Summer 2014 Miamian

miamian The Magazine of Miami University

Summer 2014

REFLECTIONS ON As Miami recognizes the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, john swann ’65 reflects on the changing times of the 1960s.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN Alysia Fischer MFA ’11, a lecturer in Miami’s Center for American and World Cultures and an affiliate in anthropology, art, and the Myaamia Center, recycles many materials in her art. She created “Curtain” from a tractor inner tube and upholstery thread. “Curtain,” which is 53"x35"x6", earned an Award of Distinction at the national juried exhibition “Fine Contemporary Craft” at ArtSpace in Raleigh, N.C., and was purchased by Fidelity Investments for its collection.

Staff Editor Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96

Vol. 32, No. 3

miamian

Senior Designers Donna Barnet Belinda Rutherford

Web Developer Suzanne Clark

STORIES

18 Open the Doors and See All the People

Copy Editor Beth Weaver

Busiest day? Wednesday. Busiest hour? 1–2 p.m. when all 450 seats in The Commons are usually filled. Our photos show you how much the Armstrong Student Center bustles.

Issue Design Consultant Lilly Pereira

22 The Cat Behind the Hat

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

Bob Chase ’91 oversees the estate of the beloved children’sbook author Dr. Seuss, hats and all.

24 Freedom: One Perspective Which came first, the hat or its drawing? (see page 22)

When John Swann ’65 MEd ’67 stepped on campus in 1961, he left behind “whites only” lunch counters and “colored only” water fountains. He thought he was free.

IN EACH ISSUE

Office of Development 513-529-1230 Senior Associate Vice President for University Advancement Brad Bundy Hon ’13 brad.bundy@MiamiOH.edu

2 From the Hub

Making freedom a priority.

3 Back & Forth

To and from the editor.

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

Margaret Peterson Haddix ’86 celebrates 20 years of writing books for children and teens (see page 14).

30%

During the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a turning point in the civil rights movement, Miamian reflects on freedom’s meaning and commemorates the volunteers who trained at Western College.

Flute recital tests an adult beginner’s nerve.

30 Love & Honor

Campus news highlights.

Gender equity focus of Women in Leadership Symposium.

10 Such A Life

32 Class Notes

Kinetic contraptions call for crazy creativity.

12 Inquiry + Innovation

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.

16 My Story

6 Along Slant Walk

Professors’ patents benefit consumers and economy.

ON THE COVER

Summer 2014

The Magazine of Miami University

Photographers Jeff Sabo Scott Kissell

14 Media Matters

Notes, news, and weddings.

46 Farewells 48 Days of Old

Dusting off a historical gem from the archives.

New works by alumni.

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

The Spirit of Freedom

By President David Hodge

Fifty years ago this summer some 700 young people

arrived at Western College for Women for training on how to register black voters in the South, teach in Freedom Schools, and build community centers.

They were the civil rights volunteers of the Mississippi Summer Project, more commonly known as Freedom Summer.

As a young person back then, I was greatly affected by the whole civil rights movement, as were many young people. We were horrified by what we saw and inspired by the ideals of democracy Our country and freedom.

That is the kind of inspiration we want is in a better today’s young people to experience. And place because that is why we are in the midst of the Year of Celebrating Freedom at Miami. Our comof the civil memoration of Freedom Summer’s 50th annirights versary this October is a natural entry point into broader conversations about civil rights. movement, Such conversations are giving our students but we still a chance to reflect on their lives and what it means to be a champion of freedom and a struggle. citizen of democracy.

What we want is for them to live lives full of meaning, full of compassion, full of commitment to making the cause of freedom everywhere a priority for all of us.

When Miami’s Class of 2018 arrives in August, their first official act will be to gather on the hillside in front of Western’s Peabody Hall. This, the site where Freedom Summer training took place, will also be the site of our 2014 convocation.

Picture it — as Freedom Summer author and convocation speaker Bruce Watson talks of that historic time, our 3,600 freshmen will be sitting exactly where their 1964 counterparts sat to learn lessons in non-

2

miamian magazine

violence and sing freedom songs to bind them together in spirit.

Their understanding of what was accomplished by activists not much older than they are now will be incredibly deep and personal. The freshmen of 2014 will be sitting in the shadow of the Freedom Summer Memorial, dedicated to the memory of all that occurred that summer.

At the edge of the memorial will be three young trees, planted during Alumni Weekend 2014, to honor three young men — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — who left Western on a Saturday night in 1964 to investigate the burning of Mount Zion Church in Longdale, Miss. Their bodies were found in an earthen dam six weeks later.

You are invited to write to Our country is in a very President David Hodge at president@MiamiOH.edu. Follow different place, a better place, him on twitter @PresHodge. because of the civil rights movement, but we still struggle.

There is still so much work to be done, both in the United States and throughout the world. Those Freedom Summer volunteers inspire all of us to reflect on the power of the civil rights movement and then go beyond to celebrate the spirit of freedom in our lives and in our nation.

Miami is hosting a national conference Oct. 12–14 for Freedom Summer’s 50th anniversary. For more about the conference and our Year of Celebrating Freedom, go to MiamiOH.edu/celebratingfreedom.

back & forth miamian The Magazine of Miami

University

Spring 2014

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

IN THIS ISSUE:

Cautious in Kabul from Nazis Reclaiming Nefertiti 3-D Anatomy

A real hero I was pleased to see Walter I. Farmer ’35 recognized as a member of the Monuments Men corps (“Miami’s Monuments Man,” Spring 2014 Miamian). From 1988 to 1996, when I served as director of the Miami University Art Museum, Walter and I became good friends.

He was one of the two major donors to the museum at that time, so I needed to spend time getting to know him, but I soon found I was meeting a friend and looking forward to our intriguing discussions. He had me hooked the first time he told me about his role as a Monuments Man and the Wiesbaden Manifesto. I became totally engrossed in Nazi-looted art as a historical research subject.

This was in 1989.

In 1994 Lynn H. Nicholas published the landmark book on the subject that is still referred to reverently: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Walter I. Farmer’s actions are cited in numerous places in

this National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book. Despite the fact that he may not have looked the part, Walter was a real hero, which is quite clear after reading about his exploits.

Shortly after this best-selling book was published, the author moderated an important panel of experts at The Spoils of War Symposium held at Bard Graduate Center, and Walter was asked to be one of the major speakers. The event was written up in The New York Times with that famous picture of Walter gazing lovingly at the bust of Nefertiti!

I left Miami to take up a new position at William & Mary before Walter died. He inspired my investigation of Holocaust-looted art in museum collections, which the American Association of Museums and The International Council of Museums had been reluctant to pursue for obvious reasons.

I am proud to say that I played a role in changing that, and museums are now required to do “due diligence” in regards to the provenance of the artwork in their collections. This is especially true of any art that may have been acquired or changed hands in Europe during the war years.

I have organized panels on the subject for professional museum associations, developed policies, written articles, and delivered lectures.

Whenever it is possible, I have dedicated this work to the memory of my friend Walter I. Farmer.

—Bonnie Kelm, PhD Museum & Private Collection Consulting, Bellakaye Designs Carpinteria, Calif.

Kabul’s peaceful years I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the article “Careful in Kabul” about the experience of Leslie Weiant ’11, who is teaching in Kabul (Spring 2014 Miamian).

Given the recent news I got from other Americans working in Kabul, who left the country because of the violence the week before the elections, I do hope she continues to be safe there.

I also spent two years in Kabul at the then-American International School of Kabul, where I taught children of many foreign nationalities, as well as American children and a few Afghan children.

I was very lucky to be there from 1974 to 1976 and enjoyed the ability to live on the economy and travel freely during what was later called “the peaceful years.”

I will never forget interacting with Afghan neighbors, shopping in the bazaars, driving past camels on the dusty unpaved road in front of my house, and traveling to Bamiyan to see the giant Buddha statues that were later destroyed by the Taliban.

Thank you for a very interesting article that brought back some wonderful memories for me. I hope that Leslie is able to continue her teaching in Afghanistan, where she is doing important work to help the children of that war-torn country.

—Virginia Berg ’60, PhD Athens, Ga.

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.

It was with considerable interest and some nostalgia that I, an anesthesiologist, read of Leslie Weiant’s experience in Kabul.

In 1972 my husband, a surgeon, and I, Miami University BA ’42 and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine MD ’45, worked and

Summer 2014

3

back & forth

John Dolibois ’42 acknowledged the weightiness of Nuremberg, but he did not show arrogance about his role as an interrogator of top-ranking Nazis.

4

miamian magazine

taught at the Avicenna Hospital in Kabul under the auspices of Care Medico.

We had previously decided that a requirement for our working in the Third World must include teaching as well so that, when we left, the Afghan physicians we worked with were better equipped to perform the same services we were rendering.

In 1972 the Avicenna Hospital was the only site in Central Asia where graduate surgical training could be obtained. We had under our tutelage 14 Afghan physicians who we got to know quite intimately. We operated on patients every day with these residents and had didactic sessions afterward.

I had the opportunity to perform and demonstrate the first insertion of a central venous pressure (CVP) line in Central Asia. This is a useful modality for monitoring a patient without sophisticated electronic devices and is useful therapeutically as well. Although we performed very major surgery on seriously ill individuals in an unsophisticated operating theater, we had no mortalities.

In our free time we drove to Bamiyan through the Shibar Pass to see the world’s largest carved Buddhas, since destroyed by the Taliban. On another occasion we drove north through the Salang Pass thus having traversed two of the three main passes through the Hindu Kush. We admired Afghanistan’s scenic beauty, loved our 14 resident physicians, but did not like the differences we saw in Afghan culture.

—Elizabeth Beckly Brodman ’42, MD Stamford, Conn.

Spirited response about Thobe Enjoyed the piece on Harry S. Thobe, “That’s the Spirit,” on page 48 in the Spring 2014 Miamian.

Here is more: I was the last person to wear the Thobe costume with the football team. It was during the Miami/ UC football game, November 1951.

Harry Thobe had died in 1950, and we were without a “dream.” At one of the Tribe Miami lettermen’s association meetings, John Pont ’52 MS ’56, football captain and president, suggested that someone don Thobe’s outfit and appear at the last football game of the season with archrival University of Cincinnati.

As a member of Tribe Miami, I volunteered to perform. I borrowed the costume from Jay Colville ’26, Miami University Hall of Fame and Olympic games athletic trainer, who had the costume stored away in the training room at Withrow Court. I wore the costume at the game in Cincinnati. Miami lost 19-14 under our famous coach Ara Parseghian ’49 MEd ’54. When the game was over, I returned the costume to Jay, and it wound up in the university archives. I don’t know what happened to the megaphone.

I returned to Miami in 1956 for my MA and met Thobe’s grandson, Paul Landfair ’59, who was a student in the architecture department where he later taught during the early to mid-1960s.

I shared an apartment with Paul and Henry Montgomery III ’60, later on the MU Foundation board, while I was teaching in the English department. As a young teenager, Paul and his older brother, Bill, helped his grandfather, Thobe, maintain the Slant Walk fountain until his death.

Bill ’57 was graduating when I returned to campus for my master’s, and he went on to become a Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Department of State.

Today, Paul lives in Philadelphia; Bill in Rockville, Md.; Thobe’s granddaughters, Jane, near Oxford; and Sue, in California. It is interesting to see that Thobe’s spirit lives on at Miami.

—Cash Powell Jr. ’52 MA ’57 Springboro, Ohio I enjoyed your article on Harry Thobe, but there is so much more to his story!

Thobe was so effective at crowd appeal that he was hired to perform at professional games for the Cincinnati Reds. He was a forerunner of modern sports fans.

He is recognized at The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in its Famous Fans exhibit as a Cincinnati Reds die-hard during the ’30s and ’40s. He was also a regular at the Century Inn near Cincinnati and built a fountain there that was recently restored to full operation.

—Gina Burton Arens ’79 West Chester, Ohio Tribute to John Dolibois Editor’s note: John Dolibois ’42, Miami vice president emeritus for University Relations, former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, and the last survivor of a team that interrogated top-ranking Nazis for the Nuremberg Trials, died May 2, 2014, at his home in Cincinnati.

He was 95.

I was sad to hear of the death of John Dolibois ’42. But it does warm me to know, as a friend so well put,

back & forth

that I get to carry a small part of this great man wherever I go. When I was a senior at Miami, Bill Gracie, Western College dean and my professor/mentor/friend, suggested Dolibois to me as a relevant contact for my senior paper on war crimes trials. John granted my interview request, and I made my way down to see him at his Cincinnati home.

John was warm and inviting to that nervous 22-year-old Miami student. He showed me priceless objects from the war, including his own medals and Nazi artifacts.

There were stories about Goering, the infamous Reichsmarschall, and other Nazis at Nuremberg.

John was obviously a lover of all things Miami University. He owed me nothing but gave of his time and energy, asking about my future and encouraging me on a future legal career.

I drove back to Oxford euphoric, with an odd awareness that I had spoken to more than just a historical figure or a witness to history. I had spoken to a humble, smart man who had served his county admirably.

Sometimes when individuals have life-altering experiences, they either inflate or denigrate their role. John Dolibois did neither.

He acknowledged the importance, the weightiness, of Nuremberg but did not show arrogance about his role, simply saying he was doing his job, like every other soldier.

I will always be thankful to have interviewed John Dolibois and to be part of the Miami family.

—Graham Filler ’06 (Western College), assistant attorney general, Michigan Department of Attorney General St. Johns, Mich.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Good At It John Dolibois ’42 loved to tell stories. And he was good at it. I will

forever picture him down front in Shideler’s first-floor lecture hall, regaling a standing-room-only crowd during Alumni Weekend with details about his induction into the Army. Drafted five months after graduation, he was in line to be classified: “OK, Delappus, what can you do?” “Well, I can speak French and German. I’d like to get into Military Intelligence.”

“Did you ever drive a truck?” “No sir, but I speak German fluently.”

“How about a bus or tractor, a plow, or something heavy with air brakes?” Never one to give up easily, he said, “No sir, but I can speak French and German.” Two days later he was on a troop train to Fort Knox to become a tank driver. He was finally transferred to Military Intelligence 18 months later.

Miami’s vice president emeritus for University Relations, former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, and last survivor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials interrogation team, John died May 2, 2014, at his home in Cincinnati. In his 95 years, he always met challenges head-on.

When John returned to his alma mater in 1947 to become Miami’s first full-time alumni secretary, his office was a faculty lounge and former men’s restroom in Ogden Hall. That’s when he “voiced a solemn vow” to someday have an alumni building. When he retired 34 years later, he moved out of a spacious office in Murstein Alumni Center, which looked out over gorgeous Peffer Park.

John raised the money to build both. The major gift for the alumni center came from Hamilton department store owner William Murstein, who wasn’t even an alumnus. Fred Yager ’14 tripled the size of the gift he had intended after he heard John’s plans for Peffer Park, built in memory of Fred’s nephew, who died in a car accident soon after his 1929 graduation from Miami.

John considered himself a matchmaker between the things the university needed and the things people wanted to support. Charley Teckman ’51 MEd ’53, a close friend and Beta Theta Pi brother, offers “probably the single best example” of John’s matchmaking talents.

“It’s Yager Stadium. Mr. Yager (yes, Peffer Park’s Yager) was a stockbroker in Dayton, and he wasn’t particularly interested in football. But John put on a coordinated campaign to have him become an associate of activities here at Miami University, and he gave the money to build the stadium. Yager’s word were, ‘I don’t give a damn about football.

I never attended a game.’ Until John got him interested.”

John Dolibois was good at it. —Donna Boen ’83 MTSC ’96

John Dolibois ’42 during Alumni Weekend 2012 at the dedication of a tree in front of Murstein Alumni Center in memory of Winnie ’42, his wife of 67 years and the love of his life.

Summer Fall 2013 2014

5

along slant walk

In A Whole New Light Above, Burcin Bayram (center), associate professor of physics, shows undergraduate student Briana Vamosi and graduate student Phillip Arndt how molecules react to ultrafast laser beams.

6

miamian magazine

New ultrafast laser technology now at Miami will

help researchers and students in biology, medicine, engineering, and quantum physics better understand energy transfer processes in collisions between atoms and molecules.

The three lasers, purchased with the help of a $150,000 National Science Foundation grant, allow researchers to greatly increase the resolution of the interaction time between atoms and molecules and to manipulate how they interact and react with polarized light.

