Duke Magazine Winter 2015

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DUKE MAGAZINE • WINTER 2015

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M AG A Z I N E

WINTER 2015

Paul Modrich thinks winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry is great.

Now can he get back to the lab? p.24 It’s the little things and the big things, the day-to-day and the momentous. It’s the individual moments that all add up to an experience like no other. As lifelong members of the Duke community, these are the things we remember that make Duke so special. And you can help them endure.

Every Annual Fund gift adds up to the collective experience our students and faculty enjoy today.

And it’s all made

possible by you.

Make your tax-deductible Annual Fund gift before December 31 and have an immediate impact on the Duke way of life. dukeforward.duke.edu/dec31

Commitment to Duke leading knowledge in service of society “Duke’s commitment to using knowledge in service of society is a model that delivers immediate results and serves as a platform for the future,” said Jack Boyd ’85, Duke Trustee and Duke Alumni Association president elect.

Boyd made an unrestricted bequest to support the university’s most pressing needs, which will allow Duke to reach new heights

April 15-17, 2016 Time changes everything, except true Blue friendships. Come back to reconnect, recapture, and recreate all of your special moments at your 2016 Duke reunion.

in academia, research, and community service. “I hope Duke will continue to move the world forward by preparing future generations of critical thinkers

Your reunion begins online at: www.DukeReunions.com

to become global influencers.”

YOUR INSPIRATION IS JUST THE STARTING POINT. No matter what inspires you to give back, our expert team can help you honor the memories, people, and places that matter to you. Smart charitable planning—at any giving level—may enable you to do more than you thought possible while propelling Duke forward. Contact us today to unleash your inner philanthropist.

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING (919) 681-0464 | giftplanning@duke.edu dukeforward.duke.edu/inspiration

CLASSES 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991,

1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and the Half Century Club Go online to see the list of people planning to attend your reunion, and be sure to add your name too! www.DukeReunions.com Duke Alumni Association Reunions Office • Box 90572 • Durham, NC 27708-0572

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WINTER 2015 | VOL. 101 | NO. 5

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THE QUAD Difficult conversations, first-generation support, presidential tales

A Patient Path to the Nobel

by Robert J. Bliwise In his life and in his work, biochemist Paul Modrich focuses on the fundamentals.

30 Bringing Out the Bones

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by Louise Flynn Wielding the tools of the digital age, Duke researchers are disrupting the science of the Stone Age.

SPORTS Marissa Young is building a women’s varsity softball team from scratch.

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49 FOREVER DUKE DAA activities and connections

Crossing to Safety by Leena El-Sadak

An alumna’s view on the refugee crisis and what’s lost when we focus on one tragedy.

4 The Art of Close Looking 0

by Robert J. Bliwise As the Nasher marks its first decade, Duke Magazine lets loose an unusual art-discussion duo in its new galleries.

55 CLASS NOTES

46 A Watertight Argument

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by Barry Yeoman J Nichols M.E.M.’ 92 believes we’ll better understand the value of ocean conservation if we think about our emotional connection to the sea.

COVER: Photograph

by Chris Hildreth

Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art

DEVIL’S OWN A symbol of potential, hope, and empowerment.

FULLFRAME Playtime: Students relax and compete in The Bolt, a gaming suite in Edens 1C. The room was designed to draw students from across campus with multiple stations and seating areas for online play. There are eight screens, ten gaming computers, and gaming consoles including a Wii U, four Xbox 1s, and four Playstation 4s.

Photo by Esteban Peralta, DukeLens

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Les Todd

f you want a sense of the complexities of the campus, consider a week or so of the Duke whirlwind, just on the cusp of Thanksgiving break. There’s no typical week, but this particular stretch revealed the many layers of the place and the tectonic shifts that it can undergo.

The expected elements spun out of the whirlwind: conferences on global Korean literature and primate cranial evolution, training for soon-to-be graduates on money management, the Duke Opera Workshop’s Movie Musical Revue. There were large-scale events, sometimes with intercollegiate appeal. Like HackDuke, which attracted more than 800 students from across the nation to Code for Good.

The coding teams applied themselves to big ideas: education, inequality, energy and the environment, health and wellness.

There were also, invariably, activities that could not be decoded easily and weren’t so exHackDuke: Jason Luo of Maryland tests an pertly organized. As the leaves ethernet connection while Frank Callas of were dropping, so were some Florida Polytechnic offers advice. student inhibitions. One day after a fire extinguisher was placed in the oven of an East Campus dorm, another object—an empty pizza box—was stuffed into a dryer in a different dorm. The pizza box did not have a good spin; the dryer was, to put it colloquially, fried.

Inhibitions provide no small theme in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. A “read-a-thon,” organized by the English department, was built on the epic’s twelve books and 10,000 lines. Students and faculty and staff members—President Richard H. Brodhead among them—completed the reading in

about ten hours. (Considerably more condensed, it turned out, than the twenty-four hours of HackDuke.) Not that there weren’t enticements beyond the literary, such as Milton Bingo and apples dipped in caramel, a nod to Adam and Eve and their particular source of temptation.

At noon that same day, a full crowd in Page Auditorium painted a picture of campus life far removed from a paradise, and individual students spoke of racist and homophobic incidents. “This wasn’t the first day we thought about these issues, and this isn’t the last day we will think about these issues,” Brodhead told the crowd. The conversation was in part Duke-specific, and in part a response to a cascade of protests at the University of Missouri, Yale, Princeton, and elsewhere.

It was a day that projected Duke far beyond the confines of the campus—and projected far-off events back to the campus. Late in the afternoon word came of the terrorist attacks in Paris. For years Duke has run an undergraduate program in France. Duke’s Global Education Office told The Chronicle, “From the moment we learned of the attacks, we were in contact with students, asking them to check in with us.” All were safe.

Safety, it seems, is a fleeting quality. Still, there’s enduring evidence of powerful and humane thinking. And that was celebrated in a weekend announcement that capped this late-fall phase on campus: Among the newest Rhodes Scholars there would be two from Duke, Laura Roberts and Jay Ruckelshaus; the newest Mitchell Scholars would include Duke’s Wills Rooney.

As history professor Tom Robisheaux ’74 said, these are the sort of young people who “will show others how to make their work more lasting, more enduring, by underpinning it with education, intellectual depth, and moral clarity.” Maybe that’s a start to repairing a broken world.

—Robert J. Bliwise, editor

DUKEMAGAZINE.duke.edu

www.

DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2015 | Vol. 101 | No. 5 EDITOR: Robert J. Bliwise A.M. ’88 MANAGING EDITOR: Adrienne Johnson Martin ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Louise Flynn STAFF ASSISTANT: Delecia Hatcher PUBLISHER: Sterly L. Wilder ’83, associate vice president, Alumni Affairs INTERNS: Roy Auh ’19, Madeline Taylor ’18, Amir Williams ’18 SPECIAL SECTIONS EDITOR: Bridgette Lacy DESIGN CONSULTANT: Lacey Chylack, phase5creative, inc. PRINTER: Progress Printing OFFICERS, DUKE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: N. Shepard Moyle ’84, president, Sterly L. Wilder ’83, secretary-treasurer EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Lesley Jane Seymour ’78, chair, Peter Applebome ’71, Sarah Ball ’08, James Cannon Boyce ’87, Sarah Hardesty Bray ’72, James Burnett ’98, Jerrold K. Footlick, Robbyn Footlick ’85, Devin Gordon ’98, Kerry E. Hannon ’82, John Harwood ’78, Mangesh Hattikudur ’01, Sara Lipka ’01, Valerie A. May ’77, Michael Moore ’08, Will Pearson ’01, Steven Petrow ’78, Shaun Raviv ’01, Dan Riley ’08, Jim Rosenfield ’81, Jon Scher ’84, John Seigenthaler ’78, Elizabeth Spiers ’99, Fiona Spruill ’99, Greg Veis ’03, James O. Wilson ’74, Robert J. Bliwise A.M. ’88, secretary, Clay Felker ’51, founding chair DUKE MAGAZINE Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 PHONE: (919) 684-5114 FAX: (919) 681-1659 E-MAIL: dukemag@duke.edu ADDRESS CHANGES: Alumni Records, Box 90581, Durham, N.C. 27708 or bluedevil@duke.edu • © 2015 Duke University, Published five times a year by the Duke Alumni Association

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DUKE MAGAZINE • FALL 2015

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M AG A Z I N E

FALL 2015

LETTERS & COMMENTS Listening to first-generation students I just read your article about the 1G initiative [“Not the Only One,” Fall 2015], and I wanted to write to thank you. You did a wonderful job of describing the challenges first-generation students face.

I attended Duke as a first-generation student in the late ’80s/early ’90s. While I knew a handful of students from backgrounds similar to mine, kids with working-class roots in the rural South, there was no organized effort by the university to build community and support for students like us. No one even really had a word to describe us. We were, in a real sense, invisible, and I’m thrilled to see that this is changing.

Mark Godwin ’92 Brooklyn, New York Marriage equality I read your article “The Longest Instant,” which I enjoyed—reminding all of us the decades of struggle was not overcome in a single instant overnight.

I had to write to tell you when I first heard the news of the Supreme Court’s decision. My eldest son, Matt, spent the summer interning in Singapore, and my family made the trek to visit him. We left our house at five a.m. June 25 and arrived at midnight June 26. The next morning while on the subway, Matt turned to us and said, “Guys, while you were on planes, the Supreme Court passed the ruling for marriage equality in all fifty states!”

I’ll never forget that moment—the five us standing in a crowded Singapore

Familiar but now more audience-friendly—the renovated Page Auditorium

subway—loud and jubilant. It was such an odd feeling to come out of a thirtysix-hour vacuum and learn of such momentous change. We were proud to be Americans that day.

Joanne Burke Dellaero ’86 Special Assistant to the Associate Vice President, Office of University Development, Duke University Durham I just read it and am sharing it with a friend whose son recently came out, at the end of his sophomore year of college.

I did not know [Steven Petrow] at Duke.

We met about four years ago at a career event for students, and I enjoyed our conversation.

My brother-in-law had a similar college experience. He, too, would advise against saying changes “happened fast.”

Your story resonated with me, and it will with others.

Ann Bierbower Lally ’78 Atlanta

A pat on our backs

I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed the Fall 2015 issue of Duke Magazine. The magazine has a handsome layout (the best it has ever been) and articles that are intellectually engaging. Two of the books highlighted, Ian Milhiser’s Injustices and Annabel Wharton’s Architectural Agents, immediately captured my attention, and I have ordered them.

I also read with interest the article about the renovation of Duke Library.

The Rare Book Library was one of the places I most admired when I was an

All for One

First-generation students—10 percent of undergraduates—are finding their voice on campus. p.28

An alumnus rejects his fear

p.34

| The meaning of eating

p.38

C. Ray Walker

undergraduate. It looks like its magnificence has been skillfully restored.

I am not often a reader of speeches, but I am very glad I took the time to read President Brodhead’s address at the Freshman Convocation. I found it to be insightful and meaningful. I hope the students were listening.

Robert M. Kaiser ’78, M.H.S. ’03 Baltimore

Architecture and Las Vegas

I’m looking forward to reading Annabel Wharton’s new book and appreciate the richness she brings to her field, but I laughed at her characterization of a Las Vegas casino as a place of “astonished bewilderment” and “bodily entanglement,” a place where “programming is predatory,” and one that “anesthetizes its victims.”

Such flamboyancies deny agency to the millions who choose casino gambling, and they overdramatize a wolfish conception of a casino at the expense of more interesting truths. As a twenty-seven-year resident of the city, I think they are also just funny.

Laura McBride Henderson, Nevada

Snack attack Some students have been having unnerving encounters with squirrels that have gotten used to humans and the good food they leave behind. “One of my friends was sitting at an outdoor table, and a squirrel literally ran across her,” one student told The Chronicle. Freshman Samantha Bouchel tweeted this image with the sentiment: “The diet of the Duke squirrel includes berries, acorns, and the occasional bagel.” Think he’d like cream cheese?

Bouchel, a first-generation student, talks about her experiences adjusting to Duke in an audio documentary by freshman Jamie Gordon.

Listen here: dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/samanthas-big-step

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myself, ‘Goal!’ and continued taking pictures.”

Coming as it did mere weeks after the deadly Port-au-Prince earthquake, Gaffield’s discovery of Haiti’s long-lost founding document was greeted as a heartening coda to tragedy. The news quickly spread around the globe.

The next winter, Gaffield returned to the British Archives for a final research tour, only to unearth yet another unknown version of the document. This one, a broadsheet that would have been hung in a public square, was found among admiralty letters. “I was kind of laughing,” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe it happened— again.”

DUKE HAITI

D I S C O V E R Y That these two original versions made it into the hands of the British, and in such good condition, Documenting Freedom Duke graduate student Julia Gaffield received worldwide attention for her is fundamental to Gaffield’s take discovery of a long-lost copy of Haiti’s Declaration of Independence. The find will shed light on a seldom-studied past and make Haiti’s rich history on Haitian history, which she says come alive for a new generation.

B R J. B is portrayed too often as a linear decline from “awesome revolution to third world devastation.”

Now an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University, Gaffield Ph.D ’12 has published the fruits of her Duke research years. Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition After Revolution (University of North Carolina Press) offers a more nuanced vision of Haiti’s relationship with the world following independence. “That Haiti succeeded in “awesome revolution to third world devastation.” remaining independent is truly remarkable,” she says, and its enand marked with an official government stamp. during independence suggests the island nation was It was, she realized, her scholarly Holy Grail: the orignot as isolated as scholars have long argued.

Gaffield has started an open-source website and inal, official printed copy of Haiti’s Declaration of Indeblog—Haitidoi.com—on which she and others upload pendence. There had been rumors of its existence, but images of primary source documents, such as the until then no one had located it.

Haitian Declaration of Independence, for scholars who “I just kind of sat there and awkwardly smiled,” Gafcan’t travel to the archives. This February she will be field said in our May-June 2010 issue. “Of course it was giving a talk at Duke with professor Laurent DuBois. midday, and I couldn’t just leave, because it’s an afterFor more information: fsp.trinity.duke.edu noon of research, right? I’m there for two weeks, and I —Louise Flynn have to maximize all this time. So I just kind of said to ucked in a reading room of London’s British National Archives, Duke student Julia Gaffield was spending a few wintry weeks of 2010 immersed in nineteenth-century colonial records, snapping photos of pages that might be of interest to her dissertation on Haitian independence.

Housed among the archives’ millions of documents dating back to the twelfth century was a bound volume of Jamaican records from 1804. Inside, Gaffield found a yellowed sheaf of papers, dated January 1, 1804—the date of Haiti’s independence from France—

IN

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LIWISE

Brownie Harris

Brownie Harris

here to find national solace in the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s “As It Hapmidst of national misery? Julia Gaffield pens,” and the NPR station in Miami (which has has an answer: in history. With word this a large Haitian population). A recent Google spring that Gaffield had found the original search yielded 48,000 hits for the phrase “Julia official printed copy of Haiti’s Declaration Gaffield Haiti.” of Independence—the only government-isSome of the stories quoted Wilfrid Bertrand, the sued copy currently known to exist—there director-general of Haiti’s National Archives, as was suddenly a more nuanced, and hope-filled, saying he was not aware of any surviving official originals of the declaration, not even in the possesnarrative for earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Gaffield, a Duke graduate student whose doc- sion of the government in Port-au-Prince. An origtoral dissertation will explore inal copy had been rumored to how early-nineteenth-century exist in London, Bertrand said, Haiti interacted with the inbut he had been unable to find ternational community, found it when he went looking himthe document, an eight-page self some ten years ago. pamphlet dated January 1, To Gaffield, the most satisfy1804, in London, at Britain’s ing responses came from postNational Archives. The first ings on her Facebook page and such declaration was the U.S. e-mail messages from Haitians Declaration of Independence; and Haitian-Americans. “My Haitian Heart beat so loud this is the world’s second. And while reading the article in the it was more than just an asserNY times that I wanted to send tion of independence. It was the culmination of the only a special thanks for what you successful slave revolt in the have done,” read one message. history of the world—the con“This document is so important ceiving of “a black republic,” for us! It became even more imEye on history: Gaffield examines Gaffield says, “at a time of portant since the catastrophic reproduction of declaration; first page, left. colonialism and slavery.” earthquake.” Another correRight after it was announced spondent told Gaffield, “You’re in early April, Gaffield’s discovery received cov- a Champion of the Haitian Nation.” Then there erage in The New York Times, the Times of London, was this from a fellow scholar: “Congrats on the Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and newspapers in finding. You are now a major worldwide celebrity, Puerto Rico, Austria, Finland, China, Guyana, at least for us historians.”

Some years before achieving scholarly celebrity and France. Gaffield was featured on a dozen radio shows, among them the BBC’s “The World,” the status, Gaffield was an undergraduate at the UniDUKE MAGAZINE

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SEND LETTERS TO: Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 or e-mail dukemag@duke.edu. Please limit letters to 300 words and include your full name, address, and class year or Duke affiliation. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Owing to space constraints, we are unable to print all letters received. Published letters represent the range of responses received. For additional letters: www.dukemagazine.duke.edu.

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In formation: At the Duke Campus Farm, dancers line up for a traditional contra dance, which is similar to square dancing and involves a caller who guides dance partners through movements. The farm is also an educational resource, functioning as a living laboratory where students get hands-on, practical experience.

Photo by Megan Mendenhall

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A difficult conversation

At a forum, students expressed their pain, anger, and distrust of administrators.

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Megan Mendenhall

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he tempest that most notably blew through the University of Missouri, Yale University, Claremont McKenna College, and Ithaca College led to reflection at Duke, and that led president Richard H. Brodhead to convene a conversation addressing how issues of race, gender, and inequality are playing out on campus.

And so, on a November day at noon in Page Auditorium, students and faculty and staff members joined the president, along with provost Sally Kornbluth and new Trinity dean Valerie Ashby, to “listen, engage, and speak” with Duke colleagues.

Before the trio of administrators took the stage, a group of students did, to the sounds of a call-and-response chant: “Whose university?

Our university!” A spokesperson chided the president for what the group saw as a hastily called meeting held at a time when most students had classes. A second group representing the LGBTQ community followed, laying out its safety concerns, stoked, most recently, by a death threat that included a homophobic slur against a freshman.

Brodhead, Kornbluth, and Ashby then took seats on stage, where the president outlined actions the university has taken already or plans to take, including launching a bias/hate task force. (It was later announced that the task force would be co-chaired by Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School and Robert L. Flowers Professor of public policy, and Linda Burton, dean of social sciences and James B. Duke Professor of sociology. In particular, they and a group of faculty, staff, and students will consider whether Duke’s institutional policies should have specific mention of bias and hate; consider issues related to communications of incidents of intolerance; and make recommendations for achieving greater transparency in the handling of issues of intolerance. An ini-

Speaking up: Students shared their feelings with administrators in multiple ways.

tial report is expected in mid-April 2016.) because I paid for my education, and I “Intolerance and bigotry has no place in paid for this experience.” a university community,” Brodhead said.

As the trio of administrators listened, “It will receive no welcome. We have the students, some in tears, others merely most talented people of evpassionate, spoke of how ery race and country togethon a regular basis they felt er in a place where they can under attack, whether from challenge each other and in- “I will show derogatory comments from spire each other. That is our faculty members (days earyou; I am lier, it was revealed that mission. But for that misnever going sion to work, every person political science professor has to have the same rights Jerry Hough, who some felt to tell and freedoms.” posted racially insensitive you we’re He emphasized that key comments about a New York going to do to solving these problems is Times editorial, would teach something action by the entire campus. two undergraduate courses Students, too, must speak next spring), editorials, and that we’re not up and educate one another op-eds in The Chronicle, or going to do.” about tolerance. anonymous threats on Yik That position—the idea of Yak and other social media. shared responsibility around Last spring’s noose inchanging campus culture—became one of cident seemed to have lasting impact as several flashpoints during the nearly nine- well. An investigation found it was the rety-minute discussion, which was broad- sult of the student’s lack of cultural awarecast on the Bryan Center plaza. “It is not ness and not racially motivated. At the my responsibility,” said senior Adesuwa forum, students challenged that finding Giwa-Osagie. “It is your responsibility, and the fact that the student involved was

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allowed to return to campus. One student challenged the president directly. “Can you honestly tell me that you believe there is no racial motive behind the incident last spring?” senior Katrina Miller asked.

Brodhead revealed that there were state, local, and federal investigations of the incident that reached the same conclusion. Though not expelled, the student received a serious disciplinary sanction, he said. “You can disagree with that, but the process was the right one. If you are ever charged, you want the people to judge you on the facts of the case and not on the passions of the community.”

Still, the division surrounding that incident highlighted a lack of trust of administrators among some students. Ashby, who arrived at Duke this past May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the students she understood that some had lost faith in the university leadership, but said she wasn’t asking them “to trust us.”

“Watch the actions we do from here on,” Ashby said. “I will show you; I am never going to tell you we’re going to do something that we’re not going to do.”

At a later forum, driven by students, a list of demands was circulated asking for change in admissions and financial policies, clear sanctions for hate speech, and an increase in faculty diversity, among others. Still, not all students were in agreement; some expressed dismay over the actions of those they termed the “social justice warriors.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Brodhead seemed to have no illusions about the challenges ahead and yet was ready to tackle them. “The openness of a great university to all the talent of the country and the world—I regard that as the greatest privilege of a university. And if that means there’s new work you have to do on underlying issues, most of them arising from a social dimension, structural social issues or historical, cultural issues, then let’s get busy and do the work.”

You can see the entire forum at https://youtu.be/Z8CWAzJArLY

Novel ideas: Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, left, talked about his work and his life in Istanbul during a week of events celebrating the Nobel laureate. Among the Pamuk-related events were a public Q&A, a panel discussion with faculty members, and the screening of The Innocence of Memories, a film that explores Pamuk’s city, where he’s lived for more than sixty years. Erdağ Göknar, who directs the Duke Middle East Studies Center, is the translator of Pamuk’s My Name Is Red; here he’s shown with Pamuk.

Les Todd

A Rubenstein gift brings the art center to life

Now under construction, it will create a hub near the Nasher.

Duke has invested nearly $100 million in art facilities since the Nasher Museum of Art opened in 2005. And yet with all the new arts programs, the $50 million, 71,000-square-foot arts center now under construction is considered a “game-changer.”

That doesn’t seem far-fetched considering its scope. The center, scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2017, will include twelve multipurpose studios, a 200-seat performance theater, a 100-set film theater, a dance studio, space for video production and a radio station, a garden, a lounge, a library, reception space, a painting and drawing studio, offices, and classrooms.

Indeed, it’s an acknowledgement of the arts’ growing presence at Duke.

There are now seventy-five student arts organizations on campus. Applicants are starting to notice as well. Three times as many include arts portfolios with their applications as did a decade ago.

The center became reality in large part because of a $25 million donation from David Rubenstein ’70, chair of the board of trustees. It’s being built on the corner of Anderson Street and Campus Drive, across from the Nasher, and will provide a home for the dance program and the Arts of the Moving Image certificate program.

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A bridge to success

A new program will help first-generation scholars thrive.

A certain magazine told the story recently of an informal Duke network that has worked to build support for first-generation students, helping to develop social and academic resources for them.

With the launch of a new program for first-generation students and those from under-resourced high schools, that informal work has become official.

The Washington Duke Scholars Program will provide enhanced financial aid and a host of academic and social opportunities when it debuts in the fall of 2016. The goal is to help students who have the academic ability to thrive at Duke, but may lack the social and economic support from home, the experience with advanced coursework, and the networking opportunities common among many incoming students.

About 10 percent of the roughly 6,400 undergraduates are first-generation students, and the plan is to enroll thirty scholars the first year; Duke hopes to double that total. The university will identify candidates and send an invitation with their acceptance letters.

Washington Duke Scholars will start in the summer before their first semester with a one-credit bridge program to give them experience with the rigor of a Duke education. They’ll also have a faculty mentor and peer preceptor to offer guidance. Scholars will participate in two first-year programs on wellness and professional readiness, as well as another seminar the following year.

The scholars will receive enhanced financial aid in the form of a grant, as well as a laptop computer; work-study requirements are dropped for the first year.

The program also provides funding for an internship or research experience and waives the expectation of earnings over the summer.

“For those students who have to make more adjustments to a place like Duke, the support a scholarship like this provides will be invaluable,” says Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions.

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BOOKBAG RELIGION 351: The Historical Jesus THE CATALYST: Mark Goodacre, a professor in the religious studies department, has been teaching the course for ten years. “I inherited it.

The first thing I did when I got to Duke was look to see what was on the books already. I saw ‘Historical Jesus’ and thought, ‘I would love to teach this course.’ ” He believes the course focuses students’ minds with a detached, critical perspective rather than one rooted in Christian tradition. “Who can’t be interested in Jesus?—Even if you know nothing about him. From cultural relevance to religious relevance, he is a fascinating figure.”

THE GIST: Goodacre says Christianity has been influential to millions of people for centuries. The course asks such questions as: What did Jesus do? What did he achieve?

Is there a difference between the historical Jesus and the Christ experienced by Christians today?

ASSIGNMENT LIST: The course expects students to read widely

and become familiar with the primary texts from both Christian and non-Christian authors, which they are quizzed on regularly. Goodacre chooses not to expend classroom energy with testing. “The classroom should be an intellectually enriching experience for everybody, including me.” Students also are expected to write three papers, including one on the scholarship of Jesus and one giving the students an opportunity to prove to be scholars themselves.

THE TWIST: The objectives are not only to gain insight about Jesus historically, but also to learn about the nature of religious studies and the historical method.

“They should know doing religious studies isn’t about Bible study,” says Goodacre. To do religious studies, one does not have to be a participant in the tradition. “It’s a democratic process, and something we want atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews all to participate in together.” —Amir Williams

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Stories of leaders past

Two losses to the community

Doris Kearns Goodwin shares presidential tales at a Rubenstein Library celebration.

Chris Hildreth

The topics ranged from Lyndon B. Johnson’s paralyzing dreams to Abraham Lincoln’s melancholy. It was all part of the storytelling shared by presidential historian and best-selling author Doris Kearns Goodwin during the seventh Weaver Lecture, as part of the events celebrating the renovation and reopening of the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Trustee chair David Rubenstein ’70 led a conversation with Goodwin that revealed behind-the-scenes stories of presidents. Those stories included the time a then-twenty-three-year-old Goodwin got to dance with President Johnson while a White House fellow, and the time Franklin Roosevelt surprised Churchill just coming out of the bath.

Goodwin also revealed the president she would most like to have dinner with: Lincoln, she said. She would ask him to “tell me a story, because I want to hear you laugh.”

A good talk: Goodwin shared presidential memories with Rubenstein and the audience.

WHO’S COUNTING?

4.29 percentage increase in the value of Duke’s endowment. It went from $7 billion in 2013-14 to $7.3 billion for 2014-15.

$5.5M

amount of five-year grant from the National Science Foundation shared with UNC-CH and N.C. State to collaborate on nanotechnology research.

Friedl and Gillis held faculty and administrative positions.

As is tradition, Duke flags were lowered to mark the death of Ernestine Friedl, the first female dean of Trinity College.

Friedl, a renowned anthropologist known for studying modern Europe and gender roles and a James B. Duke Professor emerita, came to Duke in 1973 and was chair of the cultural anthropology department until 1978. She served as dean for five years, and her initiatives included increasing diversity and overseeing the establishment of the Women’s Studies program. Just two weeks earlier, she had attended a departmental luncheon in the East Campus building bearing her name.

Friedl was ninety-five.

Economist Malcolm Gillis’s first faculty post at Duke, or anywhere, was as an assistant professor. Later, after a fifteen-year stint at Harvard, he returned to Duke and was dean of the graduate school and vice provost for academic affairs. He’s considered a pioneer in the field of development economics: During the first twenty-five years of his professional life, he helped some twenty countries apply economic analysis to public policy. In 1993, he left Duke to become the sixth president of Rice University. Gillis was seventy-four.

98

percentage of Duke student-athletes who graduate within six years.

Duke’s rate is the highest in the ACC.

DUKE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2015

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Les Todd

THEQuad

Trying to solve health care’s issues

A new approach to college admissions

It’s fair to say that health-care reform is one of the key challenges facing the nation. And that makes it fair to say that the university’s new health-policy center will have much work ahead of it.

The Duke-Margolis Center will aim to develop ideas on health reform and move them to implementation. Founded with a $16.5 million gift from Robert J. Margolis M.D. ’71 and his wife, Lisa, through the Robert and Lisa Margolis Family Foundation, the center will connect Duke’s resources with policymakers and policy analysts in the private and public sector. Disciplines involved will included business, biomedical research, clinical care, public policy, global health, and law. While it will be based at the Fuqua School of Business, faculty and staff at Sanford, the School of Medicine, the School of Law, and other units will collaborate.

Mark McClellan, a physician, economist, and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, is the center’s new director and was named the Robert J. Margolis M.D. Professor of business, medicine, and health policy.

Criticizing the Common Application used for college admissions has become a ritual on par with taking the SATs. In September, Duke, along with more than eighty public and private universities, launched an effort with the hope of offering an alternative to that online process.

In the summer of 2016, the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success is scheduled to launch a new admissions application where students could enter the basic facts, like name and high school, and each college would add its own essay questions. But the application would link to a free online portfolio system, scheduled to go live in January, through which students would be encouraged to add examples of their best work, “The opportunity for short essays they’d like to showcase, descripstudents to develop a tions of extracurricular activities, and more, portfolio over several starting in the ninth grade.

That early start is key in the coalition’s goal: years can particularly It seeks to encourage students to start thinking help students who early and deeply about what they are learning or accomplishing in high school. And with the normally wouldn’t ability of college admissions officers, counselthink about college ors, and others to have access to the portfolios, until the fall of their it gives students the opportunity to be coached senior year.” and counseled and helped to identify the right colleges for them. The organizers also want the new system to minimize the disadvantages faced by low-income students in resource-poor schools.

“The opportunity for students to develop a portfolio over several years can particularly help students who normally wouldn’t think about college until the fall of their senior year,” Christoph Guttentag, Duke’s dean of undergraduate admissions, said in the university’s announcement.

While there has been praise for the coalition’s plans, some observers have concerns. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, whose book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be took on the manic admissions process, called for the coalition to present a more detailed plan to ensure disadvantaged kids know about the plan and how it can benefit them. At a gathering of high-school guidance counselors, many criticized the effort as favoring wealthy applicants and wealthy colleges, and questioned the criteria of membership in the coalition.

New center brings an interdisciplinary approach to reform.

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On turbulent times: Tom Donilon, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, was the latest speaker in the Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture Series at the Sanford School. In a conversation with political science and public policy professor Peter Feaver, Donilon said that the U.S. should intensify the fight against the Islamic State.

“It’s important to have some victories on the ground in Syria and Iraq,” he said. “ISIS is able to attract followers from all across the world because of a narrative of success, so we need to show them losing.” Donilon also discussed other foreign-policy issues, including Russia’s recent intervention in Syria and U.S. relations with China and North Korea.

www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

The university joins a coalition that wants to start the process earlier.

Richard H. Brodhead THEQuad

BOOKBAG

Chris Hildreth

FROMTHEPRESIDENT

ROOMMATES

Sparking Innovation in Health Care SPORTS

T

Courtesy Duke Medical Center Archives

his fall, Duke celebrated the fiftieth anniversary broad intellectual expertise in the medical profession. At Duke, of the Physician Assistant program. Most peomedical students spend their third year investigating a biomedple who see a physician assistant for a cough or ical research question. This exposure allows students to envision a sprained ankle are not aware that the idea of a a future as clinician-scientists—doctors who conduct laboratory research and use the resulting insights to inform their care of physician assistant was born at Duke. In 1959, the their patients. This unique aspect of the Duke medical curricuU.S. Surgeon General had declared a dire need in the healthlum was appealing to the government of Singapore—a nation care system: a national shortage of medical personnel. Eugene eager to train its own clinician-scientists. Today, the signature Stead, who was chair of Duke’s Department of Medicine for research year is an important feature of thirty years, worked with his colleagues the curriculum at the Duke Medical to devise the best way to train smart, capable young people to extend capacity at School in Singapore.

