‰ march June 2019 2019
THE FROZEN RIBBON Sculptor Byron Rubin ’65 traces the infinitesimal symmetries that govern life— and death.
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‰ JUNE 2019
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Why America Should Stay Open
Departments 6 Eliot Circular Austen Scholar Named 16th President of Reed. Giant Chalk Inches Closer To Glory. Inspiration From a Pinwheel. Profs Get Tenure, Win Awards.
New book by Prof. Kim Clausing lays out the case for free trade.
By Anya Schiffrin ’84 16
12 Advocates of the Griffin
Too Much Treatment
18
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28 Reediana
Books, Films, and Music by Reedies
Lucinda Parker: Force Fields by Roger Hull How to be a Patient by Sana Goldberg ’12 The Night Swimmers by Prof. Peter Rock And many more.
Deconstructing Wall Street
The Financial Services Fellowship gives Reed students insight into the world of power and money.
32 Class Notes
By Romel Hernandez 22
News of the Alumni Association
Forum for Advancing Reed Camp Westwind Call for Nominations
Many doctors misread lab results, according to Dan Morgan ’96, leading to unnecessary care. By Tom Kertscher
above photo: mark abramson
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lauren labarre
Features
News from our classmates.
38 In Memoriam
The Molecule Bender
Honoring classmates, professors, and friends who have died.
Alumni ringleader Caroline Locher-Stein ’67 Professor Charles Svitavsky [English 1961–98] And too many more
Sculptor Byron Rubin ’65 traces the fearful symmetries that govern life— and death.
48 Object of Study
By Bill Donahue
22
What we’re looking at in class
Students in Hum 110 examine Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.
JUNE 2019 Reed Magazine
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Letter from the editor
june 2019
www.reed.edu/reed-magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 98, No. 2 REED MAGAZINE editor
Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu writer/In Memoriam editor
Randall S. Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu writer/reediana editor
Katie Pelletier ’03 503/777-7727 pelletic@reed.edu class notes editor
Joanne Hossack ’82 joanne@reed.edu art director
Tom Humphrey tom.humphrey@reed.edu
The Art of Science Art and science. It’s a handy way to categorize human endeavor, an imperfect but useful shorthand. But sometimes I worry that the straightforward distinction between art and science is becoming a sociological division between artists and scientists. From an early age, we push our children to identify with one group or the other. We pack their lunch boxes and send them to magnet schools for science and math, or the arts, or the performing arts—sometimes before they can even read. How is a fifth-grader supposed to choose between charcoal pencils and bunsen burners? The results are predictable. By the time they graduate from high school, many of them identify themselves as creative types destined for artsy careers or disciplined types headed for STEM degrees. DaVinci would weep. The whole thing is a load of nonsense, of course, as demonstrated by artist-scientist Byron Rubin ’65, whose sculpture of the protein Rantes, a critical component of the immune system, graces the cover of this magazine. As you’ll see in Bill Donahue’s fascinating profile on page 22, Byron spent much of his career as a research chemist wrestling with the fiendish problem of identifying the structure of proteins before he became a sculptor. His work operates on many levels simultaneously. First, it highlights the sinuous, 2
Reed Magazine june 2019
grammatical kapeLlmeister
Virginia O. Hancock ’62
shimmering geometry of the macromolecules that govern life and death. It also depicts a spectacular intellectual triumph— the mapping of these infinitesimal entities, a cartographical exploit which rivals Ptolemy and Al Idrisi. And on a deeper level still, it provokes a combination of awe and wonder about the workings of the world and our place in it. What strikes me about Byron’s career
What strikes me about Byron’s career is that it shows how both art and science require similar skills. is that it shows how both art and science require similar skills. Creativity. Ingenuity. Discipline. Curiosity. A willingness to take risks. A sense of adventure. And a dogged determination to finish a project to its conclusion. Let’s help our students develop and strengthen these skills, no matter what field they ultimately pursue.
—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90
REED COLLEGE Acting president
Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs
Mandy Heaton Reed College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts and sciences devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity. Reed Magazine provides news of interest to the Reed community. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs. Reed Magazine (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed Magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202-8138
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Black Student, White City
[Re “Black Student, White City,” March 2019] Thank you for publishing this important story. It is often thought that Oregon has always been a bastion of liberalism and tolerance, but as the article states, “racial discrimination extended back to the exclusion laws enacted at the founding of the Oregon Territory in 1844” and “the Oregon chapter of the Ku Klux Klan—the group’s largest chapter west of the Mississippi—exerted powerful political and economic presence throughout the state.” Indeed, my family was directly involved, both as persecutor and persecuted. On my father’s side, my two great uncles, of pioneer stock and born and raised in Medford, Oregon, were members of the KKK. On my mother’s side, a Czech immigrant family, the harassment of Catholic school children affected my mother directly, as she walked to and from the Catholic school. The KKK was not only anti-black, it was also anti-Catholic and antiJewish, giving rise to the folk definition of its KKK initials: koons, kikes, and katholics. And, as the article states, there was “systemic and institutional racism” throughout the state, including in Eugene, where I grew up. I attended the only high school in town at the time, where, out of a student population of around 1,500, there was only a handful of black students, all of whom lived outside the city limits near Fern Ridge Lake. I later learned that the City of Eugene had a law outlawing blacks from living inside the city limits, which was only removed after LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Sadly, white supremacy and racism persist in many places in the USA today. Judith Hendershott MAT ’66 London, United Kingdom
photo courtesy of Regina Guienze Tinti
Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may only run half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left.
