scott W. Thiems and Brian J. Lee.
commandant of the Joint Military Attaché School. The school, located in Washington D.C., trains Department of Defense civilians and military members for diplomatic assignments at embassies worldwide.
1986 Peter G. Ruppert is the author of “Limitless: Nine Steps to Launch Your One Extraordinary Life.”
1987 Brice H. Dunshee is retiring from Eli Lilly and Co. after almost 34 years. David W. Hasenbalg is group head and senior managing director of the food and beverage U.S. national platform for City National Bank, a Royal Bank of Canada company. David recently was named to the board for Second Harvest Food Bank in Orange County, California, where he lives with his wife and daughter. (See photo.) Brad D. Hauter, DePauw’s soccer coach, has written and published a children’s book, “Pokey Jr: Even Roosters Get Second Chances.”
1983 The Beta Theta Pi class of 1983 gathered at the home of Timothy L. and Kelly Chapman Weadick in Goshen, Indiana, the weekend of Aug. 15. Despite the unusual times, 10 brothers attended safely and enjoyed basketball, pickleball, trail rides, ping pong, campfires, outstanding food and general fraternization. Those attending included James A. Marshall, Timothy F. Meyer, Christian D. Cooper, Daniel M. Kiley, Greggory A. Notestine, Scott A.
1990
1989 Kelly L. Weingart is deputy
Leslie Davidson Jaworski is director of community life for the Mayflower Community, a living facility for older people in Grinnell, Iowa. She is certified as a nurse aide and state of Iowa activities director. (See photo.) Andrea Heslin Smiley joined Rockwell Medical’s board of directors. She is president and chief executive officer of VMS BioMarketing and is a member of the board of directors of live science company, Assertio.
1993 Charles E. Snider is a renowned art appraiser and long-time supporter of the American Folk Art Museum. He was quoted in Forbes magazine in a recent article about a New York auction of contemporary art. Charles wrote an article about a group of self-taught artists called the “Florida Highwaymen” for Antiques and the Arts Weekly.
1996 Brian P. Shannon is managing partner of sales for HealthChampion.
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GOLD NUGGETS 1997
2000
2003
2010
Julie Altman Artz’s short story, “The Wending Way,” was published by Glimma Publishing in its anthology, “Beyond the Latch and Lever,” which features stories from 11 emerging authors with ties to the Pacific Northwest. (See photo.)
Jonna McGinley Reilly, formerly of counsel, has been made a partner at Swanson, Martin & Bell LLP. She focuses her practice on intellectual property litigation and transactional services, along with commercial litigation and business disputes.
Molly C. Michalak and Zachary Paisley were married Dec. 31, 2019, in Savannah, Georgia. (See photo.)
Paige Penrod Persch is an obstetriciangynecologist. She has practiced since fall 2018 at Diamond Women’s Center in Edina, Minnesota, and became a partner in January.
Jonathan S. Williams is the chief of police for Crestwood, Missouri.
Keonnis R. Taylor is the public information manager for the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. She is responsible for external and internal communications, media relations and community engagement.
2004 Katy Franklin Accardo started a podcast in January in which she looks at “the craziest true crime story from every state.” “True Crime in the 50” is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Margaret Held Christensen was recognized among the “2020 Women of Influence” by the Indianapolis Business Journal. She is a partner in the law firm of Dentons Bingham Greenebaum LLP. Julie Altman Artz ’97
Kelly M. Presutti ’07
2005 James M. McQuiston is the co-author of the article “E-government and IT competencies in public administration and public policy programs in Asia,” which is scheduled to be published this year in Teaching Public Administration.
2007 Kelly M. Presutti is an assistant professor of modern art at Cornell University. (See photo.)
2008 Lauren Auld Capozza recently opened a pediatric dental practice, Loveland Pediatric Dentistry, near Cincinnati.
2009 Molly C. Michalak ’03 and Zachary Paisley wedding. DePauw alumni attending the wedding included (second row) Nancy E. Poikonen ’03, Katherine Busch Condon ’03, Emily Collinsworth Wall ’03, Mary Palecek Satchwell ’03, (third row) Kathy Eagan McNamara ’04, Niles E. Jager ’03, Lindsay Vogtsberger Jager ’03, Melanie Tchaou Spilbeler ’03, Anne Plymate Field ’03, Michael C. Field ’02, Katie Thopy Herrick ’03, (fourth row) Roberto J. Munoz ’03, Emily Zoch Campbell ’03, Brian N. Spilbeler ’03, Thomas M. Kominsky ’03 and Ryan P. McNamara ’03.
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Brendan A. Smith has been promoted to shareholder at his Alton, Illinois, law firm, Simmons Hanly Conroy. His practice focuses on sexual abuse, pharmaceutical and medical device litigation.
Ben C. Solomon won an Emmy for his documentary “Ebola in Congo.” Ben left The New York Times after nine years, worked as the filmmaker-in-residence for PBS Frontline and now is an international correspondent for VICE News.