Duke and elsewhere and deliver better The latest expression of Duke’s commitment to fresh thinking in the health-care care to patients. They developed a professional training program that could arena is the creation of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. Established create a new member of the health-care with a generous gift from Duke medical team “to fill the gap between doctor and alumnus Bob Margolis, the center will be nurse.” Four former Navy corpsmen enrolled in 1965 as the first students in the based at Fuqua and will draw in faculty Physician Assistant program. in public policy, law, and medicine. The The model proved successful—not just center aims to facilitate “translational” at Duke, but also across the country. Fifty policy research, so that ideas about how years later, there are more than 100,000 to make our health-care system more affordable, efficient, equitable, and accessicertified PAs nationwide who have trained ble can be moved toward implementation at one of nearly 200 PA programs—and at the policy level. The center’s inaugural physician assistant was named the most director will be Mark McClellan, the promising job of 2015 by Forbes. Stead former Food and Drug Administration was ahead of his time in envisioning a commissioner and a former administrateam approach to health care, with doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and othVisionary: Stead introduced ideas tor of the Centers for Medicare & Medthat influenced health-care delivery. ers working together to deliver the best icaid Services. His broad perspective will and most efficient patient care. Today, be invaluable as he connects with faculty Duke’s PA program remains ranked first in the nation by U.S. members across the university to build a multidisciplinary approach to this major national challenge.

News & World Report.

Groundbreaking work, the kind that redefines both a field The PA program is just one example of the ways that Duke of knowledge and the teaching of that field, is made possible has responded to present challenges by training for the future. by visionary faculty. Stead, the founder of the PA program, At Duke, we take pride in a form of education that is innovative, collaborative, and engaged with the challenges of the largintroduced ideas decades ago that are only now becoming part er world. Throughout its history, Duke has had faculty leaders of the conversation about health care. He was one of the first to who have been able to survey the landscape of their field, losee the value of data and evidence-based medicine. He believed cate the challenges, identify the skills and competencies that that, rather than memorizing knowledge that will become outdated, medical students should be trained to seek out current are needed, and shape the kind of training Duke provides to be thinking and be open to new approaches. Stead even foresaw responsive to these demands. the impact that computers would have on medical education Duke Medicine has been highly successful in this endeavor, and health-care delivery, stating in 1972: “We are on the brink crafting specific education paths that produce new kinds of graduates who are equipped to contribute and lead. Some of these of a major technological breakthrough in the practice of complex medicine.” training programs are highly pragmatic: the School of Nursing I’m proud that Duke’s eminent faculty leaders—in medioffers the nation’s only distance-based HIV-AIDS Nurse Practitioner Specialty, and its Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Procine and across the university—continue to carry on this disgram is the only such program in North Carolina. tinguished tradition of formulating and delivering the kind of Other emphases reflect Duke’s commitment to developing education that produces future leaders in the world. n DUKE MAGAZINE

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THEQuad

CHATTER “It wasn’t on theme, really. I’m annoyed with myself for causing trouble that I didn’t even intend to cause.”

JERRY HOUGH, James B. Duke Professor of political science, on the controversy caused by his online comment on a New York Times editorial that compared the integration abilities of African Americans and Asians

“The role of transparency and knowing what holdings we have is likely to produce more angst and anxiety than the good it would produce.”

JAMES COX, Brainerd Currie Professor of law and Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility chair, on the request by some students that the university’s endowment investment information be more open

“I totally agree with their philosophy and what I suspect is their motivation, but I have serious doubts about a mechanistic approach that focuses solely on ‘requiring a minority candidate,’ as opposed to viewing ‘excellence’ and ‘diversity’ as overlapping.”

BENJAMIN D. REESE JR., vice president and chief diversity officer of Duke University and the Duke University Health System, on the University of Texas system’s new requirement that every administrative search for dean and higher include a female or minority candidate in the final interview round

“University administrators have difficult jobs to do, and I think most understand that they are one scandal away from a resignation. But when you are the leader of a community that is supposed to be inclusive and open, where people can express ideas and learn, that does include listening to what others consider significant, what others are experiencing, and demonstrating active progress to address those issues.”

LEE D. BAKER, dean of academic affairs for Trinity College and associate vice provost for undergraduate education, on the resignation speech of University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe

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www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Three students awarded international honors

Two are named Rhodes Scholars, another is awarded a Mitchell Scholarship.

There were 869 applicants at 316 colleges and universities. In late November thirty-two students were named Rhodes Scholars. And the forty-fourth and forty-fifth Duke students to be selected are seniors Laura Roberts and John “Jay” Ruckelshaus.

Both are standouts. Ruckelshaus, a political science major with a triple-minor in philosophy, history, and English, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, an Angier B. Duke Scholar, and a recipient of the Duke Faculty Scholars Award.

He serves as a student member of the board of trustees’ academics affairs committee and as a senator in Duke Student Government. This is not his first national distinction: He is a Harry S. Truman Scholar.

Paralyzed in a diving accident the summer before his freshman year, Ruckelshaus is the founder and president/CEO of Ramp Less Traveled, a nonprofit organization he created to support students with spinal-cord injuries in pursuit of higher education. He is also a member of the U.S. International Council on Disability.

This will be his second trip to Oxford, England. As a Lord Rothermere Fellowship recipient, he studied political theory at New College during the summer of 2013. As a Rhodes Scholar, he plans to pursue a master’s of philosophy degree.

Now on a global stage: from left, Ruckelshaus, “I embrace, excitedly and Roberts, and Rooney wholeheartedly and gratefully, the mission of the Rhodes Trust to fight the world’s fight, to push forward with political theory and advocacy to a more inclusive democratic future,” he says.

Roberts is a history major with a double-minor in religion and political science. She’s been inducted into the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society and the Order of Omega Honor Society. At Duke, among other roles, she serves as vice president and director of campus affairs for the Duke International Relations Association and is events chair for the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research, helping to raise awareness for the mission of WISER school for girls in Kenya. The organization was founded in 2006 by Sherryl Broverman, associate professor of the practice of biology and global health, and Andy Cunningham ’08.

“Laura is one of those rare young people who will eventually lead organizations and inspire others,” says Thomas Robisheaux ’74, Fred W. Schaffer Professor of history. “She will show others how to make their work more lasting, more enduring, by underpinning it with education, intellectual depth, and moral clarity.”

Another Duke senior, William Rooney, was awarded the George J. Mitchell Scholarship for a year of graduate study in Ireland. Rooney is pursuing a Program II plan of study titled “Markets, Society, and Personalism.” He’s a member of the varsity cross-country and track-and-field teams, as well as a columnist for The Chronicle. He plans to attend Maynooth University for a master’s degree in the philosophy of religion. Rooney was one of twelve Americans chosen for the scholarship.

ROOMMATES The sophomores lived on the same hall in Randolph during their freshman year, were in the same focus cluster (cognitive neuroscience and law), and tented in K-ville together. Now, they live in Griffin House on West Campus’ Crowell Quad.

ConnorHile Connor is from

Omaha, Nebraska, and studies neuroscience.

Interview by Madeline Taylor. Photo by Les Todd

Man cave:

Connor’s love of sports shows up in the wall décor.

It includes a poster of his favorite Swedish soccer player, Zlatan Ibrahimović, a periodic table of elements, a towel from a Green Bay Packers playoff game, and a throwback Duke basketball felt flag from the ’90s.

Political junkie Aateeb has a mural of Richmond’s skyline, a National Geographic map of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and a Visit Palestine poster from the 1930s that he got in Israel.

AateebKhan

Favorite things:

“I have a pretty specific taste in music. I like ’60s and ’70s rock and alternative,” says Connor. “See, I’m all over the board. I listen to country, I listen to dubstep, house, rap, everything!” says Aateeb. Aateeb runs into politicians regularly. “It’s the most random thing,” he says. “I’m lucky when it comes to meeting famous Republicans.” Must-have room food?

Connor, without skipping a beat: “Mac ’n Cheese. I’m a Kraft kind of guy.”

Aateeb: “Apple cider for me.”

Aateeb

is from Richmond, Virginia.

He studies public policy and economics.

DUKE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2015

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THEQuad

Constantly connected kids are all right

Parental fears may not have foundation, researcher says.

Screens of all sorts and sizes have become a constant in our lives, inciting concerns in some parents and educators about the impact those devices might be having on young people.

Candice Odgers, director of Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy, offers worriers a chance to relax a little. Her research shows things may not be as bad as you think they are.

For one study, Odgers gave mobile phones and smart watches to 150 California youth ages twelve to fifteen, then monitored them by texting them short survey questions three times per day for thirty days. Her goal was to learn how day-to-day stressors, rather than major traumas, affect youth behavior.

After tracking phone usage, speaking with parents, and monitoring how the media cover teen digital behavior, Odgers found seven common fears among the adults: • Teens’ personal safety; • Cyberbullying; • That constant connectivity keeps teens from being present in real life; • Teens pretending to be other people online; • The digital divide between parents and children; • That multitasking impairs cognition; and • That mobile devices affect sleep.

It’s true that light emitted by screens interferes with falling asleep. But sleep aside, Odgers’ research suggests the other adult fears aren’t supported. For instance, most kids use phones to communicate with family and friends, not strangers.

Most of the texts they send concern everyday topics and are neutral or positive in content. She also found that children with strong early relationships communicated more frequently online and reported closer, more cohesive offline friendships.

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www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Q&A NAVIGATING DIFFERENT WORLDS | Damon Tweedy M.D. ’00, assistant professor of psychiatry, is the author of the widely (and favorably) reviewed Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine.

What were some of your early shaping experiences?

I grew up in a working-class area outside Washington, D.C., and went to a not-so-great middle school. It was about 95 percent black, and many of the kids there were not on track for success. A math teacher suggested I take a test that eventually got me into a science-and-technology magnet program. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I was a Meyerhoff Scholar; the program encourages African-American students into science and medicine. The summer after freshman year, I did research with an African-American cardiologist at the National Institute on Aging. It was great to work under someone who looked like me.

And that led you into medicine?

I was interested in cardiology for a long time. Eventually I realized that I had a knack for getting people to open up to me, and that’s what got me thinking about psychiatry.

You write about one of your Duke Medicine professors who approached you during a class break and assumed you were a maintenance worker. You seemed to let him go unchallenged.

Any second thoughts?

I was already on fragile ground about whether I was going to make it in medical school. And here was a professor who was going to control my next step in the process. So I wasn’t sure about confronting him, or if he’d even get it. For me, the only way to prove I belonged was to excel. Basically, for the next month, I stayed in my room and studied. I ended up getting the second-highest grade in a class of 100 students.

You mention that the percentage of AfricanAmerican medical students is tiny compared to the representation of African Americans in the general population. What keeps those numbers so far apart?

That points to bigger issues in society, including economic disparities. Becoming a doctor is an expensive undertaking. You also need the right educational opportunities to put yourself on a strong academic path. And we have to acknowledge the cultural perception of what AfricanAmerican success means.

Historically it’s been a narrow conception, particularly for black men—sports and entertainment. If you don’t see a certain kind of success, it’s hard for you to envision that for yourself.

You also write that about 75 percent of white physicians say race doesn’t affect the treatment of patients; the perception among black physicians is almost the reverse.

Who’s right?

It makes sense that well-educated doctors wouldn’t acknowledge bias in their work.

Still, we’re all lured into “framing,” or generalized judgments of individualized cases: Here’s one black patient with a certain set of symptoms; he must fit the pattern of previous black patients. On the flip side, African Americans may see an issue embedded in race that’s really embedded in class. In any case, the doctor needs to be sensitive to patient perception. The doctor can have the perfect treatment regimen. But if the patient perceives a bias, that’s going to affect how the two of them connect, and how likely it is that the regimen will be followed.

Watch Damon Tweedy in conversation with President Richard H. Brodhead:

One theme you address is that “Being black can be bad for your health,” in areas ranging from childhood obesity to heart disease and diabetes. How do we turn that around?

Education in areas like nutrition is a big need, and so is access to health care. African Americans are less likely to have a primary-care doctor; they may not have health insurance or the ability to pay for tests and medications.

Economic disparities are a major factor behind all of this.

And we’ve got to find ways to improve the doctor-patient relationship.

What have you learned from being on the book tour?

One thing is how much my experience has resonated with African-American doctors and medical students; people have told me, “You’ve basically written my own story.” But it’s also rewarding that so many people have been able to connect with this story—women and other racial and ethnic minorities, for example, who are not African Americans but who feel, in different ways in their own lives, like outsiders, too.

—Robert J. Bliwise

https://youtu.be/ajphhoBq9xk

Chris Hildreth

PLANETDUKE

Peru

A

by Hunt Oil, aims to develop strategies for improved hut 6 o’clock in the morning there is just enough man and environmental health in the region by engaging light cutting through the front entrance of the communities, government health ministries, and private thatched home where Ernesto Ortiz, Axel Berky, and a nurse technician from the Peruvian Ministry industry. The project has forged a strong partnership with Peruvian health entities including MINSA, the Reof Health (MINSA) work alongside each other and ask gional Health Directorates (DIRESA), and the Center questions listed on their clipboards. The home belongs for Public Health Research and Services in the Amazon to a Peruvian family that has consented to participate in (CENSAP) that, according to the DGHI team, is mutually one of the largest baseline health studies ever conductbeneficial and has helped foster trust in study communied in the Amazon. Now the three researchers focus on ties and provide immediate benefits to public health. collecting the family’s information before the men leave This past March these collaborative to work in their fields partnerships were challenged. Rapid and on the river.

The Amarakaeri Reserve point-of-care blood tests administered Ortiz and Berky, Study at a Glance by the DGHI team revealed previously research associates unidentified clusters of Hepatitis B viral in the Duke Globinfections in two indigenous commual Health Institute (DGHI), talk with fieldwork team members nities located along narrow tributaries of the Madre de Dios River in a largely the head of the undisturbed expanse of the Amazon household, carefully rainforest. Approximately 27 percent recording responses to of individuals tested positive for Hepa wide range of topics, atitis B. Ortiz immediately traveled from the family’s miCommunities visited from the secluded communities to gration and employment history, to inform physicians at the nearest local food consumption, to illness history. health post; that contact triggered outSimultaneously, the nurse begins to break-response efforts from national prick the mother’s finger to screen public-health authorities. MINSA headfor anemia and collect spots of blood Hepatitis cases quarters in Peru’s capital city, Lima, on filter paper. She records the rediscovered dispatched a health brigade to perform sults and sorts them with the other further confirmatory Hepatitis B tests. hair, fingernail, blood, and urine samOfficials at MINSA, DIRESA, and CENSAP then worked with affected communities to administer Hepatitis B vaccinations and offer educational “charlas” on Duration of study sexually transmitted infections.

The outbreak tested the DGHI team and their Peruvian health partners, yet a history of cooperation yielded quick intervention. Since Pan and his DGHI team square miles – area of began work in Madre de Dios in 2011, Madre de Dios Region the DGHI research has supplemented (approximate size of the health tests and data collected by South Carolina) Peruvian health ministries. The team has also helped to transport medical supplies to remote health posts. In the case of the 2015 Hepatitis B Outbreaks, Peruvian partnerships facilitated the DGHI percentage of Peruvian Just a drop: A sample-taker gently bandages a finger team’s ability to immediately influence a population living in after pricking it to test the girl’s blood. previously unknown public-health issue the Amazon affecting the communities with which they worked. Often, it can take months ples to be analyzed for health data.

Ortiz, Berky, and the nurse are visiting one of the 1,200 for global health studies and data collections to be completed and analyzed, and for study findings to be used households enrolled in a large epidemiological research to advance public health. Team members say the colstudy led by William Pan, assistant professor of global laborative network in which this study was rooted also environmental health at DGHI and the Nicholas School. allowed for timely reporting and action after the discovThe study examines human health and environmental ery of Hepatitis B infections. The DGHI team’s work and impacts affecting twenty-three communities within the Amarakaeri Reserve, a national protected zone of moun- prompt, open communication with Peruvian health officials enabled, Ortiz says, “immediate public-health benetainous and biodiverse rainforest in the Madre de Dios fits that would otherwise have taken years of submitting region of Peru, as a result of ongoing artisanal gold minand analyzing data.”—Roy Auh and Page Meier ing and exploratory gas extraction. The project, funded

Global Research Partnerships and effecting change

18

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24

months

Ernesto Ortiz

32,934

18 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

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A place for educators New community pairs novice and experienced teachers.

Standardized tests, shifting curriculums, and low pay are just some of the reasons many leave the teaching field. Indeed, nationally, nearly half of all teachers leave the field within their first five years, says Jan Riggsbee, who teaches in the Duke program in education.

But Riggsbee and cofounder Christopher Gergen are aiming to stem that tide through Duke TeachHouse, a new living and learning community established in September in East Durham, in which two experienced teachers live with and serve as mentors for four new teachers. Along with the informal support, the house offers programs, like dinners with local educators and visiting policymakers.

The program was launched with the support of the education program and Trinity College; the Office of Durham & Regional Affairs; the Social Science Research Institute’s Education and Human Development Incubator; Forward Impact, an entrepreneurial support agency; and the Durham Public Schools.

Autism research app developed

The university worked with Apple for a possible screening tool.

Autism experts often tout early detection as key in helping children with the disorder. A new app developed by a team of Duke programmers, scientists, and students aims to help with that effort.

The free ResearchKit app, called “Autism & Beyond,” is not a diagnostic tool.

Instead, its intent is to test the reliability of smart-phone questionnaires and video analysis of facial expressions as a possible screening tool for autism and other developmental disorders for children, much like the screenings that happen at schools for hearing or eyesight. Parents, and children age one to six, interact with the questionnaires and videos on the app and then get feedback on their child’s results. The researchers will gather data

Social connections get guns to criminals

Study shows gang members buy firearms from “dirty” dealers infrequently.

You’ve seen it a million times on your favorite crime drama: a criminal getting a gun from a backroom dealer.

But researchers reveal a more mundane story. Criminals are far more likely to get guns from family and acquaintances.

Philip J. Cook, a professor of public policy, economics, and sociology working with University of Chicago researchers, asked inmates how they obtained guns, while a second project analyzed data that traced weapons used in crimes.

The study was published online by the journal Preventive Medicine.

“Dirty dealers,” who deliberately violate the law and sell to buyers who can’t pass a background check, accounted for less than 5 percent of guns sold to gang members. Fifteen percent of new crime guns confiscated from a man were first purchased by a woman, which suggests a straw purchase.

The study also found that Chicago law enforcement and local and federal regulations have had an effect on the availability of guns to criminals in that city. “They can’t buy their guns from stores, the way most people do, and are instead largely constrained to making private deals with acquaintances, who may or may not be willing and able to provide what they want,” says Cook.

from the app’s use for six months.

The app was developed over four months in partnership with Apple, which developed ResearchKit, an opensource framework the company introduced last March that allows iPhone users to participate in medical trials and studies through health data-sharing efforts. The free iOS app is being offered from the Apple App Store.

Does creativity have a gender?

Researchers find more men get the description than women.

Much has been made of the male dominance in the tech industry. But, where are the female innovators?

A Fuqua study suggests those innovators might be hidden in plain sight. New research shows that men tend to be per-

ceived as more creative than women even when the work they produce is identical.

A team that included Aaron Kay, an associate professor specializing in management and operations, and Ph.D. students Devon Proudfoot and Christy Zhou Koval found that creativity and innovation are more closely associated with stereotypically male traits, leading people to judge men as more creative than women. Participants in an online study rated qualities like decisiveness, courage, and competitiveness as more important to creativity than sensitivity, sympathy, and nurturing, traits that are more commonly associated with women.

The findings suggest women could be at a professional disadvantage in workplaces where creative thinking is most valued, like the tech sector. “As our economy becomes more and more based on innovation, this bias is going to matter more and more,” Kay says. “If we think creative behavior is more desirable, then it’s even more important to be aware of stereotypes about creativity.”

DUKE MAGAZINE

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PAGETURNERS

Fiction More Potent Than Truth A physician and a philosopher reflect on why they decided to turn lessons from the exam room and classroom into novels.

After his provocative nonfiction book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality was panned by critics, Duke philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg decided to recast his big idea—namely that the sciences could answer many of philosophy’s great questions—as a wartime epic. The Girl From Krakow (Lake Union Publishing) takes readers from Paris in the ’30s to Moscow, Warsaw, and Nazi Germany, all the while exploring philosophical terrain:

4 Stories are at the heart of my work.

W

W

e love stories. Narratives of the sort that we can remember, that identify people’s motives, tell us about their decisions and choices, hold our attention, and drive our emotions. But the trouble with narratives, whether nonfiction or fiction, is that they never correctly identify the real causes of human behavior—the ones that neuroscience is only now beginning to understand.

This is a pretty wild claim. Few people even noticed it in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, fewer understood it, and (almost) no one accepted it. I decided if I was going to get many more people even to think about this argument I was going to have to package it in a very different way.

I was going to have to tell a story.

Many years ago I edited the war memoirs of my mother, Blanca Rosenberg, To Tell at Last (University of Illinois Press).

Blanca had survived the war by using a false identity. It came to me that I could use the trajectory of my mother’s life from 1935 to 1947 to convey my apparently hard-to-understand, harder-to-accept theory by putting it into the head of a young woman trying to come to grips with the horrors of the war. Never mind my late mother never had any of these thoughts as she struggled for survival.

Novelists are allowed to take license.

20

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Pediatric oncologist and Duke professor Raymond Barfield made his fiction debut with The Book of Colors (Unbridled Books), a stark and tender novel narrated by Yslea, a young woman whose voice was inspired by some of Barfield’s patients. He explains the connection between his two callings:

3 I decided if I was going to get many more people even to think about this argument, I was going to have to package it in a very different way.

riting makes me a better doctor, and being a doctor makes me a better writer.

Stories are at the heart of my work. I tell my residents to stay curious about the stories of their patients, if they want to become great doctors.

In the hospital, storytelling is literally a matter of life and death. If a patient’s story doesn’t get told well, all sorts of terrible things can happen. The world of medicine is not built with shiny machines, knives, and bags of Latinate-named intravenous fluids— those things are part of medicine, of course—but it’s the stories that situate the person, account for the past, and actually guide the decisions a doctor makes with an ill or dying person.

The deepest moments of being a doctor and the deepest moments of being a writer feel similar to me.

Whatever outward signs of authority medicine claims for itself—white coats, corridors with “Do Not Enter” signs, and promises of various tenuous miracles—doctors are often lost, if they have any sense about them. Or lost-ish. I think the same is true for writers.

THEQuad

Recommended Reading David Drake J.D. ’72, a Vietnam veteran who was drafted during law school, says his first book, Hammer’s Slammers, was “essentially the Eleventh Cavalry with ray guns.” After practicing law for eight years, he turned to writing full time. He credits Duke Law School with introducing him to the importance of logic—so useful in crafting the alternate realities in his military sci-fi novels. His latest, Air and Darkness (Tor), owes a debt to the following short stories and novels that inspired him:

Conan the Conqueror

by Robert E. Howard Howard is as good a storyteller as the field has ever seen. Reading his vivid, fast-moving narratives made me want to write.

Clash by Night and Fury (as well as other stories)

by Henry Kuttner A master of fantasy and horror, Kuttner offers gorgeous, detailed—both in natural history and in culture—settings that feed his top-drawer plots.

The Angry Planet

by John Keir Cross Children stow away on the first spaceship to Mars (built in their uncle’s barn) only to find themselves in the middle of the battle between the forces of good and evil. (Spoiler: Evil wins.) This was a profound lesson for me at age eleven.

The Last Planet

by Andre Norton Norton, the first woman inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, shows a future so distant that people know of Earth only by legends. The conceit opened my eyes to the fact that the world—my world—was as transitory a place as Norton’s Nineveh or ancient Rome.

Brother’s Keeper David Kaczynski’s new memoir, Every Last Tie: The Story of the Unabomber and His Family, is a compassionate and complex story of one family’s path from anguish to understanding. For Duke University Press editor Gisela Fosado, the project began one afternoon in 2012, when she happened to tune into a radio program featuring Kaczynski, a poet and social-justice activist: A FEW YEARS AGO, I heard David speak on All Things Considered in an episode called “When Your Family Member Does the Unthinkable.” This was just after the James Holmes shooting tragedy in Colorado and during a time when much of the media were turning to stories about mental illness and violence. During the story, David recounted the difficult moment when he and his partner, Linda, decided to turn in David’s brother, Ted, to the FBI, since they had begun to suspect that he was the Unabomber. David also spoke about his career in social-justice advocacy and his anti-death-penalty work in New York—issues that interest me as well.

For days after hearing that story, I kept thinking how remarkable it was that David had managed to befriend his brother’s victims. This work of bridging broken bonds within communities in the aftermath of violence was, in fact, at the heart of his life’s work. I decided to reach out to him by e-mail. It seemed like a long shot, but I hoped that he would be willing to write a book sharing his story and expanding on his ideas on restorative justice.

JUST PUBLISHED

Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise (Grand Central), the posthumous novel of Duke professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos, was completed shortly before his death in 2013. The real-life friendship between explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley and Mark Twain takes a fictional detour down the Mississippi and into Cuba.

Politics for the Anthropocene (Harvard University Press), is earning comparisons to Rachel Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring.

Civil rights activist and former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa James A. Joseph reveals lessons in leadership in Saved for a Purpose: A Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values (Duke University Press). Joseph is professor emeritus of public policy at Duke.

Who better than Jim Rogers, former CEO of Duke Energy and current Rubenstein Fellow at Duke, to write about world energy consumption? In Lighting the World: Transforming Our Energy Future by Bringing Electricity to Everyone (St. Martin’s Press), Rogers offers experienced perspective on energy innovation.

Duke law professor Jedediah Purdy’s environmental tome, After Nature: A

The wonders of evolution are explored in Nicholas School professor Michael Tennesen’s The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (Simon & Schuster).

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SPORTS

O

ne Saturday morning in the late 1980s, Marissa Young entered a bedroom where her father, Robert, was recovering from working the graveyard shift.

Young jostled him until he awoke. She wanted to join a friend in signing up for the local softball league, and she needed a ride. “Softball? You want to play softball?” he replied, in disbelief since his daughter was in just the first grade. “Have your mom take you.”

Young’s mother took her to registration, and that trip launched Young’s stellar softball career: from her early years in recreational leagues and youth travel teams to her accomplishments as a high-school standout and a collegiate star.

More than twenty-five years later, Young, a three-time All-American pitcher and Big 10 Player of the Year at the University of Michigan, is the new head coach of the Duke women’s softball team.

“It’s such a national brand,” Young says, as she relaxes in her office at Cameron Indoor Stadium. It smells of

become more competitive, universities and colleges are scouting girls even before they reach high school.

With that pool of eighth-grade and freshman recruits exhausted, Young must pick from the best high-school juniors. That’s a challenge, she says, “especially with the academic standards here. I’m looking for kids who won’t be overwhelmed by them.”

Nevertheless, nine players have committed to play at Duke; twelve scholarships will be phased in over time.

“I’m excited about the culture they’re bringing,” Young says. “They know what they want academically and professionally. Softball is icing on the cake.”

Young has coached a fledgling program before. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2003, she was named head coach at Concordia in 2008. After three seasons, during which she took the team from a 2–20 record to 23–23, she became an assistant coach at Eastern Michigan and, later, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Young’s expertise is coaching pitchers and catchers. In softball, a pitcher’s windup uses a windmill technique, which involves a comMarissa Young is building a women’s varsity softball team from scratch. | BY LISA SORG plicated set of coordinated movements involving the arms, shoulders, legs, hips, even the tilt of fresh paint and new carpet. Two shiny aluminum bats the head. “I break it down from the foundation,” Young rest in a corner, with a baseball she uses to teach hand-eye says. “I use film a lot so they can see what they’re doing coordination. “It couldn’t be better.” well. Pitching is also mental. I educate them on how to At Duke, softball has been a club sport, not a fullhandle those situations.” fledged varsity program. The university has discussed During her coaching career, Young has consulted with adding softball as a varsity sport since the late 1990s, but her former coach and mentor, Carol Hutchins at the Uniit wasn’t until 2013 that the administration announced versity of Michigan. “She knows how to get the most out it would do so, says Todd Mesibov, associate director of of her players,” Young says. “She pushed her kids to be athletics/compliance. the best they can be. She was real, authentic, honest—a “In the ’90s, North Carolina softball was a slow-pitch coach you never wanted to disappoint.” high-school sport,” Mesibov says. But over the past ten Hutchins is quick to return the compliment. She calls years, the popularity of fast-pitch softball spread beyond Young “a difference-maker, a pitcher with an attitude, a the traditional Sun Belt states of Texas and California. hitter, a competitor. And she brings that to her coaching.

Meanwhile, the ACC expanded to include schools with She worked her tail off at Concordia. I’ve told her the varsity softball teams. sky’s the limit.”

Since Young is not inheriting a program from a previous coach but starting the team from scratch, she has to Young’s work ethic came from her father. Although he recruit players and staff, order equipment and uniforms, slept in on the morning she signed up for her first softball team, he used his experience as a baseball player and and even consult with architects on a new 1,500-seat-capacity stadium, which will be built north of the fielda coach to diligently work with her. “He was tough on hockey facility on East Campus. And every task has to be me,” Young says. “I wasn’t the most talented player, but finished by the first pitch of the 2017-18 season.

I worked really hard and had a passion for competition.”

“This experience is life-changing for me, my family, Perhaps Young’s competitive spirit can be summed and all the women I bring in,” says Young, who has three up in one pivotal moment: As a kid, Young saw another children. player, a pitcher, under pressure, crying on the mound.

Building a team is even more difficult now than when What did Young do?

Young was a high-school recruit. At fourteen, Young “I said, ‘Give me the ball.’ ” n decided she wanted to play college softball, but in the Sorg is a freelance journalist and former fast-pitch softball late ’90s, university programs didn’t recruit prospects until they were juniors and seniors. Now, as the sport has player. She lives in Durham.

Making her best pitch

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Photo by Jon Gardiner

First base: Young’s expertise is coaching pitchers and catchers.

A Patient Path to the

Nobel

In his life and in his work, biochemist Paul Modrich focuses on the fundamentals.

W

By Robert J. Bliwise

alk into the science lab of a newly minted Nobel laureate, and you’ll spot the expected and not-so-expected things: pipettes, flasks, syringes, centrifuges, filtration equipment, radioactive-safe refrigerators, disposable gloves, notebooks of data, the journals Nature and Science, books like Molecular Biology of the Gene and The Biology of Cancer, tubes of Elmer’s glue, and a couple of pet guppies in their tanks. Displayed on walls and as computer screen-savers are images pointing to an enduring attachment to New Mexico: a Native American in full Navajo gear, an antelope herd, views of the surrounding mesas, riders in a rodeo, buffalo roaming on Ted Turner’s nearby ranch. Plus some fading photos of a tiger named Camilla that, back in the day, made her second home under a lab bench.

Paul Modrich’s lab is a reflection of the man. Meticulous, observant, and as unassuming as his standard outfit, blue jeans. He hates any hint of sloppiness or carelessness; he hates any trace of bragging or bluster. A James B. Duke Professor of biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, he was awarded one-third of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. One of his co-winners is Aziz Sancar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—who had been putting Modrich’s name up for the Nobel for some ten years. The other is Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, near London.

For decades Modrich has studied cell-based mismatch repair, the molecular machinery that detects and corrects errors in DNA replication. The research of the three scientists, who worked independently of each other, “has made a decisive contribution to the under-

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Photo by Chris Hildreth

Jon Gardiner

standing of how the living cell functions,” in the words where for your Nobel Peace Prize. Or for your Nobel of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. That research also Peace Prize in Chemistry. I hope you can enjoy the has contributed knowledge about “the molecular causes hoopla. Knowing you, I don’t think you will.” of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms beLefkowitz also shared “9 Simple Steps to Winning hind both cancer development and aging.” a Nobel Prize,” a prescription from Michael Brown, In early October, Modrich and his wife, lab col- the 1985 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medleague Vickers Burdett, were on vacation in Rumney, icine: Be curious. Train with a Nobel Prize-winner or New Hampshire, whose past notable residents include a equivalent. Find a partner to share the adventure. Find a nineteenth-century Supreme problem that fascinates you.

