Spring 2014 Miamian

miamian The Magazine of Miami University

New Center of Campus Armstrong Student Center opens and shares its stunning spaces.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Cautious in Kabul Reclaiming Nefertiti from Nazis 3-D Anatomy

Spring 2014

DIGNITY OF THE SANDHILL CRANE As a sign of respect and show of gratitude to the Myaamia people, Professor Emerita Gail Della Piana’s architecture students created this sculptural piece during the Spring 2008 semester.

Miami University proudly shares the name of the Miami Nation, whose traditional homelands included western Ohio. Cecaahkwa (Myaamia word for sandhill crane) remains a powerful symbol among Myaamia people and appears on the tribal seal of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.

Staff Editor Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96

Vol. 32, No. 2

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Art Director Michael Mattingly Senior Designer Donna Barnet Photographers Jeff Sabo Scott Kissell

STORIES

Web Developer Suzanne Clark

18 Picture Perfect

From the elegant grand staircase to the cozy Shade Family Room, the Armstrong Student Center shows off its signature spaces.

Copy Editor Beth Weaver Issue Consultant Lilly Pereira (Design) University Advancement 513-529-4029 Vice President for University Advancement Tom Herbert herbertw@MiamiOH.edu Alumni Relations 513-529-5957 Assistant Vice President for Alumni Relations Ray Mock ’82 MS ’83 mockrf@MiamiOH.edu Office of Development 513-529-1230 Senior Associate Vice President for University Advancement Brad Bundy Hon ’13 brad.bundy@MiamiOH.edu

22 Miami’s Monuments Man

A major donor to Miami’s art museum joined in history’s greatest treasure hunt.

24 Careful in Kabul Teaching in Kabul, Leslie Weiant ’11 learns many lessons. (see page 24).

ON THE COVER The dramatic dome on the towering Bicentennial Rotunda, the symbolic center of the Armstrong Student Center. Photo by Scott Kissell.

A teacher in Afghanistan, Leslie Weiant ’11 struggles to balance courage and cowardice within herself.

IN EACH ISSUE

2 From the Hub

Student life’s new soul.

3-D Anatomage table (see page 12).

3 Back & Forth

To and from the editor.

6 Along Slant Walk

www.MiamiOH.edu/alumni Address changes may be sent to: Alumni Records Office Advancement Services Miami University 926 Chestnut Lane Oxford, Ohio 45056 alumnirecords@MiamiOH.edu 513-529-5127 Fax: 513-529-1466

Spring 2014

The Magazine of Miami University

Campus news highlights.

10 Such A Life 30%

Wearing Miami pride on our sleeves.

12 Inquiry + Innovation 3-D technology gets to heart of the matter.

Opus Web paper features FSC® certifications and is Lacey Act compliant; 100% of the electricity used to manufacture Opus Web is generated with Green-e® certified renewable energy.

14 Media Matters

New words and works by alumni.

16 My Story

No longer “fake mom.”

30 Love & Honor

Donors and volunteers help to keep Miami at the top.

32 Class Notes

Notes, news, and weddings.

46 Farewells 48 Days of Old

Dusting off a historical gem from the archives.

Miamian is published four times a year by the University Advancement Division of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056. Copyright © 2014, Miami University. All rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Miamian is produced by University Communications and Marketing, 108 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, 513-529-7592; Fax: 513-529-1950; Miamian@MiamiOH.edu.

from the hub

Great Expectations

By President David Hodge

The start of every semester is always exciting as

students eagerly jump into new classes, but it will be hard to top the first day of this semester — the day Miami’s Armstrong Student Center opened its doors to our students for the first time.

I wish you could have experienced the marvelous mayhem of that day. We instantly went from a “building” to a “place,” a very special place that students quickly claimed as their own.

A new student center has been a longtime dream of our students — eight consecutive student body presidents vigorously advocated for it as vital to providing the co-curricular life so important to our graduates’ success.

It has been exhilarating to watch “The Armstrong students explore it for the first time.

Student Center Freshman Victoria Pace summed it up in her tweet, “The Armstrong Student Center is just wow.” is just wow.” Everyone who has experienced the center agrees — the architects and Miami have created something extraordinary. As a result, the Armstrong Student Center is the new heart and soul of student life on the Oxford campus.

Making all of this happen was not easy, especially with the challenges of the economic recession. We put aside the original architectural plans as too expensive and determined that by reusing the existing buildings, Rowan, Gaskill, and Culler, we would save tens of millions of dollars.

Not only would the new approach prove to be cost-effective, it would also prove to be far better architecturally, with inspiring spaces and a better fit into Miami’s campus. Miami’s “can do” spirit

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persevered, urged on by students and made possible by the generosity of our alumni and friends.

Entering at the entrance from the Hub, you see names of alumni and other donors etched into the floor tiles along the indoor Slant Walk. Look up and you’ll find thousands of additional donor names engraved on the glass walls enclosing student offices. Continue on to the Bicentennial Rotunda and you will see the names of more donors on the stones surrounding the incredible three-dimensional seal.

Observing this generosity between generations is heartwarming. It is also a long-standing tradition at Miami. During our Centennial celebration in 1909, alumni stepped forward to build Alumni Library, now Alumni Hall.

A century later and inspired You are invited to write to by our Bicentennial of 2009, President David Hodge at president@MiamiOH.edu. Follow more than 11,000 of our alumni, him on twitter @PresHodge. parents, and friends have stepped forward to make the Armstrong Student Center possible. On behalf of the countless generations whose Miami experience will be greatly enhanced by the Armstrong Student Center, thank you!

Stunning spaces in a place envisioned by students, designed for students, and now governed by students.

That is the Armstrong Student Center. We can’t wait for you to come see it for yourself.

back & forth was what drew me to it, but I did enjoy the entire publication cover to cover.

—Laura Benken Rusche ’02 Cincinnati, Ohio It looks great. I love the shorter pieces; it makes the entire publication so much more accessible.

I got it in today’s mail and stopped what I was doing to read it cover to cover.

—Beth Grimm Whelley ’87 Centerville, Ohio

Great new format I just wanted to send a quick note complimenting you all on the great new format for Miamian.

I have always appreciated receiving Miamian over the years, but now it brings me home.

I loved my years at Miami, and it helped set me on my course for an amazing 37-year career as a high school educator.

Miamian helps me relive those years and catch up with the new.

First-class publication. Thank you.

—David Morrison ’60 Midland, Mich.

Whoever chose the new layout for Miamian made a great decision.

The changes look fantastic.

—Chris Clark ’05 Los Angeles, Calif.

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the last edition of Miamian. I graduated from Miami in 2002 and have to admit I haven’t read the magazine in years.

But, the new design is smart, easy to read, and the content was really valuable. The story on Adam Bain ’95 (“Flying High at Twitter”)

Map quest How about some help for the older folk. My wife and I were at Miami in the late ’40s and early ’50s. We have visited once or twice in the past 20 years, but we are lost!

What about publishing an annual map of the current campus with the buildings clearly named? The last map I saw could not be related to the Miami I knew.

The current Miamian refers to Maplestreet Station, which is said to be located in the South Quad, wherever that is. Please help!

—John Taggart ’53 New York, N.Y. Velocipede devotees I was delighted to see the picture and description of the “velocipede” on page 48 (“Days of old: Shake, Rattle, and Roll”) in the Fall 2013 Miamian.

While practicing architecture in London for two years, starting in 1960, I sometimes saw this type of bicycle.

On the rare fair day, in Regents Park, near my office, I would see these stately ships moving along.

The “penny-farthing” is difficult to mount and to ride, but oh so elegant

when done well. The “penny” was the largest coin in circulation in England at that time, and the “farthing” was the smallest. Thus the name.

Thank you for the interesting article about a long lost art.

—Estabrook “Skip” Glosser Jr. ’54 San Gabriel, Calif.

The article about antique bicycles in the Fall Miamian was interesting. It appears from the article that a high wheel bicycle (i.e. Ordinary) resides in the university archives.

If that is the case, I would like to make a suggestion.

The handlebars appear to be positioned incorrectly by being “pointed” forward whereas they should be sideways and downward.

A minor aspect is missing spokes. If desired, replacement spokes are available from members of The Wheelmen, a national organization of people restoring and riding such bicycles and tricycles.

I cannot tell the condition of the tiring, but if it is old, it may be very dangerous if someone were to ride the bicycle. New tiring is available.

By the way, the Ohio Wheelmen ride in Troy’s Strawberry Festival parade each year.

—Richard DeLombard Ohio Wheelmen captain Huron, Ohio

Send letters to: Donna Boen Miamian editor 108 Glos Center Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056-2480 Miamian@MiamiOH.edu; or fax to 513-529-1950.

Include your name, class year, home address, and phone number.

Letters are edited for space and clarity.

I’m smiling at the juxtaposition of the velocipede photo on page 48 of the Fall Miamian and the facing color picture of the student on a skateboard — two modes of “ecofriendly,” person-powered transportation. Funny.

—Lou Pumphrey ’64 Shaker Heights, Ohio

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back & forth

Fun photo I was delighted to find a photo on page 9 of the Fall Miamian of the fall Global Rhythms concert.

While the show was more than two hours long, Miamian featured the portion of the show that I was able to contribute to the mix. I had an incredibly fun time returning to Miami and working with current students, who were fabulously enthusiastic and energetic.

—Janine Tiffe ’00 Kent, Ohio

I had an incredibly fun time returning to Miami and working with current students, who were fabulously enthusiastic and energetic.

Rock of ages No offense to Mr. Zediak ’94, but I am embarrassed at Miamian’s fact-checking. Tiahuanaco and the “Sun Gate” are nothing like 14,000 years old. A simple Wikipedia search would indicate it is from no earlier than 400 A.D. In fact, it is still argued among archaeologists and anthropologists if man was even in South America by that time. This is a mistake well out of the academic traditions of Miami.

—John Fishman ’82 ’85 Huntsville, Ala. Editor’s note: Miamian erred in stating that the Gateway of the Sun at the ruins of Tiahuanaco was 14,000 years old. According to Jeb Card, a Latin American archaeologist in Miami’s department of anthropology, the gate is actually about 1,400 years old. Our apologies to Eric Zediak, John Fishman, and other Miamian readers.

Fruitful merger Thank you for displaying our newly created Upham Arch tile in the Fall Miamian. Through the sale of this tile, we have raised more than $14,000 for Miami

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scholarships to assist students in purchasing textbooks. We are also creating a hand-painted version that will be a gift to major contributors to our beloved university.

In addition, we have been working with Elizabeth Lokon MAT ’93 PhD ’97 MGS ’08 from the Miami University Scripps Gerontology Center, partnering with her to make a 9x6 Rookwood tile that her artists with dementia could hand paint themselves and display in their Cedar Village residence in Mason, Ohio. What a wonderful experience with everyone involved!

(For more, see “Shattering the Mold” on page 30 of this Miamian.)

We also had the privilege of working with Bryan Ashenbaum from the Richard T. Farmer School of Business. Three groups of his supply chain management class worked closely with our staff. These 20 students did an amazing job for us, and we are looking forward to collaborating with other Miami classes in the future.

Working with Dr. Lokon and Dr. Ashenbaum on these projects made me proud to be an alum from Miami University!

—Joe Wilhelm ’97 production manager The Rookwood Pottery Co. Thanks, Bowse and Pup When Miamian arrives I always smile thinking back to my first dorm floor and the guys — Tammy, Rick, Jack, Manny, Steve, Bowse, Ken, Pup, etc. We went our separate ways by our sophomore year as we swirled into the turbulent 1960s (yes, even at Miami), but they had helped me transition not just into college but into life. Now in my 40th year of teaching undergrads,

I just hope my students are getting the same support and challenges in their first year on campus.

—Bill White ’69 Rensselaer, Ind. New Etheridge Hall “tradition” As a former freshman resident of Porter Hall in South Quad, I was pleased to read that the new housestyle residence hall named for Dean Etheridge will be gracing the South Quad campus.

The photo chosen for the Fall 2013 Miamian article was perfect — showing the dean sitting along a wall while mentoring a student.

That is definitely who he was. He became almost a parental figure while letting students feel we were standing on our own two feet. He bridged our childhood life from home to our being responsible adults when we graduated.

Dean Etheridge was also a bridge to groups on campus, especially during the turbulent days of the Vietnam War, Kent State tragedy, and ROTC sit-ins on our campus.

When I was contemplating a paid role in a gubernatorial campaign headquartered in Columbus, Dean Etheridge made a phone call that permitted me to take advanced placement tests and enroll at Ohio State past the deadline. As I left his office the day he made that call, he said, “Rita, do not burn any bridges behind you. Don’t cancel your scheduled housing or classes here until you are certain this is what you want.”

Weeks later, while sitting in an OSU cafeteria, I felt God was telling me this was not a wise move. I went to campaign headquarters and did not take the position. Instead, I returned to my classes at Miami.

back & forth

The next term included my student teaching at Milford High School.

The candidate lost that governor’s race, and I met my future husband, who was a substitute teacher at the high school. I am certainly glad I took the dean’s advice and did not “burn that bridge.”

So, when you asked for ideas for an “under-the-arch tradition” for Etheridge Hall, I immediately thought of a bridge of some kind.

Then I recalled stories of two students at separate elementary schools who helped build a “friendship bench” for their schools.

What about a bench for under the arch? Perhaps it could be made of stone and brick to match both the arch and the top of the walls around campus where Dean Etheridge chose to sit while talking with students.

Having a bridge design embedded into the stone or the bench designed to literally mimic a bridge would be even better.

How appropriate this honor to Dean Etheridge would be! He was a bridge in many ways for students at Miami with his wise advice and caring spirit. This could become a place where others could sit to be a mentor, find a friend, or maybe even meet a sweetheart.

—Rita McKenzie Fisher ’70 Milford, Ohio Editor’s note: For more about Bob Etheridge, in the Student Affairs office for 30 years as dean of men, dean of students, and vice president, go to Miamian on the Web at www.

MiamiAlum.org/Miamian, and see “Dedication sparks fond memories of Etheridge Hall’s namesake,” written for The Oxford Press by Bob Ratterman ’71.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Learning to care When Leslie came to the front door of her family’s Columbus home and welcomed me in, I wondered whether I should look her in the eye.

In Afghanistan, direct eye contact is disrespectful.

Leslie had taught me that a few days earlier as we chatted by phone, me in my safe university office with an expansive view of south campus, Leslie in her tiny, third-floor bedroom in a gated compound in Kabul.

During the call, she tried to bridge more than the 9.5-hour time difference.

She wanted to talk about teaching art in the only international coed school in Afghanistan. I wanted to understand what motivates a recent college graduate to move to a place where bombs and bullets are the norm.

For that I admire Leslie Weiant ’11, the subject of this Miamian’s article “Careful in Kabul.” Even if I don’t understand.

She still tried to explain.

“While my stories of the woes of living in a war zone are limited to occasional explosions and some road closures, it’s a totally different story for my students, and keeping that in perspective is incredibly important.”

This experience has changed her, she acknowledges. After only two years, she struggles to assimilate back into Western dress and culture during holiday visits to Ohio, her latest being when we met.

She feels incredibly uncomfortable in shorts and T-shirts, and she’s careful not to run or laugh in public.

Never call attention to yourself in public.

A few days after Leslie returned to Kabul for the new semester, a Taliban attack against a restaurant popular with expats killed 21 people. It was reportedly the deadliest single attack against foreign civilians in the nearly 13-year war.

How does a 25-year-old find the courage to stay in Afghanistan and teach?

And at what point do I earn the right to worry and care about that 25-year-old? I hardly know Leslie. I can’t tell you her favorite color, author, or food. Yet, I was so relieved when I heard she was safe after that deadly attack.

Caring is so much more intense when a nation of many becomes a child of one. Leslie is teaching me that. —Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96

Leslie Weiant ’11 in Afghanistan

Spring 2014

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along slant walk

Student Center Abuzz Already In the Bicentennial Rotunda at the edge of the 3-D Great Seal, Miami University Student Foundation leaders pose with Miami President David Hodge during the Feb. 7 dedication of the Armstrong Student Center, the new heart and soul of student life on the Oxford campus.

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Miami’s new “family room” filled up fast when thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends showed up Friday, Feb. 7, for the afternoon dedication of the new Armstrong Student Center.

The three-story center, which offers a wide range of dining options, from create-your-own pizzas to a station for sundaes, incorporates the former Gaskill and Rowan halls and is located on Spring Street across from Sesquicentennial Chapel. Upham Hall is to its north and Slant Walk runs through it.