Training with various laser models with different light colors in associate physics professor Burcin Bayram’s lab, the graduate and undergraduate

students are learning the techniques of fast and ultrafast time-resolved laser spectroscopy — the study of atoms’ and molecules’ reactions to light.

“We can fine-tune the color of the laser light from purple to red and probe reaction of the molecules because molecules can absorb, emit, and even scatter the light at a particular color,” Bayram explains.

By varying the delay time between two lasers as short as a few picoseconds (a few trillionths of a second), time evolution of the molecular properties can be mapped out, she says, providing an exceptional spectroscopic precision and understanding of the processes.

along slant walk

A High Note

I’M GLAD YOU ASKED

Student devoted to choir for adults with developmental disabilities At Tanner McClellan’s choir practice, warm-ups start with hugs.

Before the singing starts, there is hugging — lots of it.

That’s always Tanner McClellan’s first order of business when she gets together with the Best Buddies Friends Choir.

McClellan, a member of Miami’s Collegiate Chorale and a cappella group Just Duet, created the choir for adults with developmental disabilities out of a desire to share her passion for music.

She looks forward to their Saturday

morning rehearsals at Miami Hamilton.

“I get to spend an hour with 15 of my favorite people,” said McClellan of Upper Arlington, Ohio, a junior majoring in kinesiology with a minor in special education. She wants to become an occupational therapist and work with children with special needs.

The choir is affiliated with the Miami chapter of Best Buddies, an international nonprofit that creates opportunities for friendships between college students and people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.

One recent Saturday morning, she and the choir rehearsed six songs. She selects songs to fit the interests and personalities of the members, who range in age from 21 to 50+.

Before rehearsal was over, she and Tommy Klee, her one-on-one buddy who has Down syndrome, were playing air guitar to Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” as the choir sang.

“He doesn’t talk a lot, but he loves music,” she said. “He loves Elvis more than anybody I know.”

“One single act, one single action can cause ripples that are felt on the other

Food’s always a fun topic, so we asked:

Where’s your favorite place to eat on campus?

I love Harris because the food never gets old. There’s always a good variety of healthy options as well, and it’s all really good.

Mary Kate Bennett ’16, Hudson, Ohio, kinesiology major

I love getting salads from Americas [Maplestreet Station] as a quick lunch or dinner on the go. It’s a great way to get plenty of fruits and vegetables!

Melissa Zbacnik ’16, Cincinnati, Ohio, psychology and Spanish major

side of the world.”

Patisserie. The coffee shop environment is relaxing.

—Forest Whitaker, Oscar-winning actor and keynote speaker at Miami’s 175th spring commencement May 17, 2014, in Yager Stadium

Jamie Budhan ’17, Avon, Ohio, speech pathology major

Summer 2014

7

along slant walk

NOTEWORTHY

Elizabeth Mullenix is the new dean of the College of Creative Arts. She joined Miami in 2006 as chair and professor of theatre and artistic director/producer of Miami University Theatre and became interim dean in 2013. “Together with my colleagues, I would like to explore the idea that the skills and competencies that drive the world are increasingly arts-based: creativity, ingenuity, boldness, design.”

Nancy Solomon, professor of biology, is one of five new Fellows of the Animal Behavior Society and the first ABS Fellow at Miami.

A behavioral ecologist, she researches the ecology, reproduction, and behavior of small mammals. Solomon “continues to be one of the primary investigators integrating genetics, neurobiology, and behavioral ecology to address important evolutionary questions,” stated ABS’s executive committee.

At the JANUS Forum, Miami’s third such forum, Jonah Goldberg (shaking hands from the right), whose syndicated conservative political commentary appears in newspapers across the U.S., and Eugene Robinson (on the left in photo), Washington Post columnist and liberal political analyst on several TV programs, debated “The Proper Role of Government in a Free Society.” A sold-out crowd filled the Armstrong Student Center’s Wilks Theater for the March 19 event.

8

miamian magazine

1st

RISING RANKS

among Ohio public universities for Best Salary potential after graduation (SmartMoney.com survey).

23rd Farmer’s ranking in 2014 Best Undergraduate Business Schools in U.S. (Bloomberg Businessweek).

Stellar Students Prized For Their Curiosity and Creativity Having worked as a politics reporter for

Daily News Egypt in Cairo spring semester of her junior year, Emily Crane ’14 is returning to Cairo to write a book, Voices of the Revolution: The Untold Narratives of Egypt’s Awakening.

“I spent much of my time in Egypt telling stories,” said Crane, who discovered their power to break through “complex politics and deeply rooted preconceptions.”

During her second stay, funded by Miami’s $30,000 Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Emily Crane ’14 Prize, the anthropology and journalism double major said, she will continue uncovering narratives about the Egyptian Revolution through people whose “stories have been grossly overlooked or oversimplified.”

The Goldman, among the largest undergraduate awards in the U.S., each year provides support to one graduating senior with exceptional promise.

Jon Moller, a senior microbiology and biochemistry double major from Oxford, has received a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award in mathematics, natural science, and engineering. He researches antibioticresistant proteins that can destroy penicillin and cephalosporin antibiotics.

Courtney ClarkHachtel ’12, a doctoral student in biology from Eaton, Ohio, and James Morton ’14 of Oxford have been awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. Clark-Hachtel is focused on determining the evolutionary origin of the insect wing. Morton, a quadruple major in computer science, electrical engineering, engineering physics, and mathematics/statistics, is researching how bacteria communicate and attack each other and the organisms they infect.

along slant walk

Congratulations, Class of 2014: Miami awarded nearly 3,900 degrees at its spring commencement on a windy but sunny Saturday afternoon, May 17, in Yager Stadium. Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker gave the keynote address. Karen Dawisha, Miami’s Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science, received the university’s prestigious Benjamin Harrison Medallion. “To think that in such a place, I led such a life.”

Athletics’ Upgrades A new indoor sports center is going up on

the northeast end of Yager Stadium.

The 91,000-square-foot, $13 million facility, almost fully funded by donors, will feature a full 120-yard football field that will be used for all 19 varsity sports as well as intramural and club sports.

It will have a synthetic “field turf” playing surface similar to Yager’s. Other features will include netting for baseball, softball, and golf, along with sprint lanes and jump pits.

Baseball will benefit by a new facility as well. The 10,194-square-foot Baseball Legacy Project at Hayden Park, just east of Withrow Court, will be located along the left-field line.

Its interior will include new locker room facilities, coaches’ offices, and training and equipment rooms.

Funding for the $3 million project is all private and already has been raised.

Construction is expected to be finished during the spring of 2015.

NOMNOM NATION Miami students hoping to revolutionize the way people donate to food banks have created a new app, NomNom Nation, to fight hunger, giving smart phone users the ability to contribute to local food banks with the click of a button.

Brent Bielinski ’13, CEO and co-founder, said they launched the Android version May 1 and hoped to have an iOS (Apple) version ready by June 1. Both would be free to download. NomNom is a playful reference to the sound people make when eating.

Summer 2014

9

such a life

KINETIC CONTRAPTION During a workshop leading up to the Oxford Kinetics Festival, a tinkerer in Hiestand Hall’s sculpture studio welded an ordinary bicycle into a fantasy contraption. She hoped her creativity would earn her a trophy at the festival’s Scramble April 6 outside Millett Hall. A perennial highlight of the annual community festival, the Scramble is a combination race, parade, and obstacle course for human-powered, one-ofa-kind conveyances.

To see additional photos, fun and bizarre, go to the online Miamian at MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian and look up Such A Life under the Summer 2014 edition.

Summer 2014

11

inquiry + innovation

Turning Ideas into Inventions Miami holds 18 active patents in its portfolio

By Margo Kissell

Donna Scarborough has been treating children with swallowing disorders for nearly 20 years. During that time, the associate professor of speech pathology and audiology at Miami has seen the need for a controlled-flow cup for youngsters who choke after they take in too much liquid too fast.

There are no-spill cups on the market, she said, but “some of my kids are too weak to even initiate the suck to get the liquid from the cup.”

That’s why she and Michael Bailey-Van Kuren, associate professor of mechanical and manufacturing engineering at Miami, created the “advanced transitional cup.” A microcontroller in the cup helps open and close air valves in the lid to adjust the liquid’s flow rate.

Four students from Scarborough’s department helped with the research, determining how much suction pressure no-spill cups required and analyzing flow rates.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Miami in spring 2013 for the cup.

Long-time collaborators, Scarborough and Bailey-Van Kuren have a second patent pending for a glove-like hand pressure device that suppresses dental patients’ gag reflex. Once that patent is approved, startup company PharynMed will commercialize the medical device. PharynMed evolved from an entrepreneurship capstone class in the Farmer School of Business.

12

miamian magazine

“The students’ initial work in developing that business plan was a great help because that’s outside of our expertise,” Bailey-Van Kuren said.

Jim Oris, associate provost for research and dean of the Graduate School, believes there could be a “significant royalty stream generated to the university” because approximately 20 percent of the adult population is gag-sensitive. For those individuals, taking pills or going to the dentist can be a real challenge.

Serendipitous finding Imagine if scientists could find a way to convert any type of cell into energy-burning brown fat cells that could metabolize blood sugar.

Better yet, what if they could reprogram a cancerous tumor into brown fat cells?

Paul Harding, associate professor of biology at Miami, is investigating whether both scenarios might be possible. If it works, Harding said, the breakthrough could have potential implications in the battles against obesity, diabetes, and cancer.

“We’ve converted cancer cells in a dish into brown fat, so logically I think we can probably do it in an

inquiry + innovation

Paul Harding (right), associate professor of biology, in the lab with doctoral student Sean Taylor (center) and undergraduate students Michael Markesbery and Katie Johnson.

fruitful. We think there are tremendous therapeutic capabilities for Type 2 diabetes.”

Although targeting diabetes is one of Harding’s hopes, the patented process actually is directed toward tumors.

“We want to convert a tumor to brown fat,” he said, noting they would study mice infected with tumors to see if the tumors turn to fat. Harding noted a possible downside: The viruses would also infect other tissues, such as the heart and liver. “Somebody else would need to assist us in how to target viruses to specific cells.”

animal, too,” he said, cautioning that the research is still preliminary.

Harding and one of his former graduate students, Zhenqing Zhou PhD ’09, in June 2013 patented the process “Cell Transdifferentiation into Brown Adipocytes.”

Harding’s third patent and first at Miami, the research findings were published in the December 2013 issue of Growth Factors. Among the study’s authors is Maureen Darwal ’08, who Harding credits with laying the foundation for this area of fat research and “changing the whole focus of our lab” while working in his lab as an undergraduate zoology major.

Prior to that, the focus had been on determining which parts of the growth factor were involved in causing cells to grow and divide. Darwal wanted to make a model for cancer so she put the Heparin-binding epidermal growth factor (HB-EGF) and gene ADAM12, an enzyme that acts upon HB-EGF, together in cells.

Instead of doing the expected and growing and dividing rapidly, the cells turned to fat.

“I was absolutely shocked,” Harding said. “These serendipitous findings are sometimes very, very

Into the marketplace License income from patents fluctuates from year to year at Miami. One patent currently generating licensing income is the oboe reed gouger. Oboe professor Andrea Ridilla is co-author on the patent with Udo Heng, whose Reeds ’n Stuff company in Cranzahl, Germany, is at the top internationally in reed-making equipment. The 2009 patent is held in Miami’s name.

Ridilla said the machine helps create the sound produced by the reed and eventually the tone of the oboe.

“I was looking for a gouge that offered more focus in the reed, with less work on the part of the player, so that the player could be more free and still have a focused tone,” she said.

Ridilla, who had been using Heng’s equipment, saw him at the 2002 Conference of the International Double Reed Society in Banff, Canada, and approached him about collaborating with her in her design.

University officials see patents as a potential revenue generator, but that’s a long-term view because the patent process can be lengthy. For Oris, the key is getting patented products out in the marketplace so consumers — and the economy — can benefit.

“It doesn’t matter whether you have 10 patents or 500,” he said. “If you don’t do anything with them, you’re not helping the economy.”

The key is getting patented products out in the marketplace so consumers — and the economy — can benefit.

Margo Kissell is a news and feature writer in University Communications and Marketing at Miami.

Summer 2014

13

photo: Doug Haddix ’85

media matters

A Way With Words Kids keep Margaret Peterson Haddix ’86 young After the famous pilot Charles Lindbergh makes a mysterious cameo appearance in Jonah’s living room, it’s up to Jonah to save his town in Revealed.

Kirkus Reviews calls Margaret Peterson Haddix’s latest book in The New York Times best-selling The Missing series “plenty of fun and great for history teachers as well.”

Revealed comes out Sept. 2.

14

miamian magazine

If you want to write a book for children, the best way

to start is to remember what it’s like to be 8 years old.

That’s Margaret Peterson Haddix’s advice to anybody wanting to break into the middle-school market.

“You have to be able to put yourself in the kids’ shoes because as soon as adults are talking down to kids they know it,” says Peterson Haddix ’86.

With 33 books to her name and another three completed and ready to launch, the author best known for The Shadow Children series understands her audience, which ranges in age from 8 to 14. Book tours and school visits, sometimes up to 60 a year, keep the Powell, Ohio, resident current.

Anticipating the release of her next book, Revealed, the seventh in her eight-book The Missing series, she

still remembers how she struggled in the beginning, receiving only rejection notices for nearly three years.

“Twenty years ago I got a phone call that Simon & Schuster was going to buy both of my first two books, Running Out of Time and Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey. It was extremely exciting.”

She figures on four to six months to write a book and typically produces two a year. She’s considered writing an adult book, but right now she is much more comfortable with and interested in her young readership.

“I have covered some heavy topics, but I feel like there’s always an element of hope in a book for kids because they’re kids, and kids are pretty resilient, amazingly so. Even if they’ve been through really awful experiences, they can get past them.”

media matters

Dale’s War: A Soldier in Patton’s Third Army Roger Hubley ’69 MEd ’71 Trafford Publishing At age 37, Dale Hubley was living in Cincinnati with his wife and young son and enjoying his job at Procter & Gamble. Then he was drafted into World War II as a member of the Seventh Armored Division in Patton’s Third Army. Although the draft changed his life in many ways, he was never bitter, according to his son, Roger, who wrote this book to honor his father and chronicle his service. His dad always said, “I was one of the lucky ones. I got to come home.”

Chasing Woodstock: Finding the Cost of Freedom Ron Evans ’70 EupraxMedia Most of the legendary performers who launched their careers at Yasgur’s Farm in August of 1969 never knew of the lost playlist and program for this historic event — until the author of Chasing Woodstock introduced it to them.

Their reactions were priceless and sometimes shocking, according to Ron, who takes readers onstage, offstage, and into the dressing rooms of the greatest recording artists of a generation, including The Who; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Joe Cocker; and Arlo Guthrie.

Chasing Woodstock shares back stories and never-before-granted

interviews about the Bethel, N.Y., event 45 years ago, taking reader on a journey of innocence lost and renewed hope while challenging long-held misconceptions.

Caregiving for Your Elderly Parents Marky Olson ’70 MEd ’75 and Dauna Easley ’67 MEd ’71 Aviva Publishing Caring for elderly parents and loved ones can be daunting.

Although you love them, it can be a lonely journey when helping them makes you feel unprepared, overwhelmed, and guilt-ridden.

In their book, Marky and Dauna, who have cared for their own parents, offer a resource to help you navigate. Their stories serve as a compass and their tips and recommendations will save you anguish and help you plan.

The Adventures of Lil’ Stevie, Book 1: Canines, Campouts, and Cousins Steve Fitzhugh ’87 Touch Publishing Services A former NFL player, Steve is a motivational speaker and a champion for youth who shares life lessons from his childhood in this colorful and humorous collection of adventures, the first in a series.

Steve shows kids that life is exciting and they can rise above adversity by making good choices. Ideal for kids 7–14.

Stan the Timid Turtle: Helping Children Cope with Fears about School Violence Laura Fox ’94 New Horizon Press Stan is a young turtle who loved to go to school every day. Then strangers got into a nearby school and a lot of other little turtles like Stan got hurt.

Stan is scared that the same thing may happen to him, so he retreats into his shell and becomes afraid of everything — from the dark to going to school to getting kidnapped. With the help of his parents, as well as his doctor, Stan learns it’s OK to be afraid, but he can’t let fear rule his life. For ages 4–7.