Court justice and an OlymFind someone to pay for your pic luger. Their 700-squarework. Work very hard. Solve foot cabin sits alongside a the problem. Be lucky. Pick small lake where they keep the right spouse. As Lefkowitz noted, that pretty much a canoe. The Nobel authorities in Sweden had a outlines the high points for hard time coming up with the life and work of Paul a phone number. He first Modrich. heard the news of the NoAbout that Nobel-relatbel from former students ed need to find the right who were texting him with spouse: It happened for congratulations; one of his Modrich and Burdett when first calls was to his assistant they were both new to back at Duke, apologizing Duke. She was trained as a in advance for what was microbiologist and was running her own lab. One day sure to be a crazy day on she came by the Modrich lab the job. A few days later he and asked him the question found the official announcement somewhere in his Apthat sparked a friendship, ple Mail “junk” file. There and then a romance: Could was pressure on Modrich he spare some samples of to make a hasty return to enzymes for one of her experiments? Since then, she North Carolina. He demurred in favor of finishing says, “We’ve been together the long-planned stint away basically twenty-four hours One center court, two Nobel laureates: Modrich and taking the time to close a day.” As lab colleagues, and Robert Lefkowitz at this fall’s Countdown to down the cabin properly. they work in the same space.

Craziness—Modrich’s first Cameron visit When he did get back “We enjoy each other’s company. I’m a sounding-board to campus, Modrich was, for him, and he’s a soundof course, projected into instant celebrity status. That meant, among much ing-board for me. But we try not to discuss too much else, being brought to midcourt for a basketball sea- work at home.” son opener, which happened to be his very first time One of their early shared experiences came with the in Cameron Indoor Stadium since arriving at Duke, as arrival of Camilla the tiger cub. The cub came from an assistant professor, in 1976. Along with fellow bio- Carolina Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro, North Carolina, chemist Robert Lefkowitz, who won the Nobel Prize in a wildlife sanctuary devoted to protecting big cats.

Chemistry three years ago (and who joined Modrich Modrich was a friend of the organization’s director, who on the basketball court), he’s authentically a home- was promoting the idea of having infant tigers—destined for zoos or animal reserves—hand-raised by hugrown Nobel laureate for Duke.

At a campus celebration, Lefkowitz, referring to mans until they were about six months old. Modrich’s Modrich, offered a wry commentary on the life of a photos show the cub, fueled by a meal of chicken parts Nobelist: “Your name has been forever changed. You and playing with a stuffed toy, on Duke’s campus. He are now Nobel Laureate Paul Modrich, no matter how brought it to work every day. Also pictured in the scene inappropriate that title might be, when somebody is is Modrich’s first lab technician, who, perhaps showing introducing you. And you’ll be congratulated every- big-cat influence, went on to become a veterinarian.

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As Modrich recalls, “There were two things that our apartment complex prohibited: a water bed and a pet.

We had a water bed, a dog, and a tiger.” Modrich was ready to part with the tiger when the time came, and it weighed about sixty pounds. Sure enough, it did tear a hole in the water bed. That didn’t sink Modrich’s spirits, and he managed to repair the bed.

It’s the molecular mechanism of self-repair that put him on the path to the Nobel. Genetic material is maintained and corrected in the face of copying errors, radiation, and inherent DNA instability. Nearly 2 trillion cells divide in the body every day; the more times DNA is copied, the greater the chance that a change, including a change with bad consequences, will be made. As one analysis, in Chemical & Engineering News, described it, without DNA repair, humans would “live short, dark, disease-ridden lives.”

According to the will of Alfred Nobel, the lives singled out for the chemistry prize would recognize “the most important chemical discovery or improvement.”

The Australia-based Cosmos magazine noted that over the past decade, half of the chemistry Nobels have been awarded for discoveries in biological systems. The

faithful to that classic approach: You take bacteria and grind them up, make some sort of soup or cocktail, and then go fishing for some way to purify it. The way you go fishing is to devise a simple, straightforward, elegant test to isolate bacterial activity. Paul has carried on in that tradition. And he has produced a wealth of information about mutation and how cells correct replication errors.”

That wealth of information from the Modrich lab began with work on bacteria, then fruit flies, and finally human cell lines. Early on, Modrich decided to “work on something fundamental,” says Allen. “When you work on something derivative, you can be pretty sure it’s going to produce something, and that certainty attracts some people who are in academic jobs. When you do that sort of work, extending knowledge about what’s already been proven, there is little risk in terms of the ability to produce scientific papers and get grant money. The major advances in scientific knowledge are a result of asking fundamental questions, as Paul does. But there is never a guarantee that trying to tackle those questions will yield results.”

A world of biological complexity was long familiar

“Paul has an amazing insight into science, almost intuitive.” chemistry Nobel going to Modrich, then, points to the permeability of the boundaries that once defined science—and to the chemical underpinnings of our understanding of the human system.

“Paul has an amazing insight into science, almost intuitive,” says Bob Lahue, now professor of molecular genetics at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Lahue was a postdoc in the Modrich lab in the late 1980s. “There might be three explanations for a particular scientific result. And he would unfailingly predict one. Several months later, after doing all the experiments, it turned out he was right.”

Not just right in his scientific speculations. Also steadfast in his analytical approach. A Modrich lab member from the mid- to late 1990s, Dwayne Allen, says Modrich’s career “shows the power of classic biochemistry.” (Allen is now head of the quality-control lab at Ajinomoto North America, an amino-acid manufacturer for pharmaceuticals and medical foods.) Essentially, the idea is to keep purifying things to get at the fundamental understanding of a biological process.

“Sure, things have gotten fancier, with more expensive equipment and exotic methodologies. But Paul is

to Modrich. He grew up in Raton, in the northeastern corner of New Mexico, about ten miles from the Colorado border. It was not a land of endless opportunity.

“Everyone seemed to end up managing a store, working in the coal mines, or becoming a cowboy. That was about it.”

But to the future scientist, there were virtues to life in small-town New Mexico. “I guess life was different in those days,” he says. “My parents and the parents of my friends gave us a great deal of freedom. After school, we were on our own. And we spent a lot of time wandering the hills. I was always impressed by the natural beauty of the environment—the diversity of plant and animal life, the spectacular skies at night. You can go a few miles, and the ecology is completely different.

It was just a wonderful place to grow up.”

His father taught high-school biology; over the years, he coached football, basketball, and tennis, and he was among the first inductees into the New Mexico Coaches Hall of Fame. Just about everyone in the town of 7,000 or so seemed to know the elder Modrich. “He was also an excellent biology teacher. In fact he was the only biology teacher in town.” Modrich recalls getting

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Paul Modrich

an A in the course. He smiles and adds, “I don’t think carefully. He didn’t have to be taught. It was innate.” it was nepotism.”

In their life-after-Stanford conversations, Modrich “My father was a fairly large man. My brother was told Lehman that he wanted to work on gene regubuilt like him, and he was more interested than I was latory mechanisms. It would be his career-long chalin pursuing athletics. I was interested in other things,” lenge—pursued, Lehman emphasizes, with relentless he says. Other things like biology. “When I took my focus. (Before he was lured to Duke, Modrich went father’s biology course, it was pretty traditional—phys- on to a postdoc fellowship at Harvard University and iology, taxonomy. There was an experimental biology a brief teaching stint at the University of California at course being developed that emphasized molecular bi- Berkeley.) ology. He was one of the first teachers to participate in Farid Kadyrov, a postdoc under Modrich in the early that. But it kicked in a year 2000s, says he heard a lot after I had taken biology from Modrich about those from him.” Still, his father shaping years. (Modrich had discovered a new angle was instrumental in getting into biology, and Modrich Kadyrov his current position, associate professor at recalls the fatherly advice: Southern Illinois University “Son, you ought to learn School of Medicine.) As it about this DNA stuff. It’s turned out, another future really interesting.”

Nobel laureate would have By the time he was a college sophomore, Modrich, as his scientific origin point too, was finding the field the same Stanford lab. “Senior researchers would treat interesting. At that point, graduate students as colat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was leagues. They would always Photographing his familiar New Mexico: Navajo taking a course that exbe available. Someone like girls at Taos Pueblo

“Son, you ought to learn about this DNA plored the work of James Watson and Francis Crick, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. His undergraduate adviser was Salvador Luria. A microbial geneticist, Luria would receive the Nobel Prize the year after Modrich graduated. Modrich landed a job in the lab of Ethan Singer, a pioneer in genetic recombination. He started in a job washing glassware in the lab; eventually he helped out with experiments. As a senior he took a graduate-level course in molecular genetics.

From MIT, Modrich went to Stanford University for graduate work. His Stanford mentor, Robert Lehman, now in his nineties, remembers Modrich as “the most intense graduate student I ever had. He focused on a problem like a laser beam and could not be distracted or diverted until he got a successful conclusion from the experiment. Paul already knew about life in the lab; he knew that much of the time there are frustrations in science, but occasionally something comes out of the work you’ve done. Things worked in his hands. When he set up an experiment, he thought it through very

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stuff.

Paul could always walk into a researcher’s office and talk about anything.” And that, Kadyrov says, became the model for the Modrich lab at Duke.

Shin-San (Michael) Su Ph.D. ’87 spent four years in the Modrich lab as a graduate student in biochemistry. Today Su is senior vice president for research and development at Agios, a pharmaceutical company that applies cellular metabolism to the treatment of cancer and genetic diseases. He and other lab veterans look back on the frequent group meetings as basic to their lab experience: People would talk about the hypotheses they came up with, how they might proceed to test those hypotheses, the results they were getting, and how they might interpret those results. All that learning and observing was basic to a scientific education.

“Each individual scientist joining Paul’s lab had his own line of research,” Su recalls. “But by working tougher and brainstorming ideas, they also managed to tackle much more complex problems.” After Su completed his thesis defense, Modrich and Burdett took him out to dinner. “I asked him for any word of advice

as I continued my scientific career. He told me to be original in my thinking and to follow my gut, and not to just follow in other people’s footsteps.”

As she has watched him run the lab over the decades, Burdett says she has admired Modrich’s expert balancing act: encouraging lab members to avoid going off on a research tangent, to keep an eye on the overall picture, not to get hopelessly lost in the minutia. “It’s easy to imagine doing work that draws you in at the moment but that leads you to a dead end. Paul has always been good about keeping everyone on track by reminding them that these are pieces of a big puzzle.” And there are always the questions, from Modrich and lab colleagues, driving their science: Could you do this experiment better? Could you get cleaner results? Could you ensure the results you have are reproducible?

“When I look at those I regard as having been the most successful in the lab, and who have proven successful on their own, I think they share several characteristics,” Modrich says. “One is extraordinary interest in and enthusiasm for science. The other is a superb work ethic.”

Those are qualities that another postdoc from the early 2000s, Nicoleta Constantin, says she saw everywhere in the lab. “There wasn’t a strict hierarchy. My feeling was that we were all equal; Paul didn’t favor

ate to those expectations.” She still looks to Modrich for work-related advice, even though she’s veered into a different field: She’s a pediatric nurse in the children’s hospital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Modrich sees his own growth as a scientist tied to his becoming “a little more discriminating” around research questions. “When you’re doing science in a particular problem area, there are many, many different paths that you can follow. Selecting the right path, the right sequence of questions to pursue, can be very important in the success of that project. That’s something I’ve tried to convey to the people who have worked with me. The path that you’re following can be changed dramatically as a consequence of the work of others in the field. Or as a consequence of a serendipitous finding you make in the lab.

“I mean, you write a research grant and you say, ‘I’m going to do A, B, C, D, and E.’ And that’s really not the way science works. It’s more likely that you’re pursuing one thing, and then you find something interesting that may lead you to change your direction. What I think is very important for success in science is making the right choices, because at any point you can take multiple paths.”

Science is grinding work. It doesn’t deliver instant re-

It’s really interesting.” anybody over anybody else. In that lab you had smart, self-confident, independent people. And there was competition, for sure.”

It was a competition that involved demonstrating ability as an independent scientist, but also as a collaborative researcher who could inspire others into new thinking. Modrich “would show this laser-like ability to isolate a problem, to define a question in the most elegant and simple way,” she says. “And if we landed on a dead end, with results that weren’t reproducible, he would sit us down and we’d troubleshoot or move on to a different project. But it would always come down to doing work of high quality. Paul was impeccable in that regard. If you see a published paper with his name on it, you know it’s of high quality. Otherwise he wouldn’t let it out of his lab.”

The training she got from Modrich’s lab “was not only about DNA repair,” she adds. “It was a way of thinking. It was a way of living. It was the discipline and the motivation to get you to your goals. It was about high expectations and getting results appropri-

wards. Modrich has been turned down for grants. And he observes that the “rule of thumb” in science is that 90 percent of experiments don’t work.

Frustration and pressure are “just part of the life of a scientist,” he says. “But it’s a truly wonderful life. You’re essentially your own boss. And you determine what you do, what kind of questions you pursue. Essentially you plot your own future.” His own future, he adds, has him in a better place, temperamentally, after a lot of the Nobel hoopla—the White House receptions, the constant invitations to keynote scientific conferences, the presentation of the Nobel Lecture, the bestowing of the Nobel Medal and the Nobel Diploma by Sweden’s royalty—has exhausted itself this winter.

The lab is much smaller than it was in the past, and Modrich talks about now seeing himself on the path to retirement. There’s less administrative oversight required on his end. And more time at the lab bench. A visitor wonders whether the thought of returning to his scientific roots is pleasing—more pleasing than the hoopla. He smiles broadly. “Exactly.” n

Go to dukemagazine.duke.edu to see videos of how colleagues reacted to Modrich’s win.

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Bringing Out the Bones

Wielding the tools of the digital age, Duke researchers are disrupting the science of the Stone Age.

BY LOUISE FLYNN

S

treaked with ancient limestone dust, the scientist hovering near Steve Churchill’s worktable waited to see his reaction to the fossil she’d surgically removed from its eons-old resting place eighty meters below ground. Crammed in the tent’s open window, a camera crew from National Geographic gathered more footage. Researchers came in and out, sidestepping the tangle of cables and lab equipment.

Two bloggers tapped away on their laptops. Already the team had stowed nearly a hundred bones and fragments of an extinct human ancestor in the vault, but which one was still anyone’s guess. Every new specimen was a clue, a possibility.

Churchill’s glasses slid down his nose as he scrutinized the hominid fossil under the task light. He was certain of one thing: They had more than a couple of individuals. Maybe many more. How did they all get there? The paleoanthropologists in South Africa were as stumped as the armchair science buffs following the tweets and posts in real-time.

As quickly as the Rising Star cave was giving up its secrets, it was adding to its mystery—one that easily could take Churchill and a generation of his Duke students their whole careers to solve.

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In a profession in which the number of fossils available for study is dwarfed by the number of human paleontologists clambering to study them, even a lunch bag of hominid bone fragments constitutes a wild success. The Rising Star Expedition in November 2013 changed all that in more ways than one: Not only is it the largest cache of hominid fossils ever found on the African continent, but it also pulled back the tent flaps on the whole process, setting a new standard for open-access science. And by uploading the fossil data to Duke’s own 3D data archive, MorphoSource, the team has upended the secretive and exclusionary way our human ancestry is studied and shared.

Paleoanthropologists have long been a cagey and territorial bunch, notorious for keeping their discoveries close to the proverbial safari vest for fear a colleague might scoop them. “It’s a little bit like a Mafia thing,” says Churchill in describing how scholars typically treat their precious finds—and each other. “People who have exclusive access to the fossils have got a lot of power, because other people know if they do anything to upset them, they’re never going to see that fossil. People play the game because the reward to some degree is access.”

Open access: The Homo naledi fossils have been digitally viewed more than 28,000 times and downloaded more than 6,000 times on Duke’s MorphoSource website.

Churchill and his expedition partner in Johannesburg, Lee Berger, are advocating for a more democratic model of scholarship, one in which fossils are shared, not hoarded, and collaboration is considered essential. “To me the open-access aspect of this is as exciting as the science,” says Churchill. Inclusivity always has been a part of his teaching and research: He’s welcomed undergraduates on field expeditions and offered his Ph.D. candidates plum billing on important publications. But putting newly discovered human ancestor fossil data on an open-access website is taking that practice to the extreme.

“The idea is to change the game for everyone,” says Doug Boyer, assistant professor of evolutionary

All digital fossil images courtesy MorphoSource

anthropology at Duke and the creator of MorphoSource. Through his website, scientists can share information on fossils in a new way, and anyone with an account can download a fossil and print out a replica on a 3D printer. “Instead of working with a hundred specimens per study, you could be working with 500 or 1,000. People will feel more willing and more obligated to share when they’ve benefited themselves from other people sharing.”

But sharing is not a virtue that comes naturally to the stone-and-bone set. Churchill, a world-renowned expert on Neanderthals and their gnarly weaponry, is not surprised that open science is attracting slings and arrows. No one expects evolution to be easy, least of all those who study it.

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“We can’t lose the connection between the digital

Bone collector: Steve Churchill’s paleonanthropology lab is stocked with casts of hominid fossils.

data and the original specimen,

O

n the morning of October 2, 2013, Churchill arrived at his BioSci office intent on hunkering down with the book he was writing on Neanderthals. He was still on sabbatical and determined to make headway on the manuscript. Nonetheless, when he checked his e-mail, he found a worthy distraction: pictures of a lower jaw lodged in cave sediment next to a tape measure sent by his good pal Berger, a research professor in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (nicknamed Wits).

Judging the wear patterns on the

showman. “But he has the most generous spirit you’ll ever meet.”

They met in 1994, then two green Ph.D.s, at a conference at Berkeley.

Berger, his pockets full of fossil casts, told Churchill about some sites in South Africa’s Free State that had fossils from the time period Churchill was interested in. Churchill had done fieldwork in Israel and throughout Europe and knew that established teams in those areas made it nearly impossible for young upstarts to get a foothold. What he needed was an unencumbered corner of the map and a partner to explore it with.

The next day, he spotted Berger

of time to publish on anything they found, and after that anybody with credentials could see the casts and originals—even their worst enemies.

Churchill struck on a field model to support their research. From 1999 to 2007, he ran Duke in South Africa, a six-week, two course-credit program for between six and twenty students who often got more adventure than they bargained for. (Once Churchill, Berger, and their Duke charges narrowly escaped being trampled by a nursery herd of mother elephants and their young.) The partnership paid off in 2008 when they made a major discovery with the other two members of

or we lose the integrity of the system.”

teeth, Churchill thought it might be a robust Australopith (a more ape-like hominid) called Paranthropus. A terrific discovery, because only bits and pieces of the species had been found, and a new collection could be a Rosetta Stone of sorts. What intrigued him even more, though, was the evidence of buried fossils—maybe even a skull—studding the ground in the photos. A flurry of e-mails between the two men followed, and by the end of the day, Churchill had agreed to join Berger for a week in November to bring up the bones of the Rising Star cave system.

Churchill’s partnership with the charismatic and ruddy-faced Berger, who can work an Indiana Jones fedora just as well as his optimal camera angles, goes back more than twenty years. “He does not lack for serotonin, or confidence,” says Churchill, a tall, fit fifty-six, who plays the reserved, thoughtful straight man to Berger’s Photo by Les Todd

across the book room and thought, “Well, no guts, no glory,” and marched up to him. “I said, ‘You know those sites you were talking about last night?

Well, let’s excavate them together. I’ll raise the money. I’ll take care of logistics. I’ll bring the crew, and we’ll publish everything together.’ ” The following summer they were in South Africa, nosing around the caves where predators dragged hapless hominids and the clumsy ones fell to their deaths.

“What’s really funny is that Lee had found most of the money and did most of the organizing,” says Churchill. “I didn’t really hold up my end of the deal.” Lucky for him they were well-suited to work together—not only because of the yin and yang of their personalities, but also because they shared, even as early-career scientists, a desire to change the standard practices of the profession. They made a pact: to take a “reasonable” amount

their team, Darryl de Ruiter and Peter Schmid in the Cradle of Humankind, a fossil dreamscape roughly 200 miles from Johannesburg. At the time, five known hominid species, including our own, had called the area home.

In a de-roofed cave in Malapa, not far from Rising Star, they recovered two partial skeletons of a previously unknown species they named Austalopthicus sediba. It was the most complete hominid assemblage since Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis found in Ethiopia in 1974 and named after the trippy Beatles song. True to their promise, the team members published in two years, shared their fossils widely, and invited younger scientists to work on the prestigious announcement papers.

Five years later, in November 2013, Berger got the band back together at Rising Star—and what he had planned this time would up the ante once more.

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hile Churchill puzzled over the curious mandibles and phalanges coming out the cave, Doug Boyer prepared to quietly launch his own fossil project, MorphoSource. The idea for a digital archive that could store and share three-dimensional data on natural objects—from fossils and weird beetles to large mammals—was something he’d been working on since 2009 as a graduate student. When he came to Duke in 2012 to teach, he brought the bare-bones idea with him, and the university funded the development.

“The idea stuck with me because it seemed so practical,” he says. “It’s a way to provide more access and at the same time help museums protect their valuable collections.” Digital 3D images can be found on other Web archives, of course, but Boyer says the quality and terms of use vary too much to be useful on a large scale. The images often are incompatible with other data sets, and the websites don’t have special features to protect privacy, facilitate collaboration, or track how and when the digital specimens are used.

The genius of MorphoSource is that it can do and be so many different things at once: personal locker, virtual museum, searchable database, intellectual-property manager. Scanned and uploaded specimens can be downloaded or viewed among a select group or as a solo project, in a highly controlled environment.

Data usage is tracked, and after publication, private data can be opened to all.

A peer-review option is built into the system, too. The clean design is simple to navigate, and anyone—even a mid34 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

dle-school student—with an account can participate, but scientists and curators are able to select the level of access they give to their specimens.

Above all, Boyer says the platform must protect the authenticity of the fossils and scientific data, and to do that the interests of the institutions that house the real specimens must be respected. “Museums are the stewards of physical collections,” he says.

“We can’t lose the connection between the digital data and the original specimen or we lose the integrity of the system.”

The scholarly applications are endless:

the powerful tool he had waiting for him on campus. Nor did Boyer know what his senior faculty adviser had unearthed in South Africa. Each had a project that would transform the other’s work.

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few days after Berger e-mailed Churchill those first photos of the jawbone, he posted an eye-catching want-ad on Facebook. He needed anthropologists with excavation experience, but also, “The per-

Big dig: Left, a blogger, Wits curator, and Churchill in the science tent. Right, cavers excavating the chamber.

Boyer and his crack team of undergraduates, grad students, and postdocs are digitizing and uploading the Lemur Center’s remarkable collection of 32,000 early-primate fossils, including an extinct gorilla-sized, lemur-like creature. And there’s discussion of a partnership with the American Museum of Natural History.

But in the fall of 2013, Boyer was keeping long hours in his plain and narrow BioSci office, working out the last glitches. Directly below him was Churchill’s darkened lab, stocked with sepia-tinted long bones and skulls, where most semesters students can be heard gasping and laughing as they shoot arrowheads into ballistics gel. “The cosmic coincidence,” says Boyer, “is that his specimens were discovered about the same time the site became available.”

Out on the veld, Churchill didn’t know

son must be skinny and preferably small.

They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, and they should have some caving experience,” it read.

One reason the expedition would be so challenging was the structure of the cave system itself. The fossils were located at the end of an obstacle course of cramped tunnels and climbs ending in a vertical chute, about eight inches wide and thirty-nine feet long, that drops into the final small chamber. Air moves more slowly underground, and the oxygen and CO2 levels inside had to be monitored closely.

The cables for electricity and communications snaking through the route would need to be maintained. The survey equipment used in typical excavations was too bulky to fit through the passageways, so a techy grad student at Wits co-opted a John Hawks

hand-held 3D scanner to record the position of every fossil.

And everyone going into and out of the cave would have to watch each step: The fossils themselves were very fragile, because they were buried in sediment, not the usual concrete matrix, and therefore not as heavily mineralized.

The potential for danger was constant—on one of Churchill’s first days, the CO2 levels spiked, and the cavers were evacuated. Days later a violent lightning storm blew down tents and cut off all communication with the cavers.

Marina Elliott, then still finishing her Ph.D. in archaeology in British Columbia,

“I knew

step by careful step toward the shaft of light where they began. The cases went to Berger and then the science tent, and the caver—dirty, sweaty, jittery, and by then very hungry—usually followed to see what the senior scientists thought of the fossils.

Elliott remembers when they brought up a piece of cranium. The scientists gathered around the specimen whispering, and the tent went quiet as everyone strained to eavesdrop. Finally, news of the genus—“Unequivocally Homo!”—and Elliott says everyone broke into cheers.

There was so much excitement and anticipation in the moment, Elliott says, “they

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bove ground and half a continent away, Chris Walker Ph.D. ’15, then one of Churchill’s most promising Ph.D. students, was holed up in a hostel in Ethiopia, struggling to collect the final data he needed for his dissertation. In Europe, the twenty-seven-year-old hit roadblock after roadblock. Tanzania and Ethiopia brought more government paperwork, more rejections to his requests, and worse, the maddening silence of no reply at all from the Western scientists who controlled the fossils he needed to see.

“It’s a tough system to navigate as an early-career scientist,” says Walker. “It’s

instantly that it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

was one of fifty-seven people who answered the ad, and fitting all the qualifications, she was awarded one of the six cave-excavator positions. Berger told her he had sent his two teenage children along the route into the chamber first, because, she recalls him saying, “If one of you had been injured, there’s no way I could stand in front of your parents and say I had not been prepared to send my own children in there.”

Elliott was more concerned about doing good work than getting hurt. “At the time I still felt very much like a student in awe of all these big guns who turned up,” she says. Down in the chamber, she would hear the disembodied voices of Churchill and the other senior scientists as she recorded data and dug out fossils. “They were watching us on the monitors above ground, and [through microphones] we could hear their ‘Ooos’ and ‘ahhs.’ ” But the mood in the communications tent would turn somber as the cavers, their fossil cases packed with invaluable specimens, disappeared into the nightmarish chimney chute, scrabbled down an incline called Dragon’s Back, belly-crawled through the narrow tunnel, and climbed

probably could have said anything, and we would have cheered.”

The reaction might well have been relief, too. The professional stakes—mounting a $2.5 million expedition chronicled in real-time over social media—could not have been higher for the scientists.

But Elliott remembers Churchill as the calm, steadying force of the group. “He doesn’t jump into every conversation. Lee would be describing something in true Lee fashion, quite boisterous, and then there would be a lull, and that’s when Steve would add something that clarified it. And it was always right on the mark.”

At night they sat around the campfire with guitars and beers and big stories of dangers in the field. In the wee hours, cavers might stir from their tent to Skype with grade-school students. Elliott Skyped from inside a cave chamber with a school in Hawaii. “The kids were agog,” she says. “People can’t get enough of human origins, and scientists may have dropped the ball in not getting people more engaged. There’s the sexy stuff, the adventure and danger, but really what people want is the science.”

very cliquey. Even if you need, say, a day or two with fossils in Ethiopia, you have to book ten or twelve days because you never know what problems you’ll run into.

When I was there, I wasn’t allowed to get measurements on fossils I needed that had been announced and described.”

Luminaries like Churchill find themselves defeated by the system, too. There’s a certain Homo erectus skull Churchill wants to study for comparison and, “even though ten papers have come out on it, we still can’t see it,” he says. “And probably that will be the situation for my lifetime.”

The discouragement can prove too much for students. Walker wondered if he could succeed in such a dysfunctional profession—paranoia was rampant, grants have a 2 percent acceptance rate, and protocols are slow to change. While in Ethiopia, he says, he “questioned whether I wanted to stay in academia at all.” But, as if by kismet, he flipped on the TV just in time to hear a BBC report mention a familiar name. The newscaster was talking about Lee Berger and the impressive team he’d gathered at a cave about thirty miles from Johannesburg called Rising Star.

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planned to go to South Africa after Ethiopia—he couldn’t believe his luck.

By the time he arrived in December, the high-tech camp that housed a core group of forty or so cavers, scientists, and support staff was long gone, and the fossils transported to a temporary holding room at Wits. The crew from National Geographic had weeks of footage to edit, and the bloggers’ posts were getting hits. Churchill was back in Durham—on sabbatical with his book—but Berger, still bone-drunk and happy to share with a trusted young colleague, brought out a box that contained a special specimen.

Walker opened it. “I knew instantly that it was like nothing I’d ever seen before,” he says of the immature tibia. After showing him more fossils, Berger invited him to apply to the month-long workshop that he, Churchill, and the other senior scientists would be leading in May to put as many highly trained eyeballs on the more than 1,550 specimens, all skeletal remains from as many as fifteen individuals, young to old.

“These fossils speak to the history of every person alive today,” says Walker.

When he got back to Duke, he was fired up once again. He met with Churchill 36 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Les Todd

In Walker’s second year at Duke studying evolutionary anthropology, Churchill had invited him to work on sediba’s post-cranial skeleton analysis—everything below the neck, Churchill’s specialty—and in 2010, he accompanied his professor to the Wits campus to see the original sediba fossils on display. The city was hosting the World Cup, and vuvuzelas blared long into the night. Now he could picture them—Berger, Churchill, de Ruiter, and John Hawks— their infectious optimism, and all the young scientists like himself, swarming the place, itching for a piece of the action. He’d

Creator: Doug Boyer started working on his digital archive, MorphoSource, as a graduate student.

and told him, “This thing is weird. I don’t know what it is, but it’s weirder than I ever thought.” Churchill had left the site halfway through the expedition to get back to his writing and hadn’t seen all the material Berger had showed Walker at Wits. It would be a long five months before the workshop, but then they would have access to the treasure trove.

“If it weren’t for Steve, Lee, and the workshop, I probably would have abandoned the profession altogether,” says Walker, who is now a researcher and instructor at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Rising Star brought me back.”

I

I

n May, Walker arrived in Johannesburg to join caver Marina Elliott and the other early-career scientists Berger had invited to the workshop. With this new batch of bones

to study, he decided to scrap his dissertation plan—an exhilarating and terrifying move—and start anew with naledi. Wits set up a special study space—a veritable Rising Star War Room—complete with a fossil vault, lab equipment, microscopes, laptops, and everything else the team of researchers would need to begin deciphering the mysteries of that bleak chamber.

The fossil assemblage included nearly every type of bone—jaws, ribs, teeth, five partial skulls, pelvises, a nearly complete set of bones for a foot, another for a hand, and a third for an inner ear. Some of the junior scientists on the sediba team five years earlier were now leading small groups on this project. Churchill gathered all the leaders of the various post-cranial skeleton teams—the foot group, the pelvis team, the upper-limb folks, etc.—at a coffee shop to ask them what they were seeing. “And it was like drinking from a fire house,” he says. “This was the first

opportunity they had to hear a coherent picture of what was starting to emerge.

They’re telling me so much, and this creature is making no sense.”

Night after night, discussions would continue at the hotel where everyone was staying, or spill into the local pub. Elliott, currently a postdoc research fellow at Wits, proved herself as adept at analysis as she was at spelunking, but admits she was no match for Churchill at the pool table.

“I don’t know if Steve misspent his youth playing pool or what, but he was certainly better than me,” she says.

chill suggested they meet with Berger.

The next month the three of them gathered around Boyer’s computer monitor as he zoomed in on the 3D image of a prized Venezuelan primate fossil. He rotated it, flipped it over, and demonstrated the site’s other whistles and bells. Berger slapped his hands on the desk, recalls Boyer, and said, “You’ve already built the site I was looking for! It’ll take two phone calls—to your vice provost and my vice chancellor—and we’re done!”