The Mil-Bee Club’s refusal to serve Inez Freeman ’48 (center) sparked the “Fair Rose” campaign.
I hope John Sheehy’s excellent piece relating how Reedies responded to neighborhood racism in 1947 will have special meaning to those of us from earlier decades and provide revealing college history to younger alumni. When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1952 the Fair Rose campaign was still underway, and Connie Rumbold ’57 recruited me to visit a few businesses in the area. But since few if any students from five years before were still around, there was no institutional memory that the expulsion of Inez Freeman ’48 from a Reedie hangout had triggered the movement. So John’s account of how most (but not all) Reedies boycotted the bar in protest and launched Fair Rose was a revelation. By my time the formerly racist bar, which we knew as “Fox’s,” did serve Bill Couch [English 1953-55], Reed’s only black professor. But I don’t remember it displayed the Fair Rose. I also learned that in its racist days it was called the “Mil-Bee Club,” probably its original name since it opened in 1934. The dive bar is still there, named Kay’s since it replaced Fox’s in 1958. Michael Munk ’56 Portland The article on Inez Freeman ’48 explores Portland’s racist past. What about its present? A Reed graduate, Taliesin Myrddin NamkaiMeche ’16, was one of two men murdered by a racist while trying to defend Muslim passengers on public transit in 2017. Have Reedies participated in the mobilizations against the fascists of Patriot Prayer who are rooted in the Portland area? Have they demanded the firing of the police who not only consistently attack anti-fascist protesters but failed to arrest the right-wingers who brought a cache of guns to demonstrations last summer? If the answer to these questions is
Yes, your next issue should feature an article on this. If the answer is No, the article on Freeman should be a call to renewed action. As a veteran of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen who wore white robes by night and police uniforms by day, the chant “Cops and Klan go hand in hand” expresses reality. The threat is as real in Portland as in Charlottesville. As a student of history as well as an activist, I take the growth of the fascist right seriously. The German capitalist class ultimately welcomed Hitler and turned power over to him directly. Such an outcome is not impossible in the United States unless people organize a conscious resistance. With police killing a person of color roughly once every 28 hours, with approximately a thousand U.S. military bases circling and policing the globe, and with the national security state recording every single phone call, email, and text message sent, we are already dangerously far down the road. Bob Mandel ’66 Richmond, CA
Quirk of Time and Space
Kathleen Saadat ’74 [“Voice of Conscience,” December 2018] was a participant in one of those quirks of time and space that have happened to me over the years. In 1975, I was commuting to my job in Manhattan on the MetroNorth when I looked up and saw in a copy of the New York Times of another commuter an obituary for Oliver Nelson, the outstanding arranger, composer, saxophonist, and leader of the celebrated recording “The Blues and the Abstract Truth.” I bought the Times that day to read the obituary, of which I remember nothing. I knew Kathleen had known him in St. Louis. Shortly after that I had a dream about Kathleen in which she was wearing a long white gown, her face wan and drawn, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying. It was clearly an image of mourning. The next summer I returned to Portland for a vacation. Muffie Sunde ’73 told me Kathleen had invited me to a dinner she was cooking for friends. As I walked in the door, Kathleen said, “Steve, what happened to Oliver Nelson?” I replied that he had died. She said, “I knew you would know.” I told her that if not for looking at the back of the newspaper that moment, I would not have known. Then I told her about my dream. She said that actually she was friends with his wife, not with him. Steve Hertzberg ’74 Denver, Colorado june 2019 Reed Magazine
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Letters to Reed Let’s Hear It for Mardy Murie ’23
Rising
This is a rather del aye d comment on the excerpt f ro m “ R i s i n g ” b y Elizabeth Rush ’06 in the December issue, which describes the erosional disappearance of Louisiana’s wetlands and its effect on inhabitants. I worked in New Orleans as an oil and gas exploration geophysicist from 1980–84 and in Lafayette, LA from 1985–87. A fair amount of my work was in the shallow waters around the delta, so I had a close look at the rapid disappearance of land. As Ms. Rush states, the locks,
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USFWS
Margaret Murie’s journey to Reed was rather different from most other students’, even by 1919 standards of travel. She was the sole passenger on the last run by horse-drawn sled and dogsled down the Valdez Trail from Fairbanks, which would be replaced by a railroad the next year. Writing of Fairbanks winters at 50–60°F below zero and crossing river ice in May on her journey to Reed, Mardy describes an Alaska I will never know due to a climate that is warming and changing faster than almost anywhere else. I came to Alaska for my thesis research four years ago. I still haven’t left. This land grabs you, holds you tight, whispers silence in your ear, and breathes frost in your nostrils. Mardy loved this land and fought tirelessly to protect it. Her enduring legacy—advocating for the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980—is crowned by her work for the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). This remarkable woman deserves wider recognition among the Reed community. Though she did not finish her degree at Reed (going on to become the first woman to graduate from what is now the University of Alaska Fairbanks), many of her family did, and her legacy as a great American conservationist should vault her to the top of the list of notable Reed alumni. Today, ANWR is under renewed threat by the Trump administration’s abhorrent decision to open leases for oil drilling in this highly vulnerable ecosystem. Let us honor Mardy as we reaffirm our fight against the exploitation of this land, as we elevate the voices of those too often silenced, and as we assert, once again, that there will always be those who will stand up for the preservation of wilderness. Heather MacFarlane ’15 Marysville, Washington
Author, naturalist, and wilderness advocate Margaret Murie ’23 cuts firewood in Alaska..