Its signature spaces include the Bicentennial Rotunda; a detailed, 3-D version of the university seal in the floor beneath the rotunda’s skylight;

the intimate 500-seat Harry T. Wilks Theater; the Shade Family Room, which celebrates Miami’s history through images chronicling its first 200 years; and the Bob ’52 and Doris ’52 Pulley Diner.

During the dedication program, Mike and Anne Gossett Armstrong, both Class of 1961, who provided the $15 million leadership gift for the center, announced that they have made an additional $3 million gift to Miami.

From this, $2 million will create the Armstrong Student Engagement and Leadership Scholarship and $1 million will support the center’s east wing expansion, which will incorporate Culler Hall into the center.

along slant walk

A New Term

I’M GLAD YOU ASKED

Miami 1st public university in Ohio to offer a winter term Filming psychological thriller The Torus Effect around Williams Hall.

During the 2014 winter term — a first for

Miami — students joined faculty for discoveries in Australia and Zambia and dozens of places in between.

Business students worked on a project with Suncorp in Australia Jan. 2–25, while other business majors traveled to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai to learn about Asian financial markets.

Jonathan Levy, associate professor of geology and environmental earth science, took students to Lusaka, Zambia, to research groundwater resources and study water quality in low-income, densely populated communities.

His students worked closely with Zambian students and spoke with Zambians from many different tribes.

“Through all these interactions, I hope my students gained deepened global perspectives on life, humanity, and diversity as well as poverty and environmental issues like water scarcity and pollution,” Levy said.

Miami is the first public university in Ohio to offer a winter term, giving students a chance to study abroad, complete a workshop or internship, conduct research, or take additional online or on-campus courses.

Students who opted to stay on Miami’s Oxford campus during the three weeks kept busy too.

Sarah Brumett, a junior in mass communication, was among 18 students who worked on a film set in and around Williams Hall.

“I thought it was a really wonderful opportunity,” said Brumett, digital imaging technician for director A.J. Rickert-Epstein ’05 and his psychological thriller, The Torus Effect.

“Politics. Remember the word. It came to us from the Greeks. Poli, meaning many, and tics, meaning blood-sucking insects.”

—Alan Simpson, former longtime Republican senator from Wyoming, on campus to give the 2013 Jack R. Anderson Distinguished Lecture with Erskine Bowles, his former co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

After the new winter term, called J-term by students, we asked them:

What is your favorite memory from the term?

We were getting cleared by security at ABC headquarters when Diane Sawyer passed by. Professor Newberry called her over, and she gave us 5 minutes of advice before heading off to work.

Not 2 minutes later, Robin Roberts was leaving for the day and also took time to speak with us — she tweeted at us later that day as well!

Taryn Neubecker, Chicago, Ill., business and strategic communications major, winter term class — “NYC Media”

Seeing Conan’s show filmed and getting to talk to him.

Britton Perelman (seen here on Friends’ set of Central Perk), Cincinnati, Ohio, media and culture and journalism major, winter term class — “Inside Hollywood”

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NOTEWORTHY

Jayne Brownell is Miami’s new vice president for student affairs, coming from Hofstra University, where she was assistant vice president for student affairs since 2006. Starting at Miami March 1, she is responsible for the division’s strategic direction and leads more than 150 employees in residence life, academic support, student activities, health and counseling, student conduct, Greek Life, career services, and more. She replaces Barbara Jones, who left Miami last summer to become vice president for student affairs at Boston College.

RISING RANKS

2nd 91.1 most efficient school among national universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

Love and Honor a Record Success

Matt Myers is the new dean of Miami’s Farmer School of Business. He is currently associate dean of the Center for Executive Education and the Nestlé USA Professor in Marketing at the College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee. He will be Miami’s eighth business school dean and second Mitchell P. Rales Chair in Business Leadership when he starts May 1.

Chuck Martin, named Miami’s 36th head football coach Dec. 3, has more than 20 years of collegiate coaching experience, including six as head coach. He has twice been named American Football Coaches Association National Coach of the Year and has coached in seven national championship games the past 13 seasons.

He spent the past four at Notre Dame as offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach and defensive backs/recruiting coordinator.

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Percentage of August 2012-May 2013 Miami graduates employed or in graduate school by fall 2013.

Cause for celebration Feb. 8.

Miami’s For Love and Honor campaign

officially concluded with a record total of $535,610,796, announced at a Feb. 8 gala in the Armstrong Student Center. More than 105,000 alumni, parents, friends, corporations, and foundations contributed.

“This campaign was launched with a $350 million goal, but, through the remarkable response of so many donors and volunteers, we were able to raise that objective and then, with one of our strongest years in 2013, exceed it,” said David Shade ’66, chair of the executive

steering committee. “This is a testament to the commitment of the Miami family.”

Its achievements include raising more than $131.8 million in student scholarships and creating 586 new scholarship endowments, securing more than $135 million to support and enhance academic programming, endowing 33 new professorships, and raising $107.7 million for capital projects.

In the process, Miami’s endowment more than doubled, from $182.8 million at the campaign’s beginning to more than $430 million.

along slant walk

“It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood”: One of William Shakespeare’s darkest and most powerful tragedies, Macbeth haunted Miami’s main stage in the Center for Performing Arts when the theatre department produced the play about war, witches, and murderous ambition fall semester. More than two dozen students comprised the cast and crew for the 15th annual John D. Yeck ’34 Production.

Muohio.edu Going Away On June 1, 2014, muohio.edu, Miami’s original domain name, will go away for good. Are you prepared?

As part of the university’s updated branding strategy, Miami launched a project in 2012 to transition the domain name from muohio.edu to MiamiOH. edu. The transition period ends June 1, when muohio.edu will no longer redirect to MiamiOH.edu.

For that reason, Miami community members are being asked to review their use of the muohio.edu domain name and

make sure everything is pointing toward MiamiOH.edu before the June deadline.

You may need to: remind email contacts that messages sent to an muohio. edu address won’t be delivered after June 1; update service or account profiles with a personal email address or your MiamiOH.edu email address; and update signage, business cards, and electronic sources such as web content.

To better understand what this means for you, go to MiamiOH.edu/domain for more information.

TALK BY ACTOR GEENA DAVIS Academy award-winning actor Geena Davis will give the keynote address at Miami’s inaugural Women in Leadership Symposium at 5 p.m.

April 3, 2014, in the Armstrong Student Center Pavilion. The lecture, sponsored by the Miami University Student Foundation, is free and open to the public. However, tickets are required. For more on how to obtain tickets and register for the April 3-4 symposium, go to www.

MiamiOH.edu/MIAMIWomen.

Winter Spring 2014 2014 Fall 2013

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such a life

such a life

MIAMI.

WE WEAR THE NAME PROUDLY. We loved our time on campus … listening to the Beta Bells as we walked through crisp autumn leaves on the way to class. We are proud of our alma mater and of what we accomplished during our college days. We show our Miami pride on our clothing as well as in our homes and offices.

We’re all connected through our experiences with our great university and the Miami logo.

And we want others to enjoy similar opportunities. That’s why when we purchase a Miami University item that bears the “Collegiate Licensed Product” label, hang tag, or hologram, a portion of our purchase price is returned to the university for scholarships, allowing a new generation to benefit by the Miami Experience.

To find a store near you that carries properly trademarked Miami gear and also check out our online retailers, go to www.

ShopMiamiOH.com.

SHOW YOUR MIAMI PRIDE … FOREVER AND A DAY

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inquiry + innovation

Down to the Bone Breakthrough technology gives students rare 3-D view of human anatomy.

By Denise Spranger

Imagine a giant, 7-foot iPad. Now imagine an app of the human body. With the touch of a finger, a layer of muscle appears, then the veins, then the heart.

Zoom in. Rotate. Explore. Tap again, and you can see right down to the bone.

New to the department of kinesiology and health (KNH), Anatomage (rhymes with massage) is a virtual dissection table that displays 3-D images of human anatomy with stunning detail in a multitude of layers, views, and perspectives.

“It’s mind-boggling,” says clinical faculty member Dean Smith MS ’99 PhD ’04. “One of the most difficult challenges for students of anatomy is to visualize a 3-D representation of the body. Anatomage opens a window to that perception.”

Having access to this breakthrough technology is giving Miami undergraduates an unusual opportunity.

“This instrument provides a learning tool rarely available to undergrads outside of medical schools,” Smith notes. “At this time, the College of Education, Health and Society has the only Anatomage table in Ohio.”

One of its primary tools is a virtual scalpel that allows users to cut various layers of body tissues, study the organs, and create segments that can be rotated and enlarged. By selecting a range of anatomical networks, such as the lymph and cardiovascular systems, students deepen their understanding of the complex relationships that form our inner ecology.

As part of an independent study research project with Smith, junior Kelsey Venis, a kinesiology major,

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inquiry + innovation

KNH clinical faculty member Dean Smith explores Anatomage with a student.

is investigating the value of Anatomage as a learning tool in comparison to traditional PowerPoints, textbooks, and lectures.

“I appreciate the chance to discover how students learn,” Venis says. “I chose Miami partly because of its focus on undergraduates, and I think it’s an important part of Miami’s goal to find the ways to teach undergraduates most effectively.”

One of the first steps in her research is to explore the table’s capabilities. Venis has enjoyed learning alongside her professors and KNH Chair Helaine Alessio. “It makes me feel elevated from the position of a student to someone who is incorporated into the new things happening within the department.”

Since the addition of Anatomage, discussions are under way to develop new courses for KNH students, expanding current anatomy classes primarily targeted toward neuromusculoskeletal structures to study internal organs as well.

Smith also envisions the potential that Anatomage presents for non-KNH majors. Beyond biology students, he suggests that speech pathology majors might study the inner workings of the ear while zoology majors may explore the table’s animalanatomy options.

“I see Anatomage expanding the wealth of knowledge on campus,” Smith says. “And we’re excited that Miami undergrads have access to this technology at its forefront.”

METIman In a lab two floors below Anatomage, a “man” lies on a gurney. His chest rises and falls with every breath.

Beside him, an EKG monitor displays the spiked line of his heart rate. As his eyes begin to blink, he asks for a glass of water.

The human-like form lying on the table is no ordinary man, yet he’s no ordinary mannequin either.

Developed by CAE Healthcare, METIman is a life-size patient simulator that allows students to practice crucial skills that, in some cases, could save a life.

“The great thing about METIman is his capacity to provide us with real-time physiology,” says Brett Massie ’87, director of the athletic training program and clinical faculty member.

Although students role-play emergency situations with each other as “athletic trainers and patients,” real humans cannot mimic key symptoms such as changes in pulse, blood pressure, heart rate, and pupil reaction. METIman can — thanks to a wireless router in his chest that communicates with a softwareenabled workstation.

Massie demonstrates by passing a penlight across METIman’s left eye. The pupil constricts and dilates with the movement. “Right now, he is programmed to respond as a healthy person would,” Massie says, “but if we change the preset to a head injury, we might see a pupil that is no longer reacting.”

A senior majoring in athletic training, Cody Costanzo performs chest compressions on METIman, he checks the EKG to measure his effect, and decides to add more pressure.

“He’s our Bionic Man,” says Costanzo, smiling.

“He responds like a patient might in the real world.”

“The ability of METIman to respond is of enormous value as a learning tool,” Massie says. “If a student provides incorrect treatment, he or she could ultimately ‘lose the patient’ through cardiac arrest or other life-threatening issues. The beauty of it, of course, is that the patient is only a simulator. No human life is at risk.”

To reinforce the lessons learned, Massie is videotaping student sessions with the simulator. Much like the athletes who study film footage to gauge why a quarterback’s pass fell short, students gain insight on how to improve vital skills.

It is rare that undergraduates in non-nursing or EMT programs have the opportunity to work with innovative technology like the simulator, Massie says. The patient simulator is also new to KNH this academic year.

In the near future, METIman will don his Miami hockey uniform (size XXX) to help students master the art of teamwork with athletic trainers and EMTs at local workshops. He may also pitch in at exercise physiology classes.

“Anatomage and METIman bring the human body to life,” says Alessio, department chair. “They make deep learning both fun and memorable. That’s a perfect combination for gaining knowledge.”

“One of the most difficult challenges for students of anatomy is to visualize a 3-D representation of the body.”

METIman

WATCH VIDEOS of both Anatomage and METIman at: www.

MiamiOH.edu/EHS/ANMM.

Denise Spranger is videographer and communications consultant for Miami’s College of Education, Health and Society.

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photo: Walter Iooss Jr.

media matters

A Way With Words Listen for the Squeaking Sneakers

By Donna Boen Ira Berkow ’63, during his reporting days at the New York Times, with Walt “Clyde’ Frazier, who played 10 years with the Knicks in Madison Square Garden, leading them to two NBA championships.

In Autumns in the Garden, Berkow writes of Frazier, “I came to appreciate not only his extraordinary physical skills, but also his insights into the game. … ‘Everyone,’ Frazier once told me, ‘has a certain rhythm that he dribbles to.’ ”

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Early in his career, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist Ira Berkow ’63 realized he wasn’t seeing all he could when he covered sporting events, first as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, then as a 25-year columnist and feature writer for the New York Times.

“I came across a book by Winston Churchill called Painting as a Pastime. He said that until he began painting, he never noticed the shadows of buildings.

So I made an effort, when I went to a game, to see more, to see movements and things I might not have noticed otherwise, even the shadows on the court or the squeaking of the sneakers, and to bring the reader into the moment.”

Now retired from the Times, Berkow has finished books No. 21 and 22, Autumns in the Garden: The Coach of Camelot and Other Knicks Stories and Wrigley

Field: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Chicago Cubs, released to coincide with Wrigley Field’s 100th anniversary this year.

He’s also been working on a play for two years with Bill Madden, longtime baseball writer and George Steinbrenner biographer. It’s titled Steinbrenner.

Even a veteran reporter can come up against subjects who don’t want to talk. Berkow’s toughest was probably Major League starting pitcher Roger Clemens.

“I went to him one day and I said, ‘Roger, I have a question for you.’ He said, ‘I don’t speak on the day I pitch.’ I said, ‘You’re not pitching today.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t speak on the day before I pitch.’ I said, ‘You’re not pitching tomorrow either.’ I looked at him, he looked at me, and I said, ‘Maybe I’ll catch you another time.’ ”

media matters

A Man From Ohio Edward Clark ’49 Montpelier Press In the first volume of his threevolume autobiography, Ed charts the origins of his hardworking small-town Ohio family; his childhood, played out with cautious joy beneath the shadow of the Great Depression; an adolescence marked by hopeful confidence and uncertain prospects; the brief euphoria of college life at Miami, cut short by war; involvement in the Allied push for victory in Europe; and an emerging wanderlust and growing sense the Continent might be his true home.

The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again) P.J. O’Rourke ’69 Atlantic Monthly Press P.J. began writing funny things in 1960’s “underground” newspapers, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly as the world’s only trouble spot humorist, going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other “Holidays in Hell.” Born at the peak of the Baby Boom, he now turns his keen eye on himself and his 75 million accomplices in making America what it is today.

With laughter as an analytical tool, he uses his own average, if sometimes uproarious experiences as a

key to his exceptional age cohort.

He writes about the way the postwar generation somehow came of age by never quite growing up and created a better society by turning society upside down.

An Elf Mystery John Miller ’70 MEd ’72 Elf Publications This original story by Jennifer Miller ’00, illustrated by Ron Wheeler, is a softbound children’s picture book.

It begins with the elves snuggling into their beds for a long rest after Santa’s return from delivering presents. But, a series of loud creaks and one eerie squeak brings them to their feet in search of these strange sounds in their North Pole home.

The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities Kathleen Deyer Bolduc ’75 Judson Press Kathleen, with honesty, humor, wisdom, and wit, invites caregivers of children with disabilities to steep themselves in Scripture and self-reflection.

She walks her readers through the process using spiritual disciplines to help them recognize God’s presence in their lives and regain needed balance. Kathleen writes from personal experience as she and her son now approach yet another new life phase, adulthood, and all that entails.

The Worst of Times John Eric Buckley ’00 CreateSpace In John’s first crime novel, the streets of Queen City belong to the Durrant crime family until the emergence of a shadowy figure known as the Stranger. As police track a deranged serial killer, Detective Patches O’Brien must overcome personal demons for the good of the city. Meanwhile, the Stranger imposes his own twisted brand of justice upon the Durrant crime family, becoming a thorn in their side — a thorn that must be removed at all costs.