2011 Martin J. Hughes will appear in a Season 4 episode of the “Fargo” television series on FX. During his time at DePauw, Martin was featured in several DePauw Theatre productions. After graduation he continued to pursue acting and has appeared in multiple theatrical productions in the Chicago area. He works in marketing and entrepreneurial development sales with Magnetic Marketing and lives in Chicago. Jacob P. Lane received a year-long public policy fellowship with The Fund for American Studies. He will spend the year discussing the fundamental questions and challenges that a free society must address to flourish. Jacob, director of external relations and special assistant to the president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was recognized by the Ball State University Department of Journalism with its 2020 Young Alumnus Award for empowering college students’ engagement in the American tradition of liberty.
2012 Ross T. Patten, assistant director of economic development for the city of Covington, Kentucky, is the author of “Economic Development Is Not for Amateurs!”
2016 Erin C. Mann, strategy and marketing manager, multifamily, at Allegion Canada Inc., will be chair of the RISE steering committee. She will help RISE deliver educational content and networking opportunities to young professional employees of SIA member companies, college students and recent graduates interested in the global security industry.
DePauw Magazine marks the death of alumni, faculty and staff members and friends. Obituaries do not include memorial gifts. When reporting a death, please send as much information as you have about the person and his/her affiliation with DePauw to Alumni Records, DePauw University, P.O. Box 37, Greencastle, Ind. 46135-0037 or to jamahostetler@depauw.edu.
2020 Peng Cheng has relocated to Los Angeles to pursue his master’s degree in public policy at the University of Southern California.
IN MEMORIAM 1937 Margaret Jennings McWhirter, 105, Indianapolis, Nov. 22. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, a teacher and a community volunteer. She enjoyed theater and was a member of the Mud Creek Players, who honored her with special recognition on her 100th birthday. She was preceded in death by her husband, Felix T. McWhirter ’38; her father-in-law, Felix M. McWhirter 1907; and a sister-inlaw, Luella McWhirter Martin ’40.
1942 Thomas D. Cook, 100, Orlando, Florida, Dec. 5. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi, a Rector scholar and a physician. He enjoyed playing golf and the piano, woodworking, traveling and reading. Survivors include his wife, Catherine Peet Cook ’43. He was preceded in death by his father, George M. Cook 1913, and his mother, Naomi Randel Cook 1915. Ann Kimball Andresen, 100, Kansas City, Kansas, Dec. 3. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, a real estate broker and a community volunteer. She enjoyed golf, bridge and travel.
1943 Marguerite Arendt Goss, 100, Martinsville, Indiana, Nov. 7. She was a
lab technician and operated a medical laboratory for doctors in private practice. She was a community volunteer who enjoyed bridge, cooking and gardening. Adeleen Darrah Olewiler, 99, Boise, Idaho, May 20. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a retired high school teacher. She enjoyed bridge and family gatherings. Shirley Edwards Lafferty, 99, Brookfield, Illinois, Sept. 1. She was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi; a member and regent of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution; a Camp Fire Girls leader; and a volunteer for historical societies.
Kenneth C. Nelson, 94, Elkhart, Indiana, Sept. 19. He was employed by the U.S. Postal Service for 39 years. He enjoyed yard work, gardening and reading. Elizabeth “Betty” Staples Herdman, 95, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oct. 13. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta, a church educator and a community volunteer.
1948 Charlotte Brown Churchill, 94, Austin, Texas, Dec. 18, 2019. She retired from IBM.
Helen Jome Houck, 99, Greencastle, Oct. 7. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a docent at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She was instrumental in starting Putnam County Learning Center for the developmentally disabled. Survivors include a sister, Florence Jome Donner ’44. She was preceded in death by her husband, James M. Houck ’43.
1946 Marjorie Mogg Pettersen Steiger, 95, Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Oct. 19. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta and an avid reader who enjoyed traveling, watching sports and playing tennis and bridge. Lenore Richardson Dunwoody, 96, Houston, Dec. 22. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega who enjoyed boating, fishing, walking and gardening.
1947 Shirley Gilbert Durham, 95, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Nov. 29. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega and the Washington C. DePauw Society; a gifted pianist and singer; and a community volunteer. Survivors include her husband, Frank W. Durham ’48; a son, Thomas G. Durham ’70; and a daughter, Nancy C. Durham ’74.
