Alumni Updates

1950s

Lynn Miller, Ph.D. (BA ’59) notes that writing has been a major part of her life, and has included several scholarly books during her years as a Professor of Political Science at Temple University, and a number of the less scholarly variety in her retirement, among the latter a novel and a memoir. Even though, as a graduate student (KU MA in Political Science and Princeton PhD) she turned to a different discipline to prepare for her career, she considers her undergraduate years as an English major a marvelous foundation.

1960s

Ronald F. Best (BA ’64) has spent most of his working career as International Counsel for large design, engineering and construction company with responsibility for legal aspects of numerous projects mostly outside the US. Sgt E-5 in US Army reserve 1967-1973, demoted to 2LT MSC in 1971. Saw a goodly part of the world on an expense account. Can order a beer in about nine languages. Currently living in Richmond, TX with wife Betty.

Max Royle (MA ’66) is still employed as city manager, St. Augustine Beach, Florida.

Preston Fambrough, PhD (BA ’68) taught English and French at Baker University until retirement in 2012. He is married to Virginia Jones (KU PhD in English).

Timothy C. Averill (BA ’69) is a debate coach at Waring School in Beverly, MA (2005-present) after a 35-year career at Manchester Essex Regional HS in MA. Waring School is a bilingual school and Tim enjoys chaperoning students on their annual exchange with Nantes, France. Tim is a consultant in AP English for the College Board and was inducted into the National Speech and Debate Association’s Hall of Fame. Tim’s wife of 50 years (Lauren Bonnie [Roberts] Averill) passed away in December 2019. Tim enjoys playing bocce, gardening, reading, and cooking, and enjoys his family of two daughters (Jennifer & Rebecca), their husbands, and his four grandchildren.

1970s

Micheline (Zacharias) Burger (MA ’70) recently published a memoir, FIRELINES: MOUNTAINS, MEMORIES AND FIRE. It is a personal story of her family’s relationship to mountains on two different continents, the transitory nature of memories, and the fire that destroys and renews. It is available on Amazon.

Jack T. Lundy (MA ’70, PhD ’78) is retired and lives with his wife in Burlington, KY. They enjoy reading, going to the symphony, and gardening. Next June 1st, they will be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. They celebrated their grandchildren and weddings. Go Jayhawks!

Ron Pullins (MA ’70) retired to Tucson a few years back after four great decades in book publishing in New York and Boston, including founding and managing his own company doing modern and Classical languages and humanities. Those titles are now a part of Hackett in Cambridge, MA. Ron has returned to writing fiction (and some playwrighting) and recently signed for a novel with Unsolicited Press, a successful and fiercely independent press in Portland Oregon. The novel is due out in 2026. Stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Typishly (online) and a dozen other places. Some can be linked via his webpage, pullins.com. Ron’s master’s thesis was a collection of stories and three of those stories have now been published.

Albert J. Devlin (PhD ’70) completed study with emphasis on modern and American literature. Professors of the day included Charlton Hinman, Ed Grier, George Worth, and Max Sutton. The Jayhawk gave way to the Tiger as Devlin began a long career at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His interest in Southern literature led to Tennessee Williams, whose correspondence he published in two volumes (New Directions Press, 2000-2004) with the aid of a senior NEH Fellowship. Elia Kazan, close friend and dramatic interpreter of Williams, led to an edition of Kazan’s correspondence (Alfred J. Knopf) that Devlin published in 2014. In retirement he and his wife Molly enjoy grandchildren visits and continue to read and garden.

Troy Reeves (PhD ’70) and his wife, Susie (BFA, KU, ’65) moved to Nixa, Missouri after Troy’s retirement from Angelo State University

(a campus of Texas Tech), where Troy taught for 33 years. Troy and Susie enjoy swimming in Table Rock Lake, walking Ozark trails, ping pong, and reading. They volunteer at their church’s homeless men’s shelter. Troy’s poems have in recent years appeared in AMERICA, SOJOURNERS, ANGLICAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY, and elsewhere. His personal essay, “Polio in War and Peace,” was in the July 2022 online issue of KALEIDOSCOPE, published by United Disability Services, Akron, Ohio.

Nancy Vogel, PhD (MA ’65; PhD ’70) is the author of Robert Frost, Teacher (Phi Delta Kappa. Bloomington, Indiana, 1974.), “Profile of a Family Farm: The Vogel Family” (Kansas Century Farms: Preserving Our Agricultural Heritage of Family Owned Farms. Acclaim Press, Morley, MO, 2018. Pages 36-41.), and “A Post Mortem on ‘The Death of the Hired Man’” (Frost: Centennial Essays, Compiled by the Committee on the Frost Centennial of the University of Southern Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1973. Pages 201-206.), and editor of The Power of Thought: Fort Hays State University President’s Distinguished Scholars 1989-2000 (2001. “The President’s Distinguished Scholar Medallion: Lessons from Its Symbols,” Pages 37-44.) and P.E.O. in Kansas: Our Centennial Heritage (2003. 435 pp. ISBN 0-9712076-3-1. “Introduction, “ Pages 1-3.)