dams, levees, floodwalls, larger storms, and also the channels built by oil companies (quite a while ago) have indeed had a huge influence on the existing delta. New sediment is not being deposited in many areas that it had been. I would like to add the following comments that relate to this land disappearance. In 1879, Capt. James Eads improved navigation on the river by building large jetties on the southwest channel of the delta, thereby guiding the great majority of the river’s flow directly into deep water, along with all of its sediment. This dramatically reduced the need to continually dredge a deep channel for shipping, especially through those bothersome river mouth sand bars. At the time, it was greatly appreciated and well-rewarded. In 1963, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers completed the Old River Control Structure, well up-river from New Orleans. Without this structure, the Mississippi would, by 1990, have changed course into the Atchafalaya Basin, a much shorter route to the sea. This would have been bad news for the Port of New Orleans. There are quite a few old deltas of the Mississippi in Louisiana and the current one would have joined them but for this structure. This would have been the normal course of nature. The soil of New Orleans and I’m pretty sure the rest of coastal Louisiana is very sandy.
When it rains hard the water can get deep in the streets, but it drains through the soil rather quickly (barring major flooding). The flip side of this porous soil is that it’s compacting rather rapidly. Therefore, the sediment under New Orleans is steadily sinking, quite rapidly in a geologic sense. Without new river deposits it will ultimately sink under the waves. Man-made structures and man-caused rising sea levels are eating away at coastlines. New Orleans itself is likely doomed anyway, but it would be nice if, at least, the sediment load coming down the river could be used for land-building somewhere along the coastline. Another unfortunate man-made issue is the agricultural runoff that washes into the Gulf of Mexico every summer and creates an annual “dead zone” with low oxygen levels. It kills or otherwise harms aquatic life such as shrimp and fish. The 2017 dead zone was the largest on record. As human beings become more conscious of the large-scale consequences of our actions, there is hope that solutions will be found. The sooner the better. Will Darken ’70 Edwards, Colorado
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 9 A.M. RACE START IN THE QUAD The 8th annual Reed College 5K FUNd RUN/WALK is a fundraiser for neighborhood elementary schools: Duniway, Grout, Lewis, Llewellyn, and Woodstock. ♦ Free Pancake Breakfast ♦ Live Music ♦ Vendor Booths ♦ Kids’ Activities ♦ Tech T-shirts ♦ Participant Medallions ♦ Awards SPONSOR, VOLUNTEER, OR REGISTER TODAY!
reed.edu/5k
Eliot Circular news from campus
Austen Scholar Named 16th President of Reed The board of trustees has named Audrey founding faculty director for the Center for on the Ms. Magazine Committee of Scholars Bilger as the 16th president of Reed. Bilger Writing and Public Discourse, chair of the lit- and was the Gender and Sexuality section edihails from Pomona College, where she served erature department, and coordinator of gen- tor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her work as vice president for academic affairs, dean of der studies. has appeared in Ms., the Paris Review, the San the college, and professor of English. She will Bilger is a prolific author whose acclaimed Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. be Reed’s first female president. work focuses on comedy, Jane Austen, the “I have a profound respect for Reed’s Bilger earned an MA and a PhD in English English novel, feminist theory, popular cul- intellectual traditions, and I share the valfrom the University of Virginia and a BA in ture, and gender and sexuality. Her most ues expressed in Reed’s mission,” she says. philosophy from Oklahoma State University. recent book, Here Come the Brides! Reflections “Reed is doing something that is rare in highShe was a member of the English faculty at on Lesbian Love and Marriage, coedited with er education today. It will be a privilege and Oberlin College and professor of literature at Michele Kort, was a 2013 Lambda Literary delight to champion this community of scholClaremont McKenna College. She held sev- Award finalist. She is the author of Laughing ars and to serve as president of an institution eral leadership positions during her 22-year Feminism: Subversive Comedy in Frances Burney, engaged in such critical work.” Bilger will start work July 1. tenure at Claremont McKenna, including Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. She serves
PHOTO BY lauren lebarre
Eliot Circular
From a Pinwheel, Inspiration Rising on the north side of campus amid the pounding of hammers and the buzz of sawblades, Reed’s new residence hall now has a name—Trillium. Clea Taylor, assistant director of residence life, came up with the idea. The dorm features an innovative pinwheel design, with three wings radiating from a central hub. This threefold symmetry reminded her of a trillium, which has three petals. “It just seemed very Reed,” she says. “It’s perfect,” says Towny Angell, director of facilities operations. “Trilliums are just wonderful, mystical ,marvelous plants. Three
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beautiful petals to match the three wings of the dorm.” The flowers are native to Oregon and abound in the Reed canyon, where they bloom every spring. The $27-million dorm is part of a broader initiative to help students succeed at Reed. Every square foot is designed to promote a sense of community and provide access to support while meeting LEED Platinum standards. It will be home to 180 students starting this fall, providing a significant boost to Reed’s stock of campus housing, which currently stands at 946 beds. —CYAN SCORNSO
Trillium features a distinctive pinwheel design with three wings radiating from a central hub.
dorm photo and professors photo by tom humphrey
Four Professors Earn Tenure
PHOTO BY ZAC PERRY
Trilliums are native to the Pacific Northwest and grow in profusion in the Reed Canyon.