The Good Girl Mary Kubica ’00 Harlequin MIRA Born to a prominent Chicago judge and his stifled socialite wife, Mia Dennett moves against the grain as a young inner-city art teacher. One night, Mia enters a bar to meet her on-again, offagain boyfriend.

When he doesn’t show, she leaves with an enigmatic stranger. With his smooth moves and modest wit, Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand.

But Colin’s job is to abduct Mia as part of a wild extortion plot and deliver her to his employers. The plan takes an unexpected turn when Colin suddenly decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin.

Summer 2014

15

my story

45056 or Miamian@MiamiOH.edu.

Please limit yourself to 900 words and include your name, class year, address, and home phone number.

16

miamian magazine

Illustration by Jonas Sickler

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

my story

The Recital

By Dee Knigge Simmons ’66

When my aerobics instructor mentioned that she was selling her flute, I took it as a sign. I had always wanted to play the flute. Here was my chance.

It was a good quality, student-level flute, a Gemeinhardt. I liked the confident sound of the brand name and the instrument’s silvery delicacy as it lay in its velvet-lined case. It spoke to me; challenged me. I bought the flute and learned how to assemble the parts, clean, and polish it.

I found a local flute teacher and eagerly began lessons. She taught out of her house, and every Thursday afternoon I toted my flute and sheets of music to her home studio for a lesson. In defiance of the “old-dogs-new-tricks” cliché, I progressed at a satisfying pace and was asked by my teacher to participate in the annual recital at the end of the year.

Her students ranged in age from about 10 years old to teenagers, and I was her only adult student. I figured my ability would fit in somewhere between “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and a Beethoven sonata.

The recital was held in the sanctuary of a church, and our only dress rehearsal was just an hour before the performance. It was then that I learned the teacher had weeded out the beginners to present a program of her better students. Somehow I was included.

There were 11 of us “girls,” and I was number three on the program, with my 12-year-old daughter as my piano accompanist. She and I had practiced diligently in the weeks before and were both comfortable with our musical selection. But as each budding flutist played her piece during the dress rehearsal, it became increasingly apparent to me that I was the one playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I grew nervous.

The young girls chatted easily among themselves as my tension mounted. My palms grew moist. What if I suddenly lost the ability to read music or my fingers froze to the keys? What if I lost that stiff upper-lip maneuver that was essential to getting a note out of the thing?

Panic began to creep over me, and I felt a sense of impending humiliation. When a pint-sized flutist

told me, “My dad is coming just to hear you play.

He thinks you’re really brave!” well, that about finished me off. I wanted to duck out the back door.

I considered faking a sudden illness, which was, in fact, not far from the truth.

“Wait a minute. Get a grip,” I chastised myself. “You can do this. It’s just a few minutes out of your life; a segment of time. It has a beginning and an end, and you’ll never have to do it again,” I told myself.

When my turn came, my daughter seated herself at the piano, and I walked on stage. The audience hushed.

I rubbed my sweaty palms on my skirt, raised my flute, gave a quick nod to my daughter at the piano, and launched into my piece.

At the end of the first line, I realized my duet was missing something. In my eagerness to get it over with, I had left my accompanist in the dust. I stopped and looked over at my daughter, who was giving me a hunched-shoulders, palms-up gesture. I flashed a sheepish smile, drew a slow breath, raised the flute, nodded to my daughter, and we began again, more slowly and together this time.

We made it through the piece without further incident, and I was surprised to hear hearty applause at the end.

In retrospect, it may have been sympathy applause from the other adults who were grateful it wasn’t them up front. I gave a quick smile and a nod to the “congregation” and walked off stage, somewhat shaky but relieved and feeling like a survivor.

On the way home in the car, my flute tucked into its velvet bed at my side, my heart rate returning to normal, I started thinking. … Next year I’d tackle and master a really difficult piece. My notes would be clear and precise, my style light and airy. They’d be amazed at how I had progressed. I’d wow them.

Fortunately, my flute teacher married a saxophonist and moved out of town.

Panic began to creep over me, and I felt a sense of impending humiliation.

Dee Knigge Simmons ’66, who majored in zoology, became an RN. While she and her husband lived in Singapore, she began writing for an American newspaper. When they returned to the U.S., Dee retired from nursing and became a freelance medical writer. They live in South Carolina, have two children, one of whom graduated from Miami in 1991, and two grandchildren.

Summer 2014

17

BICENTENNIAL ROTUNDA. The towering, two-plus story atrium is at the end of the secondfloor Slant Walk continuation and provides a dramatic entrance into the two-story, glass-enclosed Center for Student Engagement and Leadership (SEAL).

Details about the GREAT SEAL , 3-D version of university seal, in center of Bicentennial Rotunda floor:

80 up to

ROPE, provided

by Delta Upsilon, used in Greek Week tug-of-war for years. It’s actually [4 ropes] woven together and wrapped over a bent steel pipe.

OPEN

24/7

feet long

GLASS GLOBE, which represents the present, was discovered recently in Culler Hall’s observatory.

504

BRICKS recovered during construction projects to Stoddard and Elliott residence halls and other Miami buildings stand on end and represent the original 2-D seal’s 60 dots.

Seats in Wilks Theater The seal’s background is a depiction provided by the physics department of what the NIGHT SKY would have looked like over Oxford, Ohio, on Miami’s Charter Day Feb. 17, 1809, at 7 p.m.

BUSIEST HOUR

1–2

P.M. WEEKDAYS

The TELESCOPE represents the future and is a piece of a larger telescope found in the physics department.

BUSIEST DAY

Wed.

18

miamian magazine

MORE THAN

20%

of materials installed are from a recycled material source.

Representing the past’s accumulated wisdom, the BOOK is open to a page featuring the grand prizewinning essay, “We On a Path to Wisdom,” from a studentwriting contest.

Center achieved a SILVER CERTIFICATION by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER

OPEN THE

35

number of steps in Grand Staircase

DOORS SEE ALL THE PEOPLE

Since opening its doors to the public on a frigid Monday morning, Jan. 27, 2014, the warm and inviting Armstrong Student Center has been the place to go and do on Miami’s Oxford campus. The following photos tell the story. The accompanying numbers fill in some fun facts.

A campus-wide celebration marked its dedication Feb. 7,

2014

.

Daylight is harvested to naturally illuminate the interior Galleria and Slant Walk spaces.

FOLLOW THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER ON Twitter @MiamiOH_ASC Facebook facebook.com/ArmstrongStudentCenter Online MiamiOH.edu/Armstrong-Student-Center

Summer 2014

19

THE ARMSTRONG STUDENT CENTER

THE COMMONS is a large, open area that provides tiered seating for more than

450

17

to gather and eat. Two kiosks allow people to place orders through a computer and receive a text message when their food is ready.

SEE ALL THE PEOPLE

students on the board of directors for the building.

OPEN THE DOORS

First movie in HARRY T. WILKS THEATER was Monsters University. But it was Disney’s Frozen that packed the venue, which also hosts artistic talent and speakers.

Big-name SPEAKERS spring semester — Academy award-winning actor Geena Davis; JANUS Forum debaters Jonah Goldberg and Eugene Robinson; Juana Bordas, president of Mestiza Leadership International; Eric Greitens, a former Navy Seal, Rhodes Scholar, White House Fellow, and best-selling author.

1,937 CHAIRS IN THE BUILDING ( a great place to study or rest)

1st

group to perform on Shade Family Room stage — section of Miami University Steel Band

SLANT WALK. This representation of Miami’s iconic Slant Walk links Joslin Family Terrace and the center’s western entrance to the Bicentennial Rotunda and SEAL.

20

miamian magazine

90 Capacity for

student organizations in the Center for Student Engagement and Leadership

SHADE FAMILY ROOM. This welcoming Spring Street entrance, formerly Rowan Hall, celebrates Miami’s history and tradition by featuring images and memorabilia chronicling its first 200 years.

217,000 square feet of space for Miami Students, Alumni, and Friends

AVAILABLE DINING: Miami Ice, Sundial Pizza Co., Serrano, Mein Street Mongolian & Asian Grill, Bob & Doris ’52 Pulley Diner, and the Haines’ Boulangerie

145 seats in the Bob and Doris ’52 Pulley Diner

11,000 More than

ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

have donated $32 million to date, which has funded nearly

60%

of the facility. Names that are etched on the floor tiles in Slant Walk hallway gave more than $2,000 to the Center.

The Center is named after MIKE &

ANNE GOSSETT ARMSTRONG ,

both Class of 1961, who provided the $15 million leadership gift for the building.

Summer 2014

21

THE

CAT HAT BEHIND THE

A

DR . SE S OVE B O RS U JUG GLE B C H SS’ ES EER O SM TAT F A E, AN S E YH ’ ATS 9 1

In the mid-1990s, Bob Chase ’91 was working in film production, and he’d done enough projects to see how much pre-production artwork the process generated.

He’d always been a fan of the whimsically surreal illustrations of Dr. Seuss, the late children’s-book icon Theodor Geisel, and he wondered if there were similar artifacts connected to Horton Hears a Who! or Green Eggs and Ham. So, in a fit of “very green ambition,” Chase decided to find out. It took a few years in those days before social media, but Chase was able to track down Geisel’s widow, Audrey, and wrangle a meeting.

.

22

miamian magazine

BY DAV ID MENC ONI

Photos courtesy of Bob Chase/The Art of Dr. Seuss.

“No one was stopping me, so I figured I might as well because I didn’t know enough not to try,” Chase says with a laugh. “And it turned out that Audrey Geisel liked the way I thought about presenting his work.

“She’d been approached by a lot of people who wanted to exploit things Seuss had done, but I came to her saying that we should give him his due alongside Norman Rockwell. I asked her, ‘Shouldn’t he be hanging next to the other greats of the 20th century?’ ” Soon after that, Chase stepped into his next career, overseeing the estate of Dr. Seuss. It’s a job that uses all aspects of the customized, three-pronged Miami degree in marketing, art, and film production that Chase earned in 1991.

Along with assembling books and prints based on Seuss’ artwork to sell, Chase organizes exhibitions such as the retrospective of Geisel’s life and career that will show at the San Diego Natural History Museum in the artist’s hometown starting in December 2014.

Another production is “Hats Off to Dr. Seuss!,” a traveling exhibit of the hundreds of hats Geisel collected during his lifetime. Launched to mark last year’s 75th anniversary of 1938’s The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, the exhibit will show in cities across the country through the spring of 2015. And yes, it includes a real-life red-and-white striped stovepipe hat just like the one from Seuss’ 1957 classic The Cat in the Hat. “Seeing that one always stops people dead in their tracks,” Chase says. “The truth is that nobody knows which came first, the hat in his collection or his drawing of it because there’s no documentation. But it’s amazing to see it for real.”

Chase got his first look at that hat when he visited “the house that Seuss built,”

For more about the art of Dr. Seuss, go to drseussart.com.

“AT HEART, SEUSS WAS A SURREALIST.”

“Oh me! Oh my!” Bob Chase ’91 outside “The Art of Dr. Seuss” at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

the San Diego estate where Geisel lived and worked. Geisel bought an old military tower on a La Jolla mountaintop and built a house around it, with the top of the tower serving as his studio. He died in 1991 at age 87, but his widow still lives in the house and gave Chase a tour on that first visit.

“It’s a beautiful spot, and full of all kinds of Seussian touches,” Chase says.

“He kept a secret closet behind a big bookshelf. It was this James Bond kind of thing where you’d pull a book out and it would open up, full of hats and paintings and things he’d done over a

70-year period. Seeing that, my jaw just hit the floor because it was like a vault of American pop culture.”

Nearly a quarter-century after his death, Seuss remains as popular as ever, with 1971’s The Lorax, 1957’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and The Cat in the Hat all undergoing new big-screen productions in recent years. But it’s not the movie versions that speak to kids as well as adults so much as Seuss’ original, inspired creations.

“Seuss occupies a really unique space culturally,” Chase says. “I’d liken him to Walt Disney, who was about entertainment through and through, plus a little morality. Seuss was about entertainment plus learning in a highly interactive way: kids sitting with their parents and learning how to read, which is a very connective moment for everyone. That’s happened over four generations of people now, and I think Seuss is embedded into people’s psyches at a deeper level because of it. His images are powerfully nostalgic in sort of the same way that cooking smells might bring back memories of your parents’ kitchen.

“He was a great artist, too,” Chase adds.

“He just chose a different path. At heart, Seuss was a surrealist. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he was in Europe in the 1920s when the first surrealist exhibits were executed. He took those tenets and applied them to a much broader audience. And that audience is still there and still growing.”

David Menconi has been music critic at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., since 1991. He has also written for Spin, The New York Times, and Billboard.

His most recent book was Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown (2012, University of Texas Press).

Summer 2014

23

John Swann’s senior year photo in Miami’s 1965 Recensio yearbook 24 miamian magazine

FREEDOM [

O N E

P E R S P E C T I V E

]

JOHN SWA NN ’6 5 MED ’6 7 R EF LECTS O N HIS YEARS AS A COLO RED- N EGRO -B LAC K ST UDE NT ON CA MPUS DURI N G T HE C HAN GI N G 19 6 0S .

BY DON N A B OEN ’83 MTSC ’96

Summer 2014

25

1960s

WH EN J O HN SWA N N M OV E D I N TO CO L L I NS H A L L I N 1 96 1, LIFE C HA NG ED D R ASTI CA L LY FO R THE A FR I CA N -A M ER I CA N F RESHM AN F R OM WEST V I R G I N I A .

Suddenly and for the first time in his life, he was welcome to eat in restaurants, such as Oxford’s Al & Larry’s and Mac ’n’ Joe’s. He could sit anywhere he wanted in the Miami-Western Theatre to watch Paul Newman in The Hustler. And he could share a bedroom and a bathroom with his white dorm mates in East Quad.

This felt like freedom to a 17-year-old coming from the South where “colored only” water fountains and segregated bathrooms were the norm and “Negros” sat only in balconies at the theater. He had to adjust.

“I went Uptown to the movie. Blew my mind because there was no upstairs.

I panicked. I didn’t know where to sit.”

He finally settled into a dark corner by the exit.

Those were the days of single movie screens and uniformed ushers with flashlights. Every time an usher moved, Swann was sure the fellow was heading his way to throw him out.

But no one asked him to leave — in the theater or the restaurant. No one called him the “N” word either, at least not to his face. He thought he was free at last.

H I G H T E A A ND AU NT J E M IM A

The oldest of four and the only boy, John C. Swann Jr. ’65 MEd ’67 grew up in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., home of The Greenbrier resort. These days, as he tells of his youth and his experiences at Miami, he’s retired from education administration and sitting at the glass dining room table in the north Dayton home he shares with Diane, his wife of 46 years.

As he talks, he looks at a large china hutch filled with ornate, green-banded dishes featuring bold pink rhododendrons, West Virginia’s state flower.

This is china from The Greenbrier, where, as he

26

miamian magazine

describes it, his mama worked for 47 years as “the coffee and high tea girl.”

His daddy was The Greenbrier’s longtime captain in the dining room and room service.

Because the C&O Railroad owned The Greenbrier, the golf resort was a major stop for the Cardinal, which ran from New York to Chicago. John C. Swann Sr. often road the train from D.C. to the resort so he could serve the senators and congressmen along the route.

In the morning when the train arrived, his mother handed out Danish and coffee. Then she’d head back home until 4 or 5 in the afternoon when she returned to serve what Swann refers to as “tea and crumpets.”

He chuckles when he thinks about other people treasuring the dishes he grew up with.

“Mama … it’s interesting about her because when she first started there, she had the Aunt Jemima outfit. And she fought the battle to wear … I guess you’d call it a regular outfit? See, that was the antebellum South. That’s what The Greenbrier hotel was and basically still is.”

Hanging up the phone, Diane walks in from the family room saying, “And your mother stopped, during her service, the wearing of the Jemima outfit.”

“With the bandana,” John adds, then asks Diane, “Was she still wearing that when I was at Miami? I think she was maybe ’til my senior year.”

CA L LE D CO LO RE D O R N EG R O H I S FRES H MAN Y EA R , HE D IS C OV E RED D I S C R IM I N AT I O N IN TH E N O RTH . I T WAS J UST M O RE SUBTLE .

LEAVING T HE S O U TH BE HI ND

Although his sisters went to West Virginia State College, Swann came to Miami because of basketball. He didn’t find out until later that his parents wanted him out of West Virginia, where he and four others integrated his secondary school.