The Summer Fairy Elizabeth Kelly Gillihan ’01 Cherished Reflections With a shiver and a stir in the petals of a flower, a pixie is born — she has magical power! So begins The Summer Fairy.

More than 30 years ago on the last day of school, two children hopped off a rowdy school bus, full of summer dreams. The next morning, they awoke to goodies and a witty poem left by the Summer Fairy.

Her endearing gesture became a Gillihan tradition. Now Elizabeth shares that tradition through the story of a pixie who visits young families and bestows seasonal gifts and poetic wisdom about summer safety. A collapsible, reusable vase in the back pocket inspires readers to leave a flower for the fairy.

NOTED Love Like This Ashley Brandenburg ’10 Ashley has signed a deal with Nashville-based BE Music and Entertainment to write and record country music. Her debut album, Love Like This, came out Feb. 18 on iTunes.

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© Bull’s Eye/www.fotosearch.com

my story

MY STORY is a place for you to share reminiscences and observations about everyday happenings.

Submit your essay for consideration to: Donna Boen, Miamian editor, “My Story,” 108 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 or Miamian@ MiamiOH.edu. Please limit yourself to 900 words and include your name, class year, address, and home phone number.

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Fostering Love

By Jane Prendergast ’85

My husband and I were eating lunch one afternoon in downtown Cincinnati when we got the call: There’s a 6-year-old girl we’d like you to meet. Dennis and I had prepared for this with weeks of foster parenting classes, background checks, a house inspection. Still, we were nervous. But the little blonde girl with pink toenails had only one question: Do you have any pets?

my story

Luckily, we did. Our husky, Bella, slept alongside her bed that night.

Chloe has been part of our family since that day in May 2010.

More than 900 Hamilton County kids live in foster homes. They go into foster care because authorities think they’ve been abused or neglected, or while their living conditions are being investigated. The goal is to reunify them with their families whenever possible, after the parents have completed parenting classes, drug treatment, or other court orders.

Our agency, Lighthouse Youth Services, has roughly 180 kids in foster homes. It’s the largest in Hamilton County, but leaders there are always recruiting more foster parents.

We started looking into it in early 2010, a few months after we got married. My husband comes from a big family with lots of kids, so adding a few more seemed like a good idea. We took classes two nights a week for six weeks. We got certified in CPR and first aid. We learned about behavior management, the effects of fostering on the foster family, advocating for kids at their schools, attachment and separation.

Teachers urged us to think about what it would feel like to be handed a garbage bag and told you have a few minutes to gather up your belongings before you get taken to a stranger’s house to live. We learned that, no matter how much better life with us might be, the kids almost always want to go back anyway. And even if they start to feel comfortable, they might never show it. It’s hard for them to trust you and let those defenses down.

Once you get a foster placement, there are new and different challenges, some of them emotionally difficult. It’s so hard, for example, to take a child to a visit with her biological mother only to find the mother doesn’t show up. The moods that follow are sour, and you struggle to find words to explain to a 6-year-old why her mother couldn’t make it.

Chloe called my husband “Daddy” almost right away. I spent some time as “Second Mom” and, teasingly, as “Fake Mom.” I knew she was trying to figure out what worked for her.

As much as the system can be daunting, it also gave us the opportunity for some of the parenting joys that biological parents experience. Otherwise, I might not

have had the privilege of watching a child learn to read.

I might never have known what it’s like to try to teach somebody to ride a bike or practice spelling words in shaving cream.

We have met wonderful people. There’s a 23-yearold man who fosters his five younger brothers and a cousin. I met an empty-nester who quit her job and cleaned out her five-bedroom house so she and her husband could take groups of siblings.

There are different ways to be a foster parent. You can accept one child or more. You can pick up newborns and take care of them knowing you’ll give them back or to an adoptive parent. You can take teenagers and help them “age out” of the system to live on their own. You can do respite, which means you take the kids when their foster parents need a break.

Our situation became what they call foster-to-adopt.

Chloe became available for adoption and we knew we wanted to keep her.

She and her stuffed bunny sat between us in a courtroom in July 2011, and she became officially ours. I teared up as I heard my father-in-law testify that he loves Chloe as much as he does his biological grandkids.

The question I get most often: How do you handle giving the kids back after getting attached? We have only done that once so far, with 4-month-old twins we’d had since they were 5 weeks old. Letting them go live with a relative was somewhat of a relief — caring for newborn twins was difficult. We took some last pictures and told each of them how much we wished them happy lives. Then my husband, Chloe, and I talked about the positive — their departure would give us room to take other children we might be able to keep.

It seems like so long ago now that we met Chloe and became parents. She’s such a funny kid with a good heart. She’s a Rainbow Loom queen and a wonderful artist.

She’s now the oldest of four in our house — we have three foster boys, ages 4, 2 ½, and 14 months.

They’re frustrating and high-energy and whiny. If I had a penny for every fight over a toy I have refereed, I wouldn’t need to work. I am exhausted at the end of most days.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I spent some time as “Second Mom” and, teasingly, as “Fake Mom.”

Jane Prendergast ’85 (janep5@ yahoo.com) has been a writer for The Enquirer in Cincinnati for almost 25 years. She left the newspaper in January to use her foster care experience as a public relations specialist for Hamilton County Job & Family Services.

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OPENING THIS SEMESTER, THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER REVEALS ITS STUNNING SPACES.

BY DONNA BOEN '83 MTSC '96

MORE ONLINE For more about the Armstrong Student Center, go to http://MiamiOH.edu/student-life/ armstrong-student-center/.

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For several months before the highly anticipated opening of the Armstrong Student Center Jan. 27, university photographer Scott Kissell donned a hard hat and dodged hammer and saw to take photos of the custom-designed elements that make the new student center on Spring Street uniquely Miami. With this photo spread, Miamian shares dramatic angles of the building’s architecture along with thoughts from people who led the center from dream to reality.

The Armstrong Student Center is awe-inspiring.

The building and the meaning behind it are amazing. Miami prides itself on always putting students first, and this student center now grounds that idea. Love and Honor is a two-way street: Students take pride in our Miami, and our Miami takes pride in us. Armstrong will give all students a place to be themselves and find their home among the red-brick buildings.

CHARLIE SCHREIBER ’14.

STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT

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THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER DAVID HODGE MIAMI PRESIDENT

“I had really high expectations for this building, but it is so much better than I ever could have conceived. It is unique.

You don’t walk in there and feel like, ‘OK, this could be a campus center anywhere.’ ”

VALERIE HODGE UNIVERSITY AMBASSADOR

“The Armstrong Student Center has been a dream of students for more than a decade and also a dream for my husband and myself, once we realized what it would mean to the students. The transformative nature of the Miami Experience will be amplified tremendously with the addition of this facility.

I cannot wait to see the beehive that will be student use of this building!”

KATIE BRYANT WILSON MS ’94 DIRECTOR OF THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER

“Students were at the center of planning for the Armstrong Student Center from the early design stages to the policies and operations now in use as the center opens. Their leadership and enthusiasm were inspiring and brought to life one of the most studentcentered places on campus.”

ROBERT KELLER ’73 UNIVERSITY ARCHITECT EMERITUS

“Walking through this building I see six years of effort by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and contractors culminating in an exciting new heart of campus activity. Multi-level spaces opening onto each other buzz with energy presenting an invitation for students to meet and discover new opportunities to learn and grow.”

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MIKE ARMSTRONG ’61 AND ANNE GOSSETT ARMSTRONG ’61 PROVIDED THE PRIMARY LEADERSHIP GIFT OF $15 MILLION FOR THE BUILDING.

“I am most inspired by all that the Armstrong Student Center will be to students for generations to come. It’s where students will meet, study, talk, eat, or just relax.

It’s where students will share experiences of engagement, teamwork, and leadership.

It’s where they will remember each other.

It’s where dreams will turn into the reality of potential.”

JOHN SEIBERT ’90 MIAMI’S DIRECTOR OF PLANNING, ARCHITECTURE, AND ENGINEERING

“It has been an honor for the design and construction team to bring into being the student dream of a new union for engagement and social interaction. The Armstrong Student Center represents the embodiment of a new heart and soul of campus life that is uniquely Miami’s, now and for future generations of Miamians to enjoy!”

WILLIAM RAWN PRINCIPAL AND FOUNDER, WILLIAM RAWN ASSOCIATES, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON

“An important campus connection was made with the continuation of Slant Walk through the Student Center thereby linking the Hub to Spring Street. Gaining inspiration from President Hodge’s commitment to student engagement and goals of leadership and entrepreneurship, we placed student function spaces front and center along this new vibrant interior campus artery.”

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By Betsa Marsh

MIaMI’s Monuments

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Major donor to MiaMi’s art MuseuM joined in

history’s greatest treasure hunt architect by training, interior designer by trade, Walter Farmer ’35 fit no one’s image of a soldier when he joined the Army in the midst of World War II. With his corps returning to the U.S., Capt. Farmer asked to stay in Europe and be part of the world’s greatest treasure hunt as one of the Monuments Men. Allied art experts dedicated to preserving the world’s cultural heritage during and after the war, the Monuments Men corps was small but mighty. About 345 men and women from 13 nations eventually returned more than 5 million artistic and cultural items stolen by the Nazis.

Author Robert Edsel celebrated these cultural heroes in his 2009 book, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Their legend soared with the February release of The Monuments Men, a film co-written and directed by its leading man, George Clooney.

MFAA Capt. James Rorimer supervises U.S. soldiers at Neuschwanstein Castle recovering looted paintings.

photos: (left) National Archives and Records Administration/Public Domain. (right) Monuments Men Foundation website

At Miami, the link to a real-life Monuments Man is as close as the university’s art museum. The late Walter Farmer, a Monuments Man from 19451946, gave much of his personal collection to help launch the museum in 1978.

Works from his collection are currently on exhibit at the museum.

After college, Farmer took his 1935 Miami degrees in architecture and mathematics into the world of interior design in Cincinnati. He joined the Army in 1942, serving first in the Medical Corps, then the Army Corps of Engineers.

As his 373rd Engineers prepared to return home from Germany in June 1945, Farmer asked to join the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) operation. It would be, Farmer wrote in The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II, “a kind of personal redemption.”

“This was the work I had waited all my life to do,” he wrote. “I was thirty-five and an architect by training, but in spirit, I was a collector and a student of beautiful objects. To have this assortment of riches at hand and the opportunity available to arrange them with care and sensitivity was the experience of a lifetime.”

“Farmer was put in charge of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point after two months, even without museum credentials,” says Robert Wicks, director of Miami’s museum. “That tells you how capable he was.” By Farmer’s return to the U.S., 28,000 crates of artworks had been inventoried, and much of it conserved.

“As an interior designer,” Wicks says, “Farmer had a wonderful eye. He may not have been trained as an art historian, but he knew good art when he saw it.”

Each day, Farmer’s team received priceless paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Botticelli at the warehouse that was once Luftwaffe headquarters in Wiesbaden.

Masterworks were coming out of hiding for return to German museums.

“this was the work i had waited all My life to do.”

U.S. Army Capt. Walter Farmer ’35 in Germany in 1945 with the reclaimed bust of Nefertiti, which today intrigues visitors at the Egyptian Museum Berlin.

Everyone stopped and stared in awe the day the bust of Queen Nefertiti arrived in her crate, destined for return to Berlin’s Egyptian Museum.

Farmer saw his share of Nazi loot too: Polish church treasuries, 700 Torah scrolls, and the crown jewels of Hungary.

Some of the art was returned immediately, some was, as the Nazis labeled it, “ownerless.” Ownerless because they had stolen collections owned by Jews and then killed the Jewish owners.

The Monuments Men group raced to save Europe’s cultural heritage — first during combat, working with no orders, supplies, transport, or funds. They hitchhiked between monuments, sometimes overshooting into enemy territory.

Then, as the Reich fell, the group scrambled to prevent Hitler’s minions

from carrying out his Nero Decree that “nothing of value … would fall into the hands of the enemy.”

One of the war’s final cultural threats was the division of Berlin into American, British, French, and Soviet zones. The Soviet Trophy Brigades were ordered to take anything of value back to the Motherland.

The difference between the Western Allies and the war’s other combatants couldn’t have been sharper. Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower underscored it even more when he decreed that all the art would be returned — even German art to Germans.

Farmer believed in the Monuments Men mission. When the U.S. government ordered him to send 202 Germanowned treasures, including works by Rembrandt, Titian, and Dürer, for “protective custody” and exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Farmer fumed.

“Plunder is the only word,” he wrote.

“Better yet, make that systematic plunder.” Farmer mobilized his fellow Monuments Men to craft a protest that became famous as the Wiesbaden Manifesto of Nov. 7, 1945. He sent the art, but also the petition with its 25 signatures to the U.S. Senate.

After a blockbuster exhibit at the National Gallery and a 12-city tour, the Wiesbaden pieces were returned to Germany in 1949. Many art historians believe Farmer’s protest prevented further shipments of German art to the U.S. The German government presented Farmer the Federal Order of Merit, honoring him as “a model of civil courage.”

“It is my eternal wish,” Farmer wrote, “that all the missing art treasures will be recovered and that they will be available for the whole world to see.”

Betsa Marsh is a freelance writer in Cincinnati.

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Kabul Careful in

Leslie Weiant ’11 struggles. Despite living in a gated and guarded compound in Kabul, the capital of war-weary Afghanistan, she doesn’t want to be afraid.

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By d o n n a b o e n • p h otos a r e by Davi d Ki ng

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F

riends and strangers pepper her with questions about the bullets and the bombs. She’d prefer to talk about the “stunningly beautiful country and its extremely hospitable people.” When pushed, she insists that the “little booms really don’t faze her.”

She half-heartedly jokes about owning body armor and a helmet, which she rarely wears. Nobody laughs at her joke. She doesn’t either.

When Weiant was majoring in art education at Miami University, she never imagined she’d be teaching at the International School of Kabul, the only internationally accredited, coeducational K-12 school in Afghanistan.

She’s always considered herself a homebody. Unlike her older sister and younger brother, she never sought to go far from her childhood home on Cemetery Road in the Columbus suburb of Hilliard. She didn’t have a desire to travel, didn’t even consider studying abroad in college.

Yet here she is living in a plain room on the third floor of what she calls the “Marble Mansion.” Her bedroom is so small that her 4-foot rug almost passes for wall-to-wall carpeting. Her window compensates for the limited space by offering expansive mountain views. She lives with the school’s other teachers in this small compound and walks two minutes from her home to her classroom, a converted living room in what was once a house.

Her adventure actually started as a college graduation gift when her parents paid her way to Kenya where her older sister, Kate ’08, was finishing three years of teaching English, theater, and communications courses at an international school in Nairobi. Leslie went with two empty suitcases to help move Kate back home. During her 10-day stay, she shared long talks with Kate’s roommate, who was leaving to teach in Kabul. The roommate recommended a book on Islam and encouraged Leslie to consider Kabul as well.

The book touched her heart, as did the roommate’s message. At the end of her visit, Leslie realized she wasn’t going to be happy staying in Columbus.

“I wanted to do something purposeful with my teaching, but I didn’t know what that looked like. Everything in my heart was saying that this is the place where I should be.”

She came to this foreign land to promote literacy. Now well into in her second year at ISK, she is the only art teacher and works with children in every grade from kindergarten through 12th.

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Still, there are many days when she chafes under her chador — the large cloth she wraps around her head and upper body out of deference to the Muslim culture. Her biggest trial is living in Kabul as a Christian.

“These students, more than any students I’ve ever seen, are forced to consider why people of their country do what they do … in a culture where they’re hyperaware of who they are and where they come from and what will happen in their country. That challenges me to consider who I am, why I believe what my convictions are.”

“ I wanted to do something purposeful with my teaching, but I didn’t know what that looked like.

Everything in my heart was saying that this is the place where I should be.”

Cultural lessons Talking via telephone from Kabul, where it’s 9.5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in Oxford, Ohio, she goes into more detail about the lessons she’s learning as well as teaching.

The semester has been hectic. Her students have cut out more than 100,000 paper dolls to break the current world record of 8,803 feet or 2,683 meters for longest paper doll chain ever made.

The school wants the attention that a Guinness World Record will bring to demonstrate how people can accomplish almost anything when they work

together. Weiant’s students used different colors of paper to represent each of the major ethnicities of Afghanistan linked together in unity.

Calling the week after her children completed their chain, Weiant says, “The world record? We’ve unofficially broken it. We’ve broken it by 2,000 meters, but the paperwork has to go through. So we’re hoping.”