The board of trustees has granted tenure to four outstanding Reed professors. From left to right, we present: Prof. Derek Applewhite [biology] is an expert on the cytoskeleton, the network of filaments that gives a cell its shape and allows it to move. Since joining Reed in 2014, he has won two major grants: one from the NIH to investigate the genetic origins of cleft palate, and one from the NSF (together with Prof. Anna Ritz) to investigate a key protein known as non-muscle myosin II. At Reed, he teaches intro biology, cellular biology, and cytoskeletal dynamics. Before Reed, he was a postdoc at the University of North Carolina. He earned his PhD from Northwestern University and his BS from the University of Michigan. Prof. Angélica Osorno [math] is an expert on algebraic topology. She is particularly interested in higher category theory and its connections with higher K-theory, and both nonequivariant and equivariant stable homotopy theory, and she has published more than a dozen scholarly papers on these topics. In 2017 she won (with Prof. Kyle Ormsby) a major grant from the NSF to do research on homotopy theory. She has also earned a Simons Collaboration grant and a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. At Reed, she teaches
topology, linear algebra, multivariate calculus, and analysis. Before coming to Reed in 2013, she was a postdoc at the University of Chicago. She earned her PhD and BSc from MIT. Prof. Christian Kroll [Spanish] focuses on 20th- and 21st- century Latin American literature and culture. His research interests include critical, spatial, and political theory, state violence and the languages of resistance, and the relation between culture, politics, and the production of space. He holds a PhD in romance languages and literatures from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in urban planning. He was a practitioner architect before turning to academia. Prof. Sarah Wagner-McCoy [English] studies 19th- and 20th-century American fiction, transatlantic literature and culture, Irish drama and Irish studies, pastoral and environmental writing, and the politics of classical education in postbellum America. She teaches courses in the American con artist, transatlantic bestsellers, Southern fiction, American pastoral, modern Irish drama, and Hum 110. She was featured in Reed Magazine for her discovery of several lost manuscripts of African American novelist Charles Chesnutt.
june 2019 Reed Magazine
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nina johnson ’99
tom humphrey
Eliot Circular
Poet Wins Rome Prize
—SEBASTIAN ZINN ’18
10 Reed Magazine june 2019
Community, Creativity, and Comics Congrats to art major Rose Driver ’19, who won a prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study comics and the communities of artists who create them in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Germany, and Belgium. Her project, titled “Making Comics Together,” will explore how artists support each other on the long creative journey from first brainwave to final product, or as she put it, “the catharsis, companionship, conversations, and collective
pride of creating together.” Rose has produced comics on an impressive range of topics, from the Doukhobors, a Russian-Canadian pacifist group, to a history of the word goth, and was bowled over when she heard the news. “I was totally elated,” she says. “I was tearing up!” The Watson Foundation provides 50 fellows from around the nation with a $30,000 stipend to travel the globe pursuing a yearlong project.
Bio Prof Hailed As Outstanding Mentor Prof. Anna Ritz has won the Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award from the National Center for Women and Information Technology for providing “outstanding mentorship” to Reed students in the field of computation. The award also recognizes her work in providing research opportunities, recruiting women and minority students, and generally encouraging students in computing. “I am honored to receive the award, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the fantastic undergrads that I have worked with,” she says. Prof. Ritz is a computer scientist who specializes in computational biology. Since arriving at Reed in 2015, she has mentored 25 students in thesis, summer research, or independent studies. She has supervised several projects in which students
nina johnson ’99
Prof. Samiya Bashir [creative writing 2012–] has won a prestigious Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome to honor artists and scholars who represent “the highest standard of excellence” and who are in the early or middle stages of their careers. The fellowship is designed to support “intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation,” and this year’s 30 fellows include scholars, artists, musicians, architects, thinkers, and preservation/conservation specialists who will spend a year at the academy in Rome. Prof. Bashir teaches creative writing at Reed and is the author of three full-length collections of poetry. Her most recent book, Field Theories, won the 2018 Oregon Book Awards’ Stafford-Hall Award for Poetry. Its title poem won the 2019 Pushcart Prize. She has earned numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. No stranger to artistic collaboration, Bashir created six “video poems” based on poems from Field Theories with video artist Roland Dahwen Wu ’13 of Patuá Films and dancer keyon gaskin of Physical Education. The artistic and cultural legacy that she will carry to Rome will include a purposeful and experimental approach to articulating American myths and the complexity of the black American experience.
applied computer science to the field of systems biology, including one exploring the use of hypergraphs to represent cancer cell data. Women and nonbinary individuals make up the majority of students in her intro classes.