He likes to brag a little that it was in 1956, before the nine in Little Rock made national headlines. Friends with one of the Little Rock Nine, he likes to teasingly point out that he and his classmates didn’t have any troops escorting them safely into their school, which housed grades 7 through 12.

“We went down to that school and couldn’t get in ’cause they’d locked all the doors. I guess we went back home, but I know they had to go to court. We didn’t get back in that school until December or January. Missed the whole first semester of seventh grade.”

Although the school remained the only thing integrated in White Sulphur Springs, Swan still thought his hometown “about the best.” He didn’t realize people treated him special because of basketball.

He played point guard (“What else do little people play?”), and his team made it to the state tournament where Coach saw him for the first time.

To Swann, Coach is and always will be Dick Shrider, head coach of men’s basketball at Miami 1957–1966 and Miami’s athletic director 1964–1988.

Swann had a chance at some scholarships in West Virginia, maybe even a full ride. The same wasn’t true at Miami, not a full ride, at least not at first. He was all set to stay close to home,

but his parents “cooked it up” so that he’d take the C&O train to Cincinnati’s Union Terminal and then catch a ride to Oxford for a visit. That’s when he decided on Miami.

NO RT H N OT S O D I F F E R E N T

Called Colored or Negro his freshman year, he discovered discrimination in the North. It was just more subtle. The stares when in the company of nonminority females, the constant glances when in the stores Uptown, the exclusion of minorities from Greek organizations.

There was only one black fraternity on campus with a handful of members and no fraternity house.

“In one of the soc classes I had, a professor asked me, ‘What is the difference between the Northern Whites and Southern.’ I said, ‘Location. And that.

Is. All.’ Then I explained the differences.

It’s blatant and open in the South, and up here you had to figure people out.

“See, you knew when you came from the South, you knew who hated you and who didn’t and how far to go with each group. That person right there? Don’t go near him. Wasn’t no doubt.

“The rough thing was trying to figure out who was my friend on the campus and why. Were they following the trends of the time then because they were supposed to treat us right, publicly

anyway? Or were they my friend because I was a basketball player? You start to become skeptical of everybody. That’s where a lot of the damage takes place.”

Still, the white students he encountered seemed more aware of African-Americans than his West Virginian classmates and weren’t reluctant to initiate conversation.

Outgoing himself, Swann established many close friendships within the Miami community.

Now looking back at that time, he believes the student body was quite receptive to change, as were his professors and advisers. To him, it was the administration that seemed neutral, at best, and failed to provide a support system, leaving minority students “to fend for themselves.”

“When I arrived, not only was the African-American population very small (approximately 1 percent), but within our own group, there was some initial in-group separation due to diversity such as vast gaps in experiences — Northern/Southern, Urban/Rural, disparities in wealth, athletes/nonathletes, upperclassmen/freshmen/grad students, townies. Temperament ranged from the very docile to those with very militant viewpoints, which were becoming frequently prevalent during this era.”

Summer 2014

27

“ I W EN T W H ER E I WA N T ED , D I D W H AT I WA N TED , A N D H A D C O N Q UE RE D MA N Y OF T H E I N T E R N A L C O N FL I CTS I H A D FACED EA RLIE R.” Seeing a need, Oxford’s AfricanAmerican families stepped forward to bridge these gaps and offer unity and fellowship.

“The black families in town, that was the whole support system. The Smiths, the Riles, the Nashes, the Jacksons.

Mrs. Smith, she was something in the registrar’s office, so she looked out for us. She’d give parties, she made us do the … what’d you call it? The Wesley Foundation. I mean, those were parents away from home. Mz. Smith didn’t allow you to wear no hat in the presence of a lady indoors.”

ROUND BALL AND ROA D T RI P S

Swann benefited from another support system not available to all minorities, the basketball team. They not only practiced and played together, they ate their meals together during road trips and worked together because all athletes were required to work 20 hours a week in campus jobs back then. They even sang together.

“See, we didn’t have laptops. We didn’t have earphones. We had my portable record player with 45s that I had to carry everywhere. We played it in dressing rooms. We’d all get around that thing in the back of the bus …”

“And sing,” Diane adds.

“Favorite records? Back then? ‘Ooh Baby Baby’ by Smokey and the Miracles.

Charlie’s was ‘My Guy’ by Mary Wells.

And Big Daddy’s was ‘Gypsy Woman’ by The Impressions.”

Charlie was Charlie Coles ’65, who later became the men’s head basketball coach in his own right. He and Charlie Dinkins ’65 and Swann roomed together until Charlie surprised everybody by marrying Dee Dee (Delores Jackson ’64) the night before practice began senior year. After

28

miamian magazine

their sophomore year, Swann spent all his summers at Charlie’s home in Springfield, Ohio, because there was nothing to go back to in West Virginia. Plus, they’d made a pact to play against competition in the summers so they’d get better.

Their Miami team was a successful one, which Swann believes helped enhance the popularity and acceptance of its AfricanAmerican members.

He’ll never forget their first away game.

“Our first trip was Eastern Kentucky.

They were waving a Confederate flag as big as this wall (he points to his living room wall) behind the basket. And we won. We won at the buzzer, so we had to get out of there quick.”

When they hit Nashville, Coach told them to pick a movie to go see.

“And I threw my hand up. He said, ‘Here you go again.’ I said, ‘Coach, you gotta remember where you are, man.

Down here they don’t play no man-toman defense. They play zone in Tennessee. Ain’t no pickin’ what movie we want to see. We better figure out which one we can go to first.’ Coach was gettin’ on me. ‘You’re always bringing that up.’

The assistant Vanderbilt coach was with us and he said, ‘He’s right. You better call.’

And when we start callin’, weren’t but two we could go to.”

Swann shouts into the kitchen were Diane is washing the lunch dishes. “What was the downtown movie, Honey?”

“What?” Diane shouts back. She can’t hear over the running water.

“The movie theater. In Nashville.”

“The Tennessee.”

“Right. The Tennessee. We went to the Tennessee, and it was a little shaky there. All of us mixed, four blacks, 11 whites, all of us in red blazers standing outside of a movie theater ’cause we weren’t going to go right in because we were waiting for the movie to change. The cops came up. Oh, yeah. They figured it out after some talking. ‘No, this ain’t no demonstration. We just waiting for the movie to change. We don’t want to go in at the end of the movie.’

“Yeah, we had some experiences. We played in Miami Beach in ’64. We could stay in the hotel, but we couldn’t go on the beach, which made no sense.”

TA L K AB O UT A R E VO LU T I ON

He enjoyed his freshman year and was eager to return sophomore year. He came back to changes. First off, he discovered he was now “Black.”

“That’s what tickles me. We fought the battle in the South to be Colored.

And just as soon as I finally become a Negro … that’s what all the papers had, Negro-lad and all that stuff … I come up here to Ohio, and all of a sudden, they’re fighting for the black name. In the South, we would fight if someone called you black. That was derogatory.”

There were also more minority students, and they were more vocal, “more out” than his class. And the group behind them, the ones who arrived his junior year?

“Whoa. That’s when the movement started. They didn’t care. They were coming down, and they weren’t gonna take nothin’.” They, too, eventually “fell in line after awhile or left,” Swann says.

It was 1963–1964, the same year some Miami students went with Bob Strippel, an assistant dean in the student affairs division, to North Carolina to register black voters. A couple of months later, nearly 800 students, mostly white and mostly from East Coast colleges, attended two weeks of voter registration training on Western College’s campus.

But Swann and his friends and classmates weren’t aware of the Mississippi Summer Project on Western, later known as Freedom Summer, which made national headlines after three of its participants — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — were kidnapped and killed in Mississippi.

For most students at Miami, black and white, the civil rights movement was something vague that was happening in the distance. On a campus that felt “insulated and isolated,” they may have been “generally supportive but not widely involved.” They were far more impacted by Kennedy’s assassination, the Beatles, and the Vietnam draft, according to 29 essays written by 1965 graduates for Jane Marie Jordan’s 1993 senior honors project, which evolved into the book The

Mood of Miami: Interpretations Amid the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement.

Swann recalls approximately 10 African-Americans in his graduating class of 1965. He stayed for another two years to earn a master’s in education.

Free of restrictions from the athletic department, the administration, and opinions of others, he found it a time of growth and freedom.

“I went where I wanted, did what I wanted, and had conquered many of the internal conflicts I had faced earlier. I lived in an old fraternity house behind the Phi Delt house with eight other friends. (He was the only minority.)

I ate all my meals at the Phi Delt house without incident or comment, attended frat parties Uptown and in frat houses, dated who I wanted, and escorted the reigning J-Prom queen to the prom without incident.”

TH E M O R E TH IN GS C H A N G E

Because of his close ties with Coles and rest of his teammates, Swann has returned to campus often through the years. Not long ago he went into Withrow Court, where his team reigned, to see the locker rooms once again. And remember.

“I wouldn’t trade the education and experience for anything. I’d go through all this again. What we realized while living through it, it takes a special person of color to make it in that place because there’s so much more pressure other than academics. That’s still true in that culture today.”

“What he’s saying, from my perspective, is that the more things change the more they stay the same,” Diane says.

“It’s a little different though,” John says. “Last time Diane and I were down there, we were walking down the street, and this young black lady was coming up the street. Now, all of my life … (“And mine,” Diane adds.) There’s a code that when you see familiar folk in the atmosphere that’s there … you give a gentle nod. Like, ‘Hey …’ unspoken, but it means a whole lot. Just that gentle nod.

This young lady did not look our way.

Black lady, black young girl, did not look our way. Like we were not there.

“Now in my day, she would have been stopped with, ‘Hey, Baby, what’s happening?’ We were an isolated group and when you saw each other, you acknowledged each other. It’s universal.

You give the nod.”

So, maybe, John and Diane conclude, the culture has changed, but not for the better. Nowadays it’s the smartphones and tablets that appear to be causing the same kind of isolation that they sometimes felt. This makes them sad.

Rattling the ice in his empty tumbler, having finished his third or fourth glass of tea, John pauses. He has some advice. It sounds simple, but history has proven that it’s not.

“Communicate. Talk to folks. All comes down to talking to each other. Majority.

Minority. We’re not all that different.”

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

2014

CELEBRATING FREEDOM Miami University is hosting a national conference Oct. 12–14, 2014, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer. For more information, go online to MiamiOH.edu/celebratingfreedom. For more about the history of Freedom Summer, go to the Summer 2014 Miamian at MiamiAlum.org/Miamian and click on the link to “A Constant Struggle.”

Summer 2014

29

photo courtesy of Journal-News

love & honor

If You See It, You Can Be It Actor Geena Davis inspires attendees of Miami’s first Women in Leadership Symposium to be a force for gender equity

By Alicia Auhagen ’15 Academy Award-winner Geena Davis rallies a sold-out crowd in Miami’s Armstrong Student Center Pavilion to lobby for parity between the sexes.

30

miamian magazine

On her first day of school as an acting major at Boston

University, Geena Davis and 99 other incoming freshmen were told by a professor that only 1 percent of students would ever be able to earn a living as an actor. Her response on hearing this? “These poor kids.

Somebody should have told them.”

Having since garnered an Academy Award for best supporting actress in The Accidental Tourist and starred in such blockbusters as Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own, she attributes her success to what she calls “idiotic, unshakable faith.”

The keynote speaker for Miami’s first Women in Leadership Symposium, Davis shared a mix of personal stories and statistics to address the issue of gender inequality in the media. The two-day symposium

in early April — which focused on the theme “Making Our Mark” — officially launched the Miami Initiative for Advancing, Mentoring, and Investing in Women (M.I.A.M.I. Women), a university-wide push to support opportunities for women in leadership.

Americans tend to think of themselves as innovators, leaders, and example-setters for the rest of the world, Davis told the sold-out crowd in the Armstrong Student Center Pavilion. But when it comes to equal representation of women, this is “profoundly not the case,” she said, citing research conducted by her Institute on Gender in Media, which found that women constitute only 18 percent of Congress, 16.1 percent of Fortune 500 boards, and 17 percent of crowd scenes in movies.

love & honor

Shefali Razdan Duggal ’93 (top left) with Elizabeth Mullenix, dean of the College of Creative Arts; Emily Douglas ’04 (bottom).

The numbers aren’t much better for women’s roles in television and film, she told the audience.

For every one female character, there are three male characters — a ratio that has not budged since 1946. And of the few female characters that exist, many are highly stereotyped and sexualized, she pointed out.

“What excuse can we possibly give girls in the 21st century why they are being shown nothing to aspire to and not teaching them that the sexes are absolutely equal? How can we justify training little boys to see that as well? By feeding our kids this serious imbalance right from the beginning, we are training yet another generation not to notice that there’s so much gender inequality.”

In a world that is roughly half women and half men, “the message that the media is sending in every possible way is that women and girls are less valuable than men and boys,” she said. Noting the lack of parity, Davis is using her connections in the entertainment industry to appeal directly to media creators to be more aware and produce more quality roles for women.

During the second day of the symposium, speakers made it clear to attendees that women don’t have to be actors, or even famous, to impact

the world. One of five alumnae who returned to the Oxford campus to share insights and advice, Shefali Razdan Duggal ’93 told the audience about her lack of focus early in her career.

For her, making her mark required that she gain confidence in herself and her dreams, she said.

“I kept looking around at what I was supposed to be doing. As soon as I stopped wondering why I didn’t fit in and started just embracing what is different about me and unique, then I started flourishing,” said Duggal, who co-chairs the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum and is a member of the White House Council of Women & Girls.

Speaking on the same panel as Duggal, Emily Douglas ’04 talked about how she had to rise above the naysayers who bullied her for doing the volunteer work she loved. Making her mark required surrounding herself with what she called a personal “board of directors” that supported her. She now encourages other women to promote more positive behaviors.

“When you see people saying things that are negative, we have to hold each other accountable and say, ‘That’s not appropriate.’ ” Douglas is the founder of Grandma’s Gifts and director of human capital at Battelle for Kids in Columbus.

The symposium was particularly inspiring for Miami University Student Foundation Executive Chair Blaire Wilson, who introduced Geena Davis at the first evening’s keynote address.

“To the kid in me, Geena Davis will always be the mom in Stuart Little. To the woman in me today, Geena Davis is a remarkable role model, an example of what women can be,” said Wilson, a junior from Hudson, Ohio, majoring in strategic communication and minoring in economics.

For Davis, a single yet profound motto is the force behind gender equality: “If they see it, they can be it.” She has unshakable faith that someday mothers everywhere will be able to tell a story she longs to tell her own daughter. It starts: “Once upon a time it was considered that women and girls were a little less important than men and boys.” At this point, Davis envisions her daughter looking at her incredulously and saying, “Mom, are you making this up?”

“What excuse can we possibly give girls in the 21st century why they are being shown nothing to aspire to?”

—Geena Davis

Alicia Auhagen is a junior from Cincinnati majoring in professional writing at Miami.

Summer 2014

31

photo from Miami University Libraries, Frank Synder Collection

class notes

Miami University Teachers’ College free-hand drawing class in 1915.

32

miamian magazine

class notes

41

Gene Shook of Troy, Ohio,

has done a lot of things in the community over the years, but he’s best known for the decades he delighted children portraying Santa Claus. That’s according to the Dayton Daily News, which ran a lovely feature on Gene, 95, who has left behind many memories of goodwill for many people despite having hung up his custom-made Santa suits. He is also a dedicated member of First Presbyterian Church, which he joined in 1937, making him one of the oldest members.

55

Reunion ¶ Nancy Landin Heuerman celebrated her 80th birthday during Miami’s Family Weekend 2013 with daughter Sheryl Heuerman Wiener ’79 and granddaughters Jenni Wiener ’12, Sara Wiener ’14, and Cory Wiener ’17, and Miami family Richard Schroeder ’63 MEd ’64, Michael Franczak ’92, and Kayla Franczak ’17.

56

Lynn Brown Dausman of

Davidson, N.C., has been published, along with four other poets, in the poetry anthology Above the Fold by Main Street Rag Publishing in Charlotte, N.C. The book, released May 25, is available through the publisher’s website.

58

John Mallen ran for Chardon (Ohio) City Council in 2009, was elected, and began a four-year term in January 2010. He ran again this past November on a platform of “one more and done” and was re-elected, extending his term until Dec. 31, 2017. John writes, “Chardon is the only municipality large enough in Geauga County to be called a city, and some of the things we do affect the greater township around us, which, along with the city, includes approximately 10,000 people.”