The school, owned by nonprofit Oasis International Schools, has approximately 360 students from all major ethnic groups and economic strata. Classes run from Saturday through Wednesday, Afghanistan’s workweek. Although the students are required to speak English and all lessons are in English, they can find it hard to follow Weiant. She talks fast when she’s passionate about a topic, which is most of the time.

After her first couple of weeks in the classroom, one student finally worked up the nerve to raise his hand. He was hesitant to question her, an authority figure, but he finally told her, “I literally don’t know what you’re saying.” For her kindergarteners, she pantomimes half the time because of the language barrier.

She believes showing rather than telling is making her a better teacher.

Her older students test her language skills in other ways.

“I’ve realized that I have a tremendously difficult time telling the difference between sulky teenage boy mumbling with an accent and an actual different

language, which is unfortunate since we’re supposed to report students who aren’t using English.”

Another eye-opening lesson for her has been the cultural difference in values.

Whereas U.S. teachers emphasize right and wrong, in Afghanistan, they focus on honor vs. shame.

“The big thing that I reiterate when I talk with educators in the States — especially because of the growing Muslim population in the U.S., I’ve been communicating with some teachers back in Hilliard — it’s really important to understand the difference between right and wrong and honor and shame because it will help teachers understand why their Muslim students make the decisions they do.

“They are much more willing to lie to avoid shaming themselves or someone else, perhaps in their family.

If you copy someone’s work in an American school, that is plagiarism and you have cheated. But here, their mindset is that that is resourcefulness.

You are thankful and grateful to that person for coming up with such a great idea and you can use it because they made it public.”

As the teacher, she must be careful never to be seen as shaming her students even as she corrects their work. She also must not look them directly in the eyes.

“In American culture, that’s a sign of respect. Here, heck, no, you don’t look a person of authority in the eye. Ever. It’s

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18 Of the Last 9

combative, it’s disrespectful. Generally they look down. And so do I. I have an incredibly difficult time looking people in the eye now. It’s physically painful because it feels wrong, especially with men. It’s very difficult, even when I go to America, to look them in the eye.”

Off the compound Her life within the gated compound, barely the size of two football fields end to end, is comforting and confining at the same time. Confinement is hard on her, as she likes being active, so she’s taking up new hobbies. Last semester they were piano lessons and running. She’s also the proud owner of a mischievous dog, Hazel, who sneaks out of the house to chase the neighbor’s pigeons and roll in the largest available mud puddle.

Weiant and her friends would like to go out more often during the weekends, which fall on Thursday and the country’s holy day of Friday, but leaving the compound requires extensive planning.

First, she must be in a group of at least four women. Even then, it’s safer and more culturally acceptable if a man is with the group. It’s also not appropriate for her to go anywhere with a driver, who is always a man, unless there’s one other woman with her. An unmarried man and woman should not be alone together.

“We don’t have the luxury of trusting strangers here, and part of my heart really aches over that. I’ve learned to reach out as far as I can without getting into trouble. Whether it’s just saying hello to the guy scanning my items at the grocery or talking about living here with a friendly stranger at dinner, I’ve realized how important it is for me to feel like I’m making an effort. I never realized how much I’d miss the ability to sit down and strike up a conversation with a stranger.”

They enjoy good times, too. She feels as though the teachers have a lot of freedom within their own community,

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Leslie Weiant ’11 is one of 18 young Miamians recently recognized through Miami’s new program, “18 Of the Last 9.” In November the Miami University Alumni Association brought back to campus 18 outstanding young alumni who have graduated in the past nine years (2004–2012 this first year) to honor them and ask them to share their experiences and successes with current students, staff, and faculty.

If you know Miamians who have graduated in the past nine years and who have started a business, been recognized in their fields, or made a significant impact on a movement, please consider nominating that person for “18 Of the Last 9.”

To send in your nomination and also meet all of the 2013 honorees, go to: www.MiamiAlum.org/18of9.

frequenting 30 or 40 locations in the city of 3 million people. Those are places where their security has gone ahead of them to examine the security system and to see if there is a safe room should there be an attack.

Illusion of safety On Jan. 17, a suicide bomber and two gunmen, reportedly Taliban insurgents, made international headlines and rocked the Kabul community when they killed 21 people in a commando-style attack on la Taverna, an extremely popular Lebanese restaurant.

The Washington Post reported that it was one of the deadliest attacks in Kabul in years.

Among those killed was the beloved owner. The news shook Weiant’s carefully crafted sense of safety. Like many expats, she spent dozens of nights in the company of friends at this restaurant, sipping

spicy chicken soup and fighting over the last spring roll, “laughing wildly in the comfort of such a safe place.”

The day after the attack, she wrote in her blog: “I thought of how I had friends who had been there early this weekend. I thought of the three doors you have to get through to enter the restaurant and the young men who always greeted us with a quiet ‘Salam.’

“I thought of the other places, like this one, in this city. Places that have been an escape, a retreat, and a reminder of home.

I thought about working up the courage to go out again, out past our big gates and walls and careful guards.

“I realized how hard that would be for me, and I felt like a coward. Knowing that there are men who do not just see me as an innocent bystander, or in the wrong place at the wrong time, or an unarmed civilian, but as the target?

“Yes, I felt the cowardice creeping on.

“ Change in this world won’t happen unless you actually do something about it. And don’t wait for somebody else to do it.”

“Is it okay to be afraid? Do I have to keep on a brave face? Or do I have some kind of responsibility to hold myself together and pretend that this didn’t affect me?”

Just a few days earlier she had been in Columbus, enjoying her holiday break and assuring family and friends that life as a teacher in Kabul is worth the risk.

Friendship and freedom She’d returned to her family’s historic 1860s home the Saturday before Christmas. The next day, sitting in the family room with her parents, Chip ’81 and Anne ’83, she fought off jet lag to explain why she must teach in Afghanistan. She plans to spend this summer in the States and then return to Kabul for a third year, to the students she adores.

However, much depends on security conditions after the Afghan presidential

election April 5 and the U.S. combat troops pullout, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014.

Listening to her parents, there’s no doubt that they are focused on family, faith, and freedom.

Chip is national director for the Better Business Bureau Center for Character Ethics. Anne, a Spanish teacher at Hilliard Davidson High School, likes to think that maybe in some small way she initiated her children’s desire to go out into the world. (Their youngest, Sam, is a second-year student studying Arabic and international studies at Ohio State.)

A Rotary Scholar who lived in Mexico before attending Miami, Anne fully expected to live internationally. Then she met her Miami Merger at a sororityfraternity party and plans changed.

When friends question how she can allow her daughter to teach in Afghanistan, Anne is incredulous.

First, she points out, Leslie is an adult making her own decisions. Second, she and Chip raised their children to look for such opportunities.

“You hope your kids will have a life of consequence and purpose. And that’s exactly what she’s doing. Just to have a mindset that all culture has value and to love it and embrace it, it just has kind of been a natural part of our lives.”

Leslie is adamant about so many things: She is not a martyr and does not

want to be portrayed as one; nor does she believe that teaching in Afghanistan makes her special.

“My biggest struggle in all this is not to think I know everything or to feel like I’m doing something better than any teacher in America is doing.

I’m not. I’m just doing it differently and I’m doing it in a different place.

Still, it’s really hard for me when the conversations that I overhear in my classrooms are of my kids talking about getting driven off the road by gunmen as opposed to hearing about who’s going to the prom with whom.

“The point of what I’m doing is to take things from a policy level to a heart level.

Change in this world won’t happen unless you actually do something about it. And don’t wait for somebody else to do it.”

Anne looks at Leslie and tells her, “You have paid a price.”

“Yeah and my students know that.

They get that. They’re so family oriented.

The idea that I’ve gone there to teach them and choosing to be away from my family for that purpose means so much to them. That I would sacrifice my comfort and safety and family to be with them boggles them. But I made an active choice to come to a country where I know I have to limit my freedom. Is it hard? Heck, yes.

But is it worth it? Absolutely.

“There are so many things I want people to know. The main thing is these are not a people absorbed in themselves and wanting a handout. They’re people wanting to right themselves so they can become a part of this world and be able to finally step outside of their own conflicts and contribute to the good things that are happening that they see and get excited about.”

Leslie Weiant ’11 struggles. For her, that’s what makes life worthwhile.

Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96 is editor of Miamian.

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love & honor

Shattering the Mold People with Alzheimer’s Show Stunning Artistic Ability Connor Wilkinson, a junior majoring in sociology, assists Roxie as she creates her Rookwood tile masterpiece.

Reprinted with permission from the November 27, 2013, issue of The American Israelite Newspaper. All intellectual property rights remain with The American Israelite Newspaper.

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People with Alzheimer’s disease shattered stereotypes today when they created strikingly beautiful artwork in a program designed to stimulate their minds and enrich their lives.

About 35 residents of Cedar Village Retirement Community who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia produced sophisticated one-of-akind Rookwood tiles with the help of The Rookwood Pottery Co., an iconic Cincinnati brand.

For the first time, the pioneering Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University and Cedar Village in Mason partnered with Rookwood Pottery in an ongoing Scripps research and therapy program called Opening Minds through Art, also known as OMA. The program shows that many people with dementia retain access to their creativity and imagination, despite having impaired memories and often lacking the ability to perform some everyday tasks.

OMA has created a structured, failure-free art-making technique that allows people with cognitive challenges to produce original works of visual art with the help of Miami and University of Cincinnati students and other volunteers.

OMA’s workshops typically involve painting, printmaking, or making collages. The Rookwood tile-painting gave the Cedar Village residents, who participate in OMA’s weekly art program there, an opportunity to express themselves in a new medium.

The tiles will be taken to the Rookwood Pottery in Over-the-Rhine, where they will be fired.

Afterward, they will be returned to Cedar Village for a Dec. 5 gallery exhibition, which will be open to the public. More than 100 people have attended prior exhibitions at Cedar Village.

“People tend to underestimate the creative capabilities of people with dementia,” said Elizabeth “Like”

love & honor

Lokon MAT ’93 PhD ’97 MGS ’08, OMA’s founder and senior research associate at Scripps. “We’ve shown that they have much to offer. When logical thinking and verbal expression are impaired, art is still available as a way for these individuals to express themselves in remarkable ways.”

“People tend to Another OMA feature is the way it creates relationunderestimate ships between specially the creative trained college students and older adults, breaking capabilities of down barriers between people with generations. Some students have described their work dementia.” with older adults in the pro— Elizabeth “Like” Lokon gram as “transformational,” MAT ’93 PhD ’97 MGS ’08 changing their attitudes toward aging, giving them purpose, and convincing them that they can make a difference in people’s lives.

OMA shows that people with dementia can contribute to society as artists, as teachers to the younger generation, and even as learners who develop new skills.

OMA offers programs for people with dementia at nine retirement communities and nursing homes in Greater Cincinnati. The program at Cedar Village is OMA’s largest.

“At Cedar Village, we’re constantly looking for ways to enhance our residents’ lives,” said Carol Silver Elliott, Cedar Village’s president and CEO. “It is our obligation to provide as rich and fulfilling of an experience for our residents as humanly possible. OMA is one of many ways we do that.”

In 2011, LeadingAge Ohio, which advocates for nonprofits that serve older adults, presented Cedar Village and OMA with its Excellence in Service for Nursing Facilities Award. The award is given to organizations displaying outstanding initiative, motivation, and leadership in quality skilled nursing services.

Cedar Village, OMA, and others caring for older adults focus intensely on enhancing the lives of people with dementia, in part, because there is no cure and the number of people afflicted is growing rapidly. More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. By 2050, up to 16 million are projected to be living with it.

Deaths from Alzheimer’s increased 68 percent between 2000 and 2010 while deaths from other major diseases decreased.

ROOKWOOD POTTERY OWNERS SUPPORT SCRIPPS

By Vince Frieden A $1 million commitment from Marilyn (Scripps) and Martin Wade of Cincinnati will support Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center and advance a profound family legacy.

Marilyn is the great-granddaughter of E.W. Scripps, a pioneering newspaper publisher and founder of the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. In 1922 he endowed the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems at Miami. In 1972, the Scripps Foundation became what is now the Scripps Gerontology Center, a pre-eminent source of research in the field of aging. The center’s mission is to produce work that makes a positive difference in the lives of aging individuals, their families, and communities.

“Our history and the legacy of the renowned demographic researchers that E.W. Scripps brought to Miami remain a source of pride at today’s Scripps Gerontology Center,” said Suzanne Kunkel MA ’79, director of the Scripps Center. “This latest investment by Marilyn and Martin Wade allows us to expand the reach of our research, service, and educational programming. We are deeply appreciative of this support from Marilyn and Martin, and we remain committed to honoring, through our work, the Scripps family legacy at Miami.”

Designated as an Ohio Center for Excellence in the category of Cultural and Societal Transformation, Scripps Gerontology Center also helps educate tomorrow’s global leaders in aging by providing hands-on research training to graduate students and thousands of hours of undergraduate servicelearning opportunities.

Earlier this year, the Wades — owners of Rookwood Pottery Co. in Cincinnati — were instrumental in the creation of a limited edition Miami UniversityRookwood tile featuring Upham Hall. Part of the proceeds for that sale supported scholarships for Miami students.

Vince Frieden is associate director of development communications within Miami’s Division of University Advancement.

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Photo from Miami University Libraries, Frank Synder Collection

class notes

Uptown Oxford in 1936: Snyder’s sold photo, office, and art supplies at 37 E. High St. for 110 years until it closed in 2006.

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class notes

54

Reunion ¶ Fred Straube of Houston visited Miami’s Oxford campus last July with his granddaughter, Caroline Browning ’16, of Centerville, Ohio.

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Nancy Rebecca Harris of

Sarasota, aka author Rebecca Dartt, has published her fifth book, Under the Radar. In this thriller, NYPD Detective Peter O’Donnell thinks he’s washed up after a disastrous drug bust in Mexico. He moves upstate to write parking tickets in a quiet college town, but it’s not long before he uncovers a diabolical plot after a chemistry technician is murdered on campus, and the killer seems to be a postgrad terrorist.

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Wayne Embry was recognized

by Sports Business Journal for his groundbreaking efforts and lifetime service to basketball. He was profiled in the Feb. 10 issue as a member of the 2014 Class of The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business. After college, he played 11 seasons of professional basketball, was a five-time NBA All-Star, and won an NBA championship with the Celtics. He went on to become the first African-American GM in the NBA as well as the first of a major U.S. team sport and the NBA’s first African-American team president.

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Reunion ¶ Terry Reed has written Book of Fools: An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fops, Jackasses, Morons, Dolts, Dunces, Halfwits and Blockheads (Algora Publishing). In his sixth commercially published book, Terry presents a “provocatively, outrageously assertive exposure of fools in their not infrequently bizarre manifestations, the object being to leave no halfwits behind.” The book has been described as “abundantly documented, endlessly

subtle, hopelessly eccentric, and deadly funny.” Terry is a professor emeritus of English, retiring from Miami in 1997.

He lives in Fairfield, Ohio.

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Marc Eisner sent in a photo from a get-together of ZBT fraternity brothers in California, who spent the day at Venice Beach: Gil Kessler ’62, Marc Eisner ’60, Terry Saidel ’62, Bob Tasner ’60, and Errol Frank ’60. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.) ¶ Art Sandeen, head of the University of Florida student affairs for 26 years and College of Education professor for 14 years, is receiving the 2014 John Blackburn Distinguished Pillar Award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. He joined UF as vice president for student affairs in 1973. Since 2004, he has “retired” three times. He still teaches.

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B.T. Chapman will receive the Adm. Souers Award from the National Reserve Officers Training Corps at Miami in April during the Miami Presidential Review. After college, he spent two years on active duty and 22 years in the Naval Air Reserve in Michigan and Ohio. His son nominated him for the award. He and his wife, Connie, live in Chico, Calif.

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Rev. Dr. Robert Close Jr. retired Jan. 5, 2014, after 45 years of active parish ministry with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Robert and wife Nina, who has served for 10 year on the staff of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, are moving to Purcellville, Va. ¶ Leonard Korman of Clark, N.J., was thrilled to hear from a college buddy after 53 years.

Leonard writes, “In 1961, while in my junior year at Miami, I resided in a rooming house on W. Church Street.

One of my housemates was a senior from nearby Indiana. During the February semester break, we decided to hitchhike to Chicago from his Indiana home. Although the weather was cold, windy, and snowy, we had an enjoyable four days. We were 21 years old. He graduated in September of that year. I had not communicated with him for more than half a century.