Ann Cox Ross, 93, Winter Springs, Florida, Oct. 8. She enjoyed travel, gardening, biking, swimming, playing the piano and painting. She was preceded in death by her husband, John S. Ross ’47. Marillyn Knuepfer Hudson, 94, River Forest, Illinois, Dec. 26. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a community volunteer. She enjoyed travel, bridge, wildlife and dogs. Survivors include a daughter, Carol A. McAdam ’82. She was preceded in death by her first husband, Robert C. McAdam ’48. H. Marguerite Sipes Weed, 94, Kansas City, Missouri, Dec. 4. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a community volunteer who was involved in the Kansas City jazz community and the launch of the Women’s International Jazz Festival. Survivors include a granddaughter, Elaine S. Weed ’11. She was preceded in death by her husband, Robert C. Weed ’48. Janet Swaim Burleigh, 94, Denver, Oct. 23. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega and a retired preschool music teacher. She enjoyed music, theater, gardening and reading. Survivors include a son, Timothy S. Burleigh ’73; a daughter, Kathryn Burleigh Denny ’75; a daughter-in-law, Susan Henderson Burleigh ’73; and a sonon-law, Gordon B. Denny ’76. She was preceded in death by her father, Roger
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GOLD NUGGETS G. Swaim 1920; her husband, James F. Burleigh ’49; and a sister, Doris Swaim Bennett ’49. Mary E. Thoits, 97, Long Beach, California, Jan. 2. She was a member of the Washington C. DePauw Society and taught a senior studies program at Long Beach City College. She enjoyed swimming in the ocean, flew her first plane at 16 and went skydiving to celebrate her 85th birthday. Marjorie Thulin Leslie, 94, Elmhurst, Illinois, Dec. 28. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a commercial artist. She enjoyed family, travel and church activities.
1949 H. Lloyd Cooper, 94, Greencastle, Sept. 15. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha, a teacher, a coach and a school administrator. Elizabeth Frisbie Goodlad, 93, Olathe, Kansas, Oct. 11. She was a member of Delta Zeta, a teacher and a community volunteer. She was preceded in death by her husband, Warren A. Goodlad ’50. Patricia A. Goodwin, 93, Los Angeles, Oct. 8. She was a member of Delta Zeta and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a real estate broker. Donald Jones, 93, Elmhurst, Illinois, Nov. 19. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta and a business executive. Survivors include his wife, Salena Hotchkiss Jones ’49; daughters, Judith Jones Kiedaisch ’73, Jill Jones Metcoff ’78 and Jamie Jones Cushing ’89; a son, Jeffrey D. Jones ’80; and grandsons Peter G. Burgeson ’98, Thomas W. Cushing Jr. ’19 and John R. Cushing ’20. H. Wendell Howard, 93, Rochester, New York, Nov. 5. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha and a Rector scholar. He was chair of the English Department and director of the Glee Club at St. John Fisher College, where he taught for 38 years.
Anders N. Madsen Jr., 97, Stuart, Florida, Oct. 27. He was a member of Sigma Nu and a retired educator. Survivors include his wife, Lorraine Long Madsen ’49. Janet Murphy MacCormack, 92, Schererville, Indiana, Nov. 3. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega and the Washington C. DePauw Society; a former kindergarten teacher; and a real estate agent. She was a wonderful cook and entertainer, an avid bridge player and the family historian and archivist.
1950 John D. Colbrunn, 92, Colorado Springs, June 2020. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi and a self-employed businessman. He was preceded in death by his brother, Edward W. Colbrunn ’50. Roger L. Rada, 91, Trenton, New Jersey, Dec. 6. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association; played pro basketball; taught college physical education; and was a professor at Trenton State College. D. James Runyon, 92, Aledo, Illinois, Nov. 4. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a Rector scholar. He had a career in banking and enjoyed gardening and studying history. Thomas J. Shively, 91, Tempe, Arizona, Nov. 16. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Men’s Hall Association, a Rector scholar and a businessman. He was an avid walker, a lifelong learner, a reader and a community volunteer.
1951 William Breck, 91, Greenwood, Indiana, Nov. 8. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi; a former member of DePauw’s Alumni Board; and a retired school principal. He enjoyed high school athletics and working in his yard. Survivors include a son, John W. Breck ’75; granddaughters Jennifer L. Breck ’01 and Abigail Breck Brown ’03; a grandson, Andrew W. Breck ’06; a sister, Anne Breck Dunn ’60; and a daughter-
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in-law, Sarah Smith Breck ’76. He was preceded in death by his wife, Sarah Catherine Clark Breck ’50. Theresa Mareta McCallum, 91, Iowa City, Iowa, Dec. 13. She was a member of Delta Gamma who enjoyed painting, needlepoint and knitting. Janice Mullen Warner Cooke, 90, West Lafayette, Nov. 26. She was a member of Delta Delta Delta and a mathematics teacher. Survivors include a son, David M. Warner ’76; a daughter, Carol Warner Golder ’81; a sister, Beverly Mullen Stodghill ’58; and a daughterin-law, Charlotte Mason Warner ’77. She was preceded in death by her first husband, John M. Warner ’51. Marilyn Wiegand Pecsok, 91, Indianapolis, Dec. 15. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi and Phi Beta Kappa; an elementary school teacher; and a community volunteer. She received an Alumni Citation from DePauw in 1986.