62

Stephen Hirst’s Lauren

Greasewater’s War has been named OneBook Arizona’s adult fiction selection for 2014. The book traces the journey of a displaced Native American woman trying to repatriate herself to the community of her birth. In the process, she precipitates an armed conflict with the U.S. government. During April OneBook month, Steve, who lives in Flagstaff, led discussions about his book at venues across Arizona.

64

Jeffry Weiler, counsel in

the Cleveland office of Tucker Ellis, is serving a threeyear term as chair of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, which is dedicated to supporting the young artists who have made America’s musical heritage their life’s work. He also has served as first vice president and secretary of the organization.

66

Dave Dietsch, a retired Air Force colonel, has been elected to the National Board of Directors of the Air Force Association. ¶ Classmates Al Stone of Cambridge, Mass.; Andy Price of Worton, Md.; and Steve Oppenheimer of Cincinnati haven’t palled around together in more than 40 years. They had a great time catching up while visiting the Rhode Island shore in July 2013. (See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

68

Jeffrey Keiner of Lake Mary, Fla., a shareholder in GrayRobinson’s Orlando office, is on the Adventist University of Health Sciences Foundation Board. Located on the Florida Hospital campus near downtown Orlando, ADU specializes in allied health and nursing education.

“We all have to live in the world we create for ourselves, and Adventist

University of Health Sciences is making the world a better place,” says Jeffrey, a commercial trial lawyer, arbitrator, and certified mediator who has practiced in Orlando since 1974. ¶ Jim Rohr and Anthony Cordes ’09 won the first annual Tufts Archives Hickory Golf Pro-Am in Pinehurst, N.C., last December. Jim and his wife, Charleen, retired to Pinehurst from Oxford after a 34-year-career in the financial services industry. Anthony, a former RedHawks golfer, is an assistant golf professional at the Pinehurst Resort. (See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

70

Reunion ¶ Ann Eisenstein of Columbia, S.C., has written Fallen Prey, the second book in her Sean Gray, Junior Special Agent Mystery Series. Twelve-year-old Sean is in a race against time. Could there be a connection between his testimony in the trial of an international child kidnapping ring and his mysterious accident? While the sheriff’s department and the FBI investigate, his new friend, Gabby, gets caught in the web of an online predator and disappears.

When authorities can’t find her after 48 hours, Sean goes undercover to bait the mysterious hunter. But when he becomes the prey, how will he rescue her? Writing for young teens, Ann, a child psychologist and trained member of the FBI Citizens’ Academy and Richland County Sheriff’s Citizen Police Academy, wraps a fictional story around real-life scenarios for kids in the middle-grade age range. In Fallen Prey, she examines growing social networking sites and provides 10 tips for teens to stay safe while staying in touch with friends. ¶ Wally Morton ’70 MEd ’72, swimming coach at Cleveland State University for the past 40 years, retired at the end of the season this

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 MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.

Summer 2014

33

class notes

past academic year. His career includes 20 conference titles, nine Coach of the Year awards, three Olympians, and far too many other accolades to recount here. When sports feature writer Jodie Valade of The Plain Dealer asked him how he’ll top all that, he told her, “I’m going to get up early in the morning, and I’m going to get an early start on things. That’s how you stay young. My two most important values are be honest and be on time. If I can take care of those two things, then everything else will take care of itself.”

Scherer ’71. (See photo in online

Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/ Miamian.)

72

71

Miami roommates and Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sisters who gathered at the summer home of Kathy Williams Scherer in Leland, Mich., for a weekend reunion in June 2013 included Pam Pederson Hall ’72, Jacque Smith Alvarez ’71, Kathy Grady Maisonville ’71 MEd ’74, Carol Sites Turner ’71, and Kathy Williams

Un-Chan Chung MA ’72, for-

mer prime minister of South Korea, returned to Miami’s Oxford campus to speak on “Uncertainties in and around the Korean Peninsula” April 17. His talk was part of the Higgin Kim Asian Business Symposium.

Now chairman of the Korea Institute for Shared Growth, he was president of Seoul National University and a faculty member of economics there for 27 years. The Higgin Kim Asia Business Program of the Farmer School of Business was established by a gift from Higgin Kim ’69, CEO of Seoul-based Byucksan Engineering and Construction. ¶ Connie Harris is vice president for Institutional Advancement and University Relations at Heidelberg University. She is

responsible for executive leadership and coordination and development in support of all philanthropic activities, including Heidelberg’s ongoing $75 million Academic Comprehensive Campaign for Excellence. She also oversees all marketing and external relations as well as internal and external communications, leading a team composed of development, alumni relations, and marketing and creative services. She serves on the Heidelberg president’s Senior Leadership Team.

76

Ronald Kopp was named to

the Top 100 Ohio lawyers (2007–2014) and the Top 50 Cleveland area lawyers (2007–2010 and 2012– 2014) lists. He practices in the areas of business and commercial litigation, representing numerous large- and middle-market clients. He has represented clients in shareholder and partnership disputes, legal malpractice, fraud,

Forever Marveling at the World’s Magnificent Wonders Moe Griffiths ’56 enjoys all the adven-

tures he and wife Chris take with the Miami Explorers. China? Great learning. Cambodia? Never imagined being there. Still, even after 14 trips (and counting) with the Alumni Association (MiamiAlum.org/Travel), it’d be hard to top his close encounter with that critter in Brazil. “Chris and I were in a canoe back in the marshy area. I must have frightened an alligator because he came out of nowhere, hidden down under the weeds, and went right across the back end of the canoe and off the other side. If you ever want to see a guy who could qualify for nationals in canoe racing, you should have been with me.”

34

miamian magazine

Moe’s guide with some friendly caimans in Brazil’s Pantanal.

class notes

breach of contract, and patent and trademark litigation. He also has represented media clients in matters pertaining to libel and invasion of privacy. ¶ Four couples, including two Miami Mergers, met for four days in NYC during Memorial Day week 2013. They witnessed the Mets defeat the Yankees both home and away. Alums (all 1976) in the group included Jon Zuck, Gary Von Lehmden, Steve Farrand and wife Jan Gau Farrand, and Bob McGraw and wife Ann Kirwin McGraw. Spouses Kathleen Von Lehmden and Stephanie Zuck were also in attendance. The couples traveled from Anchorage, Alaska; Danville, Calif.; Durango, Colo.; and London, England, to spend time together. The men, all Lambda Chi Alphas, try to meet every year or two to visit new MLB parks.

78

Sheryl Johnson Burk ’78

MEd ’99, principal of Wilson Middle School in Hamilton, Ohio, has been selected as Ohio’s Middle Level Principal of the Year for 2015. She has served as principal of Wilson for the past 10 years and has been a school administrator for 13 years. Her emphasis is on problem solving for students, teachers, and parents and growing people as she works with students and teachers. This past school year she focused on literacy. Her work has paid off as Wilson is the only secondary building in the Hamilton City School District to ever earn an Excellent rating on the Ohio Local Report Card. She and husband David ’81 MA ’84 live in Hamilton. ¶ Mary Cusick is the first director of TourismOhio. Starting in her new position last December, she is marketing the state while performing intensive brand research. Her plans include working with travel industry leaders to develop a marketing strategy for the state and to help boost

the number of visitors to Ohio. Mary lives in Columbus. ¶ Edward Moore of Bay Village, Ohio, is senior vice president, general counsel, chief compliance officer, and secretary at RPM International, a holding company in Medina, Ohio, which owns subsidiaries that are world leaders in specialty coatings, sealants, building materials, and related services serving both industrial and consumer markets.

79

John Kuehn is the Major

General William A. Stofft Chair of Historical Research at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer in EP-3s and ES-3s. His latest book is A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century. ¶ Ainsley Maull Malone, MS, RD, LD, CNSC, began serving as president of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition in June 2013. This interdisciplinary society comprises physicians, dietitians, pharmacists, nurses, and researchers who care for patients and consumers who, unable to orally consume their nutrients, require alternate methods for receiving nutrition. ¶ Steve Mudgett, CSP, CFPS, vice president, Senior Risk Control Consultant, won his age group (55–59) at the Ironman Triathlon in Cabo, Mexico, March 30, 2014, which qualifies him for the World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, Oct. 11, 2014. He did his first race in Kona in 1984 and finished ninth overall in 1985. This will be his 10th Ironman in Kona after placing sixth in the 55-59 category in 2012. He writes, “I’m doing the BIG Three this year, the Boston Marathon, Leadville 100 mile Mountain Bike Race, and then THE Ironman.” He was on Miami’s

1978 MAC cross country and 1979 MAC track & field championship teams. ¶ Steve Ricchetti is chief of staff to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and assistant to the president. Steve, who had served as counselor to the vice president since March 2012, stepped into the new position in December.

“Steve and I have been friends for years, and I was thrilled when he joined my staff as counselor,” Biden said. “He has a wealth of experience in policy and government, he knows Congress, and he has strong relationships with the West Wing staff. I’m lucky to have him.” Steve’s 30 years in public service, business, and political life include positions on Capitol Hill, the Clinton Administration as deputy chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs, and 10 years heading an independent public affairs firm.

Herb Wiepking ’41 celebrated his 100th birthday April 30, 2014, with a small party offamily and friends.

He is the first man at The Knolls of Oxford toreach 100.

80

Reunion ¶ Mary Norman is the vice president of advancement for Visiting Nurse Health System in Atlanta. She leads the development and implementation of all fundraising and communication strategies for the organization. She brings more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, strategic partnership

Summer 2014

35

class notes

Super Bowl champion coach John Harbaugh ’84 was inducted into the Cradle of Coaches Association and immortalized with a statue at Yager Stadium’s Cradle of Coaches Plaza April 19.

John’s bronze, full-body image depicts him on the sidelines as coach of the 2013 Super Bowl XLVII champion Baltimore Ravens.

36

miamian magazine

development, and broadcast media to Visiting Nurse, Georgia’s largest nonprofit provider of health care at home.

82

Jeff Cox, a partner with

Faruki Ireland & Cox in the Dayton office, has been named to the 2014 Ohio Super Lawyers list.

Super Lawyers is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Jeff has tried cases in both state and federal courts and has handled numerous arbitrations and mediations before the American Arbitration Association in various jurisdictions. His practice includes class action defense, privacy and data protection, intellectual property litigation, federal regulatory investigations, products liability, media, appropriations, advertising, competition, and other business litigation. ¶ Jeffrey Fetzer MArch ’82 has been elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. President of his own architectural and preservation consulting business in San Antonio, he has worked on some of the most iconic landmarks in Texas during his 30-year career to date. His restoration work

on the Texas State Capitol earned a National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he was project manager for the restoration of the Texas governor’s mansion, and has worked on several county courthouses, projects at the Historic Old Spanish Missions, and the Alamo in San Antonio. He served as chairman of the city of San Antonio Historic and Design Review Commission for two years, following two years as a commissioner. ¶ Leslie O’Malley received the Carolyn K. Oakes Award from The Junior League of Cleveland for her exceptional leadership and distinguished service to the organization. ¶ Tony Phillips is customer experience analytics expert for General Motors at GM World Headquarters in Detroit. He conducts statistical analysis and uses other business intelligence methods to assess company effectiveness at customer engagement. ¶ Bob Robenalt has joined Fisher & Phillips’ Columbus office as a partner, bringing a 25-year practice that focuses on employment litigation, traditional labor matters, and workers compensation to the national labor and employment law firm. He is a member of the American Bar Association, Ohio State Bar Association, Columbus Bar Association, and the Central Ohio Self Insurers Association. The ClevelandMarshall College of Law graduate has also served as an adjunct professor at Capital University and is a frequent author and lecturer on labor and employment matters, as well as workers compensation defense issues.

83

Cassie Zwick Metzger is

relocating from Louisville, Ohio, to Pensacola, Fla., to head the newly designated brand development department at QMotion Advanced Shading Systems. She oversees brand

consistency, public relations strategies, website content, and QMotion’s brand and reputation. Cassie has more than 20 years’ marketing experience, including consulting for distributors/dealers and Internet startups. QMotion manufactures automated window shades that require no wiring and function quietly on a patented, long-lasting battery system. ¶ Lillian Freeman Reynolds received the Sojourner Truth Award April 26 from the Westchester County Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. District homeless student liaison for the Mount Vernon (N.Y.) City School District, Lillian is also the executive director of the Grace Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools in Mount Vernon. According to the Children’s Defense Funds-New York, “The program is modeled after the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, a major political action program in which volunteers [many of whom trained at Western College for Women] and community members worked together to secure basic democratic rights for Mississippi’s Black citizens. Freedom Schools are educational, recreational, and cultural enrichment programs that provide a safe, fun, and nurturing learning environment” during the summer months and in the afternoons after class during the school year.

84

Jeffrey Davis of Quarles &

Brady in Milwaukee was named by Wisconsin Super Lawyers magazine among the top attorneys in Wisconsin for 2013. No more than 5 percent of total lawyers in the state are selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers. ¶ CancerFree KIDS, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit organization founded by Sam and Ellen Rasch Flannery, was recently the beneficiary of a joint fundraising

class notes

event hosted by Miami fraternities Phi Delta Theta and Pi Kappa Alpha.

The Powder Puff Football Game, featuring many sororities competing for the trophy, raised $5,300 while the fraternities supplied the coaches and referees. CancerFree KIDS has funded $2 million in pediatric cancer research since its inception. (See check presentation photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.) ¶ Sheryl Lazenby recently designed and illustrated a two-volume textbook set for the American College of Emergency Physicians. The set has been released nationally for use in 2014. Sheryl is the owner of SmartDog Design in Columbus. ¶ Brian Ramm, a partner at Ulmer & Berne, has been appointed to the board of directors for the Federal Bar Association, Northern District of Ohio Chapter. Brian’s practice is focused on the national defense of pharmaceutical companies in federal and state courts. Brian also has experience in defending catastrophic personal injury claims and political subdivisions.

86

Classmates Tracy Peters, Joe

Stagaman, Joe DiGennaro,

Jay Alvaro, Kraig Kunkemoeller, Diane

DeVillez, and Joe DeVillez enjoyed a get-together in Germantown, Ohio, last fall with Ethan DeVillez ’17 soon after he started his freshman year at Miami.

(See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

87

Steve Cox has left the car

business in Columbus after 10 years as a financial services manager to pursue a lifelong dream of saving animals. He is now development director of Kyle’s New Hope Animal Rescue (newhopeanimalrescue.org) in Cincinnati. KNHAR is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving the lives of animals that run out of options.

“I am fortunate to be director of such a unique animal rescue that saves lives of dogs and cats that have been neglected, abandoned, abused, or injured that are rehabilitated and found forever loving homes. We are featured on Warm 98 radio every Tuesday morning at 7:40 and have made appearances on Fox 19 News.” ¶ Pam Henkener recently graduated from the University of Denver with a master’s in health-care leadership. She is a business manager for Zoetis, the world’s largest animal health company and lives in the Detroit area. ¶ Beth Grimm Whelley of Centerville, Ohio, was honored as one of the 2013 Top Ten Women by The Dayton Daily News. She is senior vice president at Fahlgren Mortine and serves on the board of trustees for Sinclair Community College. ¶ Bradley Wright has been named a 2014 Ohio Super Lawyer by Ohio Super Lawyers magazine. He is the partner-in-charge of the Akron office of Roetzel & Andress. He also has been serving as the 2013–2014 chair of the board of directors for USLAW, an international organization composed of more than 100 independent, defense-based law firms with more than 6,000 attorneys covering the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

88

Stephen Funk was named

to the Top 50 Cleveland area Lawyers list (2012–2014). He focuses his practice on business and public law litigation, appellate law, constitutional law, and land use and zoning law. He is certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law and is president of the Akron Bar Association.

90

Reunion ¶ David Thomas produced and provided legal work for the recent feature film The

Yank, starring Colm Meaney and Fred Willard. David is a Clevelandand NYC-based entertainment attorney. His classmate and Milwaukeebased playwright Mike Stull made a “Zelig-esque” cameo in The Yank.

91

Andy Buschle of Naples,

Fla., was named a 2014 Man of Distinction by Champions For Learning, which recognizes men who have distinguished themselves in the Collier County community through their extensive philanthropic service; men whose fervent passion for helping others, especially children, make the community a better place to call home. Andy, BB&T business services group vice president, is involved in Junior Achievement of SWFL, Special Olympics of Collier County, The Education Foundation — Champions For Learning, Entrepreneurship Program Advisory Board, Optimist Soccer, and Cal Ripken Baseball. A native of Cincinnati, he was heavily involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters in Cincinnati and now in Naples and has mentored four children for more than 10 years. Spending time with his family is also important to him. Andy is married to Kristy, and they are parents

Cleveland native Rajiv Joseph ’96 (left) is a zealous Browns fan. That’s why he wanted to write a football movie. Watching A-list actors such as lead Kevin Costner (center) bring life to the Draft Day script he co-wrote thrilled the award-winning playwright.