Larry Mundy (BA ’72; MA ’74) is retired from law practice, lives in Texas, and still maintains that Tristram Shandy is the best book he has ever read.

Raylene Hinz-Penner (MA ’72) published East of Liberal: Notes on the Land, December 2022, in the DreamSeeker Memoir Series by Cascadia Publishing House. She and husband Doug Penner recently downsized and moved from Topeka, KS where they had lived for 20 years (Raylene taught in the English Department at Washburn University) back to North Newton, KS where they began their professional lives at Bethel College.

Bruce Keplinger (BA ’74) has practiced law for 46 years, usually defending health care providers in civil cases. Last year he left the law firm that he founded and now works parttime as an independent consultant, mediator/ arbitrator, and expert witness. The American College of Trial Lawyers inducted him in 2009 and he was named an ICON of the Missouri Bar in 2022.

Lawton R. Nuss (BA ’75) has been named to the advisory committee to the national Veterans Justice Commission chaired by former U.S. Defense Secretary and U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel. Nuss is the retired chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. He lives in Topeka with his wife, Barbara.

William (Brad) Bradley, J.D. (BA ’77) is retired from the company he cofounded, NIC,

Inc. (Nasdaq:EGOV, 1999-2021), and now is an enthusiast for regenerative agriculture on his rural land, Little Osage Ranch, LLC, curates a quarterly podcast on soil health for The Nature Conservancy trustees and staff, and is launching a website (www.farmtender.us) to match regenerative farmers and landowners this summer. He lives in Overland Park with his wife Robbie and stepdaughter Lauren, and enjoys his children, stepchildren, and his eight grandchildren.

Kevin M. McKinnon (MA ’77) moseyed about for a spell and picked up a JD in Arkansas along with that all important license to practice in 1985. Now pushin’ 70 or is 70 pushin’ me? Need ponder that a spell. Wandered down here to Bedford, TX going on 33 years ago. Continue to write poetry. Had an unfortunate accident back in the third grade (now that was a few years back), I swallowed a Webster’s dictionary whole. I’m still chewing on those words to this day. I write poetry in rhyme, free verse, dabble in haiku and a dab of Limerick (that’s for the Irish in me). Now retired these past few years, I don’t have to tuck in my shirts or wear shiny shoes. I have also continued to paint in acrylic, watercolor and oil (might as well experience it all). This past February, I began to write prose fiction for the first time. Chose to do a murder mystery. Coming at it from a bit different perspective. It’s simply a long poem intwined within narrative prose meter.

Neil Nehring (BA ’78; MA ’80) retired from the English department at the University of Texas at Austin at the end of the Spring 2023 semester after 37 years there. He and his wife Maria plan to continue to live in Austin.

Virginia L. Wolf (Bonham) (MA ’66, PhD ’80) retired as full professor from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 2001, having published some 50 articles about children’s literature and two books, Louise Fitzhugh: A Literary Biography and Little House on the Prairie: A Literary Analysis. In 1993 she began seminary, in 1999 she was ordained a Unitarian Universalist minister, and she served the Eau Claire Congregation for nine years. She has written hundreds of sermons and still occasionally preaches. She began a lifelong relationship with Carol Schumacher in 1977 and became an activist for gay rights, resulting in the legalization of samesex marriage in Wisconsin in 2014 in the case of Wolf vs. Walker. Carol and Virginia married and have been together nearly 48 years. They have two children, Laura and David, and five grandchildren.

David M. Powls (BA ’82) recently noted his 41st year in the Kansas community journalism business and was this year’s recipient of the Clyde Reed, Jr. Master Editor Award from the Kansas Press Association, which recognizes a Kansas newspaper editor for a lifetime of achievement that involves commitment to his or her own community, the Kansas newspaper industry and to the state. David and his wife Connie were also selected for the Holton/ Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame this year for their longtime contributions to their community.

Leigh Clark (PhD ’83) has almost completed his epic revisions of a short historical novel (which by inverse creation gets shorter with each edit) and will soon be submitting it to publishers. When not writing, he spends his time playing Bach on the piano or reading, of late in the complete Loeb Virgil. He finds the first comment of the shepherd Tityrus in Eclogue I—“deus nobis haec otia fecit—to be a perceptive reflection on his own life as a writer of modest but independent means.