1952 Edwin S. Burtis, 90. Naples, Florida, Dec. 28. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association; a community leader; and a businessman. He was preceded in death by his wife, Carolyn Foster Burtis ’53. Nancy Collard Sward, 89, Cheshire, Connecticut, Nov. 18. She worked for the Department of Public Health with young women and children. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a community volunteer. She enjoyed preserving the environment, walking, swimming, her dogs and books. She and her husband took many Elderhostel courses in retirement. Survivors include her husband, Alan J. Sward ’51. She was preceded in death by her sister-in-law, Barbara Sward Graves ’48. Norman W. Hammer, 92, Sullivan, Indiana, Dec. 19. He was a business owner and a certified public accountant. He was preceded in death by a brother, Allan D. Hammer ’52.
Jack C. Moll, 90, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Sept. 19. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and a business executive. He enjoyed playing tennis and golf. Survivors include his wife, Dorothy Nelson Moll ’54. He was preceded in death by his father, Wood C. Moll 1924; his mother, Margaret Borcherding Moll 1926; a brother, Richard W. Moll ’56; an uncle, Jewel T. Moll 1921; and a grandfather, Theophilus J. Moll 1894. Giovanna Sbarboro Davis, 90, Bensenville, Illinois, Dec. 14. She was a member of Delta Zeta and a retired teacher. Mabel Schloot Smith, 90, Indianapolis, Oct. 8. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a community volunteer. She enjoyed singing and playing bridge. She was preceded in death by her husband, Gregory L. Smith ’52. James M. Teerlink, 90, Lady Lake, Florida, Dec. 1. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association and a businessman who traveled extensively. He enjoyed playing golf and pickleball.
1953 Barbara Cash LaVelle, 88, Princeton, Illinois, Nov. 26. She was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi who was active in community and civic organizations. She traveled to all seven continents and enjoyed gardening, golfing and tennis. Richard K. Finfgeld, 89, Henry, Illinois, Dec. 1. He was a member of Delta Chi and Phi Beta Kappa; a Rector scholar; and a business owner. He was a community leader and an avid reader who wrote four books. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Phyllis Pierce Finfgeld ’53. Joseph T. Ives Jr., 89, Delphi, Indiana, Sept. 7. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi and the Washington C. DePauw Society and an attorney. He enjoyed playing golf and refinishing furniture. Survivors include his wife, Mary Shattuck Ives ’53; daughters, Susan Ives
Lynch ’76 and Nancy Ives Howard ’86; son, Robert T. Ives ’79; sister, Elizabeth Ives Thompson ’57; brother-in-law, William J. Thompson ’57; and daughterin-law, Carol Funk Ives ’79.
of Alpha Phi and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a community volunteer. She was a retired kindergarten teacher who taught her students the love of birding.
Verne F. Knickerbocker, 93, San Antonio, Nov. 10. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta and an attorney. He was a philanthropist with an interest in helping others achieve higher education. His love of traveling took him around the world.
Martha Fontaine Anderes, 88, Cresskill, New Jersey, Dec. 20. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and a community volunteer. She played the violin, collected antiques and was a gourmet cook.
James A. Koch, 89, Albuquerque, Oct. 8. He was a member of Delta Upsilon, a Rector scholar and a physician. Frances Russell Mefford, 88, Plano, Texas, Oct. 6. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta and a community volunteer. David L. Young, 89, Minneapolis, Nov. 11. He was a member of Beta Theta Piand a business owner. He enjoyed golf, fishing, piloting small aircraft, skiing, woodworking, photography and travel. He was preceded in death by his wife, Susan Guild Young ’55.