“I always felt that when Scott Rothman (right) and I had written the screenplay, we had built a sports car, and when Costner got cast, we had to customize that sports car to him and he became the engine.”

Summer 2014

37

class notes

SAVE THE DATE Family Weekend is Oct. 25, 2014, with the football team playing Kent State.

Homecoming is Nov. 1, 2014, when the competition will be Western Michigan.

38

miamian magazine

to Charlie, Olivia, Max, and Caroline. ¶ Erika Haupt, partner-in-charge of the Columbus office of Roetzel & Andress, was selected as one of the Top 25 women lawyers in Columbus (2010-2014). Her practice focuses on wealth transfer and estate planning matters, including business succession planning and all aspects of tax and business planning for owners of closely held businesses. ¶ Todd Miller has opened his own firm, Todd Miller Law, in Beavercreek, Ohio. He is a certified specialist in workers’ compensation and has been practicing workers’ compensation law for 20 years for firms in Toledo and Dayton.

92

Adopted: by Edwin Scharlau

III and Victor Gimenez,

Joshua Roland Gimenez-Scharlau, born Oct. 30, 2013. Edwin is owner of Route 7 Productions, a production company for photo shoots and films, based in Miami Beach, Fla. ¶ Pam Miller Wannemacher is an executive producer for the docu-reality TV series Massive Amounts of Good (massiveamountsofgood.org). Each episode focuses on a different city with accomplished musicians showcasing where they come from, how that influences them as artists, and how they give back to their community. Many musicians have signed on, including Grammy Award-winning DJ Head, who produced Eminem’s Slim Shady CD and starred in the movie 8 Mile; American Idol finalist Reed Grimm; international beat boxer Heatbox; rapper Deploi; and soul musician Mark Joseph. The pilot episode was shot in Detroit at AirTime Trampoline & Game Park, which Pam owns with husband Will ’90. For each episode, the show partners with a nonprofit to give back to that local community. For the Detroit shoot, proceeds from the concert sales were donated

to Blessings in a Backpack, a nonprofit that provides weekend meals to Detroit inner city children in need. ¶ Born: to Matthew Weaver and Alexandra, Brandon Nicholas, Nov. 5, 2013. They live in Portland, Ore.

93

Apurva Desai of Millbrae,

Calif., is chief financial officer of Vuclip, a rapidly growing Silicon Valley-based company focused on delivering mobile video content to consumers in emerging markets. As the new CFO, Apurva oversees global accounting, financial planning and analysis, legal, human resources, and other operational support functions.

He brings to the job more than 15 years of operational and financial experience with publicly and privately held global companies based in the Silicon Valley, where he has been working the past decade for large technology companies and growing startups. ¶ Jewell, a fashion handbag and accessories brand based in Johnstown, Ohio, held its first Limelight Leadership Conference in January 2014. Five Jewelled & Fabulous Miamians attended, Jewell President Christina Ellis Snyder ’93, Christie LoBuono Munafo ’04, Pam Reynolds Satterfield ’82, Susan Satterfield ’13, and Rachel Satterfield ’12. (See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum. org/Miamian.)

94

Michael Helfand of Tucson,

Ariz., and classmate Matt

Lindner of Chicago have launched

Crafthouse Cocktails (crafthousecocktails.com). Michael explains that these are “premium, all natural, and gluten-free beverages made by our third partner, Charles Joly, who is a world-famous mixologist. We started in July (2013) in Illinois and will be branching out to Ohio. Matt and I were roommates freshman year and

our corporate name is Stanton South LLC in honor of our dorm.” ¶ Randy Robinson, MD, is chief medical officer of the recently launched health-care startup R-Health, the first direct primary care provider in the Philadelphia region. For a fixed monthly fee, patients gain unlimited office and e-visits, same- and next-day appointments, and 24-7 access to their personal primary care physician via phone, email, mobile messaging, and Skype.

On-site basic labs and tests, proactive wellness education, and preventive and urgent care are included. R-Health does not bill insurance and there are no additional co-pays or co-insurance.

Individuals and families can become members directly or through their employer. Upon launching R-Health, Randy said, “By offering care when and where people want it and by promoting stronger doctor-patient relationships, R-Health helps people proactively improve their health, rather than just respond to illness. This means better management of chronic conditions and reduced utilization of the health-care system as a whole, which translates into healthier patients and decreased overall costs.” ¶ Donald Rudawsky is vice president of Institutional Effectiveness for Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Fla. In this role, he helps advance the strategic priorities and initiatives comprising NSU’s Vision 2020 plan through expert data analysis, critical program review and assessment, and predictive modeling.

95

Reunion ¶ Brian Carter returned to Miami’s Oxford campus Feb. 3, 2014, to give a lecture on “Facebook Marketing Psychographics & How Small Organizations Beat Big Ones” as part of the College of Arts and Science alumni lecture series.

He has 14 years of digital marketing

class notes

experience, working with such companies as Microsoft, Universal Studios, and Hardee’s. He also has written three books and has been featured in many national media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Mashable, Forbes, and U.S. News & World Report. ¶ Casey Stanley is vice president of marketing at Ontario Systems, a leading receivables management technology and services provider, based in Muncie, Ind. He rejoined Ontario Systems as senior director of marketing almost three years ago and has been responsible for developing and executing the company’s strategic marketing, communications, and lead generation strategies. He has more than 16 years of industry experience and 13 years of combined experience with Ontario Systems. In his three years as senior director, he has rebuilt the marketing team, adding talent that has enabled the company to focus on various marketing initiatives, including the return of Ontario Systems’ annual customer conference, as well as an overhaul of the company’s website and implementation of inbound content marketing strategies.

96

Anthony Gatto ’96 is the principal of The Arts & College Preparatory Academy (ACPA), a charter high school in Columbus.

ACPA was recently named a 2013 Charter School of the Year by the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools and a High Progress School of Honor and a School of Promise by the Ohio Department of Education. ACPA also was featured recently on NPR’s State Impact Ohio and MSNBC’s Now With Alex Wagner for its inclusive and supportive environment for LGBTQ youth. ¶ Rajiv Joseph’s play Gruesome Playground Injuries was produced on Miami’s Oxford campus last November

in the Center for Performing Arts’ Studio 88. Rajiv, a native of Cleveland who now lives in Brooklyn, received the prestigious 2013 Steinberg Playwright Award and has been spotlighted in a PBS film. He also was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his first play on Broadway, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. He is the book writer and co-lyricist for the new musical Fly, an adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and co-screenwriter of the football film Draft Day with Kevin Costner, released in April, and was a writer on the Showtime series Nurse Jackie. ¶ Born: to Donald and Stacy Granger Splitstone, Zoe Lynn, Oct. 15, 2013.

They were living in Fox Chapel, Pa., and recently moved to Pine Township, Pa.

97

Born: to Erin Manning Pepin and Jonathan, twin sons Lucas and Nathaniel, March 22, 2013, joining big sister Madeleine, 3. They live in Medfield, Mass. ¶ Born: to Julianna Woronka Piepkorn and Aaron, Jonah Austgen, March 5, 2013, in Trier, Germany. They have since moved with the U.S. Air Force to Nellis AFB, Nev., where Julianna is a major with the Air Force Reserve. Jonah is their fourth child, joining big sisters Ella and Greta and big brother Micah.

98

Dan Hackworth of Fishers, Ind., was named Regional Sales Manager of the Year in 2013 at LeMaitre Vascular just a year after he was promoted to that position. He has 13 years of vascular medical device sales experience. LeMaitre is a leading global provider of innovative disposable and implantable vascular devices for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease to address the needs of vascular surgeons. In his free time Dan enjoys being at home and spending time with his young boys, Cameron, Connor,

and Carter. ¶ Born: to Chad Tisdale and Lauren, Calvin Warren, March 12, 2014. Chad is a senior manager with Accenture and Lauren is owner/operator of Transitions Dressage. They live in Chardon, Ohio.

99

Stephanie Chu, DO, in

Denver, has spent several summers in Rwanda volunteering for Hope Shines Inc. as the camp director and medical/hygiene consultant. Hope Shines (hopeshines.net) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping orphans in Rwanda, focusing on mentoring, education, health, and hygiene. ¶ Born: to Dan and Meghan Shultz Foley, Margaret “Maggie” Colleen, June 26, 2013, joining brother Jack, 7, and sister Bridget, 5, in Broadview Heights, Ohio.

Dan is a stay-at-home dad. Meghan is a financial adviser with Merrill Lynch. ¶ “Born”: to David Kelbaugh, March 2014, Tacklebox Brand Strategy. His “newborn” focuses on helping other companies find the most powerful ways to connect with their audiences, using everything from naming to logo design.

For “baby pictures” and more, visit tacklebox.us.com. “It’s no coincidence that our logo is Miami-red,” David points out. He previously worked at

Theresa Chu ’03 is co-owner of Barley Labs, which creates all-natural dog treats out of recycled barley from a Durham, N.C., brewery. She’s sitting with co-owner Scott Beaudry and their dog, Barley, chief inspiration officer and VP of quality control. For more about the treats, their flavors, and how Theresa’s company got started, see page 40.

Summer 2014

39

class notes

“I strongly believe in American manufacturing.

Now, I’m part of a community.

I’m making things in America and making people’s homes special.”

—Lindsay Meacham ’02, founder of Red Rock Tileworks

40

miamian magazine

Leo Burnett, Ogilvy & Mather, and DraftFCB, helping companies such as Allstate and BP build and maintain their brands. He lives in Chicago with wife Staci and son Alex. ¶ Chad McQuade, a wealth management adviser, was honored by Northwestern Mutual with membership in its 2013 Forum group, which recognizes individuals for an outstanding year of helping clients achieve financial security. Chad is affiliated with The McTigue Financial Group, a district office of Northwestern Mutual based in Oak Brook, Ill. This is his third time to receive the Forum honor. ¶ Born: to Les and Becky Neefe Mitchell, Marietta Jane, Jan. 21, 2014, joining big sister Charlotte. Les is a corporate director for Catholic Health Partners. Becky is a human resources director for Beacon Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine. They live in Cincinnati.

00

Reunion ¶ Amy Achberger of Columbus was named Regional Sales Rep of the year in 2013 at LeMaitre Vascular. Amy joined LeMaitre in 2012, finishing No. 3 in her position her first year there. She also placed No. 2 in New Business in 2012 and No. 1 in New Business for 2013.

LeMaitre is a leading global provider of innovative disposable and implantable vascular devices for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease to address the needs of vascular surgeons. ¶ Born: to Randy Eilering and Sarah, twin boys Evan and Andrew, Jan. 4, 2014. Randy will be celebrating 14 years at CDW and five years of marriage in July. He and his family live in Barrington, Ill. ¶ Jerry Negrelli, a computer software consultant, is also writing jingles for Tony Kornheiser’s nationally syndicated radio show. ¶ Amy Bleimund Perry of Park Hills, Ky., is now singing with The Cincinnati May Festival Chorus

and had the privilege of performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra May 9, 2014. ¶ Jennifer Pribble published Welfare and Party Politics in Latin America with Cambridge University Press in 2013. In her book, Jenny presents data from more than 135 original interviews with former presidents, ministers, senators, deputies and other public figures in Chile and Uruguay; contributes to the growing literature on Latin America’s left turn, presenting a new classification of parties that helps explain the high levels of heterogeneity among the region’s left-leaning governments; and provides an analysis of welfare and other social assistance policies in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela. An assistant professor of political science at the University of Richmond, Jenny writes, “My years at Miami were extremely influential in shaping my decision to pursue a PhD in Latin American politics and write this book.”

01

Born: to Keith and Jennifer

Smith Dershem ’01 MAT ’07,

Annie Mae, Sept. 27, 2013, in Newport, Ky. She joins older brother Michael. ¶ Born: to Jason Plowman and Jeff Crouse, Avery Boyd Plowman-Crouse, Oct. 14, 2013, joining Charlie, 2, in Wauwatosa, Wis. Jason is employment counsel for Quad/Graphics and Jeff is a flight attendant with Southwest Airlines. ¶ Erin Stefanic Rhinehart, an attorney with Faruki Ireland & Cox in Dayton, has been named an Ohio Rising Star in the 2014 edition of Ohio Super Lawyers magazine. Rising Star recognizes the top up-and-coming attorneys in the state for those who are 40 years old or younger or who have been practicing for 10 years or less. Erin has participated in various aspects of the firm’s litigation practice, focusing on

state and federal class action defense, and is experienced in defending federal securities fraud claims, as well as mass tort claims. ¶ Born: to Ryan and Jaime Brannan Riley, their first child, Lucas Kenneth, Nov. 16, 2013.

02

Lindsay Meacham of

Nashville was featured in the January 2014 edition of Southern Living for her company, Red Rock Tileworks, which she launched in 2006. Designer of decorative ceramic tiles in dozens of colorful glazes and handmade textures, she told the magazine, “I strongly believe in American manufacturing.

Now, I’m part of a community. I’m making things in America and making people’s homes special.” This summer she plans to launch a new floor-tile collection inspired by her recent travels to Morocco, where she studied cementtile manufacturing. ¶ Born: to Cara Neudigate Olson and Matt, Leo Jacob, Feb. 10, 2014. They live in Savage, Minn. ¶ Married: Scott Popa and Amanda Eidt, Sept. 15, 2013. Scott works at Chase Investments in supervision, and Amanda is a pharmacy manager at CVS. They live in Columbus. ¶ Born: to Stephanie Bates Sterbinsky, William Francis Sterbinsky III, in Leesburg, Va.

03

John Berschback, a hand and

micro vascular surgeon, has joined Chippewa Valley Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Clinic in Chippewa Falls, Wis. He earned a doctorate from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit and completed his general surgery internship and his orthopedic surgical residency at Northwestern University’s McGraw Medical Center in Chicago. His hand surgery fellowship was at the Mary S. Stern Hand Foundation in Cincinnati. ¶ Theresa Chu is co-owner of Barley Labs, a Durham, N.C.-based small

A picture’s worth a thousand words … a campus visit is priceless.

Continue the proud tradition you know and love: Encourage high school students to experience “college as college should be” by scheduling a visit to Miami this summer.

class notes

During a campus visit, students will learn about the admission process and scholarship opportunities, chat with current Miamians on a student-guided tour, and imagine themselves joining the Miami family.

Summer 2014

Schedule a visit: MiamiOH.edu/visitƫƫƫđƫƫƫ ! .*ƫ)+.!čƫMiamiOH.edu/admission

41

class notes

Jansen Dell ’04, Cincinnati Reds’ director of creative operations, oversees a team that designs up to 2,500 projects a year, everything from small Bobblehead boxes to 20-foot-high displays in the Reds’ Hall of Fame. “The mantra here is always ‘bigger and better and more fan amenities’ because, on the business side of things, we can’t control the play on the field and we can’t control the weather. What we can control are the amenities, the experience the fans have when they’re here, making it a family-friendly environment and just making it a fun time.”

42

miamian magazine

business that creates all-natural dog treats out of recycled barley from a local brewery. She met co-owner Scott Beaudry while working in Chicago at a medical association. They launched Barley Labs (barleylabs.com) in 2012, selling their three flavored dog treats, peanut butter, pumpkin, and cheese, online and through local retailers. Scott came up with the idea shortly after his love for beer turned into an avid home brewing hobby. “It seemed like such a waste to just toss all the leftover grain from the process. I did some research and found I could take that barley and turn it into dog treats. It only seemed fair that if I was making treats for myself, I might as well make some for my dog, too.” Their dog, Barley, chief inspiration officer and VP of quality control, influenced another major aspect of the business. “We adopted Barley in 2009 from an animal shelter, and she has given us so much love and joy ever since,” Scott said. “We donate 10 cents from every bag sold to a local shelter in Durham, but one of our major goals as we grow is to be able to expand that support to even more shelters in our area and across the country so that animals can find their forever homes.”

