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Joanna gave Mathews an engraved lifeguard whistle. Before heading back to Lawrence for fall classes, Mathews checked in with the preschooler and her family. “She’s doing great now,” he happily reports.
Calling all pollinators Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds have a new hot spot on the Hill, thanks to John McGrew, a longtime Lawrence real-estate developer who led the metamorphosis of a section of Capitol Federal Hall’s lush grounds into a native-plant habitat for our prairie’s pollinators. The McGrew Family Butterfly Garden, which was planted May 10 by a group of volunteers from the School of Business, KU Endowment, Facilities Planning & Development, and the Douglas County Extension Master Gardeners, has special meaning for McGrew. He hopes that the garden will not only welcome bees, butterflies and other wildlife, but also encourage students, faculty and staff to step away from their computers and enjoy the great outdoors.
SUSAN YOUNGER
Mathews and Hodges
hen the conference room’s door swung open, Del Shankel’s happy smile proved that, for once, a surprise birthday party was truly that: a surprise. “I was told Dr. Girod wanted to see me,” the chancellor emeritus said of his most recent successor. “So yes, I was surprised. Very surprised.” The Aug. 9 party in Chancellor Doug Girod’s suite (Shankel turned 90 Aug. 4) included a cake baked by KU Dining Services—featuring an early faculty photo of the rising star of KU microbiology, unearthed at University Archives by senior Shankel administrative assistant Melissa Simpson Rhodes. Many friends and colleagues came to Strong Hall to offer sincere birthday wishes to the man Neeli Bendapudi, provost and executive vice chancellor of the Lawrence campus, calls “Mr. Jayhawk.” “Whenever I have lunch with him, I never feel like he is formally giving me advice, but I walk away with something I’ve learned,” Bendapudi, PhD’95, says of the chancellor emeritus, professor emeritus and former Alumni Association interim president. “There’s a great tact to the way he does it. I think the world of him.” Also celebrating was Reggie Robinson, c’80, l’87, interim vice chancellor of public affairs, who first met Shankel in the late 1970s, when he was involved in student government and Shankel was—among the many leadership roles he’s held on Mount Oread—executive vice chancellor. “Here’s this University bigwig, I’m this second-year student from Salina, and he’s just this wonderfully warm and engaging guy who would listen. Just think about all the people who have felt the impact of his approach and his grace. If they’re anything like me, they tried to take that as a model for how they engage with other people. “There’s nobody who better embodies all that is good about KU.” Three cheers to Chancellor Shankel, man of many missions and truly one of a kind.
“Too many of us, especially our children, are spending too much time on screens and not enough time outside,” says McGrew, b’60, who founded Outside for a Better Inside, a Lawrencebased nonprofit group that has built more than 15 butterfly gardens at local elementary schools.
CHRIS LAZZARINO
BECKY KISER/HAYSPOST.COM
A man in full
For the business school’s garden, McGrew enlisted the help of Monarch Watch Director Chip Taylor. “These plants will all be native plants,” Taylor says of the nearly 1,200 flora used. “They’ll all be very attractive to butterflies and other pollinators.” And surely appealing to Jayhawks. I SS U E 5, 2 017 |
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