PHOTOs by tom humphrey
Giant Chalk Inches Closer To Glory Reed’s giant stick of chalk inched closer to international fame in March as professional surveyors took measurements to determine whether it belongs in the record books. Prexy bustled with anticipation as approximately two dozen students and observers—including Acting President Hugh Porter—crowded into the basement to witness the momentous occasion. A hush fell over the room as the surveyors, Tim Tye and John Brady of Compass Land Surveyors, sized up the gargantuan stylus. “We’ve never worked on a project quite like this before,” admitted Tye. The chalk was created in January by a team of students who worked frantically to pour buckets of plaster and water into a construction sonotube in the short span of time before the mixture hardened. They then waited several weeks for the chalk to settle and cure before attempting to measure it. To verify that the stick was indeed made of chalk (and not something else), neuroscience major Alex King ’19 took a dark gray brick in his hands and rubbed it against the lip of the chalk. He brandished the brick above his head to reveal a persuasive white line prompting a gasp of approval from the onlookers. As the surveyors worked their way around
the cylindrical behemoth, the atmosphere grew tense. In order to break the record, the chalk would have to exceed benchmark dimensions laid down by authorities from Guinness World Records. Watching the surveyors taking their measurements, it became apparent that the stick would come very close to these parameters. After several minutes and some anxious muttering, Tye pronounced the verdict: • Height: six feet ¼ inch • Diameter: 24 inches exactly • Circumference: six feet 3⅝ inches The results provoked a hopeful cheer from the crowd. If the measurements hold up, the stick will join the record books by a height margin of one and a quarter inches and a diameter margin of three-eighths of an inch. Students involved in the attempt were Alex King, Segovia Garcia, Lorenzo Barrar, Trevor Schlack, Patrick Bedard, Addison Gwynn, Callie Burns, Gianmatteo Martinez, Grayson Perez, Henry Scheffer, Owen Young, Sophie Bender, Caroline Padula, Rafael Sampaio, Anthony Hill, Dante Hickey, A. Tamar Conner, Matthew Atteberry, Kacey Ottenbacher, Peter Cherepanov, Ariel Flaster, Connie Pullan, Miles Woo, Ilana Kim, Fiona Battistoni,
Lorenzo Barrar ’19 and the enigmatic stick of triumph.
Liam Ryan-O’Flaherty, Tayla Isensee, Perry Chan, and Gabriela Bailey. Witnesses included Mai Lon Brosseau ’85, Nadine Fiedler ’89, Kilong Ung ’87, Katherine Kornei, Ardys Dunn, Marvin Dunn, and President Porter. The future of the chalk remains murky. (Or should that be dusty?) The stick weighs at least 1,300 pounds, and getting it out of the basement of Prexy will require a significant feat of engineering. “We’ve talked about cutting it into pieces,” said physics major Lorenzo Barrar ’19. “We might also work it onto some car jacks, put it on a dolly, and get it into the elevator. Or possibly just try to lug it upstairs.” First, however, they’re crossing their fingers that Guinness will certify Reed’s claim to the world’s biggest stick of chalk.
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Advocates of the Griffin
News of the Alumni Association • Connecting reedies around the globe • More at alumni.reed.edu
nina johnson ’99
Reedies Need Us At a time when other liberal arts colleges are closing or in trouble, alumni giving has never been of more importance. As a nonprofit, Reed relies on our philanthropy, and every gift makes a difference. Truly. Alumni Fundraising for Reed (AFR) was started by a small group of dedicated alumni who understand the importance of philanthropy at Reed. AFR volunteers are working to ensure that a Reed education is here for generations to come, but we need your help. Beyond making your annual gift to Reed, we need more volunteers to help with our outreach efforts. It’s actually quite easy, takes very little time, and you can do AFR outreach from anywhere in the world (as long as you have an internet connection!). And if you are in Portland, you can even join us for on-campus outreach evenings. Encouraging alumni who made a gift last year but haven’t yet renewed their support is often the reminder they need to make that gift. And let’s be honest, a lot of us are procrastinators. We wait until the last minute possible. And then sometimes forget. Not because we don’t care, but because we have a lot of other things going on. AFR outreach is the friendly reminder that giving to Reed matters, and we need more help. No one is more likely to understand the value of a Reed education than our alumni. Future Reedies need us. Want to get involved? Email alumni@reed.edu and we will be in touch! —Christine Lewis ’07 AFR Steering Committee Chair
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Reedies Infiltrate Writers’ Conclave, Psych Convention Cuckoo clocks. Flying saucers. Monkey brains. A bathtub filled with liquor and watermelons. These were just a few of the lustrous images that surfaced in a Reed author reading organized by Prof. Sara Jaffe [creative writing] and the English department at the Association of Writers &
Writing Programs conference in Portland in March. (See the wordsmiths above.) Meanwhile, 32 alumni attending the Society for Personality and Social P s y c h o l o g y ’s A n n u a l Convention in February gathered on campus for an event hosted by Prof. Kathy Oleson
[psychology] and the psychology department. Alumni connected with students to help them chart their path in psychology, networked with other Reedies in the field, and caught up with Reed faculty. Heading to a conference where other Reedies are bound to be? Email alumni@reed.edu to let Alumni Programs know!
SAVE THE DATES! Forum for Advancing Reed September 13–15, 2019
The Forum for Advancing Reed (FAR) is the alumni insiders’ weekend you actually want to attend; you just didn’t know it. It’s a weekend of all things Reed. It’s the alumni volunteer event for those who want to accomplish something for the alumni community and the college—and it’s way less small talk than is required at Reunions! Have an opinion? We want to hear it. Like data? We have data for you to look at and discuss. Have thoughts on a crazy volunteer or event idea that might just work? Come tell us about it. Join us to learn about what Reed is doing, why, and how we need your help, and actually have fun along the way.