In November Barley Labs was a Top 4

finalist selected out of almost 15,000 companies that entered Intuit’s Small Business Big Game contest sponsored

by Intuit QuickBooks. ¶ Matt Kelly is associate principal at Earles Architects and Associates in Chicago. He has been actively involved in developing a growing client base of corporate real estate, legal, institutional, and retail/ hospitality businesses. In his new role, he continues to provide overall architectural design and management services, as well as being involved in marketing, management, and new business development initiatives for the firm. Among the clients he works with are Tishman Speyer, Crown Industries, Sterling Bay Companies, and Starbucks Coffee Co. A licensed architect since 2009 and a LEED Green associate, he earned a master’s in architecture from the University of Illinois in 2006. ¶ Born: to Matthew and Jennifer Burdick Kremer, Jack Allen, Aug. 22, 2012. Matthew is an e-commerce site development lead for Intelligrated and Jennifer is a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Princeton Community Middle School. They live in Cincinnati. ¶ Born: to Peter Madsen and Polly, Theodore “Teddy” Howe, March 29, 2013. Pete is an assistant attorney general with the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General and Polly is a marketing manager with General Mills.

They live in Minneapolis. ¶ Michael McGowan is vice president, client leadership, at dunnhumbyUSA, the world’s leading customer science company.

He is responsible for driving engagement with consumer packaged goods clients. Michael, who earned an MBA from Northern Kentucky University, lives in Cincinnati’s Mount Lookout neighborhood. ¶ Kendall Waters Nash, senior qualitative consultant in decision sciences at Burke in Cincinnati, has been serving as the 2013–2014

president of the board of directors for the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. The nine-member board is focusing on increasing the stature of QRCA and its members among external audiences through more widespread involvement, ensuring a sustainable organization and enhancing membership value through information sharing, training, and networking resources. ¶ Reid Schlotterbeck is a senior manager, tax management, at Truepoint Inc., a nationally recognized wealth advisory firm based in Blue Ash, Ohio. He focuses on advising clients on individual and business income tax. ¶Born: to Tim Wells and Hilary, Audrey Elise, Dec. 1, 2013. They live in St. Louis.

04

Born: to Ross and Tiffany

Garrett Gardner, Liam

Michael, Sept. 21, 2013. They live in Johns Creek, Ga., where Ross is vice president of technology for RightClick Networks and Tiffany is a staff attorney with the Court of Appeals of Georgia. ¶ John Merrick has joined the Brentwood (Nashville) office of LBMC Technologies as a business system consultant and is focusing his talents on Microsoft Dynamics GP and Intacct Implementations. LBMC is the Southeast’s leading full-service technology firm. John also is pursuing a master’s of accountancy at Belmont University. ¶ Born: to Neil ’04 MBA ’11 and Lindsay Midkiff Miller ’05, Rosalie June, Dec. 26, 2013, joining big sister Lila, who turned 3 in February. Lindsay is an assistant librarian in Miami’s King Library. They live in Hamilton, Ohio. ¶ Chad Ziepfel, an attorney with Taft Stettinius & Hollister, was selected for inclusion in Ohio Rising Stars 2014. Rising Stars recognizes the top up-and-coming attorneys in the state. No more than 2.5 percent of the lawyers in the state are selected.

class notes

05

Reunion ¶ Zac Haines of Cincinnati organized a 500-person political pancake breakfast featuring Ohio U.S. Sen. Rob Portman Feb. 8, 2014. After the keynote speech, Zac was sworn as the new president of the Northeast Hamilton County Republican Club. He also was recently selected to be the chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Leadership Council. In September 2013, Zac helped organize a charity concert with country music star John Rich, from the band Big & Rich, to raise money for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which helps wounded military veterans. (See photos from both events in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.) ¶ Born: to Mike and Kristen Gille Semberg, Arlo Gunnar, Jan. 2, 2014. They live in Cincinnati.

06

Abigail Brown ’06 ’07 was featured in Case Western Reserve University’s “30 Under 30” article in its Think online magazine.

Abby is an acute-care nurse practitioner with a flight nursing specialty and a member of the critical care transport team at the Cleveland Clinic.

She works aboard medical helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and ground ambulances, attending to the critically ill and injured, which she says is so rewarding. ¶ Vonzell Carter returned to Oxford this spring to perform the role of Godfrey Crump in Miami’s production of Crumbs From the Table of Joy. He also participated in a panel discussion of the play, which is about an African-American family from the Deep South that moves to Brooklyn in 1950. ¶ Meg Gaier is a middle school teacher in Barrington, Ill. Scholastic Inc. recently published her first book, Literacy Lessons for a Digital World: Using Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts and More

to Meet the Demands of the Common Core. This is a resource book to help teachers integrate technology and literacy into their classes to meet the new Common Core State Standards.

Meg is also an adjunct professor at Judson University in Elgin, Ill., where she teaches a graduate-level course on integrating technology into classroom teaching and learning activities. ¶ Married: Ashley Grenesko and Ryan Yosay, July 13, 2013, in Chicago. They live in Chicago, where Ashley is a preschool teacher and Ryan is a vice president of sales at Morningstar. ¶ Born: to Allison Rudershausen Schultz and Michael, Charlotte Avery, Jan. 27, 2014, joining big sister Evelyn. They live in West Chester, Pa. ¶ Married: Allison Siehnel and Macy Todd (University of Oregon ’07), June 29, 2012, in New York City. Allison is a teaching assistant fellow in the department of English at the University at Buffalo, where she is finishing a dissertation in American literature. Macy is also a teaching assistant fellow in the department of English at the University of Buffalo, and he is finishing his dissertation in Irish literature. ¶ Married: Kathryn Thompson and Ken Swanson, Nov. 16, 2013, in Evanston, Ill., where they live.

Kathryn teaches fourth grade. Ken does business forecasting for a life insurance brokerage.

07

Born: to Randy and Jenny

Jacob Begley ’08, Dylan Reid,

Dec. 26, 2013, in Cincinnati. Randy is a quality supervisor with Crescent and Jenny is a senior project manager with Convergys Analytics Solutions. ¶ Born: to John and Katelin Norris Berry, Benjamin John, Feb. 26, 2014.

John is sports information director at IUPUI. Kate is a physician assistant in cardiac surgery at St. Vincent Hospital.

They live in Indianapolis. ¶ Born: to

Kevin and Sara Philippsen Charles,

Kerrigan Douglas, Aug. 10, 2013. They live in Lexington, Ky., where Kevin is a senior analyst for Hitachi Automotive Products and Sara is a kindergarten teacher. ¶ Married: Melissa Gerber and Joshua Ebel ’10, Dec. 29, 2012, in Perrysburg, Ohio. They currently live in Columbus, where Melissa is an attorney at Eastman & Smith and Josh, who has been in medical school at Ohio State University, graduated in May 2014. ¶ Married: Jessica Moscato and Tommy Watkins, Aug. 3, 2013, in Bolton Landing, N.Y., at The Sagamore. They live in Orlando. ¶ Tamika Richeson of Cleveland, who is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Virginia, has received a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies. The fellowship will assist while she writes her dissertation, “Wild Colored Woman: A Legal and Cultural Examination of Black Female Criminality During the Civil War,” examining 19th-century law and culture. Her work focuses on the experiences of enslaved and free black women in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. She looked at their encounters with the criminal courts to understand the racial and gender context

Nancy McAllister ’08 of Hamilton, Ohio, completed a 2,185.9-mile thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. She started April 6, 2013, on Springer Mountain, Ga., and finished Oct. 10, 2013, on top of Mount Katahdin, Maine. “My favorite parts of the trail itself were the wild ponies in the Grayson Highlands, the views in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and the rock scrambles in southern Maine.

The best part was all the new friendships. The only things that really got me down were the gnats and mosquitoes, which almost drove me crazy.”

Summer 2014

43

class notes

of 19th-century criminal law. ¶ Beth Stelling, who moved to Chicago after graduation, was named The Chicago Reader’s Best Stand-Up Comedian in Chicago in 2010. She has taken her show across the U.S. and in 2011 was invited to take part in the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal.

Beth recently won Comedy Central’s @midnight. Now based in Los Angeles with a weekly show, she is continuing to take her show across the country. Most recently she made her debut on Conan and Chelsea Lately.

“Miami is truly a beautiful campus, and every day I miss spending time there.”

—Leah West L’Ecuyer ’10

08

Rebecca Fenton returned

to Miami’s Oxford campus to give a lecture on “African Art and Museum Imagination” at the Miami University Art Museum in February.

She is a PhD candidate in African art and African studies at Indiana University. ¶ Born: to Bryan and Kristen Sanders Kestner, Brooks Sanders, April 29, 2013. They live in Cincinnati. ¶ Sean McVay has been promoted by the Washington Redskins to offensive coordinator. He spent the past three seasons as Washington’s tight ends coach after being hired as an offensive assistant in 2012. He had worked previously with Redskins head coach Jay Gruden in Tampa Bay and with the UFL’s Florida Tuskers.

09

Dave Britt is an account

executive at The Integer Group in Lakewood, Colo. Integer, a leader in promotional, retail, and shopper marketing, creates strategic marketing solutions for clients in categories that include retail, beverage, packaged goods, telecommunications,home and shelter, automotive aftermarket, and power sports. It’s part of Omnicom Group, a marketing and corporate communications company. ¶ Born: to Kyle and Ashley Benson Chrisman, Abigail

44

miamian magazine

Joyce, Sept. 10, 2013. Kyle is manager of finance and insurance at the Reynolds & Reynolds Co. in Kettering, Ohio. Ashley is a teacher for Mad River Local Schools.

They live in Dayton. ¶ Married: Kalie Jones and Anthony Berin ’10, April 26, 2014, in Charlotte N.C., where they live and work. Kalie teaches seventh-grade language arts. Anthony is executive chef at Dandelion Market in uptown Charlotte. ¶ Dirk Long of Denver, after finishing an MSME at the Colorado School of Mines, started a company to design and implement water pumping technologies in developing countries (currentpumps.com). He writes, “We have narrowed in on a technology that we are really exited about and are in the process of raising money to take 20 pumps to Niger as a case study.

Our vision is to have manufacturing, distribution, and sales within the countries where these would be used so that not only are we providing a pump for the farmers, but we are also helping strengthen their economies.” ¶ Dana Paris attended law school at ClevelandMarshall College of Law and passed the bar exam in 2013. She is an attorney at Nurenberg, Paris, Heller and McCarthy, a personal injury law firm in downtown Cleveland. ¶ Alli Restko lives in Chicago and works as a designer at the Trunk Club, a men’s clothing service. She was on the TV show The Bachelor 2014 this spring, but she was eliminated at the Rose Ceremony in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Some 40,000 women auditioned for the show, so being chosen was amazing in itself. She has no hard feelings and no regrets. ¶ Dustin Woods has been living in Beijing as the head strength and conditioning coach for the Chinese Olympic Skating Association and the strength and speed coach for the Chinese shorttrack team, which was responsible for six of China’s nine medals at the Sochi Winter Olympic games. “We did speed

training where we’re pulling sleds, pushing sleds, using resistance bands, actually running while using different energy systems while using resistance.

I think that made a big difference in their endurance and that’s something they’d never done.” Dustin says he tries to make his workouts fun and laid back.

He plays music in the workout room and is a good sport when the entire squad jumps him and gang-tickles him. He and his wife, Allyse, also spend a lot of time with the skaters outside of practice.

10

Reunion ¶ Married: Amanda

Fisher and Edward Davis ’11

MAcc ’12, April 20, 2013, at Assumption

Catholic Church in Chicago. (See photo of the 31 Miamians surrounding the new Mr. and Mrs. Davis during their wedding reception at the Chicago Mart Plaza in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.) ¶ Christyn Keyes, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep Dave Joyce since December 2012, is now working for U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, according to the Hudson Hub-Times.

She is Portman’s press secretary for northern and eastern Ohio. She previously worked at the National Republican Congressional Committee and for U.S. Rep Steve Chabot. ¶ Lauren McBride graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2013 with a master’s in higher education and has returned to Miami as the senior assistant director for diversity initiatives in the Office of Admission. ¶ Joseph Pasquinelli Jr., OD, graduated magna cum laude from Ohio State University’s College of Optometry in May 2014. He lives in central Ohio and has recently joined the private practice of EyeCare Associates in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, as an associate. ¶ Married: Leah West and Ben L’Ecuyer ’09, Dec. 15, 2013, in Kumler Chapel. Leah writes, “Just

class notes

wanted to praise Miami University for the wonderful wedding we had in December. It was such a beautiful wintery day. We had all our family and friends there. More than 20 of our Miami friends came! Also, we had our reception and spent our wedding night at Marcum Hotel and Conference Center. Jane did an awesome job pulling off my vision for the perfect reception. Miami is truly a beautiful campus, and every day I miss spending time there.”

11

Alison Angelo graduated

June 1, 2014, from St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, N.Y. ¶ Jennifer Bondy PhD ’11 is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences in Blacksburg, Va. Her research areas include gender, immigration, and education, and sociocultural frameworks in education. At Virginia Tech, she is teaching courses on gender and education and social studies methods. She holds a PhD in curriculum theory and cultural studies from Miami, where she received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the department of educational leadership to fund doctoral research on Latina youths’ citizenship and identity formations. ¶ Married: Jessica DeWitt and Joe Kinney, Oct. 11, 2013, in Cincinnati. They met their senior year at Miami while working at Steinkeller’s and were engaged two years later while living in Cincinnati. They now live in Charlotte, N.C. ¶ Married: Maria Tremont and Robert Gulley, June 8, 2013, in Sarasota, Fla. They live in Chicago.

12

The Return of Free Willy, a team made up of Miami alumni and current Miami students, was the last team standing when 16

teams gathered at the University of Cincinnati’s Sheakley Athletic Complex (aka The Bubble) to compete in the TQL Tackle Childhood Cancer Flag Football Tournament Nov. 2, 2013.

Proceeds benefited CancerFree KIDS in Loveland, Ohio. The mission of CancerFree KIDS is to eradicate childhood cancer as a life threatening disease. The organization was founded by Sam ’84 and Ellen Rasch Flannery ’84 after their baby daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 5 months of age. That baby is now a healthy high school student. Taking home the coveted Best Flag Football Team in Cincinnati trophy, Return of Free Willy teammates are Dusty Carroll ’12, Bob Gurr ’10, Doug Gurr ’14, Blaine Odenweller ’10, Clay Odenweller ’08, Rodney Hiler ’12, Chad Collins ’10, Greg Murray ’09, Mark Meece, and Mike Mechler. (See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum. org/Miamian.) ¶ Married: Jamie Forsthoefel and David Mead ’13, June 29, 2013, in Centerville, Ohio. Jamie works at St. Joseph Regional Catholic School in Florence, Ala., where they live. David is a process engineer with the PCA Corp.

13

Luke Bennett graduated in

December 2013 with an engineering degree from Miami. He also completed the Navy ROTC program at Miami, so before he received his diploma he was commissioned into the Navy by his older brother, Ben, a U.S. Marine Corps first lieutenant.

According to The Newark Advocate, while growing up in Granville, Ohio, the Bennett brothers always talked about joining the military together.

Luke told the Advocate reporter, “To have him commission me into the Navy kind of meant the world to me.

Knowing that I would get to serve

together with my brother was an awesome moment.” ¶ Sarah Darkow cheered on the RedHawk football and basketball teams for four years.

Sarah is a fourth-generation Miamian.

Other Miamians in her family include grandmother Opal Stager Lease ’38, great-aunt Louise Stager Boli ’46, aunt Deborah Lease ’78 MM ’91, and mother Barbara Lease Darkow ’80 MEd ’83.

Sarah is a third-generation Miami cheerleader. Cheering Miami on before her were great-aunt Louise and her daughter, Mary Ann Boli Packo ’77.

(See photo in online Miamian class notes, MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.)

14

Joe Erra Ayuyu Jr. took the oath of office Feb. 27, 2014, to serve on the Commonwealth Zoning Board a day after the Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation confirmed his appointment by an 18-0 vote. “I’m nervous [about my appointment], but I have faith in the people around me. With their support, I will learn [about] and do what’s best for the CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean),” Joe told the crowd at the zoning office in Dandan.

Natalie Harr MEd ’09, seen here in Antarctica, received a 2012 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. She was one of 102 K-12 educators to receive the $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation, which she accepted in March 2014 in Washington, D.C. Natalie is a first-grade teacher at Crestwood Primary School in Mantua, Ohio. “I am honored to be considered a role model in my field as I strive to make science relevant to learners …and encourage them to view themselves and their teachers as scientists who make a difference.”