It took a bit more than that. A memorandum of understanding was drawn

“The idea is to change

Their hominid took shape quickly: Standing less than five-feet tall, she is bipedal with arched feet good for striding long distances, but with curved toes that indicate she can climb trees like earlier primates. Her shortened arms and longer legs are similar to Homo erectus, but her brain is too small to fit that species, says Churchill. The combination of traits and characteristics—some from more ape-like creatures and others more closely resembling modern humans—convinced the team that they indeed had discovered a new species.

Berger named her Homo naledi, after the word for “star” in the South African language of Sesotho. Now the team had to figure out how to make her widely accessible once they were ready to publish.

MorphoSource had been launched softly and safely into the world, but Boyer was so busy tweaking things, adding new features as fresh data were uploaded, that he hadn’t talked to Churchill about it in great detail. Then one afternoon when the two were meeting as faculty mentor and protégé to discuss what Boyer would be teaching, the conversation turned to their own research. For the first time, both men saw the potential, and Chur-

at a shady table outside Twinnies, a coffee shop in Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, two years, nearly to the day, after that fateful e-mail from Berger. “And probably that’s how it should be.” Indeed, his former student Walker has printed out several casts for local schools to use.

Churchill is trying to settle back into campus life after the media whirlwind, but now he has critics to deal with, too.

Media darling naledi has not been embraced by everyone: Some colleagues at other universities have questioned whether the group published too fast—the fos-

the game for everyone.”

up for both Wits and Duke to sign. In it, Boyer said, they had to make clear that the project would promote scholarship for South African students and protect the value of the university’s fossil collection. “Africa has suffered from first-world countries usurping scholarship and scientific objects,” says Boyer. “We had to reassure them that they wouldn’t be cut out of the loop.”

On September 10, 2015, two years after the expedition—and 10,000 person-hours of work later—Homo naledi was introduced to the world with maximum limelight. The announcement paper, published in the open-source science journal elife, listed forty-eight co-authors.

Eighty-six specimens were up on MorphoSource for scientists and teachers to download that day. At the same time, PBS streamed a two-hour documentary on the expedition, a Nova and National Geographic joint production, and aired it on television six days later. Finally, Berger and Churchill had proven it is possible to liberate paleoanthropology from its notoriously creaky and cranky roots.

“There are middle-school teachers out there who have a better cast collection of naledi than I do,” says Churchill, sitting

sils haven’t been dated yet, and Churchill estimates thousands remain in the cave system. Others have cast doubt on the accuracy of the species identification.

“As with any science, people are going to bring different perspectives to it, and they’re going to see the evidence differently,” he says. “The beauty is that if you want to prove us wrong, we’ll do everything in our power to help you. You can print casts of the fossils. We’ll arrange for the cavers to take you into the cave.”

But a plane ticket to South African isn’t always necessary when you can examine fossils on a computer screen. Boyer says one of naledi’s most vocal critics has downloaded thirteen of her bones.

No matter what the next analysis brings, the Rising Star team already has brought to life the vision Berger and Churchill shook hands on twenty years ago. And in that way, Homo naledi is the missing link—between the old methodologies and the new. Now, somewhere in South Africa or North Carolina, a sixth-grader running her finger over a warm, fresh-from-the-classroom-printer fossil cast, knows the naledi mystery exists and that she may spend her life in wonder looking for the answer, too. n DUKE MAGAZINE

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F I R S T- P E R S O N

Crossing to Safety When the refugee story fixates on tragedy, the scope of the crisis—and the resilience of the people—is lost. | By Leena El-Sadek

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s the daughter of Arab immigrants, I’ve of- stories I encountered, as a student and researcher, did not. ten grappled with what home is. Born in If this photo was symbolic of the greater migrant crisis this the U.S., I spent the first few years of my world is experiencing, why was the discussion so narrowly life between Egypt and Mississippi as my focused on one country? parents were trying to discover the balance That night, I went home and searched online, looking for between heritage and opportunity. Dad some articulation on this tragedy. Khalid, one of the student learned to downplay his heavy Egyptian accent while mom refugees I met in Cairo during a Duke research grant experistruggled to make the hijab a familiar artifact to a predom- ence, had posted his thoughts on Facebook: inantly conservative-Christian town. Their language, their “I feel sorry for [Aylan], but he’s in a better place now. foods, the expression of their faith—these are elements that I don’t care about this story just because he’s Syrian. I care have constantly been in flux for them. about this story because we’ve seen this in my country, too.

But I was accustomed to a transnational, transcultural But our children back home can’t even make it to the walife—winter, spring, fall here, summers in Egypt—and my ters,” he wrote. “Many are dying just because of the smells experiences with migration shaped the way I understood and gases coming off the streets! But no one ever talks about this world: Some of us live betwixt and between like this. us.”

Khalid was a student in my English and photography It wasn’t until I came to Duke and began studying refugee populations that I understood my story as one of volun- classes three years ago at a refugee organization in Egypt. He tary migration and that was one of many unaccompanied teenagers there was this very difGlobally, one in every 122 individuals ferent experience of who escaped home— forced migration. in his case, Sudan—in is a displaced person.

My migration gave the hope of securing a me a malleable identity better life elsewhere. that helps me build connections with people who look noth- Other students came from Eritrea, Iraq, Palestine, Central ing like me. In working with refugees, particularly students African Republic, Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan. After my age, I’ve seen how their migrations stripped them of their nearly every sentence I spoke, five students eagerly translatidentity and forced them to create new lives of meaning in ed the lesson to the others. These students, just like ones at Duke, were inspired and energized by educational opportucommunities that did not nurture connections. nities, which explains why they endured the tedious translaIn other words: One passage is safe, the other is not This fall I was reminded again of this stark distinction. tion process in my class. They were determined to resettle in I was at work, eating lunch at my desk and skimming the the U.S. and someday bring their families over.

Khalid was only a couple of years older than me, but his news, when I saw the photo of the three-year-old boy, Aylan Kurdi: His clothes were heavy with the salty Mediterranean life experiences far surpassed mine. When he was not learning waters. His skin was slightly exposed, and its color seemed English, he volunteered at the organization I worked for and to have escaped to the redness of his shirt. Still wearing earned his living as a manual laborer at an automotive factohis shoes, he’d washed up on a Turkish beach. He was face ry, teaching himself the trade because he loved fixing things.

Working in Egypt is illegal for refugees, so Khalid had to find down, but he was not faceless.

By one o’clock, the photo was trending on Twitter, Face- a private employer, which paid him half of what he could book, and every news agency I follow. By the time I got make as a native citizen. Like so many of my thirty to forty home, everyone was talking about it, from friends in Missis- students, he never missed class or work. They were all my age, sippi to the world’s most powerful governments. and they were making a life in a new country without the I couldn’t put the image out of my mind either. It was support even of their parents. But I came to see that wasn’t crushing. But there was something else, something unset- exactly true: My students came to Egypt because their parents tling in the way Aylan’s death caught people unawares. Fam- envisioned a better future for them, alone as a refugee rather ilies like Aylan’s have been fleeing their homelands for years, than with them in a country awash in violence. and apparently few people understood the horror of this.

It’s what the Somali-born poet Warsan Shire describes so The tragedy galvanized Western sentiment—which was long brutally in “Home,” her poem about the refugee experience: overdue—but I couldn’t help wondering why other refugee “No one leaves home unless/ home is the mouth of a shark.”

38 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

ers, or the poorly ventilated buses, which have killed refugees in Austria and Hungary, hoping for a home in Europe.

The ones who make it to safety in the U.S. must pass through a rigorous vetting process—countless background checks, interviews, and investigations. North Carolina, the tenth-largest acceptor of refugees in the U.S., has absorbed refugees from Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan. I got to know many of these families in Durham. The Kenan Institute connects them with local resources, and working with the men, women, and children of all ages, led me to cofound an organization, Supporting Women’s Action (SuWA). While most men find jobs and meet members of the community, women stay at home with children, often lingering in their memories of the past.

SuWA started three years ago with six Iraqi refugee women and now has more than forty women from Iraq, Sudan, Central Republic of Africa, and Syria.

From Khalid to SuWA, I have witnessed the inspiring effects of a fresh start. Khalid is now studying to be a mechanical engineer in the U.S., and so many women in SuWA have fulltime careers. But new anti-refugee sentiments have left many Americans questioning refugees’ place in the American landscape. The day after the attacks in Paris, I was on Facebook trying to explain to friends in Mississippi, who had heard remarks from the governor of Louisiana, why we shouldn’t equate refugees with terrorists. I told them I fear that we’re turning our backs on some of the world’s most vulnerable people. I want to believe that facts and my personal experiences can counter the misinformation circulating among people I know, but some days I’m not sure that’s enough. The stance so many political leaders have taken has revealed the depth and pervasiveness of our misunderstanding of refugees.

I have fears and questions, too, though very Home: Iraqi refugees (from left) Mohamed, Abdullah, Abdul Kareem, different ones: Are people really afraid the refAli, Maryam, Saedah, and Rawan came to Durham in 2014 from ugees are terrorists, or is the real issue a more Jordan. Saedah and Rawan participate in SuWA initiatives. general fear of migrants from Arab countries? If so, that’s part of my identity, and their words feel In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, we see what hap- like an attack on me and my family, too. I’ve taken a break pens when the public and politicians don’t understand this, from social media until I have a better understanding of my and think of refugees only as an unknowable mass of people own melting pot of emotions. clambering to get in, and not as individuals with humanWe should be able to agree on these few things, at least: ity and potential. Islamophobia bubbles up. Strangers are Refugees did not choose to be refugees—they are, in fact, viewed as enemies. When we don’t fully understand why the primary victims of terrorism. And they are first and forepeople are migrating and see what good they can bring to most people with families, skills, goodwill, and determination. I am reminded of Noor, a single mother in Egypt who their new communities, then fear and prejudice take hold.

According to the U.N. High Ccommissioner for Refugees, is in the middle of the resettlement process, who told me, “I there are about 19 million refugees worldwide, and more am not old in your country—I will make it, and I will give than half are younger than eighteen. Globally, one in every my children the lives they deserve.” n 122 individuals is a displaced person. And only 2 percent of the refugees who are waiting for permanent resettlement in El-Sadek ’15 is a research analyst at the Center for Justice, Safetransit countries like Egypt and Turkey will ever find it. That ty, and Resilience at RTI International and cofounder in 2013 is why they risk the crowded boats with inexperienced driv- of SuWA at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Betsy Ferney

That was Aylan’s story, too. But it’s not the whole story.

As a teacher and researcher, I was often so focused on what refugees went through to escape their homelands that I couldn’t see or understand their unwavering resilience or the outcomes of their determination. Focusing too much on their past shrouds what so many are working on: their futures. Aylan’s picture may be the thing we needed to wake up to the crisis, but fixating only on horrific stories can hide the global elements of the crisis and the full measure of the people involved.

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The Art of Close Looking

As the Nasher marks its first decade, Duke Magazine lets loose an unusual art-discussion duo in its new galleries. | By Robert J. Bliwise

Here’s a question somewhere on the spectrum between

Slowing down: medical chancellor Washington and museum director Schroth

the prosaic and the profound: Is medicine an art or a science? And how many times has Gene Washington, Duke’s chancellor for health affairs since this past spring, heard a version of that question? A lot, no doubt.

His answer: “It’s both. It’s definitely both.”

Putting that statement to the test, Washington is touring the Nasher’s new galleries with Sarah Schroth, the museum’s director. A counterintuitive pairing, but only on the surface—different expertise, but a shared interest in finding meaning, sustenance, and joy in art. Close observation is something to be learned, says Schroth, as they start out.

“It’s a skill,” Washington agrees.

Since the Nasher opened ten years ago, more than 70 percent of the space had been devoted to temporary shows, mostly around contemporary art. With these re-installed galleries, Schroth flipped the ratio. The rethinking allows the museum to show more of its 13,000 objects. It also provides better spaces for faculty members who use the collections for their classes.

Washington’s job encompasses Duke’s medical school, nursing school, and ever-burgeoning programs for patient care, biomedical research, and community service. Before coming to Duke, he was vice chancellor for health sciences at UCLA, where he was also dean of the medical school and chief executive officer of the health system. Since arriving in Durham, he hasn’t slowed down. But slowing down is just what art demands, and Washington couldn’t be happier for an experience that’s at once absorbing and diverting.

Donn Young

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Schroth’s earliest museum memory was at the National Gallery of Art; she grew up in nearby Northern Virginia. The parents of her best friend took them to see the King Tut exhibition, “the first museum blockbuster,” she recalls, and that set her on her life’s course.

She joined the Duke University Museum of Art—as it was then known—in 1995, and became the Nasher’s Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director in 2013. An expert on Spanish art of the seventeenth century, she curated shows ranging from Old Masters to contemporary art. Among them was “El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III,” for which she earned another title: She was named knight-commander in the Order of Isabel la Catolica by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

In the galleries’

“Incubator Space,” Washington and Schroth find a display of Ansel Adams photographs, curated by two undergraduates. Washington tells Schroth that at one point, he lived on West Clay Street in San Francisco, just down the block from the boyhood home where Adams endured the 1906 earthquake; the historic house (along with his own) was later threatened by a mudslide. Schroth is struck by that tie-in to Adams, for whom, she notes, nature was in essence a human being—capable of sublime effects and earthquake-like violence alike. He would try to capture character-rich landscapes and then fine-tune light-and-dark tones back in the darkroom.

The initial attraction is Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, a gelatin silverprint from 1941, with distant mountains, low-slung Face off: Above, Washington and Schroth note the details on an African houses, a cemetery, and desert vegetation, all mask. That led to a visit to Picasso’s Head of a Woman, right, a work inspired illuminated by a glowing moon. From there

by African sculpture. it’s Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, from around 1927, a Glacier National Park scene.

The shadows of the cliff’s ridges contrast with the white high- may not be aiming for perfect symmetry. That works for Washlight of snow. Schroth observes that a horizontal composition— ington, who says a slightly off-kilter composition can produce New Mexico—is thought to be soothing; vertical shapes, like a strong emotional connection. It’s interesting, and it’s authenHalf Dome, aggressive. Washington jokes that patients wouldn’t tically human. “The big word in our profession is empathy. We like to picture themselves as still, horizontal forms. And as an have a problem in medicine if we don’t feel something from our occasional Yosemite hiker, he knows something about confront- human interactions.” ing nature.

A student guard is nearby, and Washington sparks an unexSchroth asks him whether he ever attempted a direct ascent of pected interaction: What’s her major? What artists does she like?

What does she like about this museum? She laments that her Half Dome. That, he says, would be a bit too confrontational.

Line, movement, balance—Washington presses Schroth on student schedule allows her little time for Nasher wanderings. principles of design as they make their way through the galleries. “I know that feeling,” Washington tells her. She turns out to Artists, she says, often offset a perfect balance, maybe through be interested in engineering management. “You’re going to be colors or shapes, to add more interest to the composition; they running things. Nothing wrong with that,” he says.

42 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

out everything else, to shift all your attention to the patient.”

Schroth and Washington shift their attention to four reliefs depicting apostles, from a twelfth-century church in southwestern France. Once colorfully painted, the four apostles are reanimated through digital projections, effects created by a faculty-student team in art history and electrical engineering. On a basic keyboard that shoots out beams of colored light, museum-goers essentially paint the limestone—turning, say, an apostle’s flowing cloak blue and his striated beard red.

Some years ago, a similar project was applied to works by Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. The Rothkos were once filled with shimmering reds and purples, but they were allowed to fade through years Donn Young of being exposed to sunlight.

Rothko, it turns out, is a favorite of both Washington and Schroth. Washington grew up in Houston, where hope the gallery will encourage students his father was a minister; the very first images Washington was exposed to were bibliand all visitors to slow down, put away their cal scenes in churches. But in Houston’s Rothko an intimate, interdenominational sancphones and iPads, look, look, look, feel, and Chapel, tuary that’s at once overwhelming and utterly sublime, he enjoyed hours of contemplation. listen to the artist and to themselves.”

Schroth grew up with access to the Rothko room of the Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C. “I can see that approaching art is a lot like approaching pa- She “spent a good long time in front of art, meditating on the tients,” Washington tells Schroth as they move on to “Medieval works themselves and waiting for something to happen. Being Europe.” “Here’s my philosophy about treating patients: When surrounded by the Rothkos stirred my emotional state from feelyou’ve seen one, you’ve seen one. We’re all unique. When you ings of joy to sadness, from awe to terror at the sheer power of see that patient, you have to check your biases and preconceived images. They felt very spiritual to me.”

Such depth of engagement, she adds, “is another reason for notions at the door. The other thing you have to do is to tune

“I

Above, right, Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman (Tête de femme), 1960. Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 inches (81.3 x 66 cm). The J. D. Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas. © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

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displaying more of the Nasher’s collection. I hope it will encourage students and all visitors to slow down, put away their phones and iPads, look, look, look, feel, and listen to the artist and to themselves. In other words, mindful looking.”

It’s on to look mindfully through “European Art,” including Pieter van Slingelandt’s luminous and mysterious Allegorical Portrait of a Lady, from around 1675. Schroth admires the artist as a master of light: How do you make oil paint take on the qualities of silk? Or mimic the texture of pearls? There are some features that can be readily decoded: a lily and a rose standing for purity, a globe as an indicator of knowledge and wisdom, an enclosed garden as a symbol of virginity. But there are other more ambiguous elements, such as a plant being crushed by the foot of the sitter.

Washington picks up on the theme of ambiguity. Reading a patient’s case is never clear-cut, he says; there’s always space for

“T

Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art/ Peter Paul Geoffrion

One emotional benefit Washington sees in art is its healing potential. He and Schroth talk about how Duke Hospital patients and their families might benefit from a Nasher visit.

“Why wouldn’t that be happening?” he wonders in front of the Allegorical Portrait. “I love that idea,” says Schroth.

A work in the “American Art” gallery also brings an affirming verdict: John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. John Canfield Tomlinson,

he power of observation is the first business for a physician.

You have to make sure you don’t miss any clues.”

interpretation. “That’s why the power of observation is the first business for a physician. You have to make sure you don’t miss any clues.” In this particular (idealized) portrait, he notes, there are a few concerning signs—a swelling of the arms, for example.

But the eyes look bright and, basically, he says, “there’s a healthiness about her. And I’m not looking just at physical attributes; I’m trying to read the emotional state. I don’t see sagging shoulders or a downward expression.”

44 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

née Dora Grant, from 1904. There’s the classical column of the fireplace, the pensive hand-on-chin pose. And the red velvety curtain as a backdrop for the flowing black dress, combining for a classic color palette. The woman is pure verticality, like Glacier’s Half-Dome in the Ansel Adams print: a formidable presence. Washington admires the frame, which seems plucked from the elaborate setting of the painting’s subject. Schroth tells him it’s a Nasher replacement of a plain black frame that, as she

Above, left, Pieter Cornelisz van Slingeland (attributed), Dutch, Allegorical Portrait of a Lady (after Caspar Netscher), 17th century. Oil on panel, 20 1/8 x 15 1/8 inches (51.1 x 38.4 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Gift in honor of Marilyn M. Segal by her children. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

Body language: Left and right, portraits sparked a conversation on ambiguity, coded features artists create and doctors must observe in patients.

Above, the new “Medieval Europe” gallery space.

puts it, “just killed” the effect of the composition.

In “Arts of Africa,” Schroth paints a verbal portrait of a physician-collector. That was George W. Harley, who graduated from Trinity College (later Duke University) in 1916. He collected hundreds of pieces from his time as a medical missionary in Liberia, where—in addition to being one of the first American collectors to bring works out of Africa—he built a hospital, school, and leper village. The Nasher is the beneficiary.

Schroth and Washington stand in front of a hat made of rattan, plant fibers, feather, and pigment. It’s a work with a cultural context: Young men would compete to clear the fields of trees and underbrush so farmers could plant their crops. The strongest and fastest “cutter of the bush” was honored with the trophy hat. Washington’s wife, Marie, purchased masks in Cape Town, South Africa, when visiting their son, Brooks, in Johannesburg, his first city of residence on the continent. (Brooks now lives in Kenya and works as an entrepreneur. The Washingtons also have two daughters: Caroline, who works for a product-innovation Above, right, John Singer Sargent, Mrs. John Canfield Tomlinson, née Dora Grant, 1904. Oil on canvas, 58 x 38 inches (147.3 x 96.5 cm). On loan from the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Foundation. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

firm in New York, and Erin, who works in healthcare venture capital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

Over time, the Washingtons have built a collection of art from the African diaspora as well as some modern pieces.

Washington tells Schroth he’d “feel cheated” in the Nasher walkabout if they didn’t “fast-forward” to the Picasso on display. Picasso was inspired by African sculpture and its highly stylized treatment of the human figure—an inspiration evident in the black-andwhite Head of a Woman. The late-career painting, from 1960, is in the “Modern Affinities” gallery. The artist is endlessly interesting for Schroth as well. “He was an obsessive and highly creative person, driven to make art all the time, with whatever materials interested him at that moment, in whatever place he was living.”

Schroth mentions the new Picasso sculpture exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It now ranks among her favorite exhibitions. “I’ve got to see it,” Washington tells her.

Picasso’s output spanned many decades, while this exercise in observing and conversing is limited to an hour. The two of them make time for one more destination: They look at, and inside, sculptor Ivan Navarro’s Water Tower series, in the Nasher’s atrium. Everything is thrown into the creative mix: neon, wood, painted steel, aluminum, mirrors, electricity.

The hour is up, but they linger on. After all, Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is eternal, life is fleeting. It’s an aphorism attributed to Hippocrates in Periclean Athens, as it happens, a period that the Nasher recognizes, in its “Ancient Lives” gallery, with an array of glazed storage vessels and their red-figure depictions of battles, competitions, and wayward gods. They, too, have a lot to say to us. If, that is, we take the time to join in the conversation. n DUKE MAGAZINE

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A Watertight Argument Alumnus J Nichols believes we’ll better understand the value of ocean conservation if we think about our emotional connection to the sea.

BY BARRY YEOMAN

O

n a Sunday afternoon this past March, Wallace J. Nichols took out a cloth drawstring bag and distributed its contents: oversized glass marbles the color of a tropical sea. “Hang on tight to your blue marble,” the tousle-haired marine biologist told the room full of adults celebrating Creek Week at the Durham County Library. “Don’t let it roll. Don’t drop it. Don’t throw them at the speaker or eat them.”

Nichols M.E.M. ’92, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, had flown in from his home in Northern California. He told the audience to hold their glass spheres at arm’s length. “That’s what we look like right now from a million miles away,” he said. “The single defining feature, at least on the surface of our planet, is our water. That makes us special in the universe—there aren’t as many water planets as you might imagine—which means everything we do relative to our water matters. Everything.”

But when it comes to safeguarding that water, Nichols continued, the environmental movement’s PR toolbox relies too heavily on guilt- and fear-based messages, which carry the risk of numbing rather than motivating.

“Sometimes it feels like you’re being smacked on the face with a cold fish,” he said. “You’ve probably been the recipient of that smack, but perhaps even the giver.” On the library wall, he projected a photo of Elmo, the red Muppet, arms spread wide. “I’m going to add the Elmo hug to that toolbox. One way we do that, rather than the literal hug, is to share the blue marble.”

Nichols, whose friends call him J, wasn’t merely peddling a touchy-feely message of personal responsibility for protecting our natural resources. He believes, rather, that discussion around ocean conservation—along with the policies inspired by that discussion—is stunted because we rarely mention our species’ emotional connection to water. To that end, he has been fostering an interdisciplinary conversation—involving neuroscientists, geographers, health professionals, underwater

explorers, land-use planners, and others—about the benefits of being near the sea.

“Generally, we have dangerously undervalued water in all of its forms by not including this conversation,” he says. “When undervalued, and not just in the financial sense, there’s a tendency to degrade.” One of the fruits of this dialogue is his 2014 book, Blue Mind, which hit The New York Times science and nonfiction best-seller lists and this past summer was re-released in paperback.

Nichols has been particularly keen to bring brain researchers into the conversation. He believes that better data from them about the benefits of being near the water could transform an environmental issue into a human-welfare one—in turn spurring lawmakers to protect marine environments. He calls this principle “neuroconservation.”

“When we adequately value nature—and not just for the extractive value and the jobs and ‘ecosystem services,’ but also the emotional services—that will have some policy outcomes that favor conservation,” he says.

“That’s my hope.” The key, he says, is harnessing the science in a way that people can access it no matter what their political ideologies. “How do you [advocate] in an arena where there’s climate-change denial and plenty of people who consider themselves unscientific—proudly? Well, I think there’s a way that’s unifying rather than polarizing: Walk into the office of any public official and say, ‘What’s your water? Describe the moment you fell in love with your water. Who were you with? How old were you? Do you have any pictures?’ Now they’re on the same page.

‘What would you do to protect that water?’ ” Nichols—who has spent most of his career working on sea-turtle research and conservation, and still continues that work part time—doesn’t draw a paycheck from the Academy. He’s been living on crowdfunded donations; book, speaking, and leadership-training income; and the occasional modeling gig. (At forty-eight, he commands the camera with eyes almost as blue as those marbles.) As idealistic as his approach might sound, and

“What’s your water?”

Jeff Lipsky

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as Elmo-like his personal style, Nichols has nonetheless won high-powered fans. “We’re all connected to the sea no matter where on Earth we live—every drop of water we drink, every breath we take,” says the legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle A.M. ’56, Ph.D. ’66, Hon. ’93. “Through his Blue Mind work, J has the power to make people everywhere feel that connection and act to protect it.”

N

ichols grew up splashing around in lakes, pools, and the ocean, only decamping for dry land, he says, when the adults called him home. His childhood affinity spurred him to become a marine biologist. After graduating from DePauw University in Indiana, he attended Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, where he earned a

master’s degree in natural-resource economics and policy with a focus on ocean and coastal policy. There he found himself growing frustrated by the state of environmental economics—the use of economic principles to help manage natural resources.

“There were attempts to put value on nature, put value on something like an ocean view, by adding up what people spent to get there,” he says. “That’s understandable; that’s some of the data we have to work with. But it just fell so short. To put a number out there and say, ‘This is the value of nature,’ seemed dangerous.”

One way economists, scientists, and advocates think about natural resources is by quantifying the “ecosystem services” they deliver. Healthy marine and coastal environments, for example, provide seafood, fishing jobs, flood protection, carbon sequestration, and tourism income.

There are numerous methods for valuing these benefits, and endless

Keep calm and swim on Scientists have offered wide-ranging ideas about why being near the ocean brings us such calm. They include the negative ions found in ocean waves, which are believed to boost the mood chemical serotonin, and our evolutionary propensity to find safety in flat, unforested environments where predators can’t hide. Studies have linked swimming and other aquatic exercises to improved mood and sharper brain function.

There’s also anecdotal evidence that kayaking, surfing, and fishing are therapeutic for substance abusers, people with physical disabilities, and veterans coping with brain injuries and emotional trauma.

The hard research mostly nips around the edges. In his book, J Nichols cites papers like a 2010 study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how different pictures activate the brain. In the study, nature scenes triggered activity in regions associated with empathy. Urban scenes lit up the amygdala, which detects dangers. Other research has linked the color blue with security and relaxation, and shown that ocean sounds decrease body levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

At Duke, Scott Huettel has approached the question by studying how our brains place value on certain visual images, including landscapes like oceans. He measures this by having subjects give up a few pennies of their compensation in exchange for lingering over the pictures 48 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Nichols: Appreciating nature is key to a healthier brain. they find most attractive. He then correlates those results with brain function, using fMRI to look at changes in blood oxygenation, an indirect measure of neuronal activity.

What he’s found is that the brain calculates the value of experiences like beach vacations in much the same way it calculates the value of material goods. “Your experience seems to be encoded in the brain not just as some abstract aesthetic—‘this is pretty’—but actually how much it’s worth to you,” he says. Based on the literature, Huettel adds, it seems to be worth more than people realize. “You ask them how happy a purchase is going to make them feel, they overestimate their later happiness for buying a new iPhone, or a new car, or a new pair of shoes. And they underestimate the satisfaction they’ll get from having taken a vacation, or a trip, or an outing with friends.”

Huettel is quick to note that this is

incomplete science. “The enormous challenge is that we require people to be inside an MRI scanner,” he says. “This limits the depth of the sensory experience people can have. So we know a fair amount about visual experiences. We can find out—although my lab doesn’t study it—a little bit about auditory experiences.

But the other senses are quite difficult to engage while they’re in the MRI scanner.

There’s no technique that’s close to being able to identify what’s going on while someone is engaging the full sensory experience, say, of walking along the beach.

That’s many years in the future.”

Still, Huettel’s research caught the attention of Nichols, who reached out to the brain scientist before the 2012 summit (the only one he has attended). “This is something near and dear to J’s heart, because he sees a challenge to conservation as increasing awareness about the underappreciated value of the oceans as a common resource,” Huettel says. “My sense is that he’s right about this big puzzle: We know that people have great difficulty thinking accurately about public goods.

We tend to undervalue them in many ways, and we don’t take enough personal actions to support them.”

Huettel agrees that more research by neuroscientists could shift the conversation about environmental policy. “Once you start thinking about things in terms of brain changes,” he says, “something that might seem ineffable becomes more real.”

Neil Ever Osborne

debate over whether this “commodification” provides a pragmatic strategy for winning over policymakers, or whether it denigrates the intrinsic value of biodiversity and the moral imperative of protecting it.

At Duke, Nichols started thinking about what was missing from this market-based approach. “It had a lot to do with the emotions connected with those experiences. How do you put a value on your best memory?

How do you put a value on nostalgia? How much for your inspiration? How much for your insight?”

As he progressed through his academic and professional career, Nichols discovered his colleagues were generally uninterested in these intangibles. “Stick to the science,” he remembers people saying. “Keep that fuzzy human stuff to the side.”

Once he began his fieldwork, though, Nichols realized the “fuzzy human stuff” mattered. Most of his career has focused on Pacific Ocean sea turtles in Mexico’s Baja California—filling in the gaps in our knowledge of the species’ biology to manage its declining populations. His interdisciplinary team, from universities and organizations around the world, published dozens of peer-reviewed articles, he says. “But the science isn’t what’s saved the sea turtles.” Nichols also worked closely with local fishermen and their co-ops, illegal hunters, and government officials. He won them over through personal relationship-building, and that in turn led to declines in both bycatch in fishing nets and the poaching of adults and their eggs. Researchers, fishers, kayakers, and scuba divers, he says, report healthier turtle populations than the region has seen in decades. “It’s halftime, and we’re winning.”

In 2011, while still working on turtle conservation, Nichols decided to see whether he could expand this “human dimension” to other marine issues. That year he convened his first Blue Mind summit in San Francisco, bringing together brain and marine scientists with surfers and other ocean lovers. The summits, restricted to about 100 participants to ensure intimacy, feature panels in which researchers and practitioners are asked to wrestle with new questions—for example, how surfing affects the brain. They have become annual events held at different locations in the U.S. and England.

Scott Huettel Ph.D. ’99, the Hubbard Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, spoke at the 2012 conference, held on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He was struck by the value of meeting people whose “deep interest” in the oceans comes from different perspectives. “Talking to marketing faculty, or maybe an activist, or somebody who’s trying to use water-based [health] interventions—I think that’s an interesting conversation to have,” says Huettel, who directs Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Sciences. “I think that’s a very Duke-like approach: connecting people across disciplines in a productive way.

Many people, when engaging a popular audience, simply skim off what they need from other fields to justify something they already believe. J has consistently tried

to engage scientists who work in other areas and takes them seriously. He’s not an expert in these other fields, but he’s trying to bring people together.”

Because of the visibility of his work, Nichols has met with officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This past June he gave a speech at the annual conference of the American Water Works Association, an influential group of water management and treatment professionals.

“One worries often that people who have that sort of drive can spend their careers tilting at windmills,” Huettel continues. “But what he’s been able to do is to engage policymakers and scientists and still reach the general public. That’s a rare combination.”

B

efore he flew home from Durham in March, Nichols visited Duke’s campus and met with about a dozen graduate students in the Nicholas School’s coastal environmental management program.

Making his case for neuroconservation, he asked what emotions drove their academic career choices.