Camp Westwind October 4–6, 2019
Join Reedies at Camp Westwind—a magical weekend on the Oregon Coast filled with laughter, bonfires, lots of sand, and plenty of relaxing. Escape cell service (and your regularly scheduled plans) at this family-friendly weekend led by alumni volunteers. Long walks on the beach optional. Space is limited and will sell out! Costs are kept low thanks to all participants helping out in the kitchen or on the cleaning crew for two easy shifts. Registration opens in early June on alumni.reed.edu.
leah nash
Celebrating a milestone Reunion?
Nominate a Reedie for the Alumni Board To nominate yourself or another Reedie for the alumni board, please send your name, the name of the person you are nominating, and a short description about why they should be a part of the alumni board to alumni@reed.edu. Nominations must be received no later than July 15 for consideration. All at-large members serve on a volunteer working committee—find out more at alumni.reed.edu.
Become a Career Coach Want to help Reedies advance in their field, switch careers, or get that first foot in the door? The career coach program is looking for more alumni volunteers! Career coach volunteers offer flexible coaching to any alumni who would like help. Coaches answer questions about what resources are available for alumni, provide a welcoming introduction to existing professional networks, review résumés, connect Reedies to other alumni working in that field, and brainstorm career questions. You don’t have to be at the top of your industry, you just need to be willing to talk to fellow alumni and be a helpful resource—we’ll give you all the tools you need. Email alumni@ reed.edu to sign up. Need some help as you transition into a new job or change career paths entirely? Email alumnicoaches @reed.edu to get connected to a career coach today.
Consider a gift to Reed in your estate plans to honor your past and provide for Reed’s future. Contact Kathy Saitas to learn more about including Reed in your legacy planning. 503/777-7573 giftplanning@reed.edu reed.edu/legacyplanning If you’ve already made a gift to Reed in your will or trust, please let us know so we may thank you and welcome you into the Eliot Society.
The Eliot Society The Eliot Society celebrates donors who make a gift to Reed in their estate or who establish a life income gift to benefit Reed. This tradition of generosity reaches back to Reed's roots—the college itself was established through a bequest from the estates of Simeon and Amanda Reed in 1908. The society is named for Thomas Lamb Eliot, who first suggested to Simeon and Amanda Reed that they use their financial resources to found an institution of learning in Portland.
Why America Should Stay Open New book by Prof. Kim Clausing lays out the case for free trade.
used to support the National Health Service. In an age when nationalistic narratives It’s a sign of the times that a standard have become so powerful, it is more impordefense of globalization is now viewed as tant than ever to separate fact from fiction. coming from the left. But sometimes it’s In clear, simple language, Prof. Clausing lays worth taking to the barricades to proclaim out how the global economic system works, the obvious. Reed economics professor Kim explains what the problems are, and presClausing’s book, Open: The Progressive Case ents ideas about how to solve many of them. for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital She begins by reminding us how bad (Harvard University Press, 2019), argues inequality has gotten in the United States. forcefully that the urgent probIn the last 20 years, corporate lems facing many low-income profits have surged, wages have Americans—problems that stagnated, and household debt drove many to vote for Donald has soared, especially for lowTrump—will not be solved by income families. The disappointretreating from open markets or ment has resulted in votes for clamping down on immigration. politically polarizing candidates. In the wake of the 2016 But Clausing warns that closing elections, urban, progresdown the global trade system s i ve i nte l le ct u a l s s c ra m would result in higher prices for bled to understand what was U.S. consumers and would not happening in the heartland. bring jobs back. “Thirty percent Kim Clausing is the Sociologists like Nancy Fraser, Thormund Miller and Walter tariffs would make almost every Arlie Russell Hochschild, and Mintz Professor of Economics item at Gap or Walmart 30 perat Reed. Jennifer Sherman examined cent more expensive. Steel tarthe anger and frustration felt iffs harm workers in industries among parts of the white working class. using steel as an input, such as construcA viral Harvard Business Review essay by tion.” There is no evidence that countries law professor Joan Williams described the with more closed trading systems have highcontempt that some white working-class er employment—if anything, the opposite voters feel for doctors, lawyers, and mana- is true. gerial elites—and by extension for Hillary She also points out that blaming immiClinton. Political scientist Katherine Cramer grants for job losses is wrongheaded. In fact, explained how Wisconsin—a formerly pro- immigration provides economic benefits gressive and unionized state—moved so far to the United States. Much of the innovato the right. These scholars described how tion at companies like Google is thanks to the loss of manufacturing jobs, combined immigrant entrepreneurs. Rather, what is with distrust of government and fear of needed is for the government to help comimmigration, fueled Trump’s popularity. munities so they can adapt to deindustriA similar phenomenon took place in the alization and other shifts in the economy. UK, where scholars now believe that the “The best response to economic disruption groundswell for Brexit was driven in part is to help those individuals who are directby decades of tabloid portrayals of incom- ly harmed,” she argues. petent Brussels bureaucrats and migrants Clausing, who teaches internationwho sucked up resources, combined with al trade, international finance, and public lies about imaginary savings that would be finance at Reed, is an expert on combating BY ANYA SCHIFFRIN ’84
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tax avoidance, and her strongest chapters explain the problem of US multinationals that simply don’t pay taxes (think of the notorious case of Apple in Ireland). Taxes are an essential part of the solutions she proposes, such as increased government investment in education and infrastructure. Unless large companies and the 1% do their part, there is little hope that government will be able to help society adapt to future deindustrialization and the job loss likely to result from the spread of artificial intelligence. Truck drivers, waitresses, and boilermakers will still need health insurance and schools even after their jobs are killed off by automation. Companies will have to pay taxes so government can afford to take care of its citizens. A 2015 article in the New York Times reported that even small increases in taxes on the 1% could pay for an annual $176-billion investment in major urban highways or the roughly $47 billion cost of eliminating tuition at public universities.