Summer 2014

45

farewells 1930’S Ruth Hollencamp Prugh ’32, Xenia, Ohio, Feb. 20, 2014.

Mary Spring Herring ’35 MEd ’40, Arroyo Grande, Calif., March 14, 2014.

Robert E. Shull ’36, Doylestown, Pa., Jan. 21, 2014.

Joseph W. Kneisley ’39, Wilmington, Del., Feb. 19, 2014.

1940’S Emily Robinson Kinkley ’40, Basking Ridge, N.J., March 27, 2014.

Margaret Clark Morgan ’40, Santa Rosa, Calif., Sept. 22, 2013.

Charles J. Pecoy ’40, Greer, S.C., Feb. 14, 2014.

Martha E. Pera-Woodward ’40, Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio, Dec. 19, 2013.

Harold Bondhus ’41, Oxford, Ohio, Jan. 13, 2014.

John A. Carsten ’41, Pinehurst, N.C., Feb. 14, 2014.

James T. Howell ’41, Durham, N.C., Jan. 14, 2014.

Mary Wardwell Kirkendol ’41, Charlotte, N.C., Feb. 11, 2014.

Donald A. Haas ’42, Findlay, Ohio, Jan. 8, 2014.

Marjorie Hart Lange ’42, Mentor, Ohio, Feb. 15, 2014.

Dudley A. Wood Jr. ’42, Oberlin, Ohio, Jan. 8, 2014.

Betty Ball Walter ’43, Copley, Ohio, Dec. 28, 2013.

William C. Falk ’44, Oxford, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2014.

Janet Kelly Irey ’44, Mansfield, Ohio, Jan. 5, 2014.

Martha Speckman Klopf ’44, Naples, Fla., March 9, 2014.

Marilyn Archey Evans ’45, Adamstown, Md., Feb. 6, 2014.

46

miamian magazine

Wallace J. Hagedorn ’45, Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 21, 2013.

Terrence E. Bradley ’46, Berea, Ohio, Feb. 25, 2014.

Erwin D. Russell ’46, Glendale, Wis., Nov. 22, 2013.

Frank W. Szabo ’46, Ithaca, N.Y., Jan. 22, 2014.

Laura Weik Addison ’47, Yukon, Okla., Nov. 26, 2013.

Rebecca Elsner Alpern ’47, Ann Arbor, Mich., Feb. 9, 2014.

Donald J. Bettinger ’47, Twinsburg, Ohio, Dec. 6, 2013.

Harold W. Eyler ’47, Russellville, Ohio, March 2, 2013.

Jerry L. Hammon ’47, Clayton, Ohio, Oct. 18, 2013.

George H. Palmer ’47, Lyme, N.H., Feb. 24, 2014.

George H. Zimmerman ’47 MM ’51, Kettering, Ohio, Jan. 1, 2014.

Ruth Shepherd Frank ’48, Jacksonville Beach, Fla., Dec. 20, 2013.

Edgar D. Gates ’48, Lantana, Fla., Nov. 16, 2013.

Robert J. Kremple ’48, Nevada City, Calif., Feb. 2, 2014.

Carl H. Lavin ’48, Canton, Ohio, Jan. 20, 2014.

Mary E. McDaniel ’48, Englewood, Colo., Jan. 7, 2014.

William P. Porter ’48, Centerville, Ohio, Dec. 2, 2013.

John R. Allen ’49, Chapel Hill, N.C., Nov. 12, 2013.

Robert E. Gifford ’49, Hamilton, Ohio, Jan. 27, 2014.

Rose Mary Snider Green ’49, Silver Lake, Ohio, March 28, 2014.

Elizabeth Fuller Lueders ’49, Minneapolis, Minn., Jan. 28, 2014.

1950’S William J. “Jim” Malcom ’50, Wimberley, Texas, March 28, 2014.

Ruth Helwig Morrison ’50, Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., Feb. 17, 2014.

John R. Perkins Sr. ’50, Boardman, Ohio, Dec. 20, 2013.

Margaret Smith Willis ’50, North Canton, Ohio, Jan. 19, 2014.

Kenneth J. Allerman ’51 MEd ’52, Vero Beach, Fla., Jan. 9, 2014.

Russell R. Rausch ’54, Westlake, Ohio, Nov. 24, 2013.

Ronald L. Siereveld ’54 MEd ’59, Elkhart, Ind., Nov. 19, 2013.

Patricia Soller Tarvin ’54, Naples, Fla., March 10, 2014.

David A. Wakefield ’54 MS ’55, Madeira, Ohio, Oct. 27, 2013.

Elizabeth Lowe Dovenbarger ’51, Madison, Wis., Jan. 16, 2014.

Susan Stocker O’Neill ’55, Fairfield Township, Ohio, Dec. 14, 2013.

Alice Guckian Dunmyer ’51, Noblesville, Ind., Feb. 20, 2014.

Harold S. Hobson Jr. ’56, Fishers, Ind., Nov. 1, 2013.

Patricia J. Mannix ’51, New Carlisle, Ohio, Feb. 24, 2014.

Richard L. Titus ’56, Elyria, Ohio, Feb. 9, 2014.

Raymond W. Nein ’51, Maineville, Ohio, Dec. 13, 2013.

James E. Hartman ’57, Trenton, Ohio, Jan. 21, 2014.

Loren E. Orr ’51, Rushville, Ind., Nov. 12, 2013.

Robert S. Kelling Jr. ’57, Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 3, 2014.

Paul G. Price ’51, Urbana, Ohio, March 7, 2014.

Lee R. Suman ’57 MEd ’59, Hamilton, Ohio, Nov. 2, 2013.

Louis E. Verbryke ’51, Huntington Beach, Calif., Nov. 21, 2013.

Dallas L. “Dilly” Tucker ’57, Port Charlotte, Fla., April 10, 2014.

Jeanne Hines Wright ’51, Fairborn, Ohio, Nov. 21, 2013.

Howard L. Bricker ’53, Galena, Ohio, Nov. 15, 2013.

Howard H. Lentner ’58, Yonkers, N.Y., Feb. 5, 2014.

Charles L. Mendenhall ’58, Laguna Hills, Calif., Jan. 26, 2014.

Harold E. Cline ’53 MEd ’55, Centerville, Ohio, Feb. 18, 2014.

Anna Sperling Klepper ’59 MAT ’63, Kettering, Ohio, Jan. 28, 2014.

Linda K. Fitzgerald ’53, Hamilton, Ohio, Dec. 16, 2013.

Eugene T. Lawson ’59, Hamilton, Ohio, Jan. 11, 2014.

Robert O. Holland ’53, Fort Thomas, Ky., Dec. 14, 2013.

Lisa Barbieri Sizemore ’59 MEd ’61, Oxford, Ohio, June 15, 2013.

Marjorie Shiplet Jackson ’53, Hamilton, Ohio, Feb. 12, 2014.

Andrew F. Klimko ’53, Medina, Ohio, Dec. 8, 2013.

Vida Butcher Wilson ’53, Elmhurst, Ill., Nov. 3, 2013.

Carol Foster Best ’54 MEd ’56, Riverside, Calif., Oct. 18, 2013.

Marilyn Wade Duff ’54, Fullerton, Calif., March 3, 2014.

Lee D. Joyner ’54, Metuchen, N.J., Oct. 14, 2013.

Richard W. Smith ’59, Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 26, 2014.

1960’S Arthur J. Biddle ’60, Elmhurst, Ill., Sept. 15, 2013.

Florence Fox Thesken Carson ’60, Nevada City, Calif., Feb. 15, 2014.

Claudia Holeton Triplett ’60, Newark, Ohio, Dec. 22, 2013.

Donald E. Bardine ’61, Akron, Ohio, Dec. 1, 2013.

farewells

Ann Haughey Woolley ’61, La Jolla, Calif., Jan. 15, 2014.

Mary Dix Armstrong ’68, Winchester, Va., Nov. 16, 2013.

Barry R. Damm ’78, Hilliard, Ohio, Jan. 31, 2014.

David A. Goldsmith ’06, San Diego, Calif., Feb. 11, 2014.

Teri Taylor Beals ’62, Oklahoma City, Okla., Oct. 23, 2013.

Joseph “Jerry” Heiser ’68, Morehead City, N.C., Nov. 15, 2013.

Timothy J. Noonan ’78, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 16, 2014.

Albert J. Hodapp IV ’10, Dayton, Ohio, Feb. 12, 2014.

Ginger Rogers Chase ’62, Denver, Colo., April 3, 2014.

Robert M. Sirk ’68, Hamilton, Ohio, Jan. 11, 2014.

Paula Cannon Schwab ’79, Centerville, Ohio, March 21, 2014.

Courtney M. Short ’14, Zanesville, Ohio, March 28, 2014.

Helen Oheran Erickson ’62 MEd ’70, Oxford, Ohio, Nov. 17, 2013.

Geoffrey P. Hall ’69, Atlanta, Ga., Nov. 4, 2013.

Jerry L. Pittenger ’69, Powell, Ohio, Jan. 2, 2014.

1980’S Donna Shell Baker ’80, Hamilton, Ohio, Oct. 24, 2013.

Felicia Peppers Young ’69, Rocky River, Ohio, Nov. 9, 2013.

John N. Freskos ’80, St. Louis, Mo., Dec. 14, 2013.

FACULTY, STAFF, AND FRIENDS Shirley B. Deaton, Hamilton, Ohio, March 4, 2014. Retired from Miami housekeeping, 1987-2009.

Judith Markus Hardy ’62, Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 5, 2013.

Thomas L. Kerr ’62, Monroe, Ohio, Nov. 24, 2013.

Marilyn Metzger LaPorte ’62, Mansfield, Ohio, Feb. 21, 2014.

Barbara Buehner Derington ’63 MA ’66, St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 4, 2013.

Michael R. Tye ’63, Sarasota, Fla., Aug. 28, 2013.

B. David Vickroy ’63, Kettering, Ohio, Nov. 26, 2013.

Betty Kostura Wilhelm ’63, Forest Hill, Md., Feb. 7, 2014.

Sharon Long Donnelly ’64, Lakewood, Ohio, Dec. 24, 2013.

Noel E. Kaech ’64 MA ’68, Springfield, Ohio, Jan. 11, 2014.

Timothy A. Taylor ’64, Westlake, Ohio, Nov. 15, 2013.

Patricia Rahn Fritsche ’65, Muskegon, Mich., Dec. 24, 2013.

Mary Helen Stoltenberg Masters ’65, Naples, Fla., March 12, 2014.

Dorothy Allingham Spinney ’65, Salem, Mass., Jan. 23, 2014.

Raymond A. Gates ’66, Carmichael, Calif., Feb. 9, 2014.

Janiece Hashimoto KelleyKiteley ’66, Olmsted Township, Ohio, Sept. 13, 2013.

Laurence B. Amick ’67, Pleasant Hill, Ohio, Oct. 16, 2013.

Sharon A. Receveur ’67, Louisville, Ky., Nov. 11, 2013.

1970’S Keith A. Carter ’70, Park Hills, Ky., Oct. 18, 2013.

Phyllis Drossin Hulewat ’70, Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2014.

Kathryn Wingo Denick ’71, Westerville, Ohio, Jan. 2, 2014.

Alice Barnes Futrell ’71, Greenville, Ohio, Jan. 20, 2014.

Gary S. Vickers ’71, Danville, Va., Dec. 21, 2013.

Carol Neal Melancon Souza ’72, Alta Loma, Calif., Feb. 27, 2014.

Catherine J. Holweger ’73, Middletown, Ohio, Jan. 27, 2014.

Craig A. Kister ’73, Troy, Ohio, Oct. 5, 2013.

John H. Gunst III ’74, San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 18, 2013.

Eddie G. Herald ’74 MEd ’76, South Lebanon, Ohio, Jan. 18, 2014.

Mark F. Weber ’75, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 14, 2014.

Gary A. Jeffcott ’77 MBA ’80, North Canton, Ohio. Dec. 24, 2013.

David L. Lonsinger ’77, Tampa, Fla., Oct. 21, 2013.

Diana Weeks McCormack ’77, Dayton, Ohio, Jan. 17, 2014.

Douglas K. Pioch ’77, Concord Township, Ohio, Nov. 30, 2013.

Kathie Friedman Williams ’77, Franklin Lakes, N.J., Oct. 30, 2013.

Celine Germaine Philibert MBA ’80, Massena, N.Y., Dec. 14, 2013.

Reid E. Vannoy ’80, Tallahassee, Fla., May 26, 2013.

Kenneth E. Lyninger ’81, Eaton, Ohio, Jan. 18, 2014.

Terry D. Austin ’82, Lewis Center, Ohio, Oct. 27, 2013.

Sylvia Schulties Krebs MEd ’82, Anderson, Ind., April 10, 2014.

Kelley Robinson Hickey ’84, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 12, 2014.

Julia Vollette Duerksen ’86, Oxford, Ohio, Aug. 20, 2013.

Mary Mason McCauley MTSC ’87, Sheffield Lake, Ohio, Jan. 26, 2014.

1990’S Larry J. Yoder ’96, Tega Cay, S.C., Dec. 2, 2013.

2000’S Timothy W. Clark ’00, West Chester, Ohio, Jan. 26, 2014.

Leland J. Crow ’00, Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 21, 2013.

Paul A. Seal ’02, Liberty Township, Ohio, Dec. 23, 2013.

Royal F. Jewett ’69, Oxford, Ohio, Feb. 21, 2014. Miami director emeritus, student housing services, 1963–1993.

Robert L. Kane, Oxford, Ohio, Jan. 2, 2014. Miami professor emeritus of classics, 1962–2000.

David C. Kinser, Oxford, Ohio, March 31, 2014. Miami building and grounds assistant.

Elizabeth W. Lane, Oxford, Ohio, March 13, 2014. Miami professor emerita of music, 1948–1982.

Gilbert E. Pacey, Oxford, Ohio, Jan. 29, 2014. Miami professor emeritus of chemistry, 1979–2010.

Sandra L. Seefeld, Somerville, Ohio, Feb. 17, 2014. Miami professor emerita of music, 1977–2007.

Carl N. “Nick” Steele, Camden, Ohio, Jan. 19, 2014. Retired from Miami in 2005 after 25 years.

Victor L. Thomas, Monroe, Ohio, Jan. 30, 2014. Retired, Miami employee relations in 1987.

Rebecca F. Wilkins, Hamilton, Ohio, Nov. 28, 2013. Worked at Miami for more than 20 years.

Harry T. Wilks ’48, Hamilton, Ohio, March 11, 2014. Miami trustee, 2008–2016.

In Memory of… If you would like to make a contribution in memory of a classmate, friend, or relative, 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. More classmates are remembered online at MiamiAlum.org/Miamian.

Summer 2014

47

days of old

The Desk Where Harriet Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 10,000 copes in the U.S. its first week, 300,000 its first year. It’s been translated into 60+ languages.

48

miamian magazine

In the northwest corner of a second-floor guest room in Patterson Place, former home to Western College presidents and now to the Western College Alumnae Association, stands a desk on which Harriet Beecher Stowe is said to have written “a large portion” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

According to the 1954 book The Western College for Women: 1853–1953, the desk was donated by the Tichenor family in the 1860s or ’70s after the death of Gabriel Tichenor, one of the first benefactors and trustees of Western, originally known as the Western Female Seminary. Tichenor was a good friend of the Rev. Daniel Tenney, founder of the seminary.

Tichenor and his wife were also good friends and neighbors to the Stowes in Cincinnati.

Author Narka Nelson writes, “Gabriel Tichenor as a young man had been a planter in Mississippi and had owned a great many slaves. Becoming convinced that it was a sin to own slaves, he had freed them and moved with his family to Walnut Hills in Cincinnati.”

Hailing from New England, Mrs. Stowe knew little about the South, which is why, reportedly, she spent a great deal of time at the Tichenors’ desk writing and editing while Mr. Tichenor critiqued her anti-slavery manuscript.

Originally run in 40 installments in the antislavery newspaper The National Era, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly was published in 1852 as a two-volume book and became an immediate best-seller.

days of old

Students gain an entirely new perspective about Miami during Springfest 2014 on Cook Field.

Fall 2013

49

THE

CAT HAT BEHIND THE

As overseer of Dr. Seuss’ estate, Bob Chase ’91 juggles many hats.

See page 22 for the story.