A letter I had written to Miamian in 2012 was published in the Spring edition. As a result of that letter, in January of this year, I received a phone call from my hitchhiking buddy, who now lives in Maryland. Thank you.” ¶ Theodore Margolis, a member of Norris McLaughlin & Marcus law firm in Bridgewater, N.J., has been selected for inclusion in the appellate practice and commercial litigation law sections of the 2014 edition of Best Lawyers. A resident of Summit, he is the former chief assistant U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. An experienced trial lawyer and counselor, he has represented clients from all over the world in complex litigation and appeals. ¶ Michael McClain of Middletown, Ohio, after learning about Professor Lalita Satyal’s classes in the Fall 2013 Miamian, wrote, “The brief notice brought back memories and made me nostalgic for India. In one respect I am more fortunate than many other visitors to India. I have sable brown, straight hair, and dark eyes. I was commonly taken for a native, either high caste Hindu or northern Muslim.

(Others took me for Iranian.) Thus, I was able to get to know north Indian culture, both Hindu and Muslim, ‘from the inside.’ ” He is the author of a twovolume work, Persian Traditions and the Influence of Shiism in Spain.

SUBMIT A CLASS NOTE Please send news of your life to: Donna Boen, Miamian,108 Glos Center, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 or Miamian@MiamiOH.edu.

Include your name, class year, address, and phone number.

For more class news, go online to www.

MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.

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Douglas Ewan Cameron has

released his latest action thriller, Payback: Time to die … again.

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class notes

sale of this book benefit the Rocky River Historical Society. ¶ Jeffry Weiler, an attorney in the Cleveland office of Tucker Ellis, has been selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America for 2014. He practices in tax law, trusts, and estates.

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Michele Holbrook Stegman

During a three-week vacation, Fred Stanton ’71 biked down the Danube from Basel, Switzerland, to Mohács, Hungary, last year. His trip covered 1,200 miles, followed EuroVelo 6 along the Danube River, and included stops in Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest. When not on vacation, Fred pedals to and from work, 30 miles a day, some 175 workdays a year, Chicago weather permitting. He put more miles on his bike than his car last year — 8,600.

The sequel to Payback is a Bitch returns to the “House at the End of the Road,” where Dawoh “Daws” Mbayo is a semi-recluse except for his live-in lover, Tres Jones. To his amazement, the judge that sentenced Daws’ former wife and her lover to be hung finds him.

Although helping the judge will put himself and Tres in jeopardy, Daws has no option. Failure means death for all three. Douglas, a retired math professor at the University of Akron, and his wife, Nancy, spend summers in Spruce, Mich., and winters in Copley, Ohio.

They have visited all seven continents.

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Reunion ¶ Tom Harper is photographer and author of the coffee table book Rocky River, Ohio: Where the River Ends (Rocky River Historical Society). Tom started taking photography seriously just prior to his 8-year-old daughter’s death in 1983.

Kristen’s passing made him realize the importance of photography to preserve special memories. The 230-page collection features more than 700 photos of 3,000 people spanning more than 25 years. Tom tried to capture the everyday life of River people and scenes of their city in an intimate, romantic, and humorous way. All proceeds from the

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has published her sixth romance novel, Conquest of the Heart, available as an ebook on Amazon. ¶ Ray Young of Port Clinton, Ohio, was inducted into the Fremont St. Joseph’s Catholic High School Athletic Hall of Fame. After 39 years of teaching in high school, he retired in 2004. At Miami, he played football under Coaches John Pont ’52 and Bo Schembechler ’51.

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Harry Cornett Jr., an attorney

and partner with Tucker Ellis, was chosen to be in Ohio Super Lawyers for 2014. He was also named a 2014 Cleveland Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers under the category of legal malpractice law. ¶ Curtiss Isler, a Los Angeles partner in the Tucker Ellis law firm, has been selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America for 2014.

The practice areas in which he is recognized are mass tort litigation/class actions defendants and product liability litigation defendants. He also has been named the 2014 Los Angeles mass tort litigation/class actions Defendants Lawyer of the Year. ¶ Donald Pfister is interim dean of Harvard College this academic year. He has been at Harvard 40 years, serving as master of one of the undergraduate houses, director of the Harvard University Herbaria, curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium, and dean of Harvard Summer School.

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Stephen Banks has written Drafted and Served: Edward “Skip” Swain — One Citizen Soldier’s

Experiences in Vietnam. This is the story — in words and more than 150 photographs — of Skip Swain, a young guy from Kenmore, N.Y., who in 1968 at age 19 was drafted and sent to Vietnam.

In the story, Stephen, a close friend of Skip’s, focuses extensively on Swain’s training and ultimate service as an infantryman with a one-of-a-kind outfit: B Company “The Warlords,” 123rd Aviation Battalion, Americal Division.

Stephen attended Miami on an NROTC scholarship. ¶ Walter Wangerin Jr. MA ’68, winner of the National Book Award, has written The House of a Thousand Rooms — Eight Tales the Fable Man Tells. The inviting set of fables will capture readers’ imagination.

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Reunion ¶ Gary Fincke published his first novel, How Blasphemy Sounds to God, in early 2014. Braddock Avenue Books, a new Pittsburgh publisher of literary fiction, produced the book. The film rights to Amp’d, his nonfiction account of his son’s early career as a rock guitarist for the multi-platinum band Breaking Benjamin, have been sold, and a screenplay is in development.

His fifth collection of short stories, The Proper Words for Sin, was published

by West Virginia University Press in 2013. He is the Charles Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing and director of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. ¶ Sara Straight Wolf has joined the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting’s board of directors. She is an attorney with Cors & Bassett, a law firm in downtown Cincinnati. She has been selected for the publication Super Lawyers 2010-2013. She lives in West Chester, Ohio, with her husband, Myron ’68, who practices law in Hamilton. They have two grown sons, one in Chicago and one in Los Angeles.

class notes

David Schaefer, with McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman Co., has been named the Best Lawyers 2014 Cleveland Mediation Lawyer of the Year. He has significant experience representing companies in complex business and tort litigation.

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution that offers a more controlled environment empowering parties to reach predictable, mutually acceptable outcomes in what would otherwise normally result in costly, time-consuming litigation. He has served as a mediator for 12 years, handling more than 100 cases with amounts up to $25 million.

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Stephen Wilson has been

appointed to Miami’s board of trustees by Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Steve, of Maineville, Ohio, is chairman and chief executive officer of LCNB Corp. and its subsidiary LCNB National Bank. He is past chairman of the American Bankers Association and a former board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. As a Miami alumnus, he served on the Citizens Advisory Council for the Middletown campus 2000-2003. He was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon and NROTC at Miami. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy for four years before joining LCNB. His son, Scott, graduated from Miami in 2000.

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Debra Hust Allison ’73

MS ’82 retired June 30, 2013, as vice president emerita for information technology and chief information officer at Miami. She served in various information technology roles over nearly 38 years at Miami. Debi was recently elected to her second term as chair of the EDUCAUSE board of directors; her four-year term on the board concludes September 2014 at the annual conference in Orlando.

Her husband, Chris ’73, retired from Miami June 30, 2012, after nearly 40 years in IT. Son Scott ’11 lives in San Diego, and son Drew is a current Miami student. Son Brian is a 2008 graduate of the Berklee College of Music and lives in Los Angeles. ¶ Carolyn Caress Taggart, a partner in Porter Wright Morris & Arthur’s Cincinnati office, has been named to the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation board of trustees.

The foundation operates to steward philanthropic gifts for Good Samaritan Hospital and the health care needs of the greater Cincinnati community.

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Reunion ¶ On May 25, 2013, Donald L. Ambroziak, DPM Miami ’74 son was married in Sacramento. In attendance were Michael Ambroziak, Jr., DPM ’89, Thomas Ambroziak ’71, John Cubar ’74, and Paul Miller ’74. ¶ Richard Monroe of Sedalia, Colo., came in first place, winning $235,494 at the Golden Gates Casino Heartland Poker Tournament in Black Hawk, Colo., Sept. 9-16, 2013.

Poker News reported Rich was “the last man standing among the 716 entries.”

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J. Timothy Petersik

MA ’75 PhD ’78, professor of psychology at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., received the college’s 2013 James R. Underkofler Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. ¶ Krista Freymuth Taracuk sent in a photo of Catherine Brown ’17, Krista Freymuth Taracuk ’75, Jannette Ault Milligan ’95, and Sue Taracuk Brown ’80 at the Doge’s Palace in Venice during their summer trip to Europe.

(See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

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Ray Eichenberger is a sole

practitioner-attorney in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. He has published

©Thomas Jefferson Foundation, photograph by Jack Looney

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six electronic books, including novels The Blood of the Shroud, a story centered on the Shroud of Turin; and Sophia’s Attic, based on a true story about a teenage Jewish girl being hidden by a childless Catholic couple in World War II Paris. ¶ Bradley Gottfried PhD ’76 continues the Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series with his latest book The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns.

This study examines what happened to the armies of Northern Virginia and the Potomac during the months following Gettysburg, when both armies assumed the offensive. The book breaks down these campaigns (and all related operational maneuvers) into 13 map sets or “action-sections” enriched with 87 original, full-page, color maps. Bradley’s earlier atlases focused on Gettysburg, First Bull Run, and Antietam. He is president of the College of Southern Maryland. ¶ Mike Roos MA ’76 has written One Small Town, One Crazy Coach: The Ireland Spuds and the 1963 Indiana High School Basketball Season (Indiana University Press). In the summer of 1962, the peripatetic and irrepressible Pete Gill was hired on a whim to coach basketball at tiny Ireland High School. There

Leslie Greene Bowman ’78, president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, with French President François Hollande and President Barack Obama in Jefferson’s Cabinet at Monticello. Leslie hosted the two world leaders on a tour of former President Thomas Jefferson’s home outside of Charlottesville, Va., Feb. 10, 2014. “It was a wonderful and historic day for Monticello and thrilling for me,” Leslie said.

Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, was a noted Francophile and served as the U.S. minister to France 1785-1789.

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class notes

The prospect of cheap electrical power and decentralized sources of abundant clean energy … should be explored and discussed.

—Joel Garbon ’82, co-author of Breakthrough Power: How quantum-leap new energy inventions can transform our world

he would accomplish, against enormous odds, one of the great small-town feats in Indiana basketball history.

With no starters taller than 5'10", few wins were predicted for the Spuds. Yet, Gill molded the Spuds into a winning team that brought home the town’s first and only sectional and regional titles. Mike is a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. ¶ Jeffrey Silver, staying close to Miami University, has been appointed to a second, six-year term as pastor of St. Mary Parish and Catholic Campus Ministry on High Street in Oxford, through June 30, 2019.

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Joel ’77 PhD ’87 and Christine

Corrigan Benson ’85 are a

proud Miami Merger, celebrating their 30th anniversary last July 23. Joel, who has been teaching at Northwest Missouri State University for 26 years, was recently named chair of the department of humanities and social science.

Christine, who earned a PhD from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, has been teaching at Northwest Missouri State University for 16 years and was recently named chair of the department of mathematics, computer science, and information systems. Their son, Jeremiah, is a lance corporal with the U.S. Marines; daughter, Montanna, is a senior in mathematics and statistics at Northwest Missouri State University.

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Scott Mingus’ new book, Confederate General William “Extra Billy” Smith: From Virginia’s Statehouse to Gettysburg Scapegoat, is the 2013 winner of the Nathan Bedford Forrest History Book Award. Smith was a shrewd postal contractor, skilled attorney, five-term U.S. congressman, Confederate congressman, and governor of Virginia during two wars, as well as a Confederate colonel and the oldest

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general in either army at Gettysburg.

Scott’s biography draws upon a wide array of newspapers, diaries, letters, and other firsthand accounts to paint a broad, deep, and colorful portrait of one of the South’s most interesting leaders and devoted sons. Scott is a scientist and executive in the paper and printing industry. He maintains a popular blog on the Civil War history of his home in York County, Pa., for the York Daily Record (www.yorkblog.com/ cannonball) and is the author of five scenario books on wargaming and, with his wife, Debi, publishes CHARGE!, the leading international magazine for Civil War miniature wargaming. ¶ Michael Vincent ’78 MS ’83 PhD ’91 received the Herbert Osborn Award from the Ohio Biological Survey. An instructor of biology at Miami, he is also curator of Miami’s Willard Sherman Turrell Herbarium, the largest herbarium in Ohio. He has researched broadly in the field of botany, having written treatments for the Flora of North America project, the Flora of China Project, and the Flora of the Greater Antilles project. He chairs the Ohio Flora Committee.

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Reunion ¶ Robert Carter is president and CEO of the Willie Ross School for the Deaf in Longmeadow, Mass. Bert, his wife, Kelley, and sons Chris and Matt live in Leeds, Mass. ¶ Married: Tom Engelhard and Katherine Sivier, in October 2013 at The Grove in Glenview, Ill. Tom is a regional 401k manager for Mutual of Omaha. They live in Palatine, Ill. ¶ For Betty Sue Gumm Fligor ’79 MGS ’81, what began as scribbles on little scraps of paper has grown up into a book of 17 short stories, Sunshine, Freedom, and Little Frogs. One critic describes the compilation as “evocative tales of people we all know well, but who

seldom get their stories told except in obituaries.” Sunshine, Freedom, and Little Frogs, published by Book-broker Publishing of Florida, is available on Amazon.com. ¶ Karen Chuparkoff Lefton was the 2013 recipient of The Leadership Akron Alumni Association’s Distinguished Leader Award, recognizing her success as co-chair of the Women’s Endowment Fund’s yearlong fundraising campaign, which exceeded its $2.013 million goal. Karen is passionate about women’s issues, justice, and literacy. During the recent For Women, Forever campaign, she created the Karen C. Lefton Fund for Survivors of Domestic Violence, earmarking her gift for programs that help remove women and children from violent situations and place them in a stable, safe, and peaceful home. She is a partner at Brouse McDowell in Akron and lives in Copley, Ohio. ¶ Glendon Pratt, a partner in the Columbus office of Peck, Shaffer & Williams, has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2014 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, cited for his work in public finance law.

He was also named Public Finance Law Lawyer of the Year in Columbus. He has worked in public finance law for more than 30 years.

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William Buckley PhD ’80 of

Crown Point, Ind., recently retired from Indiana University, Northwest, after being nominated five times as Best Teacher. Prize-winning poet, published in national and international journals, artist, author of books on D.H. Lawrence, L.F. Céline, and Sylvia Plath, graduate of San Diego State University with MA’s in English and education, and a PhD from Miami.

He founded Plath Profiles at Oxford University in England in 2007, currently anchored at Indiana University, Northwest, the only journal in the

class notes

world on Sylvia Plath. Âś William Leuby, senior vice president of Columbusbased investment management and financial advisory firm Hamilton Capital Management, has been named to the board of directors of Columbus Speech & Hearing Center. The center is the largest outpatient provider of pediatric speech-language and hearing services in the Columbus area, offering complete diagnostic and therapeutic services to central Ohio children and adults with communication disorders.

Bill, who has been profoundly deaf since birth, was a patient of the center as a child. He also will serve on the board’s finance committee. An attorney, CPA, and certified financial planner, he has been named one of the nation’s Best Financial Advisers For Doctors six times by Medical Economics magazine and one of Dental Practice Report’s Best Financial Advisers For Dentists three times. He lives in New Albany, Ohio.

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Joel Garbon is co-author of

Breakthrough Power: How quantum-leap new energy inventions can transform our world. Its preface states, “This book is intended to be a discussion-starter. Issues raised by the prospect of cheap electrical power and decentralized sources of abundant clean energy, and other implications of this fascinating world should be explored and discussed publicly. They are crucial to the economies of countries, and to the well-being of individuals.â€? Joel is a scientist, industrial consultant, and president of the New Energy Movement. Âś Matthew and Suzanne Oliver Goehring saw their fourth child, Stephen, graduate from Miami in December 2013. Their other Miami graduates are Hannah ’10, Seth ’11, and Elizabeth ’12. Suzanne’s father, Kenneth Oliver, graduated from Miami in 1951. Âś Jim Powers participated in IronMan Wisconsin Sept. 8, 2013, to raise money

for pediatric epilepsy research. His times were: 2.4-mile swim: 1:58:47; 112-mile bike: 7:24:18; 26.2-mile marathon run: 5:12:57. Finish time with transitions: 14:55:2. œ Sarah Wingo Williams sent in a picture of the Miami Merger members of the Glen View Club in Golf, Ill., who participated in the 28th annual Redskin Cup: Sarah Wingo Williams ’82, Kris Ward Engle ’75, Kay Selby Buhl ’76, Cindy Pate Henderson ’77, Dan Williams ’82, Mitch Engle ’74, Scott Buhl ’75, and Jay Henderson ’78. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.

MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.) Âś Mike Wroblewski has written Creating a Kaizen Culture (McGraw-Hill Professional). Co-written by leaders at the Kaizen Institute, the book explains how to enable an adaptive, excellent, and sustainable organization by leveraging core kaizen values and the behaviors they generate.

VISIT M I A M I A L U M .O R G / A LU M N I W E E K E N D FOR MORE D E TA I L S !

ĆŤ ĆŤ Ä‘ ĆŤ ÄŒ ĆŤ

Alumni Weekend JUNE 19–22, 2014

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class notes

83

Most companies don’t understand how to build and engage a longterm online audience.

—Jeffrey Rohrs ’91, author of Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers

Harrison Collier Jr. ’83

Patti Fisher Anderson ’75, Sue Curran

MEd ’85 has retired from

Rushmore ’81, Jennifer Meatch

teaching after 30 years in the Cincinnati Public Schools. Having served in various schools and positions, he retired from Walnut Hills High School, his alma mater, and in May 2013 was awarded the Dr. Lawrence C. Hawkins Award as Cincinnati Public Schools’ Educator of the Year. He is now assessment coordinator and director of clinical experiences in the education division at the College of Mount St. Joseph. ¶ Theodore Shinkle, an attorney with GrayRobinson in Florida, has been recognized on the 2014 Best Lawyers in America outstanding attorneys list. ¶ John Suddes has developed a new technology that was launched into beta testing last fall. He is founder and CEO of Ching, a technology fundraising tool that allows nonprofits to raise money through a percentage of their supporters’ online purchases paid directly from online retailers such as Amazon.com and Nordstrom. Ching’s first partner is Food For Thought Outreach, a nonprofit in the Santa Rosa Beach, Calif., area that aims to serve the Walton and Okaloosa County area by providing more than 150 children with healthy, easy-to-prepare meals every weekend.

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Reunion ¶ Cindy Curran

Detrempe writes, “Last

summer there was a Member Guest Golf Tournament at the lovely Red Sky Golf Club in Wolcott, Colo. Through a funny set of circumstances, we ‘found each other’ and had a wonderful time sharing our Miami stories! It’s true that we are all a special family with a very unique bond!” At the tournament swapping stories about toasted rolls and other Miami traditions were Jeff Anderson ’75, Cindy Curran Detrempe ’84, Laure McGowan Miller ’78, Pam Shough Cagle ’68,

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Holzworth ’74, and Don Holzworth ’73 MEn ’75. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.) ¶ Kay Hickey Hagaman and her family visited Jeff Horton ’85 and his family in Colorado Springs, Colo., when the Hagamans headed west for a vacation. Kay’s family then visited Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, and Yellowstone National Park before participating in a mission trip in South Dakota and returning home to Ohio. ¶ Phillip Scott, DO, of Richmond, Ind., is president of the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians. He practices family medicine at Richmond Family Care Center, where he also cares for patients at Reid Hospital & Health Care Services. In addition, he serves as director of medical informatics and on the governing board at Reid. He recently earned a graduate degree in medical informatics from Oregon Health and Science University via its online program. He and wife Jacqueline Rahe Scott ’86 live in Richmond with their children, Andrew, Alexi, and Abigail.

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Doug Curry MA ’85, executive

director of recreational sports and housing administration at Miami, received the Honor Award from the Ohio Recreational Sports Association. Active with ORSA for 18 years, he served as treasurer 1997-2003 and on various committees. At Miami, he oversees the recreational sports center, Goggin Ice Center, the equestrian center, housing administration, and the HOME office. ¶ Mark Stall is general counsel of Toyota Industries North America, headquartered in Columbus, Ind. He also was recently recognized by the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program for his service as co-chairperson 2010–2013.

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Michael O’Guinn was recently

selected for promotion from colonel to the rank of brigadier general and assignment as the deputy commanding general, 807th Medical Command. Mike deployed five times in support of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom, culminating with his last deployment in 2010-2011 where he commanded all U.S. medical forces throughout Iraq. His awards include the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Star Medals, and the Combat Action Badge.

He and his wife, Monica, live with their three daughters in New Windsor, Md.

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Edward Leach MEd ’88 is the new director of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development in The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education.

NISOD offers professional development opportunities to community college faculty, administrators, and staff and boasts members worldwide, ranging from large, urban community college districts to small, rural community colleges. As director, he has strategic and operational responsibility for all of NISOD’s programs and staff, serving as primary liaison. ¶ Petticoat Junction Housemates Jenny Smith Short ’88, Kendra Foster ’88, Ann Marfurt Marischen ’89, Julie Reimann Pastore ’88, and Jen Wells Pinto ’89 reunited in New Orleans in January 2013. All live in different cities but try to get away for a weekend together every year. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.) ¶ John Sullivan sent in a photo of the Alpha Chapter of Sigma Chi Class of 1988, which held its 25th anniversary reunion July 28, 2013.

Nearly 40 alumni returned to Oxford, many of whom hadn’t been back in 25 years. They participated in tours of the campus and the Sigma Chi Founders

class notes

Museum, a BBQ cookout at the Sigma Chi house, golf at Hueston Woods, and euchre. Many from Class of 1987, 1989, and 1990 showed up as well. Attending were John Sullivan, Tom Anderson, Chris Straley, Nick Cavalaris, Mike Mayer, Matt Winkelmann, Mark Rehfuss, Dan Lamb, John Schwing, Rob Anderle, Mark Neff, Chuck Thomas, David Henning, Rick Schiller, Brad Schoch, Peter Troller, Maxim Meyers, Pat O’Toole, David Galas, Bob Barnes, Rob Scott, Tom Holtz, Andy Kircher, Mike Billman, Mike Harrell, Rob Smeltzer, Tom Barnes, Mike Hughes, Brian Walsh, John Petro, and Mark Jump. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.

MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

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Reunion ¶ John Chevalier, director, global investor relations for Procter & Gamble, is the 2014 chairman of the National Investor Relations Institute board of directors.

John, who celebrated his 24th year with P&G in June 2013, has served on the NIRI board since 2011. He has been a member of NIRI since 2002, previously serving as president and program chair of the Cincinnati Tri-State NIRI Chapter, and was co-chair of the NIRI 2013 Annual Conference. ¶ Dr. Susan Thompson Hingle is interim chair of the department of internal medicine at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield. She is a professor of internal medicine, internal medicine’s clerkship director, and residency associate program director, as well as SIU’s associate doctoring curriculum director. Last April she was named chair of the board of governors of the American College of Physicians, the nation’s largest medical specialty organization. She and her husband, Kevin, live in Springfield with their two sons. ¶ Cris Moore Kaminskas is a

councilmember for the city of Liberty Lake, Wash., and is an account manager for Esterline’s advanced input systems platform. ¶ Judy Lombardo performed her one-woman show Victory?! (some names have been changed to protect the guilty) at the Chicago Fringe Festival in September 2013. ¶ Craig Tiggleman ’89 and Rob Schuler ’85 met Reed Slinger, a current Miami student working in the Disney College Program, in the California Grill restaurant, located atop the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World, the day it re-opened after a seven-month restoration. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

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Steve Stewart hosted the

26th Annual “Stewfest” (golf weekend) at a family cottage in Michigan. Each summer up to 20 Miami alums and fellow SAEs descend on several Michigan courses for this long weekend. At the weekend were Jack Gonder ’91, Kevin Kachmarik ’91, Rich Schumacher ’92, Craig Mathieson ’90, John Zemenak ’90, Dave Ziegert ’90, Phil Young ’90, Doug Boersma ’90, and Steve Stewart ’90. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.

MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

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Erika Haupt, partner-in-

charge of Roetzel’s Columbus office, has been named among the 2014 Best Lawyers in America in the practice areas of litigation – trusts and estates. ¶ Jean Weston Parker received Franklin University’s 2013 Teaching Excellence Award, which recognizes top adjunct professors based on faculty and student recommendations. In addition to teaching for Franklin’s interdisciplinary studies program, Jean manages her own curriculum design consultancy in Columbus. ¶ J. Anthony Rich is president of the

Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. Anthony had served on the executive board for two years prior to his election. He also serves on his bar association’s ethics and grievances committee, is co-chair of the criminal law section, and serves as acting judge in Lorain Municipal Court. He has not lost a jury trial since switching to criminal defense in January 2007 and has made several appearances as a guest commentator and legal analyst on Court TV. Anthony lives in Lorain with his two “boys,” Molson, 4 (Golden Retriever), and Wrigley, 1 (St. Bernard). ¶ Jeffrey Rohrs has written Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers. According to Jeff, most companies are still taking one step forward and two steps back in their customer relationships because they don’t understand how to build and engage a long-term online audience.

To gain a lasting advantage over your competition, Audience challenges companies look no further than your email, Facebook, Google, Instagram, mobile app, SMS, Twitter, website, and YouTube, where you can start building audiences that last. Through research data and case studies, this book details how marketers can gain a competitive

Dave Fleming ’90, speaker-trainer-workplace humorist, knows what really affects workplace communication and morale. “Our obsession with wearing denim to work, the joy of finding brownies on the break-room table, or sneaking to one’s desk when getting to work late.” Author of Inside the Cubicle, Dave, named the No. 2 corporate comedian in the U.S. by CBSNews.com, helps companies improve communication, boost morale, and increase productivity all while learning through insightful workplace humor (daveflemingspeaks.com).

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advantage. ¶ Martin Taft, an eighthgrade history teacher in Milwaukee, was “honored and humbled” to serve as a guardian for a World War II vet in an Honor Flight, escorting a veteran to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Martin’s attire on the trip included a Miami sweatshirt. ¶ Jason Wabrick, a mortgage fulfillment team director with Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, has been promoted to vice president. He joined the bank in 2011. Jason coaches for Mason Youth Sports Organization and lives in Mason, Ohio, with his wife and two children.

I’m grateful to own (or be owned by) two fat cats, because without them, this book might not have happened.

—Dena Karides Harris ’92, author of Does This Collar Make My Butt Look Big? A Diet Book For Cats

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Jillian Griffiths, a partner in

PwC’s advisory deals practice and a CPA in the state of New York, has been named one of Consulting magazine’s 2013 Women Leaders in Consulting for her outstanding achievements in client service. Having dedicated the majority of her years in public accounting to advising private equity firms and Fortune 500 companies, she offers clients an uncommon depth of understanding of the due diligence process. She is also highly respected for her ability to identify and quantify the impact of financial and business issues on purchase price and investor return. ¶ Dena Karides Harris has published her second humor book with 10 Speed Press, a division of Random House.

Does This Collar Make My Butt Look Big? A Diet Book For Cats is available nationwide. Dena’s prior book, Who Moved My Mouse? A Self-Help Book for Cats, has been translated into six languages. She recently accepted a job as senior content creator with The Sales Factory, a research-based marketing firm in Greensboro, N.C. ¶ Liz Ciancio Seman is executive director of corporate engagement for Furman University in Greenville, S.C. She is also serving her second term as a member of

Greenville County Council and is vice chair of the national board of the Meals on Wheels Association of America.

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Born: to S. Randall Brown and Emily, Eliza Frances, joining brothers Adam, 6, and Wes, 4, in Worthington, Ohio. Randy is a pediatric physician in private practice and an associate professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine. ¶ Lee Anne Green Vitatoe ’93 MS ’94 was promoted to the rank of captain in the U.S. Navy Sept. 1, 2013. Her father, John Green of Oxford, Ohio, a retired Navy captain, administered the oath of office to his daughter. Lee Anne, who graduated No. 1 in her NROTC class at Miami, is currently assigned as the Deputy Force Surgeon and Lead Medical Planner at Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, Norfolk, Va. She and her husband, David ’92, and their children, Nico, 7, and Luca, 4, live in Virginia Beach.

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Reunion ¶ Married: Jacqleen

Musarra and Jack Scafide,

Aug. 17, 2013, at the Alder Planetarium in Chicago. They live in Chicago. ¶ Paula Turek Seeger of Madeira, Ohio, is an associate director, data solutions, in the Cincinnati office of dunnhumbyUSA, which builds brand value for consumer goods and retail companies. She is responsible for developing innovative analytic solutions that allow dunnhumby’s consumer packaged goods clients to better understand shopping behavior and consumer trends. ¶ Michael Sherban is an associate in Ulmer & Berne’s Cleveland office. He is a licensed patent attorney and focuses on all aspects of intellectual property law, including patent litigation and prosecution, trademark litigation, copyright litigation, and intellectual property licensing.

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Alissa Pulsfort Groth is the company controller for DIGS |Real Estate|Design|Renovation|, a Cincinnati-based company specializing in real estate representation, interior and exterior design, and construction services. ¶ Christina “Leslie” MillerO’Hara of Franklin, Ohio, has joined First Group America’s First Student division in Cincinnati as region human resource manager. ¶ Duke Southworth is councilman at-large for the city of Strongsville, Ohio. He was appointed to the position when a vacancy occurred in 2011 and was elected to a four-year term in November. He and Shannon Patton Southworth live in Strongsville with their boys, Owen, 10, and Colin, 7. ¶ Alfred Steiner had a one-person show Sept. 21-Nov. 16, 2013, at 101/ exhibit in Los Angeles at 8920 Melrose Avenue. The show, Contrariwise, included recent prints, drawings, shaped paintings, and sculptures. ¶ Married: Kate Volkman and Scott Oakes, in October 2012, in Kate’s hometown of Alexandria, Va. They live in San Francisco and both work for the University of California, San Francisco.

Kate is a writer in the development and alumni relations office. Scott is the principal investigator in a cancer biology lab.

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Leif Mitchell received a Seton Elm-Ivy Award from Yale University and the city of New Haven for having “done yeomen’s work to cultivate and sustain effective partnerships between Yale University, the city of New Haven, and the broader New Haven community in the interest of improving community health and with a particular focus on people disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS.” ¶ Married: Kirsten Nilsson and P. Grayson Mennetti Jr., Sept. 14, 2013, at Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, Calif.

This summer, a new generation of scholars will fall in love with

Miami.

MIAMI SUMMER SCHOLARS Session I: July 6–18, 2014 Session II: July 20–August 1, 2014

MiamiOH.edu/summerscholars summerscholars@MiamiOH.edu

class notes

Summer Scholars is a twoweek program designed for high-achieving, rising high school juniors and seniors.

During their studies on the Oxford campus, these scholars will collaborate with Miami’s nationally recognized faculty to delve deeply into such topics as government, social justice, health care, entrepreneurship, and more. They’ll also participate in workshops about navigating the college search process and experience campus life in a Miami residence hall shared with other scholars.

If you know any exceptional high school students eager to take on challenges, encourage them to check out Miami’s Summer Scholars Program and apply by the May 1 deadline. It will be a summer they’ll never forget!

Spring 2014

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class notes

crew designing the sets for their soonto-be released feature film Jupiter Ascending. She lives in Chicago with her partner and dog. ¶ Born: to Jay and Kimberly Sukalich Randall, Morgan Elizabeth, April 5, 2013, in Columbus. ¶ Douglas Sheahan changed the name of his company from DMS Investments “doing-business-as” Concert Wealth Management to ICCF Wealth Management. This new name, in partnership with Insurance Consultants of Central Florida, adds retirement planning.

Jonathan Kuehnle ’98, campus director at Springfield (Ohio) High School, competed on Jeopardy!, traveling to Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif., Dec. 18 to tape the show, which will air the week of April 7. Jon says, “It was a great experience! While I wasn’t nervous on set, I was definitely excited. It’s a high-energy environment, and you really need to keep on your intellectual toes in order to compete. As for the final question (or is it the final answer?), I think the category was Food and Drink, and the clue was something like: ‘This product leaves its traditional container at a speed of .028 miles per hour.’ ”

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Lori Varlotta PhD ’97 has been elected 22nd president of Hiram College, becoming its first woman president. She has been a university administrator for 29 years, the past 11 at California State University, Sacramento, where she is senior vice president for planning, enrollment management, and student affairs. She will join Hiram in August. ¶ Born: to Ashley Musselman Wallace and Chris, Brady Alexander, Nov. 17, 2012, in Denver. Ashley is program manager of the education program at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Chris is a senior analyst at CenturyLink.