It became immediately clear that no one was pursuing a degree based solely on cool intellect. “We went to Florida for spring break to do bird banding,” said one student. “Along the way [a friend] and I went paddleboarding”—here, she paused to collect herself—“with dolphins and other animals. They swam next to us, and I just had to stop and cry. I hope that I never not have this sense of amazement, because the second I do, I don’t want to be in this field anymore.”

Her classmates talked about wonder, empathy, happiness, frustration. They discussed their passions for surfing, scuba diving, and watching whales. One shared his sense of doom knowing that people who have never seen the ocean’s depths are helping destroy it. Nichols suggested these feelings might be grist for research that could further conservation efforts. “Walk across campus and ask a neuroscientist out for a cup of coffee,” he advised the students.

Bringing sentiment into environmental science does not mean abandoning rigor, Nichols argued: “You do want to be unbiased, and you want to present the facts.”

That’s different, he said, from adopting the air of detachment that is valued in some academic circles.

“There would be no sea turtles without the turtle-huggers—people who are absolutely, wildly obsessed,” Nichols said. “We would have lost a lot of populations without the people who are truly unstoppable. You take away their funding, you put up all kinds barricades, and they don’t stop. We often are so careful to not be those people. But I say fly your freak flag high, and sometimes fly it a bit higher.” n Yeoman is a journalist based in Durham. His recent work has been published in OnEarth, Audubon, The American Prospect, and Popular Science, and by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

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Chinemerem Nwosu Class of 2019 Student in Professor Richard J. Powell’s Archives Alive Course Modern and Contemporary African American Art

CRAZY SMART In this age of texting, tweeting and Googling, there’s something special about holding a 150-year-old letter in your hands.

That kind of face-to-face encounter with history is what our Archives Alive initiative is all about.

Archives Alive courses at Duke are based on original materials in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Students get up-close and personal with the primary sources of knowledge and culture.

That’s not just smart. That’s crazy smart.

Be part of our history. Support Duke University Libraries.

library.duke.edu/crazysmart

50 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Forever

Duke Alumni Around the World

“I’m never going to fill a cavity. I’m never going to speak Mandarin. I’m never going to decode a chain of DNA. But thankfully, the universe graciously provides other men and women who will. And remembering that. . . compels us to keep learning.”

–MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry A.M. ’97, Ph.D. ’99 speaking to the Class of 2019 during Orientation Week.

Donald Traill/Invision/AP

ONLINE

#MyDukeMoment: At Reunions Weekend,

April 15-17, 2016, the Duke Alumni Association will help a few special alumni bring their Duke memories to life. Submit a favorite photo of you and your friends from your Duke days on social media using #MyDukeMoment. We’ll select a few winners to re-create their photos with a professional photographer during Reunions Weekend.

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How are you ForeverDuke?

Chris Hildreth

Sterly Wilder ’83, associate vice president for alumni affairs, in conversation with Deborah Lee James ’79 How did you get to Duke?

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, and life was kind of confined to New Jersey for many years. When it came time for me to look at colleges, my first criterion was to get out of New Jersey.

And of course I wanted to go to a great school. My major was comparative area studies with a concentration in Latin America, and my minor was Spanish. I graduated in three years and did some summer study in Spain and Argentina.

Since my Duke days, I’ve traveled extensively. I’ve been to all seven continents. Duke was the first destination on this lifelong journey because it was the first time I lived away from home.

As the 23rd secretary of the U.S. Air Force, Deborah Lee James is responsible for organizing and equipping the nearly 664,000 airmen and women serving throughout the world. James is a former president at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a company that provides information technology support to the U.S. Department of Defense, and was the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve Affairs during the Clinton administration. James has served as secretary of the U.S. Air Force since 2013.

How did your Duke experience prepare you for public service?

It definitely solidified my love of international affairs and my love of language. To this day, I am fluent in conversational Spanish. At Duke I learned the importance of critical thinking, time management, having an inquisitive nature, and continual learning.

Jim Varhegyi

52 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

What’s the secret to becoming the leader of the U.S. Air Force?

Beats the heck out of me! Short story: I came out of Duke, I went to Columbia, got a master’s in international affairs, and promptly flew to the State Department. But I didn’t get picked to serve in the State Department.

Instead, I got selected to

work in the Department of the Army as a civilian. From that point forward, one thing led to the next. The thread that tied my experiences together was defense. Then, this very extraordinary thing happened: I got a call from the White House asking me if I would be willing to have my name on a list of candidates for secretary of the Air Force.

I was just so blown away and flattered, of course I said yes, never dreaming that it would be me.

Thinking about your initiatives to increase opportunities for women and minorities—what makes you most excited?

I am a big believer in diversity—diversity of people and thought. I think that’s where you get the magic of innovation. I learned that at Duke.

I experienced that at Duke.

When we look at our Air Force, there’s both good news and bad news. We’re fairly diverse in the lower ranks— not as good as we could be but certainly the best of the services. We have about 20 percent women. But as we go up through the ranks, we start to get worse, which means both women and minorities are leaving us earlier than we would wish. That’s an important readiness issue.

We need to do better.

What would you say is the most important work to be done by the Air Force?

We are involved with every operation that goes on at all times all around the world.

Six hundred sixty thousand people make up our Air Force—that’s active duty airmen and women, the National Guard and Air Force Reserves, and civilians. The overwhelming majority is between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. We put unbelievable confidence and authority and power in their hands. We have very young people who are maneuvering our satellites every day and who are standing watch on our nuclear enterprises. They are doing a great job and working very hard. A key mission of mine is taking care of them.

What is your advice to Duke students and alumni who would like to pursue public service?

Be prepared to zigzag, because whatever your original idea was may or may not work out. Ask people to have a cup of coffee and tell their story. That can create a mentoring situation. Competence also is really important because mentors and your network can open a door and get you a job interview, but unless you’ve got that competence, you’re not going to be able to get the job or hold the job.

Want to meet Secretary James?

Register for Women’s Weekend February 18-20, 2016, at www.dukealumni.com.

The fifth biennial weekend brings together diverse alumnae and students for learning, conversation, and networking.

ForeverDuke

GO! Celebrate a Blue Devil

Know a fellow alum who is doing extraordinary things for Duke and the world? Help us find them. Visit DukeAlumni.com to learn about our annual awards and to fill out a nomination form by February 1.

SAVE THE DATE FOR

Women’s Weekend

DUKE IS HERE:

The fifth biennial Women’s Weekend takes off in Durham February 18-20.

Alumnae speakers working in diverse roles—from corporate CEOs to tech pioneers to activists—will lead interactive workshops for alumnae, students, faculty members, and other Duke leaders. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James ’79 will deliver the keynote address. Go to DukeAlumni. com for more information.

Rubenstein Library Reopens

Back on campus? Drop by the newly renovated David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, named for Duke trustee chair David Rubenstein ’70. The redesigned space is now a state-of-the-art research facility where alumni, students, faculty members, and visitors can view rare books and scholarly materials. Stop by the soaring Gothic Reading Room and the new Mary Duke Biddle Room, where you can view Virginia Woolf’s original writing desk.

Number of alumni:

Houston

2,093

Young alumni (10 years out):

753

Local alumni events: About 20+ year (Duke Forward is in Houston, December 9)

per

Who said it’s the Lone Star state?: Houston alumni get together regularly to volunteer at the Houston Food Bank, where they unpack and organize fresh produce, meats, milk, and other food supplies for the 800,000 consumers aided every year by the organization.

Good place to find a Blue Devil: Blue Devils are in good company at Pappadeaux restaurants, a chain owned by the family of Evy ’98 and Mary ’97 Pappas.

Showing the flag: 83 Houston-area alumni volunteer to interview prospective students.

Notable Dukies: Duke trustees Christopher Brown ’81 and Ralph Eads ’81; Lin Giralt ’77, managing director at TestAnalytika, a company that helps doctors and patients in developing countries access U.S.-based cancer advisory services; Andrew Schneider A.M. ’95, Ph.D. ’96, a business reporter at Houston public radio 88.7; R. Chadwick Holmes ’00, a research geoscientist at Chevron; Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner M.Div ’08, a Houston minister who is leading a justice movement following the death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail cell in July.

WHERE ARE YOU? Share a photo from your city using @DukeAlumni on Instagram or Twitter and help us show Duke’s reach around the world.

Board of Directors 2015-16 President: N. Shepard Moyle ’84 Immediate past president: Jeffrey C. Howard ’76 Secretary-Treasurer: Sterly L. Wilder ’83

Lamptey Nartey ’02, Judith Wagoner Pahren ’84, Rodney C. Pitts ’68, Eric G. Savage ’92, Aisha J. Taylor ’05, Pamela Stone Schearer ’73, John Tolsma ’95

Mark W. Scroggs M.D. ’84, School of Medicine Joan M. Stanley B.S.N. ’71, School of Nursing Susan Prosnitz J.D. ’89, School of Law

Vice Presidents: Jack W. Boyd ’85, Chris D. Brandt ’00, Palmer Peebles Garson ’79, Nikki Hurst Gibson ’80, Winston E. Henderson ’90, Amy Hepburn ’97, Mary Kristin Klein ’82, Joanne O’Connor ’92, Sara K. Oliver ’06, Lee Harris Roberts ’90, Mark E. Stalnecker ’73, Paul S. Teller ’93

Professional school representatives: Andrea Barnwell Brownlee A.M. ’99, Ph.D. ’01, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Abigail Williford Kocher ’00, M.Div. ’06, Divinity School Robin ten Kate M.B.A. ’03, Fuqua School of Business Courtney Lorenz M.E.M. ’06, Nicholas School of the Environment William Senner B.S.E. ’06, M.E.M. ’06, Pratt School of Engineering Amy Hepburn ’97, M.P.P. ’01, Sanford School of Public Policy Judith Ann Maness M.H.A.’83, Graduate Program in Health Administration Jennifer Moody Skeesick D.P.T. ’06, Graduate Program in Physical Therapy

Young alumni representatives: Andrew L. Hanna ’14, Jin-Soo D. Huh ’09, Lara L. Jones ’08, Margaret L. Skoglund ’10

Duke Magazine Editorial Advisory Board representative: Steven Petrow ’78 Directors-at-large William A. Bermont II ’97, Jonathan P. Cardona M.B.A. ’00, Pola Ayllon Changnon ’85, Mandeep Singh Dillon ’92, Jason Goode ’97, J.D. ’00, Christine Gosnell ’83, Mychal P. Harrison ’01, Ana Homayoun ’01, Edwin Howard Jr. ’63, Naakoshie

Faculty representatives: Michelle Connolly, Associate Professor of the Practice of Economics Frederick W. Mayer, Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Environment

Presidents, School and College Alumni Associations: Kristin Whitesides M. Div. ’05, Divinity School Lisabeth Brynn Todd Crute M.B.A.’95, Fuqua School of Business Kristen Cappel M.E.M. ’06, Nicholas School of the Environment Jason Piche B.S.M.E. ’97, Pratt School of Engineering David Esquivel J.D. ’97, School of Law Kurt D. Newman M.D. ’78, School of Medicine Joan M. Stanley B.S.N. ’71, School of Nursing Jennifer Moody Skeesick D.P.T. ’06, Graduate Program in Physical Therapy

Honorary members: Michael Schoenfeld ’84, Suzanne J. Wasiolek ’76, M.H.A. ’78, LL.M. ’93, Gerald L. Wilson B.D. ’61, A.M. ’68

DUKE MAGAZINE

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FOREVER DUKE

AWARDS

Jeremy Block B.S. ’03, M.P.P. ’10, Ph.D. ’10 —New York Sarah Borns A.B. ’72 —Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida Kwang-Lu Amy Chen B.S. ’00 —Boston Cuyler Christianson A.B. ’76 —New York Thomas Fousse M.B.A. ’94 —London Alex Guttler A.B. ’05, M.B.A. ’12 —New York Brian Greene A.B. ’05 —Marina Del Rey, California Andrew Hananel B.S. ’01 —Chicago Sarah Hostetter A.B. ’09 —Washington, D.C. Katherine Hutton B.S. ’05, M.B.A. ’11 — West Point, New York Jason Jones A.B. ’91 —Dunwoody, Georgia Brooke Levin A.B. ’06 —Durham Leslie Lewis A.B. ’79 —Longmont, Colorado John Lipe B.S. ’02 — Charlotte, North Carolina Pam Liu A.B ’11 —Cambridge, Massachusetts Lyda Molanphy A.B. ’88 —Austin, Texas Nicole Pilo A.B. ’95 —Charlotte, North Carolina Kim Reed A.B. ’86 —Potomac, Maryland John Shen M.S. ’96, A.M. ’98 —Long Beach, California Jennifer Snook A.B. ’04, M.B.A. ’11., M.E.M. ’11 —San Francisco Doris Stoessel A.B. ’67 —Tahoe City, California Denis Weinstein A.B. ’12 —London Class of 2009 Reunion Co-Chairs Duke Proceed Committee

CHARLES A. DUKES AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING VOLUNTEER SERVICES Stuart Dean A.B. ’75 —Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Sally Searcy Kleberg ’66 —New York Harsha Murthy A.B. ’81 —Washington, D.C. Karl Sheffield A.B. ’54 —Naples, Florida Gregg Tenser A.B. ’89 —Manhattan Beach, California

2015

Duke Alumni Award Winners DAA is pleased to announce winners of our 2015 awards. The 32 individual and group award winners were honored during a special Homecoming Weekend reception in October. The Distinguished Alumni Award, the association’s highest honor, was presented during the weekend’s Founders’ Day ceremony. The awards recognize outstanding achievement and commitment to Duke and its alumni around the world.

BEYOND DUKE SERVICE AND LEADERSHIP AWARDS

Mark Hecker A.B. ’03

Maria Gibbs B.S.E. ’12

Oftentimes it’s in helping others that we help ourselves. Mark Hecker’s revolutionary approach to tutoring is built on this concept and embodies the Duke principle of helping our peers. Hecker’s nonprofit organization Reach Incorporated has built a unique and flourishing tutoring community in the greater Washington, D.C.-area by pairing highschool students struggling in reading with elementary-school students who also are having trouble reading at grade level. The Reach program trains high-school students to be effective reading tutors and then pays them to tutor the elementary-school students. Both groups benefit through the interaction. Best of all, the program has shown results with all ages improving and attaining success in their reading efforts. Hecker—who holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke, a master’s of social work from the University of North Carolina, and a master’s of education from Harvard University—is a 2011 Echoing Green Fellow and a 2013 Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellow.

Nominator Mike Ambrose, a former teacher and current education-policy advocate, says of Hecker: “I spend my days thinking about how to bring better educational opportunity to all students. If possible, one of my first steps would be to clone Mark Hecker. Where much of the country sees low-achieving high-school students who are statistically too late for intervention, Mark sees untapped talent and new hires who can positively shape the next generation of D.C. students.”

Maria Gibbs understands more than most how to bridge the gap between poverty and prosperity. The recent Duke engineering graduate demonstrated that fact by earning recognition as one of the New Faces of Civil Engineering from the American Society of Civil Engineers for her impressive work designing and building footbridges to isolated communities around the world. Gibbs’ passion for this work first ignited when she learned of a rural community in El Salvador whose elementary-school students had to swim across a flooded river to get to school during the rainy season.

Spurred to action, she traveled to El Salvador to help these students with a Denver-based nonprofit organization called Bridges to Prosperity.

Since then Gibbs has traveled Courtesy Maria Gibbs to Nicaragua and Rwanda to help build and test suspension footbridges over impassable rivers. It is her desire to alleviate poverty by using her knowledge and experience to create safe access to education, health care, and economic opportunities. Gibbs received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and studies bridge aeroelasticity, focusing on wind-induced effects on Bridges to Prosperity’s suspension footbridges. She is earning her Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Notre Dame.

Washington, D.C. Service to a Local Community

Courtesy Mark Hecker 54 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

South Bend, Indiana Service by a Young Alumna/Alumnus

Sally Rankin M.S.N. ’78 and Rev. William W. Rankin II A.B. ’63, Ph.D. ’77, A.M. ’79 Tiburon, California Service to the Global Community

The Rev. William “Bill” and Sally Rankin would be the first to tell you that their work is just a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done in the global-health arena. However, their dedication to putting knowledge in service of society is bringing hope to thousands in the sub-Saharan nation of Malawi.

In 2000, while working with an interfaith peace-building organization, Bill learned that a $4 dose of an anti-retroviral drug could halt the transmission of HIV from mother to newborn. That information was transformative for Bill. In response, he founded the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), which brings HIV/AIDS health care and education to the estimated 930,000 Malawi citizens with HIV/AIDS and to their families. Sally’s contributions to global health match Bill’s in passion and reach — most notably her research on the adaptation of patients and their families to chronic illnesses, particularly families dealing with the challenges of HIV/AIDS. Sally also is recognized as a public-health scholar and expert and has worked with GAIA to empower women and to expand the number of trained health-care professionals in Malawi.

Collectively, the Rankins have written sixteen books or book chapters and more than 141 peer-reviewed articles. Both Bill and Sally have taught at the university level for more than twenty years and have held major leadership positions—he as dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and she as associate dean for global health at the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco.

Shawn Rocco

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD

Kimberly Blackwell A.B. ’89, H.S. ’00 Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Kimberly Blackwell embodies the innovation, passion, and drive that make Duke University the special place it is.

As a clinical oncologist at Duke since 1994 and now as the director of the breast-cancer program at the Duke Cancer Institute, Blackwell has dedicated her time, research, and expertise to the mission of fighting breast cancer and saving the lives of women everywhere.

Over the past several years, Blackwell developed a new breast-cancer treatment known colloquially as the “smart bomb.” The FDA approved the treatment—officially named T-DM1—in 2013. T-DM1 attacks a particular protein found in an aggressive type of late-stage breast cancer while leaving the healthy cells untouched. The results are nothing short of miraculous. Women undergoing Blackwell’s treatment are surviving at higher rates and experiencing fewer side effects from chemotherapy.

Blackwell also played a major role in the development of another breast-cancer drug, known as lapatinib. Her research at Duke as the principal investigator for these two drug trials established Duke as the place where two of the last six drugs approved for breast cancer were engineered.

Blackwell’s groundbreaking research in the fight against cancer earned her a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list in 2013.

In addition to her innovative research, Blackwell serves as professor of medicine and assistant professor of radiation oncology at Duke University Medical Center and maintains an active clinical practice. Her clinical and research interests surround the formation of blood vessels in breast cancer, breast cancer in younger women, and hormonal therapy.

“The Duke community is what kept me here,” Blackwell says. “The brain-tumor group at Duke has a slogan: ‘At Duke there’s hope.’ And that’s really true. We do things here that can’t be done anywhere else.”

Courtesy Sally Rankin DUKE MAGAZINE

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A Dream to Drum

GIVING BACK: Grammy-nominated drummer Jeremy Jones ’02 returned to campus Nov. 5-6 to share his journey from Microsoft to full-time drumming with students as part of the Duke Entertainment Media & the Arts Network (DEMAN) Weekend. Learn more about other DEMAN alumni speakers at www.dukealumni. com. Want to share your journey with students? E-mail Communications Specialist Christina Holder at christina. holder@daa.duke.edu.

Alumnus Jeremy Jones’ path to a career in music took a detour through Microsoft.

U

nder the glow of purple stage lights in Baldwin Auditorium, Jeremy Jones ‘02 is giving a drum lesson from his perch behind a sparkling silver drum set.

As a videographer clamps a GoPro camera near Jones’ drum pedal, he jokes with her, saying, “You can sound really cool if you say, ‘Can I get some of that kick drum?’ ” The videographer accepts the challenge, and Jones delivers, letting his drumsticks fly and crash against the drumhead, his brown ponytail bouncing to the beat. Over the next few minutes, he weaves together a string of rhythms with his sticks, moving easily from a swing jazz beat to hip-hop to bossa nova and back again.

Such impromptu musical journeys are just Jones’ style.

The Seattle native plays in a jazz trio called The Teaching and was a featured drummer on Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ 2014 Grammy-winning rap album The Heist.

In November, Jones joined several dozen fellow alumni musicians, artists, and media professionals on campus for

Duke Entertainment Media and the Arts Network (DEMAN) weekend. The annual event draws diverse alumni who work in creative fields into conversation with students through workshops and networking.

Jones encouraged students to nurture their artistic passions at Duke and also to seek a balanced lifestyle, something he felt stressed about as a student.

He remembers taking a master class with Winard Harper, telling the renowned jazz drummer that while Jones wanted to be a professional drummer

Microsoft was calling.

“I figured if I take that job, I can get a house, I can start paying off my loans, I can get a car, I can get the best drum set,” Jones says. “And then I can leave in a few years.”

Jones worked as a software engineer at Microsoft’s headquarters outside of Seattle for more than four years, often spending his desk-bound days thumping his foot on a bass drum pedal beneath his desk.

He bought a house and built a soundproof practice room in his garage. He practiced yoga,

played with the trio introduced the group to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, who were at work on what would become their breakthrough album. The duo wanted a jazz sound on the album, and The Teaching ended up recording an instrumental titled “BomBom” that made the final cut.

The next stop was at the Grammys in 2014, where The Heist won best rap album and was nominated for Album of the Year. As featured artists on the album, The Teaching walked the red carpet and

“You’ve got the talent. It’s all about having the love.”

56 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

more than anything, he didn’t think he was good enough.

“No, you can do it,” Harper told him. “You’ve got the talent. It’s all about having the love.”

Still, other paths seemed safer. A double-major in music and computer science, Jones— along with friend Stefan Negritoiu ‘02—built Duke’s first internal social media platform.

Called MyDuke.com, the site featured e-mail, weather, and a textbook exchange. The two friends operated it out of Negritoiu’s dorm room. Soon

searching for deeper meaning and peace in life.

“I could feel within myself a shift of the type of lifestyle I wanted to have,” he says.

“Instead of thinking, ‘I need the Microsoft salary in order to be safe,’ it was like, ‘I have a wealth of resources within myself…I can leave, and I’m still going to exist and be fine.’ ” So he saved money for six months, and in the fall of 2006, he put in his notice at Microsoft. Shortly after, Jones’ trio recorded its first album.

Then, a musician who often

watched the show live. Being in the midst of musicians who had invested so much in their music was rewarding, Jones says.

“All of these great musicians...they’re people walking around in bodies just like us and just have excelled in their music,” Jones says. “Being in the same space with them felt really good.” And he knew then that Winard Harper had been right: that it was all about the love. He just had to listen for its beat.

—Christina Holder

Photo courtesy Jeremy Jones

ClassNotes

Want to be featured in Class Notes? E-mail us at dukemag@duke.edu.

40s 50s 60s

Robert A. Wolff ’42 will be honored with the Leader of the Herd Lifetime Achievement Award

by Fairfield University Basketball.

At age 93, he is the world’s longest-running TV and radio sportscaster, after 75 years on the airwaves.

Mason C. Carter D.F. ’59 cowrote Forestry in the U.S. South, a comprehensive history of the Southern foresting industry.

Frederick F. Andrews ’60 helped launch a repair and preservation program with his wife, Jane, for Southold’s Old Burying Ground, the oldest surviving colonial cemetery in New York state. The cemetery includes more than 100 examples of original American folk art and gravestone carving.

John F. Lovejoy Jr. ’60 received the Humanitarian Award from the American Academy of Orthopedics in recognition of his work in Haiti. It is among the highest awards in the field.

James A. Reiffel ’65, retired cardiologist, is now professor emeritus of medicine at Columbia

University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His second children’s book, My Goose Got Loose, written with some of his grandchildren, was published in the fall.

Phillip R. Finch ’69 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for real-estate law. He is a shareholder in GrayRobinson in the firm’s Orlando, Fla., office.

’66 | 50th Reunion April 15-17, 2016

Charles D. Williams ’69 received the 2015 Leopold Conservation Award from the Sand County Foundation, which works with private landowners on practices that benefit the environment. He is the owner of West Wind Farm in Frankfort, Ky.

Patrick D. Coleman ’68 was named in the 2016 Lawyers of the Year for management in employment law and labor law and for litigation in labor and employment law. He is a shareholder at GrayRobinson in the firm’s Florida offices in Jacksonville and Gainesville.

Jonathan C. Kinney ’68 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for real-estate law.

He is a shareholder in Bean, Kinney & Korman in the firm’s Arlington, Va., office.

Kingston E. Smith ’68 served for 24 years as chief counsel, deputy chief counsel, and counsel for the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives.

Mark Wasserman ’68 published Pesos and Politics: Business, Elites, Foreigners, and Government in Mexico, 1854-1940. He is a professor of history and has been at Rutgers University for 37 years.

Do more than you thought possible with a charitable gift annuity.

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70s

Joe B. Hoyle ’70 is the inaugural recipient of the J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook Prize, which recognizes the attributes of superior teaching of accounting. Hoyle is an associate professor of accounting at the University of Richmond.

’71 | 45th Reunion April 15-17, 2016 Bruce A. Perler ’72, M.D. ’76 was elected president of the Society for Vascular Surgery. He is a professor of vascular surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the vice chair of clinical operations and finance, and chief emeritus of the vascular surgery division at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

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ALUMNI DISTINGUISHED UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING AWARD (ADUTA)

Edward J. Balleisen Look no further than an oil spill or a financial recession to see ethical tensions begin to build as governments respond and recalibrate. Crises provide the perfect storm to influence governmental regulation throughout the world.

Megan Mendenhall Understanding how the perception of risk in the midst of crises influences regulation is at the center of the “Rethinking Regulation” project by Duke history professor and vice provost for interdisciplinary studies Edward Balleisen. The interdisciplinary research program at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics brings together more than forty faculty members and twenty students from Duke, N.C. State, and UNC-Chapel Hill to explore regulatory governance.

For his commitment to creative, interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship on the intersections of government, business, law, and policy, the Duke Alumni Association has awarded Balleisen its 2015 Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award (ADUTA). Balleisen was selected by a panel of undergraduate students randomly selected by the registrar who evaluated nominees on the basis of original teaching, fostering intellectual curiosity, and student engagement.

He will receive $5,000 and the option to donate an additional $1,000 to a Duke library of his choice.

For the past decade, Balleisen has been a leading participant in the Tobin Project, an organization that fosters the creation of multidisciplinary scholarly networks focused on pressing public policy challenges. His work with the Tobin Project earned Balleisen a 2013 MacArthur Foundation Award for Effective and Creative Organizations. In addition, Balleisen has written widely on the evolution of American regulatory institutions and contemporary debates on regulatory governance.

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J. Keith Morgan ’73 was appointed executive vice president and chief legal officer for TIAACREF in New York. He will lead the company’s legal and compliance, government-relations, and corporate-secretary functions.

Reginald J. Clark ’75, J.D. ’78 was named in the 2016 Lawyers of the Year for tax law. He is a partner at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan in the firm’s Atlanta office.

Robin A. Ferracone ’75 has been named to the National Association of Corporate Directors’ Directorship 100 for the fifth consecutive year. She is the CEO of Farient Advisors, an executive compensation and performance consulting firm.

James R. Schroll ’75 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights, and insolvency and reorganization law. He is a shareholder in Bean, Kinney & Korman in the firm’s Arlington, Va., office. ’76 | 40th Reunion April 17-19, 2016 Michael K. Kuhn ’76 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for real-estate law. He is a partner at Jackson Walker in the firm’s Houston office.

L. Scott Levin ’77 operated in the world’s first bilateral hand transplant at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with Scott H. Kozin ’82 and colleagues from Penn Medicine during a 10-hour surgical procedure.

Mitchell C. Wiener ’77 is an expert in Social Security reform and private pension-plan design and regulation who works at the World Bank in Washington. Previously, his career has taken him to Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Armenia, Macedonia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

James L. Conner II ’78 has joined Calhoun, Bhella & Sechrest as an equity partner in Dallas and Durham.

Frank E. Emory Jr. ’79 has been named to the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council. He is a partner at Hunton & Williams in Charlotte and Washington, D.C. He is a trustee emeritus at Duke.

80s

Bruce Alexander Allen ’80 published his first book, The Great Siege of Malta, about the battle between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights of St. John in 1565.

John H. Hickey J.D. ’80 presented his paper “Typical Liability and Causation Defenses in a Typical Auto Case” at the 2015 convention of the American Association for Justice. He is a partner at Hickey Law Firm in Miami.

Bruce J. Ruzinsky ’80, J.D. ’83 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for bankruptcy and creditor rights law, insolvency and reorganization law, and bankruptcy litigation. He is a partner at Jackson Walker in the firm’s Houston office.

David S. Taylor B.S.E.E. ’80 is the new president and CEO of Procter & Gamble. He had been the company’s president of global beauty, grooming, and health care.

A Material Legacy THE NANCY A. NASHER AND DAVID J. HAEMISEGGER COLLECTION OF CONTEMPORARY ART

2001 Campus Dr., Durham, NC 27705 I nasher.duke.edu Tony Cragg, Versus, 2011. Wood, 110 1⁄4 x 116 x 39 1⁄2 inches (280 x 295 x 100.3 cm). Image courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, New York, and Paris, France. © Tony Cragg. Photo by Michael Richter.

A Material Legacy: The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of Contemporary Art is made possible by the Nancy Hanks Endowment, Trent Carmichael, Katie Thorpe Kerr and Terrance I. R. Kerr, Kelly Braddy Van Winkle and Lance Van Winkle, and Lisa Lowenthal Pruzan and Jonathan Pruzan.

Katherine E. Tennyson ’81 was named president-elect of the board of directors of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. She is the Circuit Court judge for Multnomah County, Ore. Scott H. Kozin ’82 operated in the world’s first bilateral hand transplant at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with L. Scott Levin ’77 and colleagues from Penn Medicine during a 10-hour surgical procedure.

Richard F. Silver ’83 was promoted to professor of medicine at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He directs a research laboratory dedicated to understanding protective immunity against tuberculosis and is a member of the division of pulmonary, critical-care, and sleep medicine.

Kirk G. Warner L ’83 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for bet-the-company, commercial, and product-liability litigation. He is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office.

Marco W. Werman ’83 has joined the board of the New England Foundation for the Arts. He is the host and editor of Public Radio International-BBC’s The World.

Wilson A. Schooley J.D. ’84 was elected secretary of the American Bar Association section of civil rights and social justice. He will chair the section in 2018.

Michael P. Scharf ‘85 J.D. ‘88 was appointed dean of Case Western Reserve University. He was interim dean.

Jill A. Zima-Borski ’84 won two second-place awards at the Florida Outdoor Writers Association in the categories of magazine feature and family participation. She is also the organization’s president.

R. Joseph Morris ’85, J.D. ’88 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for patent litigation.

He is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office. ’86 | 30th Reunion April 15-17, 2016 Jeffrey B. Coopersmith ’86 is a litigation partner and co-chair of the white-collar, investigations, and government-controversies group at Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle. He is married to Stefanie H. Snow ’87 and has two sons.

John T. Molleur ’86 was appointed hearingoffice chief administrative law judge of the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in Charleston, W.Va.

ALUMNI ENDOWED UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Duncan F. McKechney ’19

A

desire for answers in all areas of life set freshman Duncan F. McKechney on a path toward studying physics early in his academic career.

“I’ve always been into the biggest questions, the most abstract, out-there, what-can-bend-your-mind-the-most questions—and where I’ve always gone to find those is in physics,” says McKechney.

But McKechney, who was awarded the Duke Alumni Association’s annual Alumni Endowed Undergraduate Scholarship, says physics isn’t his sole interest.

McKechney has played piano since he was three and is a singer. He recently joined three campus music groups, including the Duke Chorale. He’s studied German for the past six years. McKechney is hoping to blend his love of the natural sciences, music, and languages during his time at Duke.

A visit to the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy lab that brings together Triangle-area faculty and students to study low-energy nuclear physics, solidified McKechney’s desire to attend Duke. He saw how collaborative and innovative the university was by bringing together top area faculty working in the physics field, and he could see exciting possibilities for his own research.

“It was the combination of what a pleasure it is to be here, as well as the people and the facilities, that made me want to come to Duke,” he says.