1954 Tanya V. Beck, 88, Indianapolis, Dec. 14. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta and an Episcopal priest who received an Alumni Citation from DePauw in 1989. She was preceded in death by her mother, Margaret Spauling Beck 1920. James A. Briggs, 88, Carmel, Indiana, Nov. 4. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi and an attorney. After retirement, he spent his days caring for the animals at the Wilson Family Farm in Carmel. Janet Crowder King, 88, Crawfordsville, Indiana, Dec. 24. She was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi; a community volunteer; a business owner; and a secretary at Crawfordsville High School for more than 20 years. Patricia Cullen Ratcliff, 87, Holland, Michigan, March 21. She was a member
W. Robert Fowler, 88, Farmingham, Massachusetts, Dec. 9. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association; a United Methodist minister; and owner of a used bookstore. Survivors include his wife, Ruth Allen Fowler ’54, and a son, Mark A. Fowler ’79. Elisabeth Jones Grueninger, 88, Indianapolis, Dec. 4. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and coowner of Grueninger Travel Service. She enjoyed travel and was a talented watercolor painter and community volunteer. Survivors include her husband, Othmar G. Grueninger ’55; a grandson, Hugh H. Dyar IV ’14; and a daughter-in-law, Erika Greenawald Grueninger ’90. L. Arthur Middleton Jr., 89, San Diego, Aug. 29. He was a member of Delta Upsilon and owner of an insurance agency. He enjoyed sports and his dogs. Roger J. Naus, 88, Shreveport, Oct. 22. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi, a Rector scholar and a business owner. Jeanne Priebe Cramer, 88, Hartford, Wisconsin, Nov. 28. She was a member of Alpha Phi and worked at Marshall Field’s in Chicago and Wauwatosa. She was preceded in death by a sister, Martha Priebe Anderson ’56. Marjorie Schneider Walsh, 87, Escondido, California, March 10. She was a member of Delta Zeta and a microbiologist. She enjoyed travel, outdoor activities, hiking, camping, skiing, painting and time with family and friends. She was preceded in death
by a brother, Arthur E. Schneider Jr. ’61. Sharon Sloan Feix, 88, San Francisco, Dec. 17. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma; an office manager; a patent and trademark paralegal; and coowner of an art gallery. She was an artist skilled in watercolors and pastels. She enjoyed travel, reading and the arts. She was preceded in death by her sister, Julia Sloan Evans ’47. Janet E. Snape, 87, Wilmington, Delaware, Aug. 27. She worked in insurance and was a lifelong Star Trek fan who loved collecting, customizing and wearing unusual jewelry. She was preceded in death by her father, W. Harold Snape 1922, and a sister, Mary Snape Beck ’50. Sally Sohngen Henderson, 88, Amelia Island, Florida, Oct. 25. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi and the Washington C. DePauw Society. She enjoyed gardening, the arts, entertaining friends and family, traveling and volunteering in her community. Barbara Swain Mackinnon, 88, Hendersonville, North Carolina. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta who enjoyed community clubs and time with her family. Maurine Urich Freeland, 89, Carmel, Indiana, Dec. 6. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a community volunteer. She was a master gardener and enjoyed traveling. She was preceded in death by her mother, Melba Donaldson Urich 1925.
1955 Barbara Ault Homme, 86, Portage, Indiana, Dec. 20. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi and a community and church volunteer. She worked in retail sales and administrative positions. She enjoyed the beach, gardening, crossword puzzles, bridge and reading. Survivors include a sister, Katherine Ault Brunkow ’64; a brother-in-law Thomas L. Brunkow ’61; and a niece, Sarah L. Brunkow ’91. She was preceded in death
by her parents, Harry L. Ault ’29 and Margaret Harvey Ault ’30. Leslie E. Haney, 87, Goshen, Indiana, Nov. 1. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a Rector scholar. He was a physician who enjoyed fishing, hunting, telling jokes and serving others. He loved history and gave presentations with his wife on local Native American history. Survivors include a daughter, Susan M. Haney ’84, and a son, David L. Haney ’88. Howard M. Skoien, 87. Lake Bluff, Illinois, May 23. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association and a retired English teacher who, after retirement, taught 10 years at the College of Lake County.
1956 Joyce Taylor Siefker, 86, Terre Haute, Oct. 10. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and a community volunteer who taught Englishand had a second career as a librarian. She enjoyed traveling, knitting, playing bridge and dancing. She was preceded in death by her father, J. Hugh Taylor ’27. L. Richard Thompson, 86, Winfield, Illinois, Dec. 29. He was a Rector scholar, a missionary in the Philippines and a telecommunications engineer. He was a tireless advocate for immigrants building new lives in the United States. Jerri Warner Hilbert, 86, Kalamazoo, Dec. 16. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a physical education teacher.
1957 Jack L. Barnes, 85, Elwood, Indiana, Oct. 3. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta; a newspaper publisher; and a community leader. He enjoyed sports and vacations in Arizona.
1958 William L. Amers, 84, Vincennes, Indiana, Dec. 19. He was a Rector
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GOLD NUGGETS scholar and community volunteer who works as a teacher, counselor and principal. Daniel S. Forney Jr., 84, San Francisco, Nov. 15. He was a member of Sigma Nu; a business owner; and an account executive. He was an avid runner, hiker and mountaineer and a community volunteer. William E. Haslem, 84, Union, Michigan, Oct. 21. He retired from teaching high school English and government in the Elkhart Community Schools. Survivors include his wife, Deanna Worl Haslem ’59. He was preceded in death by his brother, John R. Haslem ’57. Barbara Land Padgett, 84, Carmel, Indiana, Oct. 17. She was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi and a middle school English and speech teacher. She enjoyed gardening, cooking, painting and traveling. Suzanne Wagner Davis, 84, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Dec. 10. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a teacher of art and occupational therapy. Survivors include a daughter, Kira Davis McManus ’87, and a sister, Frances Wagner Rehm ’61. She was preceded in death by her mother, Virginia Hudson Wagner ’30. Albert A. Watts Jr., 84, Valparaiso, Nov. 27. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association who retired from U.S. Steel after 35 years in production planning. He enjoyed Bible study, reading, traveling, wintering in Florida and bridge. Survivors include his wife, Belinda Nickel Watts ’58. Thomas S. Winks, 83, Ladson, South Carolina, Dec. 12, 2019. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta and an insurance salesman.