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Born: to Tim and Anne

Chapman Bosche ’99,

Elizabeth Maria and William Van Doren, June 6, 2013, joining big brother Jack, 4, in Chesterfield, Mo. ¶ Born: to Adam and Devra Candee Glick ’99, Emily Isabelle, June 28, 2012, joining big sister Rachel in Chappaqua, N.Y. Adam is vice president and director of HR at Frenkel and Co. in New York City.

Devra is vice president at RCG Human Capital Consulting. ¶ Jessie Haddad is lead set designer for the NBC series Chicago Fire. She also worked with Andy and Lana Wachowski’s Chicago

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Reunion ¶ Born: to Darren and Julie Erskine Abrams ’00, Logan Nolan, Nov. 12, 2012, joining Aidan, 7, and Kiersten, 3, in Plano, Texas. ¶ Born: to Brian and Cristen Means Brearey ’01, Abigail Catherine, May 25, 2012, joining big sister Ellen.

Brian is vice president of operations for CPI-HR, a benefits and payroll/HR firm in Solon, Ohio. Cristen is a nurse practitioner for the pediatric surgical unit at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospitals in Cleveland. They live in Shaker Heights, Ohio. ¶ Born: to Doug and Megan Darling Feichtner ’00, Henry David, Aug. 7, 2013, joining Jane, 8, and Olivia, 5. They live in Cincinnati. ¶ Born: to Travis and Mary Gorham Hill, Andrew Grayson, Nov. 1, 2013, joining big brothers Tyler and Nathan in New Orleans.

00

Born: to Jeff Abke and Rachel, Wallace Jeffrey, Aug. 5, 2013. A “crazy summer,” they moved five weeks after Wally was born from Connecticut to Perrysburg, Ohio, where Jeff is director of development for Perrysburg Public Schools. He is launching a new program to raise nontax levied funds for the district. ¶ Gina Hagedorn Eiben has been promoted to partner at Perkins Cole. Working out of the Portland office, Gina is a member

of the firm’s business practice. She is also a member of the board of directors of Portland Parks Foundation. ¶ Born: to Tisha Menchhofer Grote ’00 and Mike Grote ’13, Fira Grayson, June 5, 2013, in Cincinnati. Tisha graduated with a PhD in educational leadership from Miami Aug. 9, 2013. She is an AP government teacher at Lakota East High School. Mike is also a teacher in the Cincinnati area. ¶ Born: to Eric Sanicola and Hannah, Henry Samuel, Nov. 21, 2011. They live in Morris Plains, N.J., where Eric works for JP Morgan Chase & Co and Hannah works for Metlife. ¶ Hillary Weigle has been promoted to partner at the law firm of SmithAmundsen. A member of the insurance litigation group in the firm’s Chicago office, she has taken more than 16 cases to verdict. Her law degree is from Indiana University.

01

Born: to Matthew and Julie

Manuel Barkhurst ’04, Wyatt

Joseph, Feb. 21, 2013, joining older siblings and future Miamians Mason and Makenna. ¶ Katherine Yarosh Benner’s first book, Perseids Peak, has been published on Amazon.com for Kindle only. After graduating from Miami, she earned a JD at Valparaiso School of Law. She lives in the Southwest with her husband and their two pugs. ¶ Born: to Shawn and Jennifer Roeth Eingle ’02, Haylen Alisia, Nov. 22, 2013.

They live in Fishers, Ind. ¶ Born: to Michael and Sarah Schuster Kuhnell, Meret Elisabeth, Jan. 1, 2013, joining big brother August as a proud future Miamian. They live in Worthington, Ohio. ¶ Michael McNeese is the manager of ECOT’s video production department, and his supervisor, Nick Wilson, is ECOT’s vice president of marketing and communications. Mike writes, “Over the summer Nick charged my team with creating a broadcast

class notes

commercial campaign for ECOT, which we managed from concept all the way through to delivering the commercials to individual stations.

Two of the commercials featured Jack Hanna of the Columbus Zoo. Producing commercials of this caliber in-house is unprecedented at this level. The commercials had an immediate effect, causing ECOT’s enrollment to improve by 14 percent over the same period one year ago.” ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) is Ohio’s “first and largest K-12 online public school,” according to its website. ¶ Heather Menne MGS ’01, a senior research scientist at Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland, has been selected as a 2013-2014 Health and Aging Policy Fellow, a program administered at Columbia University in association with the American Political Science Association. During her oneyear residential fellowship, she will participate in the federal policy-making process in a placement with an executive branch agency, in Congress, or in a policy organization in Washington, D.C. She is president of the Ohio Association of Gerontology and Education and co-convener of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Interest Group of the Gerontological Society of America. ¶ Erin Stefanec Rhinehart, with Faruki Ireland & Cox in Dayton, has been appointed by the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division chair as managing editor of The Young Lawyer, the official publication of the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division. TYL circulates nationally and internationally to approximately 150,000 division members, institutions, and other subscribers. ¶ Born: to Ryan and Jaime Brannan Riley, Lucas Kenneth, Nov. 16, 2013. They live in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Ryan was an employee at Miami when they met so, technically, they aren’t a Miami Merger. Jaime is a brand/

product manager for Shearer’s Foods in Massillon, Ohio. Ryan is a stay-athome dad formerly with Allstate’s accounting department. ¶ Natalie Hostacky Stevens, a senior associate in the Cleveland office of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, was named a Rising Star by the 2014 Super Lawyers Magazine in the category of employment litigation: defense. ¶ Born: to Jason and Jacqueline Clark Szalanski ’02, Connor Jason, Nov. 6, 2013, in Lansing, Mich. Jacqueline is a therapy supervisor for Residential Home Health. Jason is an operations manager for Pratt and Whitney. They live in Williamston, Mich.

02

Kyle Borchers, after working

at WDTN-TV (2News) in Dayton and at a newspaper in the Toledo area, mostly as a sports reporter, earned an MS in education and health sciences from the University of Dayton in December. Living in Beavercreek, Ohio, he is in his second year of teaching English language arts, now at Graham Local High School. ¶ Chris Cotter, who earned a JD from the University of Dayton, was named a 2014 Ohio Rising Star by Ohio Super Lawyers. He is an associate at Roetzel & Andress in Akron. ¶ Born: to Sarah Freels Helf and Matt, Logan Matthew Thomas, June 15, 2013. They live in Middleton, Wis. ¶ Born: to Amanda Paule Koba ’02 MS ’04 and Brian, Jackson Matthew, March 18, 2013, in Holland, Ohio. Amanda is a professor at Bowling Green State University. Brian is superintendent of Stone Oak Country Club. ¶ Billy Stratton has published his first book, Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip’s War. He has a PhD in American Indian studies and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Denver.

03

Born: to Shannon Borbely Christy and Ryan, John Andrew, May 2, 2013. ¶ Born: to Christopher and Allison McClure Haedt ’04, Isla Quinn, July 31, 2013.

Christopher is an architect at Design Group. Allison is an attorney at Jones Day. They live in Columbus. ¶ Born: to Jim and Beth Kikta Heinen, Finnegan James, April 11, 2013, joining Kenley, 5, and Eve, 3. Jim is a patent attorney with Armstrong Teasdale. Beth is a workforce research consultant with ICF International. They live in St. Louis, Mo. ¶ Born: to Kevin Mullan and Danielle, Juliet Renee, June 10, 2013. Their daughter’s name comes from a song written by Kevin’s brother, Steven ’09. Kevin is director of alumni relations at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. ¶ Seth Wamelink, an attorney with Tucker Ellis, is an Ohio Rising Stars for 2014. In the Cleveland office and recently promoted to counsel, he practices in products liability, commercial litigation, medical malpractice, and construction litigation.

Patrick John Fetters Puthoff, 15 months old, escorted his mom, Tricia Fetters ’00, to the dedication of the Armstrong Student Center Feb. 7. Nephew and godson of Tricia’s brother, David ’08, he’s already showing great intellectual curiosity as he examines the 3-D seal set into the floor of the Bicentennial Rotunda.

Although Patrick didn’t have much to say about the event, Tricia said, “I was delighted to share the Miami experience that day with so many other supporters, including our family’s favorite ‘baby RedHawk.’ ”

04

Reunion ¶ Emily Douglas was recognized by Workforce Magazine as a 2013 Human Resources Game Changer. The magazine’s staff

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class notes

Travis Nickels ’04 MS ’06 took some great photos of his boys when he, his wife, and their boys visited the Oxford campus last fall. “At ages 4 and 2, my boys already know where they will be attending college,” Travis joked. Or was he joking?

Travis, MD, is chief resident of the Anesthesiology Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.

selected the 25 winners based on professional accomplishments and other achievements. The honorees are a diverse group from across the globe representing some of the best HR practitioners and strategists under 40 years of age. Emily is director of human capital at Battelle for Kids, an education-focused, nonprofit in Columbus that provides strategic counsel and services to state departments, nonprofits, and districts all over the world. ¶ Born: to Emily Russo Kuhn ’04 MEd ’09 and Matt, Henry Philip, June 3, 2013, joining Jacob, 2. They live in Oxford. Emily is a stay-at-home mom. Matt works in Miami’s development office.

05

Born: to Eric and Lauren

Oakes Fuller, Harper Anne,

Dec. 20, 2013, joining big brother Ethan. ¶ Married: Sarah Kelley and Paul Rindfleisch ’00, Aug. 31, 2013, in Charleston, S.C. Living in Washington, D.C., Sarah works for the USO and Paul works for No Kid Hungry — Share Our Strength. ¶ Born: to Sean and Lisa Belopotosky Knight, Jude James, July 17, 2013, in Canton, Ohio. ¶ Chris Stellato is president of the Columbus School of Chinese, which he founded in 2010. Featured in ThisWeek Community

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News, Chris talked about learning Mandarin. “Every single syllable has a tone pitch that you need to be paying attention to. You have to develop all new muscles in your mouth. Just all around it is a difficult language, even for the Chinese.” After graduating from Miami, he moved to China and studies there for several years. ¶ Jenn Winter was chosen as a Doubletree by Hilton & “DTourist.” She traveled to Europe in September and October to create video, photography, and written content as part of the company’s DTour of a Lifetime website. Jenn manages J. Winter Photography in Chicago and has been traveling and blogging since 2006, primarily in East Africa. She writes about travel at www.ALadyAway.com.

06

Married: Ashley Grenesko and Ryan Yosay, July 13, 2013, in Chicago, where they live.

Ashley is a preschool teacher. Ryan is a vice president of sales at Morningstar. ¶ Married: Sarah Mementowski and Michael Close, Aug. 4, 2012, in Cleveland. Sarah teaches third grade at Elmwood Elementary in Garfield Heights. Michael is an Internet specialist with Flaming River Industries in Berea. They live in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, with their dog, Casey. ¶ Married: Stacey Schrand and Jared Pondelik.

They’d dated since freshman year.

Stacey is in marketing for June Jacobs Spa Collection. Jared works in private equity for Pinebridge Capital. They live in Manhattan.

07

Married: Melissa Gerber and Joshua Ebel ’10, Dec. 29, 2012, in Perrysburg, Ohio. They live in Columbus where Melissa is an attorney at Eastman & Smith. Josh is in medical school at Ohio State University and will graduate in May 2014. ¶ Lindsey Goble earned a law degree in 2012 at Cardozo

School of Law in New York and a master’s in tax law at New York University in 2013. She was admitted to the New York Bar Feb. 3, 2014, and is a clerk for a federal tax judge in Washington, D.C. ¶ Married: Erica Holmes and Kyle Stineman ’08, Aug. 10, 2013, in Cleveland. They live in Olympia, Wash., where Erica is a communications specialist at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

Kyle is an actuarial analyst at the Washington office of the State Actuary. ¶ Born: to Steve and Kelsey Nocks Kalgreen ’08, Lucas Richard, Sept.

10, 2013. ¶ Matthew Kendra earned a PhD in clinical psychology from George Mason University Dec. 19, 2013, completed a psychology internship at Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, and is a clinical postdoctoral fellow in Stanford University School of Medicine department of psychiatry.

“I really miss Miami and enjoy reading through the Class Notes, especially to see if any of my classmates have news.” ¶ Brent McCreary is the assistant company manager of IF/THEN, a new musical by Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winners Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey that stars Tony-winning actress Idina Menzel. It premiered in Washington, D.C., last fall and opens on Broadway this spring.

08

Married: Megan Law and Jace Hunter ’07, July 6, 2013, at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. ¶ Nick Seger has joined Faruki Ireland & Cox law firm in Dayton. He is experienced in business and commercial litigation. Prior to joining FI&C, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. James G. Carr of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Along with district court cases, he worked on matters before the Sixth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. Nick graduated from

class notes

the University of Toledo College of Law. ¶ Married: Erika Wirtz and Garrett Eesley, Aug. 10, 2013, in Park City, Utah, where they were joined by more than 35 Miamians. Erika is employed

by Procter & Gamble in New York City. Garrett is employed by Starwood Capital Group in Greenwich, Conn.

They live in Manhattan.

09

Reunion ¶ Married: Laura

Bright and Matt Weymer,

July 6, 2013, in Kumler Chapel, where they were engaged the year before.

They live in Youngstown, Ohio, where Laura works at the YMCA and also teaches at Youngstown State University as an adjunct professor. Matt is a teacher and high school baseball coach who has taken his team to state finals two out of the past three years. Laura writes, “Matt has recruited many of the students he teaches in class to go to Miami, and many of them are there loving it!” ¶ Ilya Budik was featured in the Bearden Shopper-News (Knoxville, Tenn.). In the July 29 article, he talks about how Israel is enriched by Jews who emigrate from other countries because they bring different talents and perspectives. In the same way, he adds, Alzheimer’s research benefits from many countries working together to find a cure. Ilya is CEO of NeuroQuest, an Israeli biomedical company that’s developing a low-cost test to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) in early stages. Now living in Israel, he grew up in Knoxville, Tenn. ¶ Married: Patricia Casal and Robert Sondergaard, May 4, 2013, in Niagara Falls. They live in Columbus. ¶ Married: Sarah McEleney and William Huber ’08, June 22, 2013, at the top of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas. They had been dating since they met at Miami in 2006. They live in Cincinnati with their cats, Catawba

and Tabasco. ¶ Emily Milliman reports several classmates got together for their fourth annual lake-house reunion in Grayling, Mich. Spending quality time on the dock and in the water while reminiscing about their studio days in Alumni Hall were Josh Castillo, Emily Milliman, Stephen Allen, Victor Smith, Jim MacMillan, Ashley Gresla, Pablo Bonnin, Alex Divito, Ryan Finch, and Mike Lowder. (See photo in online Miamian Class Notes, www.

MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

10

Jeff Bieszczak passed the Ohio Bar Exam in July 2013 with the highest overall score in the state of Ohio (out of 1,255 applicants).

He serves as an appointed judicial law clerk for the Hon. Arthur I. Harris at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland.

He earned a JD magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from Case Western Reserve University in 2013. ¶ Ashley Brandenburg signed with Nashville BE Music and Entertainment to write and record country music. She has been told her sound is like Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift mashed together, but, she says, “I have my own unique style, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do for years.” Her debut album, Love Like This, came out Feb. 18 on iTunes. ¶ Married: Melissa Burr and Erik Ahlin ’08, June 15, 2013, in Melissa’s hometown of Hudson, Ohio. They live in Chicago. Melissa is a graphic designer at Soulsight. Erik is a major account executive with Careerbuilder. ¶ Hayley Cook was promoted to senior associate at ICR, a leading strategic communications firm.

She is a member of ICR’s corporate communications group, providing account service, strategic counsel, and media relations for public and private companies. She joined ICR in 2011

working out of the firm’s Connecticut headquarters before transferring to its office in New York City.

11

Eric Igel is an associate, finance,

in the Cincinnati office of dunnhumbyUSA, a leading customer science company. He provides financial support to the U.S. Commercial Finance team members as they help plan and manage business. Previously a finance analyst at the E.W. Scripps Co., he earned an MBA in finance and international business from Xavier University in 2013.

12

Adam Giffi was featured in Inside Business for being “part of the new team of employees at Alexander Mann Solutions, the London-based company that chose Cleveland as home for its first North American global client service center.”

Adam is a sourcing specialist for AMS, a 2,000-employee global provider of outsourced recruitment and talent management that’s worked with such names as Rolls-Royce and Credit Suisse.

SAVE THE DATE Alumni Weekend is June 19–22, 2014.

Learn more at MiamiAlum.org/ AlumniWeekend.

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Tim Keil of Hyde Park, Ohio, is

an associate in custom insight in the Cincinnati office of dunnhumbyUSA, a customer science company.