Every year since 1979, the Duke Alumni Association has awarded the Alumni Endowed Undergraduate Scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship for the children or grandchildren of Duke alumni. DAA selects the recipients on the basis of academic achievement and merit, as well as leadership that extends beyond the classroom. McKechney, who is from Fairport, New York, is the son of Heather McKechney ’92 and her husband, Michael.

His room in Gilbert-Addoms hall on East Campus is just a few doors down from his mother’s freshman room. Knowing that his mother has gone before him is special, McKechney says. “To have the same experiences that my mom did is going to be, I imagine, amazing.”

Courtesy Duncan McKechney

’81 | 35th Reunion April 15-17, 2016

Robert W. Thielhelm Jr. ’86 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for commercial litigation law. He is a partner at BakerHostetler in the firm’s Orlando office.

public-school programs, which feed almost 2,000 children each week during the school year. Lentz also teaches at Wake Forest University School of Law. Stefanie H. Snow ’87 is a deputy prosecutor for the city of Redmond, Wash. She is married to Jeffrey B. Coopersmith ’86 and has two sons.

Barbara R. Lentz ’87 cofounded the Forsyth Backpack Program to raise awareness and funds to provide supplemental food to hungry children in Forsyth County, N.C. The program assists 28

Dennis M. Murphy M.H.A. ’89 was promoted to president of Indiana University Health, a unified statewide health system of nearly 20 hospitals and health centers.

60 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

MARRIAGES Catherine E. Thompson ’84 to Jonathan E. Strother M.Div. ’86 on Dec. 13, 2014. Residence: Greenville, N.C. ’91 | 25th Reunion April 15-17, 2016

90s

Caryn E. Coppedge McNeill J.D. ’91 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for employee-benefits law. She is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office.

Craig L. Olivo ’91, A.M. ’94 was named in the 2015 New York Metro Super Lawyers for employment and labor law. He is a member of Bond, Schoeneck & King in the firm’s Garden City, N.Y., office.

Amy J. Meyers Batten J.D. ’92 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for securities and capital-markets law. She is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office.

T. Daniel Crawford ’92 was named a member of the 2015 class of American Chemical Society fellows. He is a professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech.

Thomas G.W. Telfer LL.M. ’92 published Ruin and Redemption: The Struggle for a Canadian Bankruptcy Law, 1867-1919. He is a professor of law at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.

Geoffrey R. Krouse ’93, J.D. ’97 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for mergers-and-acquisitions law. He is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office. He also was elected to the board of directors of the Duke Law Alumni Association.

WE ARE

DUKE ENVIRONMENT

NICHOLAS.DUKE.EDU/ IAMDUKEENVIRONMENT

Heather J. McAdams ’93 coauthored a novel, Desolation Sound, based on a real-life severed-foot mystery in British Columbia. She also coproduced a documentary, The Search for Michael Rockefeller, now available on Netflix.

Sharad K. “Bobby” Sharma ’95, J.D. ’98 is managing partner of Blue Devil Holdings LLC, an international sports, media, and entertainment investment company in New York. He was previously senior vice president and head of global basketball for International Management Group Worldwide Inc. ’96 | 20th Reunion April 15-17, 2016 Courtney Q. Forsloff Shah ’96 published Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual Knowledge in Progressive-Era America. She is chair of the social sciences department at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Wash.

Matthew T. Kirsh J.D. ’97 was named chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.

David C. Kneip ’97 completed his Ph.D. in the history of Christianity from Notre Dame University. He is an assistant professor at Abilene Christian University.

Geoffrey W. Adams J.D. ’98 was named in the 2016 Best Lawyers in America for banking and finance law. He is a partner at Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in the firm’s Raleigh office.

MARRIAGES Melisa K. LaVergne ’96 to Todd Graham on May 2, 2015. Residence: Fort Mill, S.C. Leslie Poprik ‘99 to B.J. Capelli on September 20, 2014. Residence: Philadelphia, PA. BIRTHS Katherine Gardner to Cory A. Rayborn ’98 and Rebecca Rayborn on July 13, 2015…Connor DUKE MAGAZINE

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Grant to Jennifer Johnsen Brownlie B.S.E. ’99 and Jason Brownlie on June 23, 2015…Andrew Michael to Jenny C. Michael Varner ’99, M.P.P. ’05 and Bren Varner on April 20, 2015. ’01 | 15th Reunion April 15-17, 2016

00s

Eric J. Beecher ’01 has joined Moss & Barnett, a business law firm based in Minneapolis. He will focus on corporate and commercial

bia Chamber program that recognizes community leaders with potential to grow and advance Columbia University.

Angela Tarango Ph.D. ’09 was promoted to associate professor of religion and awarded tenure at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Christopher E.G. Scoville ’05 has joined the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development as an associate policy director in Durham.

MARRIAGES Carla J. Rothenberg ’02 to John Roy on Aug. 8, 2015. Residence: Manhattan Beach, Calif….

Kari L. Hess ’03 to Karen Wood on Aug. 29, 2015. Residence: Somerville, Mass.…Brandon H. Little ’03, M.E.M. ’10 to Rob Mayo on Aug. 8, 2015. Residence: Charlotte…Andrew J. DiMattina ’05 to Claire Benjamin on July 11, 2015.

Residence: Washington…Jessie G. duPont ’06 to James P. McDonald J.D. ’09 on July 11, 2015. Residence: Washington…Heather M. Imsande ’06 to Christopher Gale on Aug. 9, 2014. Residence: Quincy, Mass.…Jonathan H. Shugar ’06 to Sarah Thompson on July 11, 2015.

Residence: New York…Philip A. Hauspurg ’08 to Jessica L. Young ’08 on Dec. 6, 2014. Residence: Santa Monica, Calif.

’06 | 10th Reunion April 15-17, 2016

Christopher Y.H. Chan ’01 is director of legal and government affairs at Redmart in Singapore.

He was recently general counsel at DoxIQ.

Carmen J. Breen-Lopez ’06 completed her doctorate and achieved licensure in Pennsylvania.

She is a bilingual specialist psychologist at Holcomb Behavioral Health, a mental-health clinic in Kennett Square, Pa.

Dave A. Chokshi ’03 has been selected as a fellow ambassador of the New York Academy of Medicine. He will share his expertise through media interviews as well as blogging, op-eds, and presentations.

Lillian D. “Lois” Deloatch A.M. ’08 was inducted as president of the Rotary Club of Durham.

She served in several development positions at Duke and is the major-gifts officer at Self-Help’s Center for Responsible Lending in Durham.

William M. Umbach ’04 was accepted into the Leadership Columbia Class of 2015-16, a Colum-

Susanna L. Drake Ph.D. ’08 received tenure at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.

transactions.

WHERE YOUR SON CAN BECOME...

A SCHOLAR • AN ARTIST • AN ATHLETE • AN OUTDOORSMAN

A MAN Who puts others before himself; who entertains differences of opinion but stands firm in his convictions; who learns from his challenges and failures, yet still holds himself accountable. Christ School is a place where your son can grow into a dependable, tolerant, and confident adult.

BIRTHS Mason Edward to Allison E. Campbell ’00, J.D. ’03 and Mark Campbell on Oct. 21, 2014…

Sophia Leigh and Sadie Wagman to Andrew Ellenbogen ’00 and Sarah Ellenbogen on May 27, 2015…Isaac Andrews to Matthew L. Rosen ’00 and Jenni Rosen on Oct. 19, 2014…Maryn Lynne to Dana L. Olsen Craig M.B.A. ’05 and Thomas Craig on Nov. 21, 2014…Mattis Jochen to Marion D. Hartmann Lange LL.M ’06 and Oliver Lange on May 22, 2015…Harrison Evan to Kristin S. Heiden M.Div. ’08 and Chris Heiden on April 1, 2015…Tucker Edward to Haylee G. Schwartz Mihalick ’09 and Chad Mihalick on Jan. 28, 2015.

10s

Anthony P. Marzocca ’10 was named a law clerk to the Hon. Robert Drain, Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court, in White Plains, N.Y. He graduated from Columbia Law School in May 2015. ’11 | 5th Reunion April 15-17, 2016 Brad A. Stinson Jr. ’12 founded The Campus Market, a service that allows buying and selling among college students.

Alyssa R. Roegner M.S.N. ’15 was named a certified registered nurse anesthetist at Beaumont Healthy System in Troy, Mich.

CHRIST SCHOOL Asheville, North Carolina

www.christschool.org • 800.422.3212

62 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

MARRIAGES Edward T.W. Bersuder ’10, J.D. ’14, LL.M. ’14 to Gabriela Jara J.D. ’14, LL.M. ’14 on July 2, 2015. Residence: Raleigh…Kraig M. Knas ’10 to Emily L. Modlin ’10 on Sept. 19, 2015. Residence: Chicago…Sarah A. Bruss M.B.A. ’11 to Matthew J. Walsh M.B.A. ’11 on June 20, 2015. Residence: Hoboken, N.J….

John A. “J.J.” Hoff III ’11 to Katherine E. Patellos ’11 on July 11, 2015. Residence: Philadelphia…William R. Robinson ’11 to Sarah E. Krueger ’12 on May 22, 2015. Residence: Durham…Mark W. Thysell ’11 to Monica K. Hogan ’12 on Oct. 31, 2015. Residence: New York…Alexander S. Keller ’12 to Catherine E. Auerbach ’13 on Aug. 16, 2015. Residence: Charlottesville, Va….Christopher J. Nash ’13 to Nicole Schollmeyer ’13 on April 18, 2015.

Residence: Chicago.

Travel with Duke

Your friends. Your faculty. Your dream destinations.

Where do you want to go in 2016?

www.dukealumnitravel.com

Mystical India with Ranthambore Tiger Preserve Oct. 30 - Nov. 15, 2016 Photo: iStock

Ancient Greece & Turkey Sept. 26 - Oct. 4, 2016

Art of Living in Provence Oct. 7 - 29, 2016

Coastal Iberia Oct. 25 - Nov. 2, 2016

DUKE MAGAZINE Photo: iStock

Photo: iStock

Photo: iStock

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63

BIRTHS Emett Ruth to Christopher E. Breslin M.Div. ’11 and Rachel Breslin on July 7, 2015…Gael Nicolas to Lauren K. Willoughby Garcia-Belmonte M.B.A. ’11 and Sergio Garcia-Belmonte J.D. ’12, LL.M. ’12 on April 13, 2015…Luke Daniel to Matthew R. Jantzen M.Div. ’12 and Amy Jantzen on July 10, 2015.

INMEMORIAM Julia A. Perry Pattie ’33 of Alexandria, Va., on March 11, 2015. She is survived by a son, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Christine A. Umstead Sharpe ’33 of Frederick, Md., on April 20, 2015. She taught in schools in North Carolina, Washington, and Maryland for 22 years. Her many civic engagements included the

Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Frederick Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, and the Maryland State Retired Teachers Association. She is survived by a daughter, a son, four grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Mary A. Heyward Ferguson ’38, A.M. ’40 of Pittsburgh, on April 9, 2015. She was an English professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, Ohio State University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she was a founding professor. She was influential in women’s studies, working on national commissions and curricular projects, and serving as editor of the anthology Images of Women in Literature. She is survived by three daughters, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Ruth E. McChensey Smith ’38 of Newtown, Pa., on Feb. 14, 2015. She worked for Educational

Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., and played tennis in various senior-citizen leagues. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

William F. Franck Jr. ’39 of Martinsville, Va., on March 18, 2015. A veteran of World War II, he served in the Quartermaster Corps in the European theater. After returning from the war, he became general manager, then president, at Pannill Knitting Co., transforming it into Tultex Corp. He was the first president of the Martinsville Chamber of Commerce, chair of the fund drive that built Memorial Hospital, a member of the Martinsville school board and the Mayor’s Commission of Human Values, and president of the Virginia Manufacturing Association. He was a chair emeritus of the Duke Eye Center advisory committee. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; two daughters, C. Ann Franck Gordon ’72 and Martha Franck Rollins ’65, M.A.T. ’68; two sons; son-in-laws O. Randolph Rollins ’65, J.D. ’68 and Alexander M. Gordon M.Ed. ’77; 11 grandchildren, including Mary V. Rollins ’91 and C. Elizabeth Rollins Euler ’97; a grand-son-in-law, Robert A. Millet H ’95; nine great-grandchildren; and a niece, Laney T. Credle Haga ’65.

Dorothy R. Miller Gordon ’39 of Efland, N.C., on March 28, 2015. She lived all over the world, including California, Maine, Japan, Germany, and Okinawa. She is survived by two sons, Thomas F. Gordon Jr. ’66 and Alexander M. Gordon M.Ed. ’77; a daughter-in-law, C. Ann Franck Gordon ’72; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

SAVE THE DATE Thursday, February 18 - Saturday, February 20, 2016 Durham, NC Register online at dukewomensweekend.com

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Deborah James, Secretary of the Air Force Contact us for additional information at education@daa.duke.edu or call 919-684-2988.

64 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

James B. Thomas ’39 of Easton, Md., on April 11, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he served in both the European and Pacific theaters and was at Utah Beach in the Normandy landings. He opened his own medical practice in Frederick, Md., and worked alongside his brother and father. He also ran mental-health clinics for the state of Maryland.

He is survived by two daughters, two sons, four grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Marion D. Johnson Bruckner ’40 of Oyster Bay, N.Y., on Feb. 4, 2015. She created a book club at the Manhasset Public Library and was a sustaining member of the Junior League of Long Island. She is survived by two daughters and six grandchildren.

Charlotte C. Newlin “Shotsie” Deupree ’40 of Covington, Ky., on April 16, 2015. She was a fashion model in Cincinnati, working for several well-known department stores. Her civic engagements included the Cincinnati Woman’s Club, Junior League of Cincinnati, the opera guild, the symphony club, World Piano Competition, and the World Choir Games. In 1973, The Cincinnati Enquirer named her “First of the Queen City Beauties.” She is survived by three grandsons and a great-granddaughter.

Eugene G. Wilson ’40 of Winston-Salem, on April 7, 2015. He was on the lacrosse team when it was founded at Duke in 1938 and played for three years. He served as captain of a torpedo boat during World War II, earning a Bronze Star with a combat “V” and the French Croix de Guerre with a Silver Star. He also served in the Korean War and retired from the Navy Reserve. He worked for Western Electric Co., now Alcatel-Lucent, for over

35 years. He was a licensed pilot. He is survived by his wife, Frances; a daughter; two sons; a stepdaughter; two stepsons; and four grandchildren.

William B. Cox ’41 of Richmond, Va., on May 11, 2015. A veteran of the Army during World War II, he worked for DuPont as a chemical engineer for 25 years and Media General as a data processing manager for 13 years. He was a Virginia Licensed Engineer. He was awarded Volunteer of the Year by The Shepard’s Center of Richmond. He is survived by his wife, Geraldine; a son; a brother; four grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Carol J. Wagner Crook ’41 of Belleville, Ill., on April 2, 2014. She is survived by a daughter, a son, three grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Paul A. Gira M.F. ’41 of Santa Barbara, Calif., on May 20, 2015. A lieutenant in the Navy during World War II, he worked in marketing for more than 60 years with Cosmodyne Corp. and then Hydranautics. He is survived by two daughters and five grandchildren.

David F. Gould Jr. ’41 of Levittown, Pa., on May 2, 2015. He was in the Navy Air Force during World War II as a lieutenant and plane radar operator. He worked as a civilian engineer and an analyst at Johnsville Naval Air Base. He is survived by two sons, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Dorothy A. “Dottie” Luchans ’41 of Stone Mountain, Ga., on March 18, 2015.

James M. Timmons M.D. ’41 of Detroit, on April 9, 2015. He was in private practice with the Columbia Ear, Nose & Throat group for 40 years. He was a diplomat of the American Board of Otolaryngology, a past president of the Columbia Medical Society, and on the board of directors of the Columbia Hearing & Speech Center. In 2004, he was inducted into the St. Luke Society of Providence Hospital. He is survived by two daughters, two sons, 11 grandchildren, and 18 great-grandchildren.

Louise M. Phillips B.S.N. ’42 of Warner Robins, Ga., on May 23, 2015. A veteran of the Army during World War II, she was a registered nurse and worked in hospitals stateside after the war. She is survived by five daughters, 10 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren.

Martha S. Roddy A.M. ’42 of Harrisburg, Pa., on May 11, 2015. She taught at Central Dauphin High School for over 20 years. She is survived by two sons, a sister, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Phillip E. Russell ’42, M.D. ’50 of Asheville, N.C., on May 31, 2015. A pilot for the Navy during World War II, he practiced internal medicine for 35 years across the country. He was a board member of Blue Ridge Mental Health and the chief of medicine at Aston Park Hospital. He was named 2007 Volunteer of the Year by the North Carolina Arboretum. He is survived by a daughter, two sons, a sister, two grandsons, and a great-granddaughter.

Jean Wells Clark ’43 of Pittsburgh, on May 8, 2015. She worked as an insurance adjuster for World War II. Later, she worked as a volunteer coordinator for Western State School & Hospital, serving in the Bethel Park school district administration. She is survived by a son, four daughters, 10 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Joel A. Cooper B.D. ’43 of Little Rock, Ark., on April 17, 2015. He served churches in Arkansas for more than 50 years as a United Methodist minister. In 1948, he was named The Progressive Farmer Rural Minister of the Year. He was the founding pastor of both Maumelle and Grace United Methodist churches in Conway, was nominated to the Methodist episcopacy, and was a delegate for many years to the General and World United Methodist conferences. He also taught at Hendrix College. He is survived by three sons, including William C. Cooper M.Div. ’75; a brother; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Eben E. Cowan ’43 of Greenville, S.C., on March 17, 2015. He worked at IBM for 35 years as an account executive. He is survived by his wife, Jo; a daughter; a son; two stepdaughters; and a stepson.

Carl C. Edens Jr. B.S.M.E. ’43 of Naples, Fla., on April 25, 2015. A veteran of the Army Air Corps during World War II, he worked as an engineer for AT&T on a series of defense and telecommunications projects. He is survived by his wife, Ruth; a daughter; two sons; a sister; a brother, John C. Edens ’50; and three grandchildren.

Give your kids a summer experience they will always remember.

Send them to Duke TIP Field Studies.

Field Studies are two-week, residential programs that provide academically challenging courses to gifted students in grades 9–12. Students can conduct marine science research in Florida, explore tropical medicine in Costa Rica, delve into international law and justice in The Hague, stretch their mathematical knowledge right here at Duke, and more. The Duke University Talent Identification Program.

Apply at tip.duke.edu/fieldstudies. Applications are open January 6–February 24.

Admission is based on a review of each applicant’s overall submitted academic portfolio.

DUKE MAGAZINE

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“I love that Duke Divinity is interdisciplinary. It’s rare to have 50 colleagues of different backgrounds all under one roof. Elsewhere I wouldn’t have the expertise I now have at my fingertips.”

“I like to teach, do independent research, and pursue what’s good for science. At Duke, there is a huge opportunity to make a difference and to get students interested in science.”

Sara Haravifard, William M. Fairbank

Christena Cleveland, Associate Professor

Assistant Professor of Physics at Trinity

of the Practice of Reconciliation and Director

College of Arts & Sciences

of the Center for Reconciliation

“Duke has always believed in me— first as a student, and then as a professor. I came home in part for that reason, and I stayed because of the tremendous resources available to faculty, including our students.”

IDEAS THAT MOVE THE WORLD FORWARD FACULTY EXCELLENCE How does Duke provide the best education for our students?

With exceptional faculty who lead by example.

As teachers, they train students to become

Neil S. Siegel ’94, A.M.’95, David W. Ichel Professor

critical thinkers and leaders in their fields.

of Law at Duke Law School

As mentors, they inspire them to develop their academic interests and careers. As internationally recognized experts, they pursue groundbreaking research to move the world forward.

Thanks to you, remarkable leaders like Christena Cleveland, Sara Haravifard, and Neil Siegel are among more than 68 out of 100 new endowed faculty chairs and professors who are at Duke because of the Duke Forward campaign. Your support to raise $3.25 billion

by June 2017 ensures we always have the best faculty at Duke.

Discover more at dukeforward.duke.edu.

Download the LAYAR app and scan the photo to discover more ways the Duke Forward campaign has put your gifts into action in the 2015 Campaign Impact Report.

Follow us for regular campaign updates.

DUKE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2015

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Anne W. Morrison Taylor ’43 of Monroe Township, N.J., on May 31, 2015. She was a history teacher for the Monroe Township public schools. A charter member of the Cranbury Historical & Preservation Society, she was its first corresponding secretary and docent. She was also a board member for the Long Island Historical Society. She is survived by six children, 11 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

Ruth A. Jolly Barrows ’44 of Cincinnati, on March 26, 2015. She is survived by two daughters, a son, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Madge Poole Copley ’44 of Virginia Beach, Va., on April 13, 2015. She worked in fashion and retail in New York and New Jersey before moving to Virginia to work as a substitute teacher at Green Run High School for more than 30 years. She is survived by a daughter; a son; a sister, Mary E. Poole ’35; five grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Joseph P. Gutstadt ’44, M.D. ’47 of San Rafael, Calif., on April 18, 2015. A psychiatrist, he was the deputy director of Marin County Mental Health Services at Marin General Hospital. He then was the supervising psychiatrist to the mental-health inpatient services and crisis unit. He was the first chair of the Marin Mental Health Advisory Board and its senior advisory committee. He won second place in pie-baking and an honorable mention for sculpture at the Marin County Fair.

He is survived by two daughters, a son, and three grandchildren.

Luise Neimann Hanson J.D. ’44 of Saco, Mont., on April 29, 2015. She was one of the few

STORIED LEGACY

StoriedLegacy.com "Storied Legacy's professionalism helped create a gift for our family that will be great to share with future generations."

-David Gergen

Archival Quality Biographical Films by Duke Alumni 68 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

women to receive a law degree during that era.

After teaching for a year, she moved to Saco and ran the Frank Hedges Ranch. She is survived by two daughters, a son, and a sister.

Donald S. Littman ’44, M.D. ’47 of Red Bank, N.J., on May 28, 2015. A former lieutenant in the Navy during World War II and the Korean War, he practiced internal medicine in Little Silver, N.J., for 40 years. He is survived by his wife, Leone B. Siegel Littman ’45; a daughter; two sons, including James A. Littman ’72; seven grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Audrey B. Hante McGlaughlin ’44 of McMurray, Pa., on Dec. 17, 2014. After working for two years in New York, she moved to Pittsburgh and served on the board of Magee Hospital and the Children’s Home. She is survived by a daughter, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Douglas L. McGuire B.D. ’44 of Ruston, La., on Feb. 21, 2015. A chaplain in the Navy during World War II, he served in the Methodist Campus Ministry throughout his life. He represented Louisiana for the United Methodist Church. He held the title of honorary chieftain of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation for his support of Native American churches. He served as a member of the board of trustees of Centenary College and was a charter member of the board of trustees of Glenwood Hospital. In 1985, he received the first annual Heritage Award. He cofounded an endowed professorship in English at Louisiana Tech. In 1993, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Arts & Sciences and, in 1994, one of the 100 Centennial Distinguished Scholars for the university. In 2002, he was named Tech’s Alumnus of the Year and, in 2004, received the Lincoln Humanitarian Award. He is survived by two daughters, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Sterling J. Nicholson Jr. ’44 of Minneapolis, on Feb. 1, 2015. A veteran of the Army during World War II, he worked for his family’s heating and air-conditioning business in Durham. Later, he was an international economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, Legislative, and Tariff Policy Division, in the Office of International Trade Policy. He represented the U.S. in international negotiations that culminated in the Harmonized Community Description and Coding System, for which he won a bronze medal for meritorious service. He is survived by two daughters, three sons, a brother, a sister, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

in meat-buying for Safeway supermarkets before joining the Duke University staff, working over the years as a secretary, cataloguer for Perkins Library, and circulation librarian of the Medical Center Library. She was an admissions counselor at Durham Technical Community College for 14 years. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, a sister, three grandchildren, and two great-grandsons.

Neal A. Bedinger Jr. ’45 of Winston-Salem, on May 6, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he belonged to the Navy Reserve for over 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant. He worked for Davis Inc. for 32 years as general manager and executive vice president. A Forsyth County commissioner, he was also on the Smith-Reynolds Airport Commission and the boards of Winston-Salem State University Foundation and Piedmont Federal Savings Bank. He served as president of the Winston-Salem Retail Merchant Association and the Better Business Bureau. He is survived by a daughter, two sons, a brother, three grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

George M. Ivey Sr. ’45 of Charlotte, on May 21, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he worked for his grandfather’s company, J.B. Ivey & Co., expanding the stores from downtown centers into regional malls around the Southeast. He was the former director, president, and chair of J.B. Ivey & Co. and Ivey Properties Co. He held leadership positions on the boards of many organizations, including Marshall Field & Co., the National Retail Merchants Association, the Charlotte Merchants Association, the National Council of YMCAs, the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, the Mint Museum, United Way of Carolinas, and Barium Springs Home for Children. He was also a member of board of visitors at Charlotte Country Day School. He is survived by his wife, Jean; three daughters; a sister, Mary C. Ivey Matthews ’56; seven grandchildren, including Matthew Findley McLanahan ’05; and five great-grandchildren.

Jim E. LaRue ’45 of Tucson, Ariz., on March 29, 2015. He was a college football coach for 45 years, coaching at the universities of Arizona, Houston, and Utah, and Wake Forest University.

He also coached various professional teams, including the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears, who won the Super Bowl in 1986. He is survived by two daughters, a son, a brother, five grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Jane W. Bendall Steele ’44 of Chapel Hill, on Feb. 9, 2015. She held various management positions in the world-trade and domestic headquarters organizations within IBM for 38 years.

She is survived by two stepdaughters, a step-granddaughter, and three step great-grandchildren.

Hugh McCulloch Jr. M.D. ’45 of Point Pleasant, N.J., on Feb. 24, 2015. He was the chief of Air Force Dispensation on Guam. He was then a diplomat in dermatology at Johns Hopkins. During the Korean War, he was the chief of dermatology at Valley Forge Army Hospital. Later, he had a private practice in New Jersey, in Plainfield and Bay Head. He is survived by his wife, Pat; three daughters; a son; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Enola N. Cross Tobi ’44 of Tampa, Fla., on May 9, 2015. She worked for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as a photogrammetric mapmaker.

She was a dress buyer for Maas Brothers and managed the pension plan and profit-sharing plan for The Tobi Co. She is survived by a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren.

Marguerite G. Taylor “Peggy” Ramage ’45 of Greenville, S.C., on April 6, 2015. She served on the Christ Church Altar Guild for 62 years. She worked for The Burley Warehouses, her family’s farms in Tennessee and West Virginia. She is survived by two daughters, a son, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Ethel A. Ruppenthal Barlow ’45, M.R.E. ’47 of Durham, on March 14, 2013. She worked

Evelyn A. Bernhardt Roberts ’45 of Gaithersburg, Md., on April 20, 2015. She worked at the

Library of Congress and for the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Labor, and worked on the papers of Woodrow Wilson. She is survived by two sons, her brother, and a grandchild.

Herbert D. Smith II ’45 of West Chester, Pa., on April 25, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he served in the Pacific theater. He owned and operated the family business, T.E. Smith & Son Moving & Storage. A Mason, he also belonged to the Exchange Club and the American Legion. He is survived by his wife, Lorraine; three daughters, including Gayle L. Smith Jeffries ’71; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Charles B. Tichenor II ’45 of Boiling Springs, N.C., on May 19, 2015. A Navy veteran, he served in the Pacific theater and China. He worked for Kraft Inc. for 20 years, becoming vice president of marketing. He then moved into academia, teaching at Mississippi State University, Elizabeth City State University, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. As a business professor at Gardner-Webb University, he founded the Graduates in Executive Management program. He was a board member of various U.S. and foreign corporations. In 1939 and 1940, he won the U.S. Boy’s Table Tennis Championship. He is survived by his wife, Helen; two daughters; two sons; two stepdaughters; four grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Jesse Gordon Wright ’45 of Lexington, N.C., on April 2, 2015. She taught English at North Davidson High School and was a member of the Lexington city school board. She is survived by a daughter; a son; a sister; four grandchildren, including Amy W. Hill ’94; seven great-grandchildren; and two cousins, Eva H. Hargrave Smith ’57 and Deirdre Woods M.E.M. ’82.

Dirck W. Arrowsmith ’46 of Yuba City, Calif., on April 7, 2015. A veteran of World War II who served in the Pacific theater, he worked for the San Jose Mercury-News in the advertising department.

He won a national advertising campaign two years in a row. He then worked for the family fertilizer business, Western Farm Chemical Co. When it was sold to John Taylor Fertilizer, he flew planes as the regional sales manager in crop-dusting. Later, he established Arrowsmith Ink, a printing brokerage firm. President of the board of directors of Fremont Medical Center, he also was a member of the Yuba Sutter Aero Squadron and special deputy sheriff of Yuba-Sutter Counties, a director of the Chamber of Commerce, and chair of the United Way. He was a past president of the Yuba City Club, which awarded him the Paul Harris Fellowship, and he received awards from the Yuba City Unified School District.

He is survived by two daughters, a son, and two granddaughters.

Joneta Burdett Campbell ’46 of West Lafayette, Ind., on Dec. 5, 2014. Survivors include her husband, Shirley; a daughter; and a son.

Nancy Wenger Kiehne ’46 of Baltimore, on March 20, 2015. She designed promotional art for the Hampton Mansion Historic Site and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In 2008, she was featured in The Artist’s Magazine as one of 16 artists over 60. She then taught art classes and workshops in Towson, Md. She is survived by a daughter, Barbara E. Kiehne Younger ’76; a son, Ear-

nest C. Kiehne ’73; five grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

Michael Suttle Jr. ’46 of Newport News, Va., on May 20, 2015. A veteran of World War II in the Marine Corps, he was the president of Suttle Motor Corp. in Newport News for over 50 years.

He is survived by his wife, Jessie; a daughter; three sons; seven granddaughters; and three grandsons.

Roy J. Trumbull B.S.E.E. ’46 of Venice, Fla., on March 7, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he worked for Wisconsin Bell Telephone Co. for 37 years. He is survived by his wife, Mildred; two daughters; a brother; and two grandchildren.

Mary F. Goodwin Bowling ’47 of Madison, Wis., on June 1, 2015. She was the finance director for the Mississippi District YWCA and worked for Millsaps College. She taught U.S. history at Gulfport and Central high schools and wrote a community newsletter. She is survived by two daughters, a son, a stepdaughter, three stepsons, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Sherman D. Clark ’47 of Houston, on May 7, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he was an exploration geophysicist for oil provinces around the world. He is survived by a daughter, two sons, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Muncy E. “Buddy” Funk Jr. ’47 of Woodstown, N.J., on April 5, 2015. An Army sergeant during World War II, he was an excavating contractor. He is survived by his wife, Sally; a daughter, Janet L. Simmons Hoerst ’76; two sons, including Roberdeau D. Simmons ’74, M.D. ’78; a sister; and eight grandchildren, including Sallyann C. Bergh ’03.

Wilbur P. Gulley Jr. ’47 of Little Rock, Ark., on Jan. 23, 2015. He was captain of the minesweeper USS Prime during World War II. He then joined his father’s company, Pulaski Federal Savings & Loan, later renamed Savers Federal, where he was CEO for 47 years. He was the leader of Arkansas Savings & Loan League, serving on the Little Rock Branch of the Federal Reserve. His civic engagements include general campaign chair of the United Fund, president of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce and Little Rock Boys Club, and board member of of Hendrix College and Arkansas State University. He is survived by four sons, including Wilbur P. Gulley ’70 and William H. Gulley ’70; two stepdaughters; a stepson; 13 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

John S. Josey ’47 of St. Simons Island, Ga., on May 21, 2014. He was a medical officer and flight surgeon for the Marines for three years. He practiced ophthalmology in Georgia for 36 years.

He is survived by his wife, Lola; two sons; and two granddaughters.