1959 William R. Allred, 94, Corydon, Indiana, Oct. 21. He was a United Methodist pastor and administrator. Survivors
include a son, Alan R. Allred ’76. James A. Goulding, 83, Madison, Wisconsin, Oct. 29. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association and the Washington C. DePauw Society. He was a United Methodist pastor who spent most of his career at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, as a chaplain, a professor in philosophy and religion and dean of the college and vice president for academic affairs. He enjoyed traveling to many countries, the opera and family gatherings. Anne Headley Glock Ziska, 83, Punta Gorda, Florida, Dec. 31. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and the Washington C. DePauw Society. She taught kindergarten and worked as a real estate agent. She enjoyed entertaining, golfing and bridge. She was preceded in death by her brother, James R. Headley ’50, and an aunt, Mary Barnes Headley ’28.
1960 John D. Barnes, 81, Bethesda, Maryland, Dec. 31. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association and a physicist. He enjoyed photography, sailing and travel. Survivors include a sister, Roberta O. Barnes ’70. He was preceded in death by his father, Earl O. Barnes ’31. Mary Bottrell Cowie, 82, Lakewood, Ohio, Oct. 27. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and a social worker who enjoyed traveling and hiking. Lawrence W. Clarkson, 82, Leicester, North Carolina, Oct. 31. He was a member of Delta Chi and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a Rector Scholar. He was a member of the DePauw Board of Trustees from 1987 to 2002, when he became an advisory trustee. He was president of Boeing Enterprises and senior vice president of Boeing for planning and international development, retiring in 1999. He had been a member of the Alumni Board of Directors and the Parents’ Council
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and served as national chair of the Annual Fund. He received an Alumni Citation in 1983 and the Old Gold Goblet in 1998. Survivors include his wife, Barbara Stevenson Clarkson ’61; a daughter, Jennifer Clarkson Soster ’88, who retired from DePauw, where she was music operations manager and executive assistant to the School of Music dean; a sister, Ann Clarkson Turpin ’58; a grandson, Frederick L. Soster ’17; a nephew, John D. Cooper ’86; a great niece, Emma Jean Cooper ’15; and a son-in-law, Fred Soster, professor emeritus of geosciences. Martha Jackson Layton, 81, Terre Haute, Jan. 8. She was a member of Delta Delta Delta and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a foreign language teacher. She loved animals, playing golf and traveling. Survivors include her husband, Donald L. Layton ’59. Elizabeth Stone Ober, 82, Litchfield, Connecticut, Nov. 30. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and a school administrator. Kenneth R. Todd, 82, Indianapolis, Jan. 20. He was a member and vice president of Sigma Chi and circulation manager of The DePauw, a natural fit for this third-generation newspaper man who went on to hold several positions during 35 years at the Indianapolis Star and News. He was involved in several newspaper organizations and served on the boards of Civic Theater, At Your School Services and the 500 Festival. Survivors include his wife, Jo Ann Eggers Todd ’61.
1961 Bonnie Jo Darling Allen, 81, Washington D.C., Jan. 27. She was a member of Alpha Chi and the homecoming queen in 1960. She was a school teacher for several years. She played the viola and was an accomplished musician. Survivors include her husband Joseph P. Allen IV ’59; her brother-in-law, David T. Allen ’61; and a nephew, Timothy Joseph Allen ’92. She was preceded in death by
her father, Walter C. Darling 1917. Robert C. Barnes, 80, Chesterfield, Missouri, April 26, 2019. He was a member of Sigma Chi and a business owner. He was an Eagle Scout and served in the Marines. He was preceded in death by his brothers, Richard G. Barnes ’52 and Thomas B. Barnes ’57. Ann Bender Veatch, 81, Evanston, Illinois, Dec. 29. She was a member of Alpha Phi and an elementary school teacher. Cecil E. Beeson Jr., 81, Cincinnati, Sept. 24. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta; an electrical engineer; and a college instructor. He took college and graduate-level courses for his entire life and enjoyed collecting stamps, baseball cards and coins. Gary A. Dudgeon, 81, Greensburg, Indiana, Oct. 6. He was a member of the Men’s Hall Association; a sports writer for the Greensburg Daily News; and a church and community volunteer. He played Santa Claus for local events for nearly 30 years. Joyce Hopewell Cook, 81, Terre Haute, Nov. 28. She was a member of Delta Delta Delta who taught elementary music and worked as a real estate agent. She was a community volunteer and played in several bridge clubs. Pamelia LeDune Tallman, 81, Indianapolis, Oct. 3. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi; a high school English teacher; and a church and community volunteer. Survivors include her husband, William C. Tallman ’61.
1962 William J. Vesey, 80, Fishers, Indiana, Nov. 18. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi and an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. He enjoyed sailing, baseball and football.