Anne D. Wallace (BA ’77; MA ’84) becomes Professor Emerita this August after more than 30 years as a teacher and scholar of 19th-century British literature. After taking her PhD at the University of Texas in 1989, Wallace taught for a year at Washburn University before joining the English faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2005 she became Head of the English Department at UNC Greensboro, serving in that position until 2014 and as Chair of the Faculty Senate from 201517. In August 2022 Wallace published “’Paths to freedom and to childhood dear’: Walking and Identity in a Time of ‘Stopt’ Paths” in the online journal Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism (26.3). She lives in Greensboro and Asheville, North Carolina, with her partner Tony Harrison.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Kent Jackson’s (BA ’85) first book, which is still in print (and an eBook). The current title is “Jet- law Explained.” The book explains the Federal Aviation Regulations for pilots. (The movie rights are still available.)

Ellen Boddington (Wilson) Baumler (BA ’74; PhD ’85) is a noted Montana author of many articles and books, most recently a history of Montana’s cemeteries, The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State (U of Neb, 2021). Her work was a finalist in the Willa Literary Awards (2004) and she earned a prestigious Award of Merit (2016) from the American Association for State and Local History. This year, the Montana Historical Society’s Board of Trustees has honored her with the Heritage Keeper’s Award. “While Montana is fortunate to have had incredible professional historians, none have surpassed Ellen Baumler in her exceptional capacity to connect with the public and K-12 students. “Her ability to share her passion with almost everyone — making the past relevant, understandable, and enjoyable — is what makes her contributions so far reaching,” noted Kirby Lambert in the nomination materials. “At the same time, she retains the respect of academics and regularly lectures to college classes and volunteers on PhD advisory committees.”

Chuck Marsh (PhD ’85) retired in 2021 as the Oscar Stauffer Professor and associate dean for research at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas. He and his wife, Kris, live in Lawrence.

Gina Kellogg (BA ’86) transitioned to semiretirement at Ascend Learning (Leawood, KS) in June after a career spanning positions as magazine editor, director of communications, and senior director of content marketing strategy, among others, in industries ranging from water parks, facilities maintenance, and healthcare to floristry and international children living in poverty. In her new part-time role at Ascend, she continues to focus on the critical need for graduating more and better educated nurses while also pursuing interests in travel, genealogy, writing, fundraising, helping to plan her son’s wedding next year, and enjoying life with her husband and grandchildren.

Heather Enos, MBA (BA ’87) moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, to start a role as Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President, and Treasurer, for the Darden School Foundation at the University of Virginia. Ironically, her first day was the day that everyone was told to start working from home because of COVID and didn’t actually set foot on grounds to meet her staff and colleagues for almost three years!

As CEO of Bloomfire, the world’s leading knowledge management platform, Mark Hammer (BA ’88) and his team grew the company over 600% in sales, culminating in a sale to a private equity firm. After the sale, Mark moved his family to Berlin Germany.

Steve Farmer (MA ’82; PhD ’88) retired in 2022 after thirty years of teaching Victorian fiction and poetry, as well as graduate seminars in pedagogy, in the department of English at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

Kiersten Firquain (BA ’90) published a children’s book Penny Goes to the Circus.

Jim Starr (BA ’90) is currently working in the field of Project Management/Coordination and Strategic Communications management, residing in St. Louis, MO.

Daniel B. Hunt (BGS ’92) accepted an assignment with the U.S. Department of State as the Regional Security Officer for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China. Mr. Hunt has been employed by the Department of State since 1999, and is the author of four science fiction novels, two poetry collections, and a collection of short stories. He departs Berlin, Germany with is his wife and two younger children in the summer of 2023.

In addition to being a member of senior leadership in a research-focused academic institution, Deborah Maloney (BA ’93) has put her degree in English to use. Beginning in 2021, she started publishing darker-themed romances (under a pen name). Currently, she has four published novels, an entry in an anthology, and is working on her fifth publication. To date, all of her publications have contracts and are being recorded for audiobooks.

Marcia E (Riley) Kelley (BGS ’94) has retired from a career of Technical Writing and freelance writing. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, Vernon Kelley and her youngest son. Her oldest son lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Aaron Rosenberg (BA ’92; MA ’94) hit two publishing milestones this year, turning in his 50th novel and his 100th short story. His most recent release, the urban fantasy novel Yeti Left Home, also received a glowing review in Publishers Weekly. Aaron still lives and works in New York City.

Dana Carlisle Kletchka (BA ’95) was promoted in 2023 to Associate Professor of Art Museum Education in the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at The Ohio State University, where she also serves as the Director of the Museum Education Specialization.

Amy Lerman (PhD ’97) lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press, 2022) won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest.

Tully McCoy (BA ’98) accepted a position as President and CEO of Great Plains Trust Company in Overland Park, KS. Tully lives in Prairie Village, KS with his wife, Nicole, and their two children, Tully (13), and Rory (11).

Jesse Alemán (PhD ’99) served as the Interim Associate Dean of Graduate Studies from 2022-2023 and has been named the 20232024 Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. His essay, “The End of English,”