Clausing lays out the debates and the complexities of calculating what companies owe. She also discusses an initiative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and G20 for country-by-country tax reporting so it becomes clear how much tax multinationals are paying in which countries. “While companies would resist the scrutiny that such disclosure would generate, tax transparency is a big step toward a more honest tax culture,” she notes. Clausing joins many policy makers and economists who have called for an expansion of the earned income tax credit and the imposition of a carbon tax. Her point is that a stable and prosperous society benefits the business community and that business has much to gain from access to an open global economy. Fair and transparent tax laws, robust antitrust regulations, and more transparency on pay structure and labor inclusion will benefit everyone. Throughout the book, her tone is clear, reasonable, and fair. It’s telling that she uses the word “concern” 50 times while the word “anger” does not appear once. Her commonsense analysis is hardly radical—before the Republican party moved so far to the right, her ideas would have been considered center of the road. Indeed, her jacket endorsements from Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary, and Jason Furman, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, demonstrate that this is not incendiary stuff. But in these turbulent times, with demagogues in the ascendant globally, the need for logic, reason, and common sense has never been more urgent. Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Put your best foot forward with some new socks from the Reed College Bookstore.
bookstore.reed.edu
TOO MUCH TREATMENT BY TOM KERTSCHER
When it comes to your health, have you ever worried about aegrescit medendo? It’s not a disease; it’s a Latin phrase that means “the treatment is worse than the disease”—a potentially dangerous phenomenon. Consider this chilling example from Dr. Dan Morgan ’96, an infectious disease and general medicine physician, who also does research as an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Writing in the Washington Post about how often physicians misread lab results, he said: Say that Disease X has a prevalence of 1 in 1,000 (meaning that 1 out of every 1,000 people will have it), and the test to detect it has a falsepositive rate of 5 percent (meaning 5 of every 100 subjects test positive for the ailment even though they don’t really have it). If a patient’s test result comes back positive, what are the chances that she actually has the disease? In a 2014 study, researchers found that almost half of doctors surveyed said patients who tested positive had a 95 percent chance of having Disease X. This is radically, catastrophically wrong. In fact, it’s not even close to right. Imagine 1,000 people, all with the same chance of having Disease X. We already know that just one of them has the disease. But a 5 percent falsepositive rate means that 50 of the remaining 999 would test positive for it nonetheless. That means 51 people would have positive results, but only one of those would really have the illness. So if your test comes back positive, your true chance of having the disease is actually 1 out of 51, or 2 percent — a heck of a lot lower than 95 percent.
False diagnosis often leads to a cascade of unnecessary care, and is one factor driving the trend of overtreament in the U.S.,
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greg kahn
Many doctors misread lab results, according to Dan Morgan ’96, leading to unnecessary care.
TEST CT OR NO TEST?
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estimated in a 2017 study to be more than 20%. 1 These are well-educated medical doctors, Will it make a difference? for heaven’s sake. What’s going on here? Test: CAT Scan for Pulmonary Embolism 1 “The issue is mostly that doctors, as well as Will it make a difference? No No Yes No patients, tend to believe that patients do or take next steps patient is already on or can’t patient has kidney disease patient doesn’t want to know No No Yesto dye No don’t have a disease when a test is positive receive anticoagulation or allergy patient is already on or can’t patient has kidney disease patient doesn’t want to know receive anticoagulation or allergy to dye or negative. Tests are just a lot more complicated than that,” he said. 2 3 2 3 resultTwomean? Dan was a psych major at Reed and wrote What is the chance of disease before What will a positiveStep asks What is the chance of disease before What will a medical positive result mean? testing? his thesis with Prof. Dell Rhodes [1975– students to consider the testing? 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY likelihood that a patient has 2006]. 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Patients under 50 shortness of breath a Reed College student was wanting to chalwho have no leg swelling, normal vital signs normal vital signs, no recent lenge things and wanting to question if peosurgery, and so on have a ple really knew what they were doing, or if low risk (1% chance) of 10% 1 worked the way we were told pulmonary embolism (PE). things really 1% Patients who were recently Will it make a difference? likely unlikely they worked,” he says. bedridden, have leg swelling, or shortness of For many diseases, there is only one test, SHOULD TEST? 10% breath, and so on Ihave a CT No No Yes No so there isn’t an easy way to double-check SHOULD I TEST? high risk (10% chance) of PE. CT take next steps 4 patient is already on or can’t patient has kidney disease patient doesn’t want to know for Pulmonary Embolism 6% renal injury the results. And if a test comes up positive, 1% Decide with if testing. receive anticoagulation or allergy to patient dye for Pulmonary Embolismlikely 18% incidental finding requiring follow-up unlikely doctors feel the need to act. $260–1800 Patient cost (variable co-pay) “There’s a lot of uncertainty in medicine gen1 true positive false positive 3–10% false positive pulmonary embolism requiring PE RX Will it make a difference? 1 3 Detects >90% of pulmonary embolism if present 1/10,000 X-ray causing cancer erally, and2then having a test that people can Will it make a difference? Step Three highlights the What is the chance of disease before What results will exclude a positive mean? 