Doris E. King A.M. ’47, Ph.D. ’52 of Raleigh, on Feb. 21, 2015. She was one of the first women to be granted a scholarship for Ph.D. studies at Duke by the history department. She taught at Campbell College, now Campbell University, Stephen F. Austin University, and Wesleyan College. She helped establish a College of Liberal Arts degree program in history and government at N.C. State University, where she taught for 25 years. She is survived by her niece and four great-nephews.

Margaret P. Brooks Luecker ’47 of Evanston, Ill., on Feb. 21, 2015. She was a social worker for Alamance County, N.C. She is survived by a

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daughter, Elizabeth B. Luecker van Slyke B.S.C.E. ’79; a son; a brother; two granddaughters; and two grandsons.

licensed professional engineer. He is survived by his wife, Gwendolyn; five sons; eight grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

Hendley S. Reynolds Jr. ’47 of Durham, on Feb. 22, 2015. A veteran of the Army Air Corps during World War II, he worked in IBM for 25 years. He was treasurer for Homestead Heights Baptist Church. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor; two daughters; a son; a sister; and five grandchildren.

Mary Anne Cromer Stone ’48 of Durham, on April 27, 2015. She was president of the Durham Junior League and Durham Nursery School Association. She also served on the Caring House board.

She is survived by three daughters, including Marian C. Stone Lacy ’72; a son-in-law, Dudley B. Lacy ’72; five grandchildren, including Julia H. Lacy Gaylord ’07; and a great-granddaughter.

Roland F. Dorman ’48 of Simsbury, Conn., on Feb. 25, 2015. A medical technician in the Army during World War II, he made a career in insurance, at Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., as CFO at Aetna Insurance Co., and as senior vice president of Connecticut General. He was on the board of directors of Federal Life Insurance Co. He was board chair and Sunday-school superintendent at Simsbury United Methodist Church. He is survived by his wife, Joan; a daughter; a son; and four grandchildren.

Guillermo Garcia de Quevedo ’48 of Miami, on April 10, 2015. A banker for 45 years, he began at First Federal Savings & Loan of Miami. He was also a local enrolled agent for tax preparation. Survivors include four daughters, three sons, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Jean O. Moser Godwin ’48 of Frederick, Md., on April 10, 2015. She was a high-school chemistry teacher. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, eight grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

Lonnie W. Hudson Jr. ’48 of Raleigh, on March 16, 2015. A World War II Army veteran, he started in business operations at DuPont in Virginia. He continued as a stockbroker and investment adviser, retiring as vice president of White, First Securities. He grew prize-winning roses. He is survived by his wife, Ruth; two daughters, Caroline Hudson Lock ’78 and Elizabeth W. Hudson Willingham ’84; and a granddaughter.

Edwin A. Kucerik B.S.M.E. ’48 of Telford, Pa., on Feb. 22, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in the Custom House in Philadelphia for almost 30 years.

He is survived by his wife, Doris; a daughter; two sons; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Eugenia A. Caswell Latty ’48 of Orlando, Fla., on May 7, 2015. She was committee chair of the Orlando Symphony and Opera. She is survived by two daughters, a son, and five grandchildren.

Theron E. Montgomery Jr. A.M. ’48, Ph.D. ’50 of Anniston, Ala., on Feb. 10, 2015. He was a sociology professor at Jacksonville State Teachers College. In 1955, he was named dean of Jacksonville State College. He retired as president emeritus at Jacksonville State University. He was also an international consultant, member of the Regional Medical Center Hospital board, president of the Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce, and member of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. He is survived by a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren.

Wallace B. Salter B.S.C.E. ’48 of Bartow, Ga., on March 17, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he was a civil engineer with the Georgia Department of Transportation for 30 years. He was a registered land surveyor and a 70 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Mary E. Hunter Szybalski ’48 of Madison, Wis., on April 23, 2015. One of the very few women in science at the time of graduation, she worked as a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than 25 years, she worked at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, where she created a new field of gene therapy by performing the first-ever transfection of human cells. She designed and named a process that selects for cells transfected with the human HPRT gene, and she did research on the physical mapping of bacteria, using electron microscopy. She is survived by her husband, Waclaw; a daughter; and a son.

Richard L. Weidman ’48 of Reading, Pa., on March 14, 2015. A veteran of the Air Force, he worked at Philadelphia Insurance Co. and Procter & Gamble. A CPA, he became president of John A. Beard & Co. He served on the local school board. He was president of both the Reading chapter of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Mount Carmel Water Co. He was an officer and director for several local companies. He is survived by two sons, a sister, and four grandchildren.

Wade T. Batson Jr. A.M. ’49, Ph.D. ’52 of Marietta, Ga., on Feb. 14, 2015. An officer in the Navy during World War II, he taught biology and botany at the University of South Carolina for 30 years. He wrote 12 books and more than 40 scientific journal articles. He received numerous accolades for his research and teaching, including USC’s Michael J. Mungo Distinguished Professor of the Year Award and the S.C. Wildlife Federation’s Conservationist of the Year. In 1982, he received the Order of the Palmetto, and later he was inducted into the S.C. Hall of Fame and the S.C. Hall of Science & Technology. He was honored with a wildflower garden on the Swamp Rabbit Trail. He is survived by a daughter, a son, nine grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

John C. Boggs Jr. ’49 of Richmond. Va., on Feb. 15, 2015. Having worked for military intelligence during the Korean War, he taught English at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and then at the University of Richmond for 35 years, where he was the chair of the English department and graduate studies. His research focused on James Joyce and Herman Melville, among other modern works. He is survived by his wife, Rosemarie; a daughter; a son; and five grandchildren.

Mary L. Powe Gardner ’49 of Durham, on April 14, 2015. She is survived by three daughters, a son, a sister, and four grandchildren.

Wilson L. Hamilton ’49 of Deerfield, Ill., on May 12, 2015. He worked in applications engineering. He is survived by a daughter and a son.

Gene R. Harris Jones ’49 of Norfolk, Va., on Feb. 19, 2015. She was a journalist, tour guide, piano teacher, and artist. She hosted exhibitions and was featured in art galleries for more than 40 years.

Later, she taught art on the Cunard Cruise Tour.

She is survived by four sons, 10 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Richard M. Parker III ’49 of Rochester, Mich., on May 17, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he was a high-school English teacher for 35 years. He is survived by his wife, Victoria; a daughter; a son; a sister; and two grandchildren.

Delford L. Stickel ’49, M.D. ’53 of Durham, on May 11, 2015. A medical officer of the Navy for two years, he was assistant professor of surgery at Duke Medical Center. In 1962, he was awarded a John and Mary R. Markle Scholarship in academic medicine and an NIH transplantation research fellowship. In 1965, he performed a kidney transplant, a first for both North Carolina and Duke Medical Center, and he taught the practice. He was the chief of surgery and chief of staff at Durham VA Medical Center. He was a part-time medical director of the N.C. Office of Emergency Medical Services in Raleigh. He is survived by his wife, Ann; a daughter, Nancy L. Stickel ’82; two stepdaughters; two brothers; and seven grandchildren.

Neil C. Taylor ’49 of Jacksonville, Fla., on April 20, 2015. A lawyer, he was a partner in Taylor, Moseley & Joyner PA. He was also the president of San Jose Country Club and Oaklawn Cemetery Association, which he also owned. He was on the board of the Gator Bowl Association and was Jacksonville’s City Handball Champion. He is survived by two sons and five granddaughters.

J. Shirley Blue Whitaker ’49, A.M. ’52 of Greensboro, on Dec. 27, 2014. She taught Spanish at Duke, and she was an associate professor at Mary Baldwin College and UNC-Greensboro. She wrote several articles about Spanish drama, presented several papers around the country, and wrote a monograph that was published in North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures.

She is survived by a sister and two grandchildren.

Thomas D. Ancrum ’50 of Camden, S.C., on March 20, 2015. After serving in the Army Corps of Engineers, he worked in finance in New York and as a commodities broker in New Orleans. He was the supervisory construction engineer for projects such as Dupont, Richland Memorial, and Moncrief Hospitals, Williams Brice Stadium, and other large stadiums throughout the Southeast. He was then a real-estate agent with Coldwell Banker. He was also the director of the Kershaw County Historical Society. He is survived by his sister.

Peleg D. “PG” Midgett III ’50, M.Div. ’60 of Southport, N.C., on Nov. 19, 2014. A veteran of the Army during World War II, he joined his father’s business, Pamlico Power & Light Co., before turning to the ministry. He served in various churches throughout South Carolina before becoming a part-time associate at Wrightsville United Methodist Church. He is survived by his wife, Carol; a daughter; five sons; a sister; two brothers; seven grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Jamie T. Poteet ’50 of San Angelo, Texas, on June 4, 2015. A veteran of the Air Force during the

Korean War, he operated chain hotels and clubs in pre-Castro Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Chile. He taught English in Cyprus and Greece. He was a club manager near Chicago.

Harold M. Richman ’50, L ’51 of Charleston, S.C., on Dec. 28, 2014. A veteran of the Marine Corps during World War II, he was an orderly for President Harry Truman at the Potsdam Conference. He was then a private investigator. He is survived by his wife, Sydney; a daughter; two sons; and a sister.

John L. Sullivan Jr. ’50 of Brunswick, Ga., on April 26, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during the Korean War, he worked in IBM for 13 years as a branch manager, director of education, and assistant to the president. He later became a district manager, heading all installations in the Southeast, including the 900 people serving on NASA computer operations. He then became vice president of marketing with Honeywell and eastern regional manager with Memorex Corp., and worked in sales and marketing for Computer Sciences Corp., Automatic Data Processing, and Korn Ferry International, where he was a managing partner. He is survived by his wife, Barbara; two daughters, including Nancy E. Sullivan ’78; two sons; his sister, Elizabeth S. Roche ’52; and six grandchildren.

Margaret P. Sullivan M.D. ’50 of Houston, on March 4, 2015. She was a member of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, for two years. In 1956, she helped develop a pediatric clinic with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where she spent the rest of her career. She wrote and coauthored more than 100 articles published in

international medical journals, and she was the past president of both the American Medical Women’s Association and Business & Professional Women of Texas. She gave presentations to the International Congress of Hematology and to the International Congress of Pediatrics. She was the first woman to be named a Duke School of Medicine Distinguished Alumna. She received the American Leukemia Society Service to Mankind Award in 1985 and the Ashbel Smith Professor of Pediatrics Award in 1986. She is survived by two sisters.

Adelene M. Hopkins Woodworth A.M. ’50 of Chattanooga, Tenn., on Feb. 9, 2015. She was active in founding Allied Arts, now known as ArtsBuild, which emerged from the Chattanooga Arts Council, and became board chair. She was a board member of the Chattanooga Symphony, Boys Club, Chattanooga Regional History Museum, and Chattanooga Nature Center. She was president of the Symphony Guild and Reflection Ridings, where she was honored as a life member.

The American Lung Association named her a Chattanooga Woman of Distinction. She is survived by a daughter, a son, and a sister.

Ella F. Sowers “Ecky” Broad ’51 of Cleveland, on March 18, 2015. She taught high-school English and the Bible in Concord, N.C., before becoming a dramatist, writing and performing her own one-woman shows about people in history and show business. She performed throughout the U.S. and Canada. She is survived by three daughters and six grandchildren.

James C.P. Brown M.Div. ’51 of Southern Pines, N.C., on March 15, 2015. He was a minister in the United Methodist Church for over

40 years. He is survived by his wife, Martha; two daughters; two sons, including Wesley F. Brown ’76; two stepdaughters; a stepson; four grandchildren; six step-grandchildren; and six step great-grandchildren.

Joseph H. Casey B.D. ’51 of Salisbury, N.C., on April 3, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he was a minister in the United Methodist Church for 40 years. He served various churches throughout West Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Martha L. Hoffner Casey M.Ed. ’50; a daughter; a son; a sister; two granddaughters; and two grandsons.

Patricia R. Markwell Clay ’51 of Brunswick, Ga., on April 24, 2015. She was a member of the Atlanta Junior League, among other activities. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, and two granddaughters.

David C. Dellinger B.S.M.E. ’51 of Nokomis, Fla., on April 13, 2015. A veteran of the Army Air Corps, he was a fighter pilot during World War II and the Korean War. He made contributions to military force structure using computer and systems analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He was a founding faculty member at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. He is survived by a daughter, a son, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Robert W. “Tiny” Foster LL.M. ’51 of Columbia, S.C., on May 16, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II and Korean War, he was a captain-ranked legal officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps for more than 20 years.

He was a professor of law at the University of Louisville briefly and, for 29 years, at the University

MEMORIAL GARDEN SARAH P. DUKE GARDENS

Imagine … a garden of serenity, with exquisite plantings and shaded benches where family and friends can gather and reflect, in the heart of Duke Gardens.

For information, please contact: 919-684-5579 • teresa.dark@duke.edu gardens.duke.edu * Duke University estimates that the nondeductible, fair market value of this service is $500; please review this matter with your personal tax advisors.

Photos by Duke Photography & Robert Ayers.

Donors who have contributed $25,000 or more to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens Endowment Fund may have the opportunity for their ashes to be interred in the Memorial Garden.*

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of South Carolina, where he was law-school dean and an American College of Trial Lawyers Professor Emeritus, and Strom Thurmond Chair Professor.

In 1976, he was a visiting professor at Oxford University and later a Distinguished Visiting Chair Professor of law at New York Law School. The official reporter for the South Carolina Judicial Committee and Judicial Council on the Uniform Commercial Code, he was published widely. In 1979, he received the Distinguished Whitney North Seymour Sr. Award from the American Arbitration Association, and he received the Order of the Palmetto in 1991. He practiced in the federal courts in South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court, and U.S. Courts of Military Appeals. He is survived by three daughters, two sons, and nine grandchildren.

Stephen A. Greenberger ’51 of Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 12, 2015. An Army veteran, he joined his father’s business, M.P. Greenberger Co., and over 40 years developed it from a furniture store to an interior-design firm to a real-estate company. He was president of the American Society of Interior Designers N.J. chapter and, as vice president of the National Council for Interior Design Qualification, he helped create the qualifying exam for membership in professional design societies in North America. In Morristown, N.J., he served on the board or as chair of more than 30 civic committees, including as president of the organization now called the N.J. Land Conservancy for more than10 years. After moving to Beaufort, S.C., he chaired the Beaufort County Zoning Board of Appeals and worked for the Beaufort Open Land Trust, the Coastal Conservation League, and the South Carolina League of Conservation Voters. He also founded the Beaufort, S.C., Rowing Club. He is survived by three daughters, a son, two sisters, 10 grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Emmett W. Hamrick Ph.D. ’51 of Chapel Hill, on Jan. 8, 2015. A veteran of the Army Air Corps during World War II, he was department chair of religion at Wake Forest University before becoming the John Thomas Albritton Chair of the Bible. At Wake Forest, he expanded the religion curriculum to study a wider variety of religions, and he contributed to strengthening the graduate program.

He was an Old Testament scholar and went on several archaeological excavations in the Middle East. He is survived by his wife, Shirley, and a son.

William S. Howell ’51 of Atlantic Beach, Fla., on May 3, 2015. A veteran of the Army Air Corps during World War II, he was self-employed as an insurance and real-estate agent. He served as president of the Jacksonville, Fla. Realtors and the Florida League of Cities, mayor of Atlantic Beach for 26 years, and a trustee for Florida’s First Municipal Bond Council. He received the Good Government Award and E. Harris Drew Municipal Officer Award in 1988. He is survived by his wife, Shirley; a daughter; four sons; seven grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; three great-great-grandchildren; and several nieces, including Julia A. Howell Dunbar ’77.

Laurena P. Booker Japenga M.D. ’51 of Indian Wells, Calif., on March 1, 2015. She was one of only five women in her graduating class at Duke. A pediatrician, she served as chief of staff at San Dimas Community Hospital. She was on staff at Foothill Presbyterian Hospital, Inter-Community Hospital, and Queen of the Valley Hospital. She 72 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

is survived by two daughters, two sons, a brother, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Cynthia; four daughters; and his first wife, Grace E. Chappell “Betty” Weber ’51.

Richard P. Kratz H.S. ’51 of Fullerton, Calif., on Feb. 16, 2015. He was the chief of the Army’s Eye, Ear, Nose, & Throat Services at the Army’s General Hospital in Tokyo. Advocates for phacoemulsification, which is a surgery implanting an intraocular lens into the patient’s eye via ultrasonic handpieces, he and actor Robert Young, a recipient of an intraocular lens, were instrumental in moving Congress to overturn the FDA’s ban on intraocular lenses in 1980. He was then a medical adviser for Bausch & Lomb. He is survived by seven children.

Johnnie R. “Buddy” White III ’51 of Birmingham, Ala., on March 11, 2015. A veteran of the Air Force, he was the secretary and treasurer for Bowers Construction before becoming comptroller for Dan River Mills and retiring from Ford Motor.

He is survived by a daughter, two sons, a sister, and seven grandchildren.

Douglas C. McClurkin M.F. ’51, Ph.D. ’53 of Oxford, Miss., on Jan. 21, 2015. A Navy veteran of World War II, he was a professor of biology at the University of Mississippi and a forest hydrology/ soil scientist. He is survived by two daughters, a son, two stepdaughters, a stepson, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Amos T. “Pat” Pagter Jr. ’51, M.D. ’55 of Rutherfordton, N.C., on Feb. 2, 2015. A Navy veteran, he was stationed in Washington, where he attended high-profile citizens, including President John F. Kennedy. For more than 50 years, he had an internal-medicine practice in Tryon, N.C. He also served as chief of staff at St. Luke’s Hospital and was president of the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners. He twice received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for serving on the state medical board. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy; two daughters; a brother; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

James F. Perry J.D. ’51 of Fearrington Village, N.C., on Jan. 7, 2015. A veteran of the Army during World War II, he opened a private law practice in Asheville, N.C., before joining Traveler’s Insurance Co. in Wilmington, N.C., later moving to the corporate headquarters in Connecticut. He retired as assistant general counsel and vice president of State Farm Insurance Co. He specialized in no-fault auto insurance, a topic that he spoke about to state legislatures and various insurance industry associations. He is survived by his wife, Shirley; a daughter; two sons; and five grandchildren.

Russell H. Tagert Jr. ’51 of Greensboro, Fla., on May 14, 2015. A Marine Corps veteran, he was in human resources with Western Electric and worked in AT&T for 44 years. He was the chair of the American Red Cross. He established the city blood program and developed the ambulance service regulations for the North Carolina State Board of Health. He was later an administrator and volunteer with N.C. Telephone Pioneers, where he played “Rainbow the Clown” at Wesley Long Hospital and New Hanover Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C. He is survived by his wife, Judith; two daughters; two stepdaughters; two stepsons; three grandchildren; five step-grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Wilma R. Wright Webber R.N. ’51 of Tabor City, N.C., on April 26, 2015. Survivors include her husband, William; three daughters; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

W. Davis Weber B.S.M.E. ’51 of Gloucester, Va., on Feb. 13, 2015. Survivors include his wife,

Oscar B. “O.B.” Williams Jr. B.S.M. ’51 of Dallas, on Feb. 14, 2015. He was an officer and physician in the Navy before pursuing a career in medicine. He taught at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, then went into private practice as an anesthesiologist and began working for Baylor Hospital. Later, he served two terms as chief of anesthesia at Presbyterian Hospital. He cofounded Dallas Anesthesia Associates. He is survived by three sons, a sister, and five grandchildren.

Charles W. Abshire A.M. ’52 of Troutdale, Ore., on Jan. 1, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he served as an educator at various institutions. He began as a high-school principal in Idaho before working at Reedley College in California. He later became dean of students at Yakima Valley College in Washington before working as director of the library at Mount Hood Community College in Oregon. For more than 20 years, he worked at the library, and he taught history until he retired. He is survived by two daughters, a son, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Frank T. “Doc” Barranco Sr. ’52 of Lutherville-Timonium, Md., on March 21, 2015. He had an orthopedic private practice for 30 years and ran a foot clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery. He took on the role of fire surgeon for the Baltimore City Fire Department in 1972, and during his 20 years with the Baltimore City Police Department, he took over as chief physician in 1985. He was in the Maryland Army National Guard, where he commanded a support hospital and served as state surgeon under the Office of the Adjutant General.

He retired as a brigadier general and continued to serve in the office of commanding general of the State Defense Force of the Maryland State Guard.

He belonged to numerous professional organizations and received many awards throughout his career, including one of the first “Baltimore’s Best” awards, the Legion of Merit Medal, the Maryland National Guard Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Governor’s Certificate of Distinguished Citizenship, and a Baltimore County Silver Star Ribbon for rescue operations involving an Amtrak wreck. He is survived by three daughters; three sons, including Michael S. Barranco ’82 and Frank T. Barranco Jr. ’84; a sister; and 15 grandchildren, including Paget C. Barranco ’18.

A. James Barrett Jr. B.S.M.E. ’52 of Highland Ranch, Colo., on April 19, 2014. Survivors include his wife, Phyllis; two daughters; three sons; and his niece, Nancy B. Klove ’80.

Morton D. Bogdonoff H ’52, H ’54, H ’55 of New York, on March 1, 2015. He began as a professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology at Duke’s School of Medicine, where he was director of the division of behavioral medicine. In

1970, he became chair of the department of medicine at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He was a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. For 40 years, he was a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical School. At Cornell, he was director of the Living at Home Program, and he was co-chief of the geriatric division. He also was an attending physician at New York Hospital. He was editor of the medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

He is survived by his wife, Mary M. Patton Bogdonoff ’56; four children; and two stepsons.

Stanley L. Deckoff H ’52 of Port St. Lucie, Fla., on April 23, 2015. He was the first radiologist and department chair at Mid Island Hospital in Bethpage, N.Y. He is survived by three daughters, two sons, and 11 grandchildren.

Donald C. Dohner ’52 of Clermont, Fla., on April 13, 2015. He worked in chemical sales, as a banker, as a stockbroker, and as a business owner.

He and his late wife, Patsy, owned an interior-decorating and upholstery business in Boca Raton, Fla. He is survived by three daughters and eight grandchildren.

Robert C. Gibbs ’52 of Washington, N.C., on April 28, 2015. A veteran of the Air Force, he worked in the libraries at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Florida. Most recently, he was the associate university librarian at Auburn University in Alabama. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Jean; two sons; and three grandchildren.

Adlai C. “A.C.” Holler Jr. M.Div. ’52 of Charleston, S.C., on March 10, 2015. During World War II, he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps, receiving the Legion of Merit, and after the war, he served as a chaplain for 30 years. He was a faculty member of the Air Force Chaplain School and served as senior staff chaplain in Alaska, Spain, Italy, and Vietnam. After retiring from the military, he was associate pastor and minister of counseling for Bethany United Methodist Church, director of Charleston District Pastoral Counseling Center, and president of Pyramid Counseling Services of Summerville. Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth; a daughter; a son, Adlai S. Holler M.Div. ’82; a granddaughter; and a nephew, David C. Holler ’85.

Robert C. Hudson ’52 of Salem, Va., on Feb. 16, 2015. A veteran of the Army Counter Intelligence Corps, he was a professor emeritus of physics at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., where he taught for 34 years. He also was a founding partner of Physics Associates, where he performed radiological inspection work. He is survived by his wife, Sallie, a daughter, two sons, and seven grandchildren.

Duane E. Neureuther Ivester J.D. ’52 of St. Augustine, Fla., on Jan. 4, 2015. She was a lawyer and children’s advocate in Charlotte for the Department of Family Services before moving to Florida to work for the state. She is survived by her husband, Thomas; three daughters; and a grandchild.

Elizabeth E. Girardet Krynski ’52 of Durham, on Feb. 20, 2015. She taught special-needs children in Durham for 30 years. She was a member of various organizations, including the Durham Orchestra, where she was a violinist, and Daughters of the American Revolution. She

wrote poetry and two books about her life. Survivors include two grand-nephews and a great-niece.

George A. Lewis Jr. B.D. ’52 of Luling, Texas, on April 3, 2015. He was a member of the Southwest Texas Methodist Annual Conference and a pastor in the Flatonia circuit in the North Texas Annual Conference.

William Mallard Jr. B.D. ’52, Ph.D. ’56 of Atlanta, on Dec. 23, 2014. He taught at Sweet Briar College before teaching church history at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He taught for 43 years and was the longest-serving faculty member of the Candler School.

He received the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Candler School’s Centennial Medal. He was ordained an elder in the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church. He is survived by his wife, Gatra; three sons; a brother; and five grandchildren.

Virginia C. Page “Jenny” Max R.N. ’52, B.S.N.Ed. ’53 of Middletown, Ohio, on Jan. 15, 2015. She worked at various hospitals in Cincinnati, was director of obstetrical nursing at Miami Valley Hospital, and taught nursing in Ohio. She also was the office manager for the medical practice of her husband, Marvin, and she worked at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. She belonged to numerous local organizations, including Middletown Women’s Medical Auxiliary, Middletown Symphony, and the Red Cross. She was a liaison recruiter for Duke’s School of Nursing. Survivors include a daughter; a granddaughter; a sister-in-law, Nina M. Musselman Page A.B. ’45, M.D. ’49; a niece, Susan C. Page Lodewijks A.B. ’78, M.D. ’82; and a nephew-in-law, John K. Lodewijks A.M. ’82, Ph.D. ’85.

Thomas H. McCauley Jr. ’52 of Durham, on Jan. 9, 2015. An Army veteran of World War II, he worked for accounting services at Duke for 35 years before retiring. He was also in the Army Reserve. Survivors include several cousins.

P. Franklin Mullinax Jr. ’52 of Richmond, Va., on Jan. 11, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he served as an instructor and research assistant before starting his career in medicine. He was a physician and professor at the Medical College of Virginia for 43 years. He contributed to the fields of rheumatology, immunology, and allergy. He published many journal articles and belonged to several organizations, including the One Voice Choir. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the Lupus Foundation of America. He is survived by a son, a daughter, and four grandchildren.

Ralph J. Neal B.S.E.E. ’52 of Durham, on March 3, 2015. A Navy veteran, he worked in research and development for Blue Bell Co. for 25 years. He was a private pilot. He is survived by his wife, Sibyl; a daughter; a son; a sister; and two grandchildren.

Eugene G. Partain ’52, J.D. ’58 of Asheville, N.C., on March 7, 2015. A veteran of the Korean War, he was a trial lawyer and senior partner at King & Spalding for 40 years. He was associated with many professional organizations, including the International Society of Barristers and the Union Internationale des Advocats. He was named in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American

Law, and Best Lawyers in America. He was recognized by the American Bar Association as one of the country’s top litigators. He is survived by his wife, U. Agnes Reinsche Partain ’52; a daughter; a son; and four grandchildren.

Clyde H. Robertson Jr. A.M. ’52, Ph.D. ’55 of Richfield, N.C., on Jan. 27, 2015. He taught biology and zoology at Pfieffer University School of Natural Sciences for 33 years. He was chair of the division of natural sciences and the athletic policies committee, head of the biology department, building supervisor for Harris Science Building, and faculty adviser to the Baptist Student Union.

He is survived by his wife, Betty; two daughters; a sister; five grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Betty R. Cunningham Sally ’52 of Raleigh, on May 28, 2015. She started the first community Bible study in Swansboro, N.C., and she and her husband, John, were the first drivers for the North Carolina Baptist Men’s medical/dental bus. She is survived by two daughters, two sons, nine grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Betty F. Prosser Tumblin R.N. ’52 of Rock Hill, S.C., on April 20, 2015. She worked in the South Carolina Department of Public Health. She is survived by two sons and five grandchildren.

M. Marion Workman M.Div. ’52 of Pleasant Garden, N.C., on Jan. 8, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he served the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church as a minister for 38 years. Within the conference, he was district superintendent of the Statesville district.

He is survived by a daughter, a son, a granddaughter, and a great-grandson.

Walter L. Adams ’53 of Valparaiso, Ind., on May 8, 2015. A veteran of the Army, he was in the Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II. He was a labor lawyer with Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson before cofounding the law firm Adams, Fox, Marcus, Adelstein & Gerding.

He was also of counsel for Schuyler, Roche & Crisham. He is survived by a daughter, two sons, and four grandchildren.

John A. Gehweiler ’53, M.D. ’56 of Dallas, Ga., on July 6, 2014.

Allen S. Johnson A.M. ’53, Ph.D. ’55 of Winston-Salem, on May 4, 2015.

John S. Reiser A.M. ’53 of Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 8, 2015. A veteran of the Navy during World War II, he worked for Wyeth Laboratories for over 30 years. Survivors include his wife, Gwinnett; three daughters, including Susan L. Reiser ’81; son-in-law, Frank C. Patton III ’82; sister-inlaw, Anne P. Tillet Reiser ’51; five grandchildren; two nephews, W. Allen Reiser J.D. ’83 and William E. Reiser Jr. M.B.A. ’92; a niece, Elizabeth C. Reiser Williams ’79; and a niece-in-law, Nora M. Jordan J.D. ’83.

Tom A. Vestal M.D. ’53 of Anderson, S.C., on Oct. 2, 2014. He was a practicing ob-gyn in the Carolinas for over 30 years. He also was involved with the Anderson Free Clinic and Meals on Wheels. He is survived by his wife, S. Janis Ballentine Vestal ’51; five children; 15 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

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Roy J. Ferry ’54 of Colonial Heights, Va., on Dec. 28, 2014. He was a production-systems analyst at Reynolds Metals. He is survived by three daughters, two sons, 12 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Emmett E. Hiatt Jr. B.D. ’54 of High Point, N.C., on Feb. 26, 2015. He was a minister in the United Methodist Church for 44 years, serving the Western North Carolina Conference. He is survived by his wife, Mary; two sons; a brother; and a granddaughter.

Iris A. Perry “Ikey” Lloyd ’54 of Durham, on March 8, 2015. She taught kindergarten at Asbury United Methodist Church. She is survived by her husband, J. Delona Lloyd ’55; a daughter; a son; and four grandchildren.

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Anne McDonald Oakley ’54 of Quincy, Ill., on Jan. 30, 2015. She helped build Quincy Newspapers. She was a member of numerous organizations, including the Anna Brown Home Women’s board and Friends of the Library, and served as a past president of both the Quincy Service League and the Illinois Women’s Golf Association. She and her husband, Tom, were founding members of the Naples National Golf Club in Florida. She is survived by her husband, Thomas A. Oakley ’54; a daughter; a son; a sister; a brother; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

John A. Reed Jr. ’54, J.D. ’56 of Sapphire, N.C., on Feb. 19, 2015. He is survived by his wife, Louisa; three daughters, including Donna L. Reed ’75; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

H. Fuller Whitaker ’54, M.F. ’55 of Middlesboro, Ky., on Jan. 12, 2015. He worked for the Kentucky Division of Forestry and the Department of Reclamation. He is survived by his wife, Edna; a daughter; three sons; 12 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Dorothy A. Johnson Beavers Ph.D. ’55 of Rochester, N.Y., on Nov. 12, 2014. She worked for Eastman Kodak Co. in the research labs. Survivors include a son.

R. Huck Finn ’55 of Cleveland, on Dec. 25, 2015. He was a dentist in private practice for many years and was associated with the Kidney Stew Club. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn; two daughters; and a grandson.

Marie T. Hakala-Zakrzewski Ph.D. ’55 of Watertown, N.Y., on Jan. 16, 2015.

Originally from Finland, she worked at Orion, a pharmaceutical company, before working in the Biochemical Institute of the University of Helsinki. After emigrating to the U.S., she worked at the Agricultural Experiment Station of Rutgers University and in the department of pharmacology at Yale University. Working at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, she conducted research on cancer chemotherapy that helped development of treatment for colorectal cancer and research on the transfer of genes. She published around 100 research papers throughout her career. After retiring, she was a member of the League of Women Voters in Buffalo for 20 years. She is survived by a daughter, two sisters, and three grandchildren.

Gery C. Houlihan ’55 of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., on Dec. 28, 2014. Survivors include his wife, Lois.