He is responsible for developing the models that aid in the delivery and analysis of personalized customer communications. ¶ Liesel Schmader began attending the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law last August as a Leadership Scholar to pursue a JD. She is focusing on leadership and policy through law. ¶ Alexa Yoon is a project coordinator in the specialty retail architecture studio at FRCH Design Worldwide. Prior to that, she was a co-op student designing studios for community housing in Cincinnati, exploring sustainable building methods to reduce maintenance costs.

Spring 2014

45

farewells 1930’S George A. “Banana George” Blair ’37, New York, N.Y., Oct. 17, 2013.

Earl C. Shrader ’37, Fort Myers, Fla., Sept. 7, 2013.

Jane Scott Hayes-Telfair ’39 SpecEd ’72, Wilmington, Ohio, Sept 2, 2013.

Carolyn Albright Young ’39, North Canton, Ohio, Feb. 20, 2013.

1940’S Warren P. “Bud” Fisher ’41, Jamestown, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2013.

Elaine Castator Dempster ’42, Sylvania, Ohio, Sept. 17, 2013.

Eugenia Weber Freeman ’42 MEd ’62, Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 30, 2013.

Mark W. Lukingbeal ’52, Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 10, 2013.

Richard C. Gove ’56, Traverse City, Mich., Feb. 28, 2013.

William J. Gottermeyer ’48, Morgan, Vt., Nov. 7, 2013.

James R. Noyes ’52, Anderson, S.C., March 23, 2013.

Richard L. Gray ’56, Dothan, Ala., Aug. 12, 2013.

Owen M. Hornstein Sr. ’48, Lafayette, La., Oct. 5, 2013.

Carl B. Porter ’52, Collierville, Tenn., July 14, 2013.

John A. “Jack” Pettibone ’56, Lexington, Ky., Aug. 29, 2013.

David J. Putts Jr. ’48, Massillon, Ohio, Oct. 18, 2013.

Earl D. Rhodes ’52, Sterling Heights, Mich., April 30, 2013.

JoAnn Schuster Sloneker ’56, Oxford, Ohio, May 12, 2013.

Frances Pedrick Benz ’49, Isle of Palms, S.C., Sept. 6, 2013.

Norma Hockenberry Schrote ’52, Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 1, 2013.

Ashford D. Wood ’56, San Francisco, Calif., Nov. 27, 2013.

Edward J. Bosmeny ’49, Naperville, Ill., Sept. 3, 2013.

Richard C. Fox MS ’49, Anderson, S.C., Sept. 7, 2013.

Patricia King Laflin ’49, Indianapolis, Ind., Sept. 22, 2013.

Martha Rossel Wilson ’49, Newark, Ohio, July 10, 2013.

Florence Mantel Goetz ’42, Beachwood, Ohio, Sept. 26, 2013.

1950’S William C. Akers ’50, Boca Raton, Fla., Oct. 13, 2013.

Robert C. Shape ’42, Sun City Center, Fla., Oct. 15, 2013.

Robert W. Cantoni ’50, Lebanon, Ohio, Nov. 15, 2013.

James H. Steen ’42, Providence, Utah, June 17, 2013.

Catherine Redinger Lee ’50, Naperville, Ill., Dec. 19, 2013.

Carolyn Talbot Hoagland ’43, Glen Lake, Mich., Sept. 13, 2013.

Marjorie Leonard Morner ’50, Sandusky, Ohio, Nov. 15, 2013.

Robert D. Crooks ’45, Parkersburg, W.Va., Oct. 8, 2013.

Lois Hawker Blalack ’51, Newport Beach, Calif., March 12, 2013.

Ann Clawson Berry ’46, Beavercreek, Ohio, April 25, 2013.

Helen B. Michak ’51, North Royalton, Ohio, July 1, 2013.

Janet Hartman Landwehr ’46, Lavallette, N.J., Jan. 5, 2013.

Jane Roeser Wagner ’51, Columbus, Ind., Sept. 29, 2013.

Glen Y. Miller ’46, Duck, N.C., July 29, 2013.

William F. Cottrell Jr. ’52, Boulder City, Nev., Oct. 4, 2013.

Don E. Sando ’46, Dayton, Ohio, Oct. 7, 2012.

Joyce McCabe Dearwester ’52, Cincinnati, Ohio, Sept. 7, 2013.

Ruth Newyear Davis ’47, Walnut Creek, Calif., July 21, 2013.

Delpha Dutton Dickson ’52, Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 2, 2013.

Angus D. Harrison Jr. ’47, Polk City, Fla., Aug. 31, 2013.

Marjorie Rice Kreachbaum ’47, Upper Sandusky, Ohio, Aug. 31, 2013.

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Thomas R. Stump ’47, Fort Myers, Fla., May 2, 2013.

miamian magazine

Corlyss Rike Dillard ’52, Antioch, Tenn., Oct. 7, 2013.

Marilyn Brubaker Ducich ’52, Bend, Ore., Oct. 3, 2013.

Dominic J. Liberatore ’52, La Porte, Ind., Sept. 8, 2013.

John L. Altshool ’53, Cincinnati, Ohio, July 29, 2013.

Alice “Scottie” Wright Coler ’53, Green Valley, Ariz., May 31, 2013.

Charles O. Doring ’53, Monroe, Ohio, April 26, 2013.

Marjorie June ’53, Evanston, Ill., June 19, 2013.

Donald K. Kellogg ’53, Madeira, Ohio, Aug. 18, 2013.

William F. Niehous ’53, Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 10, 2013.

Shulamit Braun Retter ’53, Kiriat Ono, Israel, May 31, 2013.

Daniel F. Reynolds ’53, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Oct. 5, 2013.

Bert D. Strahan ’53, Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 11, 2013.

Jo Ann Bower Wagner ’53, Newport News, Va., April 8, 2013.

Alice J. Gerlach ’54, Indianapolis, Ind., July 16, 2013.

Charles D. Williams ’54, Lexington, Ohio, Sept. 25, 2013.

Thomas J. Beckett ’55, Bradenton, Fla., Sept. 20, 2013.

Edward D. Hawkins ’55, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Sept. 28, 2013.

Lawrence E. Hoover Sr. ’55, Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 26, 2013.

Betty Butts Oglesby ’55, Iowa City, Iowa, Aug. 22, 2013.

Barbara McElhaney Pogue ’55, Orinda, Calif., Aug. 8, 2013.

Jerry M. Crown ’57, Chicago, Ill., Oct. 27, 2013.

James C. Gill ’57, Hamilton, Ohio, Aug. 21, 2013.

John V. Bonander ’58, Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 8, 2013.

Jack W. VanMetre ’58, Madison, Wis., July 24, 2013.

Thomas J. Hanner ’59, Dunwoody, Ga., Oct. 1, 2013.

1960’S John E. Lewis ’60, Harrison Township, Mich., Sept. 11, 2013.

Katherine “Kay” Hanau McGimpsey ’60, Sarasota, Fla., July 14, 2013.

Ruth E. Myers ’60, Hicksville, Ohio, Sept. 29, 2013.

Sheryl Sullivan Starnes ’60, Rapid City, S.D., June 14, 2013.

Donald N. Brunner Sr. ’61, Farmersville, Ohio, July 18, 2013.

Donna Coy Hoffman ’61, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 3, 2013.

Mildred Combs Struckman ’61, Milan, Ind., Oct. 4, 2013.

Robin A. Beck ’62, Kenosha, Wis., Jan. 21, 2013.

Joan Leserman Schwartz Gregory ’62, Palo Alto, Calif., July 11, 2013.

Kenneth F. Miracle ’62, Xenia, Ohio, Oct. 1, 2013.

Robert S. Ross ’62, Chico, Calif., Aug. 2, 2013.

farewells

Linda Morris Stuecheli ’62, Overland Park, Kan., July 26, 2013.

John T. Ochsenbein ’71 MS ’72, Vandalia, Ohio, Oct. 1, 2013.

Charlotte Furbert Ming ’80 MEd ’80, Hamilton Parish, Bermuda, Dec. 26, 2013.

Diana Kern Umansky ’63, Lexington, Ky., Nov. 18, 2013.

Cheryl Congress Gannon ’72 MFA ’74, Lighthouse Point, Fla., July 18, 2013.

Jolene Lancaster Plunkett ’64, Columbus, Ohio, Oct. 9, 2013.

Peggy L. Bryant ’73, Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2013.

Ralph C. Donnell ’83, Cincinnati, Ohio, Sept. 27, 2013.

David R. Stitt ’64, Rocky River, Ohio, July 22, 2013.

Jeffrey A. Fagan ’73, Tenafly, N.J., March 3, 2013.

Mark P. Linzie ’83, Franklin, Ohio, Aug. 14, 2013.

Noel J. Cutright ’65, Saukville, Wis., Nov. 10, 2013.

Debbie Carroll Moehring ’73, Richmond, Ind., Dec. 22, 2013.

Cindy M. Dunham ’85, Fort Thomas, Ky., May 12, 2013.

Mary Jane Andrulis Meyerholtz ’66, Sun City West, Ariz., July 17, 2013.

Martin D. Protzman ’73 MEd ’75, Hamilton, Ohio, July 20, 2013.

Michael T. Wells ’86, Lithia, Fla., May 8, 2013.

Linda Franz Streibert ’66, Naples, Fla., July 31, 2011.

Jack R. Schendel MS ’73, Albuquerque, N.M., July 3, 2013.

Bruce W. Adams ’67, St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 2, 2013.

Douglas E. Dickison ’74, Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 6, 2013.

James T. Arbuckle ’67, Beverly Hills, Calif., May 27, 2013.

Thomas E. Pickett ’74, Myrtle Beach, S.C., Sept. 2, 2013.

Barbara Schuster Uhrig ’67, Indianapolis, Ind., Dec. 19, 2013.

Nancy Acheson Rohrer MA ’74, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 30, 2013.

Pamela Marsh Marks ’88 MTSC ’05, Richmond, Ind., Sept. 9, 2013.

J.P. Stuart White ’67, Ellijay, Ga., May 12, 2013.

Rita Corbin Burns ’75, Hamilton, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2013.

Suhith Wickrema ’88, Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 9, 2013.

Frances Netherland Currey Brown ’68, Berryville, Ark., Dec. 4, 2012.

Margaret Lura Branscum ’76, Englewood, Ohio, June 1, 2013.

Sara Murphy Burns ’68, Franklin, Ohio, June 21, 2013.

Eric P. Jensen ’68 MEd ’70, Toledo, Ohio, Nov. 6, 2012.

David J. Richards Jr. ’68, Concord Township, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2013.

Diana Crowner Lenzmeier ’69, Westerville, Ohio, Feb. 17, 2013.

Clayton G. Napier ’69, Hamilton, Ohio, Aug. 14, 2013.

1970’S Nancy Emmette DiRocco ’71, Shawnee Mission, Kan., Feb. 7, 2013.

Pamela Burns Fagyal ’71 MS ’73, Florissant, Mo., May 28, 2013.

Douglas M. Fey ’71, Lebanon, Ohio, Sept. 27, 2013.

James N. Cole ’81, Bellbrook, Ohio, Aug. 12, 2013.

Douglas E. Orcutt ’87, Loveland, Ohio, June 1, 2013.

Janine Simmons Walker ’87, Vienna, Va., Jan. 29, 2013.

Gloria Bailey Webb ’87, Dayton, Ohio, June 14, 2013.

Robert J. Congelli ’76, Kent, Wash., June 26, 2013.

1990’S Robert W. Pilcher ’91, Chicago, Ill., Aug. 22, 2013.

Pamela R. Peters ’76, Walnut Creek, Calif., Sept. 7, 2013.

Christine Terse Serra ’92, Avon Lake, Ohio, May 25, 2013.

C. Clifton Chancey III ’77, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Oct. 19, 2013.

Kevin P. Messina ’94, Chesterfield, Mo., Feb. 2, 2013.

Kenneth A. Landis ’77, Trotwood, Ohio, July 28, 2013.

Jeffrey D. Warstler Jr. ’97, Canton, Ohio, Oct. 5, 2013.

Rolland K. Miracle ’77, Worthington, Ohio, Aug. 5, 2013.

Mary K. Rozier PhD ’98, Cincinnati, Ohio, July 4, 2013.

Paul C. Wotherspoon PhD ’77, Beavercreek, Ohio, June 9, 2013.

Abbie J. Harper ’12, Maryville, Tenn., Nov. 14, 2013.

Jerrell L. Wedge ’12, Upper Marlboro, Md., Nov. 10, 2013.

Jacob S. Jarman ’16, Greenwood Village, Colo., Oct. 26, 2013.

Andrew D. Salsman ’16, Springdale, Ohio, Dec. 16, 2013.

Jaclyn M. Wulf ’16, Westlake, Ohio, Nov. 17, 2013.

FACULTY, STAFF, AND FRIENDS David L. Ballard ’61 MA ’63, Middletown, Ohio, May 22, 2013. Retired senior instructor of communication at Miami Middletown, 1966-2009.

Joan G. Curp, Eaton, Ohio, Aug. 17, 2013. Retired from Miami in 2009 as student service technician in registrar’s office, at Miami, 1987-2009.

Richard M. Jellison, Oxford, Ohio, Nov. 5, 2013. Miami professor emeritus of history, 1962-1991.

Lisa Mayo Hon. ’97, New York, N.Y., Nov. 24, 2013. Co-founder, Spiderwoman Theater, longest running Indigenous women’s theater in North America.

Carol M. McQueen, Hamilton, Ohio, Nov. 8, 2013. Retired from Miami.

Richard G. “Dick” Shrider, Oxford, Ohio, Jan. 21, 2014.

Miami director emeritus of intercollegiate athletics, 19571988. Miami men’s head basketball coach, 1957-1966; Miami athletic director, 1964-1988.

Jerry F. Raleigh Sr. ’78, Middletown, Ohio, Oct. 16, 2013.

2000’S Joanne R. Lalk ’00, Oxford, Ohio, Oct. 31, 2013.

Teresa Charters Yontz ’79, Springfield, Ohio, Sept. 19, 2013.

Ruben R. Ardery ’02, Louisville, Ky., April 27, 2013.

1980’S Halle Reid Holland ’80, Alpharetta, Ga., Aug. 12, 2013.

In Memory of… If you would like to make a contribution in memory of a classmate, friend, or realtive, send your gift to Miami University in care of Wendy Mason, Advancement Services Building, Miami University, 926 Chestnut Lane, Oxford, Ohio 45056 or call Wendy at 513-529-3552.

Donald C. Weber, Oxford, Ohio, Oct. 8, 2013. Miami professor emeritus of statistics, 1967-1989.

Spring 2014

47

days of old

That’s the Spirit Harry Thobe leads the cheers at a Miami football game in the late 1940s. His hat and shoes, seen above, as well as his suit and umbrella, are on display in Miami University Archives.

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miamian magazine

Decked out in a white suit and red-banded straw hat

during game days, his one shoe red, the other white, Harry Thobe proclaimed himself Miami’s No. 1 sports fan during the first half of the 20th century. His antics were hard to miss as the Oxford stonemason paraded along football’s sidelines waving a white umbrella and shouting through a red and white megaphone. He was particularly fond of predicting home-team wins, announcing to the crowd, “I had a dream last night …”

He claimed to have attended 54 consecutive Homecoming games. The familiar figure was loved by the student body, but his headline-grabbing stunts were a source of misery for administrators.

He moved to Oxford in 1895 to build the town’s train depot at Spring and Elm streets. He also laid brick for several campus buildings.

Perhaps his best-known work was “Thobe’s Fountain,” which he crafted from rough stone in the early 1900s and donated to the university. Located beside Slant Walk between what is now King Library and Harrison Hall, the fountain became a popular meeting spot for students. It fell into disrepair after his death in 1950 and was replaced by a smaller one in 1952.

In 1959 this fountain, too, was removed. Today the Kappa Kappa Gamma centennial memorial sits on top of the fountain’s remains.

Legend has it that his spirit still resides near Slant Walk, ready to greet all passersby. Supposedly if you stand west of the fountain’s remains, face the nearest oak tree, and call Thobe’s name, Harry will answer.

Now that’s what you call spirit.

days of old

Spring at last, when gorgeous weather allows for studying outside at the Hub. Elliott Hall is in the background.

Fall 2013

49

Rescued treasure U.S. Army Capt. Walter Farmer ’35 helped reclaim the bust of Nefertiti, which today intrigues visitors at the Egyptian Museum Berlin. See page 22 for the story.