1964 Emerson F. Davis Jr., 78, Indianapolis,
Oct. 20. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta and a business owner. He enjoyed dancing, fishing, camping, boating, poker and euchre.
that operates a flying eye hospital for patients from Third World countries. Her work allowed her to travel the world.
Massachusetts, Sept. 18. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a sales representative. She enjoyed skiing, swimming, photography and travel.
J. Martin Peck, 78, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Nov. 22. He was a member of Sigma Nu. He was a physicist; an avid reader and bridge player.
Monica Reid Scaife Zontanos, 73, Scottsdale, Nov. 3. She was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and the Washington C. DePauw Society and a college administrator. She enjoyed traveling, playing bridge and volunteering. Survivors include a sister, Sally Reid Dinwiddie ’70 and brotherin-law Mark Dinwiddie ’71. She was preceded in death by her first husband, William Scaife ’69.
1988
1965 David A. Smart, 77, Aurora, Colorado, Nov. 3. He was a member of Delta Tau Delta, a business owner and a consultant. He enjoyed baseball and was a loyal Chicago Cubs fan.
1969
Fred R. Smith III, 77, Waynesville, Ohio, Oct. 30. He was a member of Sigma Chi who retired as the corporate director of safety from AK Steel. He enjoyed muscle cars, weight lifting, karate and landscaping.
Karel Kelsik Barney, 72, Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 23. She was a member of Alpha Phi and a business manager. She will be remembered for her contagious laughter, quick wit and love of her flower gardens.
Cherrel Walker Underwood, 76, Newburgh, Indiana, Oct. 31. She was a member of the Washington C. DePauw Society and a behavioral clinician at the Evansville State Hospital. She enjoyed traveling, walking and reading. Survivors include a daughter, Karesa Underwood Roush ’97.
1973
1966
Kathleen Walker Burroughs, 68, May 2019. She was a member of Delta Gamma and a speech pathologist.
William J. Baier, 74, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Sept. 14. He was a member of Delta Upsilon and a businessman who enjoyed playing golf. Survivors include a son, Bret Baier ’92.
1968 Sandra J. Pfaff, 74, Malone, New York, Nov. 5. She was an operating room nurse and later worked in infection control. She volunteered with Orbis International, a nonprofit organization
William A. Rosche, 54, Absecon, New Jersey, Sept. 11. He was a member of the Washington C. DePauw Society. He was an assistant professor at the University of Tulsa from 1999-2007 and then an associate professor at Stockton University in New Jersey. He was deeply committed to his teaching and his students. He loved animals and jazz and played the saxophone.
1992
Friends Patsy E. Rogers, 82, Greencastle, Dec. 9. She worked at DePauw for 44 years, retiring from the Computer Science Department, where she worked as a secretary.
1995 Cathy L. Falkner, 45, Killeen, Texas, Jan. 7. She was a high school science teacher.
1996
Andrew M. Carter, 68, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Dec. 6. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and an attorney.
James P. Bruckmann Jr., 46, Charlotte, North Carolina, Oct. 19. He was a member of Sigma Nu, a high school math teacher and a tennis coach. He enjoyed sports, games and family times.
Mark R. Henry, 61, Battle Creek, Michigan, Dec. 12. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha; a Rector scholar; a physician; and a faculty member at Western Michigan School of Medicine. He enjoyed traveling with his family and friends.
1998
Paula R. Wasko, 60, Fort Wayne, Nov. 8. She was a member of Delta Gamma and a business owner. She enjoyed outdoor activities and family gatherings.
2010
1985
Ruth Grace Zibart, 101, Nashville, Tennessee, Dec. 26. She taught French at DePauw from 1947-57 and later taught at Vanderbilt University, where she was the first woman elevated to associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. She retired from Vanderbilt as professor emerita in 1985.
Regina S. Trent, 58, Greencastle, Dec. 14. She worked in food services at Wabash College and later at DePauw.
Karen M. Kennedy, 50, Coral Gables, Aug. 30. She was a choir director and a conductor who conducted at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center. Survivors include a sister, Susan A. Kennedy ’96.
1974
Richard J. Loeffler, 76, Chicago, Dec. 31. He was a member of Lambda Chi 1982 Alpha and an attorney.
1967
Faculty
Gregory A. Cain, 45, Seattle, Sept. 24. He was a member of Alpha Tau Omega who had a career in business consulting. He was an avid sports fan who enjoyed traveling and fishing trips to Alaska.
Janice A. Williams, 33, Fort Wayne, Oct. 11. She was a nurse for Pediatrics Associates Inc.