C. Thomas Martz Sr. ’55 of Piedmont, Calif., on March 6, 2015. A veteran of the Air Force, he navigated bomber planes and played on Hamilton Air Force Base’s basketball and golf teams. His fourman team advanced to the Pacific Defense Area Golf Championship. Retiring from the Air Force, he had a sales career in magazine advertising with The Saturday Evening Post and Travel Weekly. He became the Pacific manager of National Geographic magazine and then the West Coast manager of Time Inc.’s Fortune magazine for 11 years. He then became president of the Northern California Broadcaster’s Association before becoming president and CEO of the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. He chaired the Senior PGA Charles Schwab Cup. In 1999, he won the California State Senior Golf Association Championship. In 2000, he was named the University of California-Berkeley’s Bear of the Year. He placed in many golf tournaments. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; a daughter; and a son.

Norman H. Briggs B.S.M.E. ’56 of Norcross, Ga., on March 6, 2015. An Air Force veteran and instructor, he was a project manager for fossil and nuclear projects. He was a member of the Gwinnett SeniorNet Computer Learning Center.

Survivors include his wife, Nancy; seven children; three stepchildren; a brother; and a number of grandchildren.

Charles R. “Dick” Gill H ’56 of Lexington, Ky., on Jan. 4, 2015. Honorably discharged from the Army Medical Corps as a major, he was a physician specializing in rheumatology. He had a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic before working for more than 35 years at the Lexington Clinic and St. Joseph Hospital. He was board certified twice by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He was associated with various organizations relating to arthritis, and he belonged to several professional organizations. He was a fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is survived by his wife, L. Sue Coker Gill B.S.M.T. ’54; a daughter; two sons; a sister; and two grandchildren.

Golden S. Hinton H ’56 of Athens, Ga., on Dec. 20, 2014. He was an ophthalmologist in Tennessee for two years before moving to Georgia and practicing until 1997. He is survived by his wife, Anne; three daughters; and two grandchildren.

Duncan B. Macgregor ’56 of Peachtree, Ga., on Dec. 1, 2014. An Army veteran, he was a systems analyst and a section manager for the American National Insurance Co. for almost 25 years. He was a member of the Bay Area Running Club and the Houston Marathon finish-line committee. He is survived by his wife, Carol; a daughter; two sons; a brother; and three grandchildren.

Louis M. “Mike” Weld B.S.C.E. ’56 of Spartanburg, S.C., on March 11, 2015. A Navy veteran, he was a professional civil engineer who worked at Piedmont Steel and owned Weld Engineering.

He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; a daughter; two sisters; and a brother.

William R. Shawver A.M. ’57 of Fort Worth, Texas, on Oct. 8, 2014. He was a veteran of the Air Force during the Korean War. He is survived

by two daughters; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

William M. Douglas H ’58 of Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 5, 2015. He joined the Navy and participated in the V-12 program, then served at the U.S. Base Hospital in Illinois and on an aircraft carrier.

He was a physician with a practice in Florida. He was a member of the Historical Society of Central Florida and the Orlando Museum of Art, among other organizations. Survivors include a niece and a nephew.

Forrest E. Gotthardt Jr. ’58 of Daytona Beach, Fla., on Dec. 26, 2014. Survivors include two daughters and a sister.

Thomas S. Kenion ’58 of Greensboro, on Jan. 6, 2015. He worked for Blue Bell/Wrangler/VF for 39 years. He is survived by his wife, Jerry S. Mann Kenion ’61; a daughter; a son; and a grandson.

Larry L. Speer ’58 of Akron, Ohio, on Nov. 1, 2014. He owned Repair-It Industries in Ohio before moving to Arizona and continuing to expand the business. He both sponsored and played on several basketball teams in Ohio. In 2009, he was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame at Fair Lawn High School, where he competed in football, basketball, and track. He is survived by his wife, Cece; a daughter; a son; and several grandchildren.

Jack C. Williams ’58, A.M. ’63 of Columbus, N.C., on March 12, 2015. A veteran of the Navy, he spent his career working at IBM. Survivors include a daughter, Carmen J. Williams B.S.E. ’81, M.D. ’86; a son, Jack C. Williams Jr. B.S.E. ’92; and a daughter-in-law, Ann Elizabeth Miller M.D. ’87.

James Harper III ’59 of Danville, Va., on Jan. 20, 2015. He was mentored by Harold Bache of Bache & Co., an investment firm. Bache had been mentored by J.P. Morgan. He, in turn, took a protégé with whom he shared his knowledge of the business world. He was an avid tennis player. He is survived by his life partner, Jeffrey Carson.

David R. Moorefield Ph.D. ’59 of Clinton, S.C., on Dec. 29, 2014. A chaplain during the Korean War, he won a Bronze Star for his service.

He was a Presbyterian minister and a professor at Presbyterian College for more than 30 years.

He is survived by his wife, Ann; three daughters; a son; two sisters; three brothers; and five grandchildren.

James G. Woolery ’59 of Raleigh, on Dec. 18, 2014. A veteran of the Army and the Military Police, he was an actuary for the North Carolina Department of Insurance for most of his career.

He is survived by a sister, Martha B. Woolery Sneed ’53.

Hillel J. Gitelman H ’60, H ’63 of Chapel Hill, on Jan. 10, 2015. He was a nephrologist, widely known for Gitelman’s syndrome and his medical research on kidneys and bone metabolism. He received a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before joining the faculty of the UNC-CH School of Medicine for 30 years. He is survived by his wife, Honre; three sons; two sisters; a brother; and four grandchildren.

Terry P. Wallace B.S.E.E. ’60 of Flat Rock, N.C., on June 19, 2014. Survivors include his wife, Imogene.

Max G. Weaver ’60 of San Diego, on Jan. 12, 2015. He was a professor of English at two colleges in Ohio before editing medical textbooks. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Bordner Weaver B.S.N.Ed. ’57; a daughter; a son; and two grandchildren.

E. Danielle Wilson Allen ’61 of Dallas, on March 7, 2015. She is survived by a daughter, three sons, a brother, and four grandchildren.

Nola Maddox Falcone ’61 of Augusta, Fla., on Jan. 5, 2015. She was the first woman to receive her M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for Chase Manhattan Bank as a trust officer and research analyst of the energy industry before joining Lieber & Co., where she was a partner. She was president and co-CEO of a Lieber subsidiary, Evergreen Asset Management. Barron’s magazine named her one of the top money managers in the U.S. in 1997 and 1998. She was most recently the CEO of NMF Asset Management LLC. She held board positions and was a trustee for a number of organizations.

She is survived by a son, Charles.

Patricia S. Hodgson Rooker ’61 of Savannah, Ga., on Nov. 23, 2014. Throughout her life, she lived in California, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Uruguay. She owned a stationery store in South Carolina. She is survived by her husband, Jean Paul; two daughters; a sister; a brother; and four grandchildren.

Robert H. Chambers III ’62 of Gainesville, Fla., on Jan. 15, 2015. He began his teaching career as the dean of Davenport College and assistant professor of English and American studies at Yale University before becoming a visiting fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Later, he became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and an English professor at Bucknell University, where he edited Twentieth Century Interpretations of All the King’s Men: A Collection of Critical Essays. He was a visiting scholar at Doshisha University in Japan before becoming president of Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, where he cofounded a branch campus in Budapest. Later, he was a senior consultant at Marts & Lundy Inc., then was provost and dean of Trinity College, University of Melbourne. He was the founding director of Common Ground on the Hill, which named a teaching award in his honor. He chaired the Maryland Independent College and University Association and served on other college-related boards. Survivors include a daughter, a son, and a brother.

Robert A. “Andy” Gordon Jr. J.D. ’62 of Hendersonville, N.C., on Feb. 16, 2015. A captain in the Army, he had a career as a bank trust officer.

He was a Boy Scout leader, a chamber of commerce president, and organizing trainer and organizer for Hospice and Head Start programs in Florida. He is survived by his wife, Linda; three sons; a brother; six grandchildren; and two great-grandsons.

William A. Keller ’62 of Dumfries, Va., on Feb. 12, 2015. He was a special agent in the F.B.I., serving in Detroit and then Tampa after attending the Army Language Institute. Later, he practiced law in Virginia, specializing in land-title issues. Through-

out the 1980s and ’90s, he and his wife were publishers of Prince William County’s local Messenger newspapers. He is survived by his wife, Gail; two daughters; two sons; and eight grandchildren.

Albert “Chip” F. Aruza Jr. ’63 of Newburgh, N.Y., on Dec. 25, 2014. A member of the Marine Corps and veteran of the Vietnam War, he was an area specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development. He was treasurer and former captain of the Middle Hope Fire Department and a member of the American Legion. He is survived by his wife, Florence; two daughters; two sons; and four grandchildren.

Susan Fox Beischer ’63 of Durham, on Jan. 20, 2015. She was a board member of the Fox Family Foundation, which gives grants to organizations located within North Carolina’s Triangle.

She belonged to many community organizations, including the Foundation for Better Health, the Friends of the Duke Art Museum, and Durham Academy’s board of trustees. She is survived by two sons and five grandchildren.

David L. Fisher ’63 of Sacramento, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2015. An award-winning poet, he taught English and poetry courses at colleges around the Bay area in California. He published several books of poetry, including The Book of Madness, for which he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1978, he won the first annual Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award for the best book of poetry in America for Teachings. His most recent work was I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof, published in 2012. Throughout his career, he was awarded two National Foundation for the Arts fellowships. He is survived by a brother.

Joseph E. Sink M.Ed. ’63 of Lexington, N.C., on Jan. 14, 2015. He was a teacher in Davidson and Guilford County schools for over 42 years.

He was a member of Gideons International. He is survived by his wife, Evelyn; two daughters; a son; a sister; seven grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Ralph G. Dillon ’64 of Concord, N.C., on Jan. 26, 2015. He was an English professor at Appalachian State University before working for CVS as a pharmacist for 30 years. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; two sons; and three grandchildren.

Joanne Montague A.M. ’64 of Greenville, S.C., on Jan. 1, 2015. She was a journalist and educator in Greenville and a volunteer with the Greenville Country Democratic Party. She was elected a delegate to the National Democratic Convention three times and was named a presidential elector twice. Survivors include several nieces.

James W. Gibson Jr. H ’65 of Jonesborough, Tenn., on Feb. 3, 2015. He practiced family medicine in Kentucky for four years before moving to Durham. He was one of the first doctors to study mammography, and he opened a radiology practice, now called Mountain Empire Radiology, in Johnson City, N.C., with two other doctors. He was a clinical professor at James H. Quillen College of Medicine. He was a member of many civic and professional organizations. He was an honorary alumnus of East Tennessee State University and he received the Servant’s Heart Award from the Mountain States Health Association and the Spirit DUKE MAGAZINE

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Award from the Mountain States Foundation. He is survived by his wife, Dottie; a daughter; a son; and three grandchildren.

Walter C. Metz B.S.E.E. ’65, M.S. ’68 of Raleigh, on Jan. 8, 2015. He joined IBM as a systems engineer in its Raleigh office, where he worked for more than 40 years. His division was recently acquired by Lenovo, and he was working on a new project in the Research Triangle Park. He is survived by his wife, Mary L. Dysart Metz ’69; two daughters, Louise D. Metz ’96 and Anna K. Metz Lutz ’99; a son, Cade P. Metz ’94; a daughter-in-law; two sons-in-law, including Daniel J. Lutz ’01; two sisters; two brothers; and six grandchildren.

David E. Miller M.S. ’65, Ph.D. ’71, M.D. ’73 of Youngsville, N.C., on Jan. 17, 2015. He was a physician for more than 40 years and was associated with Postpartum Education and Support and Postpartum Support International.

He is survived by his wife, Frances; a daughter; two sons; six grandchildren; and numerous great-grandchildren.

Thomas E. Wooten M.F. ’65 of Clemson, S.C., on Jan. 15, 2015. A veteran of the Army, he was a researcher at Mississippi State University before becoming a professor of forestry at Clemson University, where he worked for 37 years. He was named an Alumni Distinguished Professor, served as chair of the department and of the Alumni Professors, was a university marshal, and received multiple teaching awards. He taught as an adjunct faculty member after retiring. He is survived by his wife, Helen; two daughters; a son; and two grandchildren.

Mary Ellen Billings Culp B.S.N. ’66 of Florence, Ariz., on March 3, 2015. She worked as a nurse in Washington, D.C., before moving to Colorado and then Washington. She is survived by her husband, Wes; a son; a brother; and three grandchildren.

Robert Stempfel Jr. H ’66 of Sacramento, Calif., on Nov. 3, 2014. A veteran of the Army, he was a doctor specializing in pediatrics. He received a research fellowship at the Children’s Clinic in Stockholm, Sweden, before beginning a pediatric residency at Vanderbilt University and accepting a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Later, he was a pediatric endocrinologist and professor at Duke. He was a professor and chair of the pediatric department at the University of California-Davis before becoming the director of the Mailman Canter for Child Development at the University of Miami. He made contributions to pediatrics, especially child developmental disabilities. He is survived by his wife, Sarah; a daughter; a son; a sister; and three grandchildren.

Nathan N. “Nick” Aronson Jr. Ph.D. ’67 of Mobile, Ala., on March 1, 2015. He was a professor of biochemistry at Penn State University and published more than 80 articles, mostly focused on diseases related to digestion. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship and was elected president of the Association of Chairmen of Biochemistry Departments of Medical Schools. Later, he became chair of the biochemistry department and a distinguished professor at the University of South Alabama Medical School. He is survived by his wife, Judy; two daughters; a son; a sister; two brothers; and five grandchildren.

Gerald L. Alderson H ’68 of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Feb. 11, 2015. He was the only medical corps officer to serve in the Dental and Oral Division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington. He was head of the pathology department at Audie Murphy Veterans Hospital, and he practiced at the University of Texas Health Service Center in San Antonio. He was in charge of the virology and microbiology departments at Bexar County Hospital, where he also taught in the medical and dental schools. He is survived by his wife, Ellen; a daughter; and a granddaughter.

John F. Brauner A.M. ’73, Ph.D. ’77 of Jamestown, N.D., on Dec. 24, 2014. An Army veteran, he was part of a team at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that developed a widely used vaccine for meningitis. He taught botany at Rutgers University before becoming chair of the biology department at Jamestown College. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn S. Rex Brauner M.Ed. ’74; a daughter; a son; and three brothers.

Gary G. Briggs Ph.D. ’74 of Genesee, Pa., on March 9, 2015. A board member of the Whitesville Library and trustee of the North Bingham Cemetery Association, he was a self-employed contractor in Allegany and Potter counties. He is survived by a stepson.

Barry F. Prosak ’75 of Fort Myers, Fla., on Jan. 11, 2015. He was a master ship captain with the Erie Sand & Gravel Steamship Co., sailing on the Great Lakes. He is survived by a daughter, his mother, three sisters, and a grandson.

Deborah E. Meredith ’76 of High Point, N.C., on Dec. 29, 2014. She held the Grand Cross of

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Color of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. She was an advocate for individuals with autism. She is survived by her husband, Dwight A. Meredith ’77, J.D. ’85; two sons; her mother; and two sisters.

Albert S.C. Sun H ’76 of Towson, Md., on March 8, 2015. Originally from Taiwan, he practiced medicine in Maryland for nearly 40 years, focusing on pulmonary and critical care. He is survived by his wife, Chen-Chih; a son; and his siblings.

Rodney C. Edwards M.H.A. ’77 of Oklahoma City, on Jan. 22, 2015. He served as a hospital administrator in Riverton, Wyo., and was recruited to work as vice president of operations at Baptist Medical Center, which moved him to Oklahoma City. There, he also worked for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and became executive director of the State Residential Assisted Living Association. He is survived by his wife, Shannon; a son; a daughter; his mother; and two brothers.

Wall Street. Then she established and managed her own consulting firm for 10 years, coaching individuals on work/life balance. She was also a member of the Duke Alumni Association board of directors.

She chaired the alumni admissions advisory committee and was the president of the Duke University Metropolitan Alumni Association. In 1990, she was awarded the C.A. Dukes Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service to Duke. All the while, she served on the board of governors of the Arthritis Foundation, totaling 20 years. In 1998, she was named one of 50 National Heroes Overcoming Arthritis. She is survived by her husband, Bill; and a daughter, Kathryn F. Hammond ’18.

James E. Lowe H ’80 of Durham, on May 10, 2015. He was a professor in the depart-

ments of surgery and pathology at Duke. He was a director of the surgical electrophysiology and cardiac metabolism laboratories at Duke. Also an NIH surgical scholar and established investigator with the American Heart Association, he published hundreds of articles in peer-review journals. He is survived by two daughters, Summer E. Lowe Nebbink ’99 and Natalie S. Lowe Raab ’03; a son-in-law, Anthony Raab ’03; a sister; four grandchildren; and a significant other, Gail A. Shulby B.S.N. ’79, A.M. ’00.

Charles R. Perry J.D. ’80 of Cumming, Ga., on Nov. 27, 2014. He was a lawyer, broker, and developer. After law school, he served on the board of directors for the North American Land Trust. In 1995, he was awarded the ACBR Million Dollar

Hubert A. Derby H. ’78 of Denver, on April 23, 2015. Working in emergency medicine for 30 years in the Philadelphia area, he was the director of emergency department at Philadelphia’s Misericordia Hospital in the 1980s. He was a physician on an Indian reservation in South Dakota and at a military base in Colorado. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; two daughters; and a son.

Linda D. Briggs-Milteer M.R.E. ’78 of Mansfield, Ohio, on March 15, 2015. She worked in the correctional system for 23 years as the administrative assistant to the warden and the public information officer. She also was an entrepreneur with her handbag business. She is survived by a son, her parents, and two brothers.

Landry C. Smith III ’78 of New Orleans, on Dec. 24, 2014. He served as the assistant director, facilities management and transition coordinator, of the expansion and renovation project at Grady Memorial Hospital. Later, he worked as a health-systems analyst with the Georgia Department of Community Health. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy; a son; his mother; and two brothers.

Donald A. Dunbar M.B.A. ’79 of Durham, on March 21, 2015. He was a manager at IBM for 34 years and later a tax preparation specialist for H&R Block. He is survived by his wife, Irene; a daughter; four sons; a brother; 10 grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Beall D. Gary Jr. ’79 of Charlottesville, Va., on May 10, 2015. He was the COO of Regent Surgical Health and past president of the American School Counselor Association board of directors.

He is survived by his wife, Amy; a daughter; and two sons.

Terry R. Sokoll ’79 of New Bedford, Mass., on April 21, 2015. She was a fitness instructor. She is survived by two daughters and two grandsons.

Patricia Dempsey Hammond ’80 of Summit, N.J., on May 19, 2015. For 20 years, she held various executive positions with J.P. Morgan in New York, rising to the level of vice president. She developed training programs and introduced one of the first online job posting systems on

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Club Land Deal of the Year for his 375-acre project at Satellite Place. As a teenager, he won the 1969 South Carolina State Golf Championship. He is survived by his wife, Ann; four children; his mother, Dorothy E. Sink Perry ’41; a grandson; and a cousin, Clifford W. Perry Jr. ’66.

Herman L. Best A.H.C. ’81 of Clinton, N.C., on Nov. 22, 2014. He was the historian of First United Methodist Church in Clinton. He is survived by a niece and a great-nephew.

John H. Farrer H ’81 of Olympia, Wash., on April 18, 2015. He was a urologist at hospitals around Washington. He is survived by his wife, Penny, and four children.

Stephen H. Manglos Ph.D. ’81 of East Syracuse, N.Y., on April 14, 2015. He patented the single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and was a tenured professor at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. He is survived by his wife, Carol; a daughter; two sons; two brothers; and two granddaughters.

S. Paul Maslen M.F. ’81 of Upperco, Md., on Dec. 28, 2014. He was a watershed forester for Baltimore before starting Parkton Woodland Services, a forestry consulting business. He is survived by a daughter, a son, his father, a sister, and a brother.

David C. Hester Ph.D. ’82 of Louisville, Ky., on May 8, 2015. He was ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church, serving as pastor in Maine, North Carolina, and Kentucky. He was assistant professor of religion at Berea College.

He joined Louisville Presbyterian Theological

Seminary, where he was professor of pastoral theology and Christian education, dean of the seminary, and director of the doctor of ministry and Christian education program. He also published theological books. He is survived by his wife, Gale; a daughter; three sons; a brother; and eight grandchildren.

Alan K. Roy ’82 of Novato, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2015. He had a career in academia as an educator.

He is survived by a daughter, a son, his mother, a sister, and a brother.

Gerald J. Zinfon Ph.D. ’82 of Campton, N.H., on March 30, 2015. A veteran of the Marine Corps during the Korean War, he was a professor emeritus of English at Plymouth State University, where he taught for 30 years. He is survived by his wife, Lissa; a daughter; a son; and three grandchildren.

Andrew L. Schwartz ’83 of Bowerston, Ohio, on July 8, 2015. He was the director and owner of Firebird Camp for Girls and Camp Roosevelt for Boys. He is survived by his mother; a sister; a brother; and several cousins, including Alice L. Spahr ’89.

Charles C. Smith M.Div. ’83 of Cove City, N.C., on April 4, 2015. He was a United Methodist minister in eastern North Carolina for 38 years.

He is survived by his wife, Jill; a daughter; a son; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

James L. Berk Jr. M.B.A. ’84 of Brentwood, Tenn., on May 14, 2015. He was a marketing executive for Multimedia Entertainment in New York before pursuing producing and songwriting. He

later became the president and CEO of First Media Communications Inc. He is survived by his wife, Amy; a daughter; and a son.

John A. Long ’84 of Pompano Beach, Fla., on April 23, 2015. He was a businessman in the power industry for 20 years. He is survived by his wife, Grace; two daughters; a son; and his father.

M. Kirk Shouvlin M.B.A. ’84 of Milford, Conn., on March 26, 2015. He founded and operated two coffee businesses in Connecticut.

He is survived by his wife, Bernadette; two sons; his mother; his father; a sister; a brother; and four grandchildren.

Charles T. McCullough Jr. H. ’85 of Asheville, N.C., on May 27, 2015. A flight surgeon in the Air Force during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he performed the first total hip replacement in Asheville, in 1972. He was chair of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, which honored him with its highest volunteer award in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Shirley; a daughter; and two grandchildren.

Chester R. Sawyer Jr. M.B.A. ’85 of Southbridge, Mass., on Jan. 29, 2015.

Bruce W. Wood B.H.S. ’85 of Benson, N.C., on May 28, 2015. He was an EMT in the emergency room at Cape Fear Hospital in Fayetteville, N.C. He was also a firefighter and a police officer.

He was a member of the second class of physician assistants that Duke Medical School accepted. He is survived by his wife, Teresa; three children; two brothers; and four grandchildren.

Mary R. Warner Sawyer Ph.D. ’86 of Ames, Iowa, on May 20, 2015. Having been involved in the civil rights movement as a college student, she was involved in human-relations and human-rights work. For 25 years, she taught religious studies at Iowa State University, where she cofounded the African-American studies program and created a peace-and-justice internship. She wrote or coedited three books and numerous articles on African-American religion and politics. She is survived by two sisters.

Linda D. Harris Gilliam M.D. ’87 of Durham, on Jan. 30, 2015. A veteran of the Army, she was a general medical officer at Fort Lee in Virginia and served during the first Gulf War in Kuwait. Her service earned her the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal. She was a family-medicine physician, and she established a charity to serve the East End of Richmond, Va. She is survived by a daughter and a brother.

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William L. Walters M.Div. ’87 of Salem, Va., on May 9, 2015. He worked for the National Roll Division in Avonmore, Pa. He was an intern chaplain at Duke Hospital and was the associate pastor or pastor of various United Methodist churches in Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Suzie; a daughter; a son; and five grandchildren.

urrey Road

a Hope Valley landmark a legacy inspired by its setting

78 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

9085 heated sq ft sited on 3.12 acres guest cottage

Cooke Property

www.cookepropertyinc.com

Jennifer K. Lindquist Hahn B.S.E. ’88 of Sioux Falls, S.D., on Feb. 16, 2015. After serving eight years in the Army and achieving the rank of major, she joined Science Applications International Corp. She then became program manager at the Eros Data Center before serving as vice president and then as an executive in business development.

The records she set in high school on the track team held for more than 20 years. She is survived by her husband, Dick; a daughter; two sons; her parents; stepparents; a sister; a brother; and a grandmother.

Laura J. Boccuti Merkel ’88, M.B.A. ’92 of Skillman, N.J., on Jan. 16, 2015. She had a career in the pharmaceutical industry for many years. She served on the Parent Teacher Association/Organization and was involved with the Girl Scouts. She is survived by her husband, Charles; two daughters; her parents; and a sister.

Amy E. Winans ’88 of Harrisburg, Pa., on March 23, 2015. She taught at Penn State and Dickinson College. She was also an associate professor of English at Susquehanna University, where she was associate editor of the anthology Early American Writings and associate editor of the “Profession and Pedagogy” section of the scholarly journal Modern Language Studies. She is survived by her husband, Windsor; a daughter; her parents; a sister; and a brother.

Thomas D. “Denny” Stauth M.Div. ’89 of Dodge City, Kan., on June 27, 2013. An Army veteran, he was a minister at churches in Kansas. He is survived a daughter, a son, his mother, a brother, and eight grandchildren.

Anne M. Gilliom Andrus ’90 of Malibu, Calif., on June 20, 2012. She was a paralegal at a law firm before publishing four books, a few of which ranked in Amazon’s Top 200 list. She was later the Relief Society president. She is survived by her husband, Tom; a daughter; and three sons.

Russell D.P. Armstrong M.B.A. ’90 of Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 28, 2014. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth A. Michael J.D. ’89; a daughter; two sons; and a stepson.

Haywood W. Gillikin M.Div. ’90 of Smithfield, N.C., on Feb. 18, 2015. He taught at multiple UNC System schools and North Carolina community colleges for 17 years. Ordained as an elder in the United Methodist Church in 1992, he became a pastor of several United Methodist congregations over 24 years. He is survived by his wife, Jenny; a son; two stepsons; and a grandson.

Michael D. Fetter ’91 of Birmingham, Ala., on March 21, 2015. He was a child and adolescent psychologist in private practice. He is survived by his wife, Caren; his parents; a sister; and a brother.

Daniel E. Ruhl B.S.E. ’92 of Madison, Miss., on April 19, 2015. He was an officer in the Navy and an instructor at the Navy Supply Corps School. He joined AmSouth Bank’s management program in Birmingham, Ala. He then practiced corporate litigation and bankruptcy, first in the Jackson, Miss., law firm of McGilnchey Stafford and later at Copeland Cook Taylor & Bush. He also coached the Mississippi College Duberstein moot-court teams and was inducted into the Order of Barristers. He is survived by his wife, Allison Boone Ruhl ’96; two daughters; a son; five sisters; and two brothers.

Sean J. Daniels ’94 of Los Angeles, on March 24, 2015. He worked in the law firm Dewey Ballatine before becoming an executive director of business affairs and development for AOL in Los Angeles. He was then the director of i3 Mobile Inc., offering mobile subscription information and communication services. He was later a consultant for Internet businesses. He is survived by his sister and a brother.

Sidney S. “Chef” Smith III A.M. ’94 of Paoli, Pa., on Jan. 22, 2015. He was a member of the first Teach For America Corps and taught in underserved public schools in Georgia, Massachusetts, and Maine. At Upward Bound, a program for high-school students through Bowdoin College in Maine, he taught math. He is survived by his wife, Susan Lorenz Smith M.P.P. ’02; a daughter; a son; his mother; a sister; and a brother.

Roland “Ron” Guerra M.B.A. ’99 of High Point, N.C., on May 23, 2015. He was a licensed general contractor in North Carolina and Florida, and he was a Florida real-estate agent.

The director of construction and campus development at High Point University, he also worked for Portrait Homes and Centex Homes, and he was president and owner of Arvista Homes LLC and Avalon Construction Co. He was a fundraiser and membership-drive leader for the High Point Chamber of Commerce. He held leadership roles in various civic and professional organizations. He is survived by his wife, Ellen; a daughter; his parents; and a brother.

Wanda Gail Cecil M.S.N. ’00, D.N.P. ’01 of Zebulon, N.C., on Oct. 3, 2012. She is survived by her husband, Walt; two daughters; her parents; three brothers; and a granddaughter.

Jesse J. Henderson M.B.A. ’01 of Indianapolis, on April 21, 2015. Survivors include his wife, Sonya.

Jeffrey B. Williams M.P.P. ’05 of Alexandria, Va., on April 21, 2015. He worked in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is survived by his wife, Stacie; three daughters; his parents; a sister; and a brother.

Norbert Nevid A.M. ’06 of Raleigh, on May 27, 2015. He was vice president of MGIC, a private mortgage insurer in Minnesota; a consultant in New York; and vice president of GE; and he continued as a financial analyst in retirement. He is survived by a daughter; two sons; two grandchildren; and his companion, Andree Allen.

Alicia L. Marti Pommerening J.D. ’97 of McLean, Va., on March 26, 2015. She was a lawyer at Williams & Connolly, where she was a junior associate on President Clinton’s impeachment trial.

She is survived by her husband, David G. Pommerening ’82; two daughters; her parents; and a brother.

Austen J. Heinz ’08 of San Francisco, on May 24, 2015. An ROTC member at Duke, he was founder and CEO of Cambrian Genomics, which makes synthetic DNA accessible through laser printing. An Eagle Scout, he mentored students.

He is survived by his parents, two sisters, and a step-grandmother.

Janice Henry-Rinehart M.Div. ’98 of Dallas, Ga., on Jan. 13, 2015. She was a Methodist minister in Wakulla, Fla. She is survived by three sons, her mother, a sister, and three grandchildren.

Bei “Jerry” Sun ’16 of Durham, on March 4, 2015. He was a second-year undergraduate studying biology. He is survived by his parents and a sister.

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DEVIL’S OWN

This stock certificate is a symbol of potential, hope, and empowerment. It represents an investment in Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line steamship company, which was founded in 1919 through his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Garvey, a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator, was a proponent of the black-nationalist and Pan-African movements and through UNIA aimed to improve the lot of ethnic Africans. To that end, his steamship company sought to transport goods and black people throughout the African diaspora. The artifact, along with other Garvey-related documents in the Robert A. Hill Collection, was acquired recently by the John Hope Franklin Research Center.

–Amir Williams

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Commitment to Duke leading knowledge in service of society “Duke’s commitment to using knowledge in service of society is a model that delivers immediate results and serves as a platform for the future,” said Jack Boyd ’85, Duke Trustee and Duke Alumni Association president elect.

Boyd made an unrestricted bequest to support the university’s most pressing needs, which will allow Duke to reach new heights

April 15-17, 2016 Time changes everything, except true Blue friendships. Come back to reconnect, recapture, and recreate all of your special moments at your 2016 Duke reunion.

in academia, research, and community service. “I hope Duke will continue to move the world forward by preparing future generations of critical thinkers

Your reunion begins online at: www.DukeReunions.com

to become global influencers.”

YOUR INSPIRATION IS JUST THE STARTING POINT. No matter what inspires you to give back, our expert team can help you honor the memories, people, and places that matter to you. Smart charitable planning—at any giving level—may enable you to do more than you thought possible while propelling Duke forward. Contact us today to unleash your inner philanthropist.

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING (919) 681-0464 | giftplanning@duke.edu dukeforward.duke.edu/inspiration

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1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and the Half Century Club Go online to see the list of people planning to attend your reunion, and be sure to add your name too! www.DukeReunions.com Duke Alumni Association Reunions Office • Box 90572 • Durham, NC 27708-0572

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M AG A Z I N E

WINTER 2015

Paul Modrich thinks winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry is great.

Now can he get back to the lab? p.24 It’s the little things and the big things, the day-to-day and the momentous. It’s the individual moments that all add up to an experience like no other. As lifelong members of the Duke community, these are the things we remember that make Duke so special. And you can help them endure.

Every Annual Fund gift adds up to the collective experience our students and faculty enjoy today.

And it’s all made

possible by you.

Make your tax-deductible Annual Fund gift before December 31 and have an immediate impact on the Duke way of life. dukeforward.duke.edu/dec31