Leslie D. White, 57, Milford,
SPRING 2021 DEPAUW MAGAZINE I 47
LEADERS THE WORLD NEEDS
Brian Dixon ’01
A
s students at DePauw, neither Brian Dixon ’01 nor Brian Gau ’96 anticipated working in the consequential jobs they hold now. And they certainly didn’t expect to be entangled in the most monumental global health crisis in a century. But these scientists, with their dissimilar expertise and disparate roles, are both deeply involved in the battle against COVID-19. As the director of public health informatics at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbank School of Public Health, Dixon developed the first comprehensive informational dashboard in the country and provides data about trends to Indiana political and public health leaders as they seek to manage the COVID crisis. He was summoned to the Statehouse by Gov. Eric Holcomb and is a frequent source to Indiana news media. His wife, Kathryn Longer Dixon ’03, told him, “‘you’re a big deal now.’ I was like, ‘I guess I kind of am.’ I was not expecting that to happen.” As a principal scientist and a protein mass spectrometrist at Pfizer Inc., Gau worked on the COVID-19 vaccine
48 I DEPAUW MAGAZINE SPRING 2021
approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use. “I had dreams,” Gau said, “but not this big.” n
D
ixon has worked almost 20 years at Regenstrief, which functions as a think tank for public health leaders and “increasingly play(s) a critical role in providing both data and data analysis for our partners.” When Regenstrief launched its dashboard, “no one else was doing that,” he said. “( Johns) Hopkins had their dashboard first, but they were showing globally where cases were, but not hospitalizations and what populations and subpopulations were being impacted most by this virus. “It’s the first one of its kind, especially at the state level, and it’s really the first of its kind to look at data from multiple hospitals, multiple health care systems, across a community.” The dashboard became the envy of other states, and a number of leaders contacted Dixon in the hope of replicating it. One even tried to hire him to build that state’s dashboard, but he said, “I’ve got
Photo: Reigenstrief
DePauw-trained scientists enmeshed in fight against COVID-19
enough on my plate.” Indiana news media took notice too, and have regularly interviewed him for stories about the virus’s progression. As a result, Regenstrief has become a household name, Dixon said, and “people now know what we do and what we are.” He admits that such attention from the news media and the governor was nervewracking at first, but it’s a role that he savors for his institute. For the second time in the institute’s 50-year history, its value to the state is being noticed, he said. The first time was in 1972, when Regenstrief “put Indiana on the map as a leader in health information technology” when it developed the electronic medical record. He also admits that it can be frustrating when he offers his best advice to decisionmakers, only to have them reject it. “Of course, they have to deal with the politics,” he said. And COVID-19 and its attendant mask-wearing have been particularly political – more so than any other health issue since, perhaps, seat belt laws were enacted, Dixon said. “I just try to be there to provide the objective truth, provide scientific input into
Brian Gau ’96 that decision-making process,” he said. Dixon, who has a master’s degree in public administration and a doctorate in health informatics, had planned to be a dentist but a first-year computer science course at DePauw turned his head. He said he feels as if he has been preparing his whole life for the COVID pandemic. “While I would not have predicted it, I do think that all of the various training that I’ve had prepared me well to respond quickly to what Indiana needed in the crisis,” he said. “And so for that, I was thankful that we were in the right place at the right time to step up and assist.” n
G
au works in Pfizer’s biopharmaceutical sciences division, which manufactures sufficient quantities of promising drugs for clinical trials and compiles material to be filed with drug regulatory agencies worldwide. He was involved in those functions for the COVID vaccine that Pfizer and its partner BioNTech developed “in six months. To understate: That’s an
unusually short time for such work.” Gau was working on a project involving modified DNA when he was reassigned to work on the COVID vaccine, which is messenger RNA-based. “We needed to leverage what expertise we had,” he said. “In my case, I was gaining experience with mass spectrometry of oligonucleotides – DNA and RNA – with this other project. Serendipitous. A career in sciences requires a commitment to continuous learning; this has never been truer for me than in 2020.” When the vaccine first showed promise – that announcement was made July 1 – Gau said he felt “excitement but with a lot of trepidation about how much work was before us. … We did not celebrate but put our heads down and kept pushing. “And I felt gratitude; so many other people were out of work, and here I was working on a project that just might change everything.” When the FDA gave the vaccine emergency-use approval Dec. 12, “my reaction … was pride. And some embarrassment,” he said. “So many people have worked on this, so many people have sacrificed to let us work on this. So when somebody on Facebook calls you a hero, it
just doesn’t feel quite right.” Gau, who has a doctorate in chemistry, said that, while at DePauw, he doubled majored in chemistry and physics and planned to be a scientist. But “I did not have a master plan, and my career shows it. … It is an important message: You don’t have to have everything figured out at 18 – or at 22. My career underscores the benefit of liberal arts education. I’ve been able to pivot and pursue varied scientific interests because I never pigeon-holed myself … and because I was taught to think independently and critically.” Working on the COVID vaccine has been the highlight of his career, “so far,” he said. “I’ve always been motivated by doing science, the day-to-day focus on projects and studies. … I have not been as motivated by the long-term outcomes or even long-term goals. “But this is the first time where longterm outcomes have been palpable, and of interest to people who are not my colleagues. It matters, and I finally get it.”
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