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One Detects >90% of pulmonary embolism if present 1/10,000 X-ray causing cancer 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY positives. The graph helps 10% true positive 56% true positive patient under 50 patient recently bedridden 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY project involves collaborating with graphic 1% PRETEST PROBABILITY 10% PRETEST PROBABILITY medical students grasp the 90% false positive 44% false positivebleeding no leg swelling leg edemapulmonary embolism Negative results exclude 4% risk major with treatment 10% true positive 56% true positive patient under 50 patient recently bedridden surgery shortness of breath actual significance of a 90% false positive 44% false positive no leg swelling leg edema designers to create images that clarify the normal vital signs surgery shortness of breath positive result. normal vital signs probabilities. Highlighting tests that tend harms benefits to have more false positives, such as mam10% mograms, is another good way to caution 10% 1% physicians. 10% likely unlikely Visit testingwisely.com for more info. 1% He also wants to change how doctors order likely unlikely 1% tests, to make it more difficult to order the likely true positive unlikely false positive ones that are more likely to yield question4 able results. 6% renal injury 4 The aim wouldn’t be to stop 6% renal injury Decide with patient if testing. 4 6% renal injuryfinding requiring follow-up 18% incidental Decide if testing. using those tests,with but topatient nudge doctors to Decide with patient if testing. 18% incidental finding requiring follow-up 18% incidental finding follow-up $260–1800 Patient cost requiring (variable co-pay) more fully think through the pros and cons $260–1800 Patient cost (variable co-pay)requiring PE RX 3–10% false positive pulmonary embolism $260–1800 Patient cost (variable co-pay) before doing so. 3–10% false positive pulmonary Detects >90% of pulmonary embolism if present 1/10,000 X-ray causing cancer embolism requiring PE RX 3–10% falseofpositive pulmonary embolism requiring PE causing RX cancer The goal is to raise awareness among phyDetects >90% pulmonary embolism if present 1/10,000 X-raybleeding Negative results exclude pulmonary embolism 4% risk major with treatment Negative results exclude pulmonary embolism 4% risk major bleeding with treatment sicians that most>90% testsof aren’t nearlyembolism as accu-if present Detects pulmonary 1/10,000 X-ray causing cancer harms benefits with treatment rate as, say, the HIV test,exclude whichpulmonary is almostembolism Negative results 4% risk major bleeding harms benefits never wrong. “That test is sometimes how doctors and Visit testingwisely.com for more info. harms benefits Visit testingwisely.com for more info. patients think all tests work, that a test is Step Four presents other factors to weigh in the decision to proceed with the test, such as its always accurate, that a positive means you diagnostic usefulness, costs, and risks, which include injury to the kidneys, major bleeding, needless medication, and so on. have it and a negative means you don’t,” he Visit testingwisely.com for more info. says. “But it’s actually the exception to the rule.” take next steps
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G R A P H I C D E S I G N E R S R E N E E WA L K E R & B E T H S H I R R E L L AT J E F F E R S O N U N I V E R S I T Y, P R O J E C T M A N A G E R L I S A P I N E L E S
take next steps
june 2019 Reed Magazine 17
DECONSTRUCTING WALL STREET
THE GRIFFIN HAS LANDED. The 2019 Fellows (all sophomores): Bijay Rai, Aryeh Stahl, Kathleen Kwenda, Matt Jarvis, Lulu Davis, Jonathan Li, & Aidan Walker. (Not pictured: Zoe Watch.)
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The Financial Services Fellowship gives Reed students insight into the world of power and money. BY ROMEL HERNANDEZ
mark abramson
From the outside, the world of finance can seem like a planet from another dimension, bristling with junk bonds, angel investors, hedge fund managers, and other bizarre life forms. Fear not. For the last nine years, Reed has offered students a look behind the mystique and a glimpse of what it’s like to run with the bulls, bears, and griffins of Wall Street. The Reed Financial Services Fellowship gives eight sophomores an introduction to the multifaceted financial industry. Fellows spend a week in Manhattan visiting as many as 15 power centers while networking with the bankers, brokers, attorneys, analysts, and journalists—many of them Reed alumni and parents—who populate “The Street.” The fellowship is the brainchild of Reed trustee Jane Buchan, who launched the program in 2011 and works with the Center for Life Beyond Reed to lead students on a whirlwind trek every spring. “New York City is a foreign place for many students,” she says. “I want to introduce them to this world of work, dispel some myths, and get them thinking about their career paths regardless of their destination.” A self-described “West Coast girl,” Buchan grew up in Portland and took classes at Reed when she was still in high school. Later she went on to earn degrees from Yale and Harvard, become a competitive athlete (her sport: the high jump), and blaze a career in high finance, cofounding a multibillion-dollar investment firm. But she never forgot her classes at Reed, which she calls intellectually and personally “transformative.” She made her mark cofounding the global investment firm Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company in 2000, and last year struck out on her own to start a new fund called Martlet Asset Management. She is also making a mark as a philanthropist, supporting an array of causes, including Reed.
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Fellows get an inside look at the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, courtesy of Edward G. Schreier of Deutsche Bank.
“I’m very loyal,” she says. “Reed is an important place, and the students are just phenomenal.” Buchan says Reed students bring something special to the table coming from a liberal arts background—a sharp intellectual curiosity and a willingness to ask deep questions. Wall Street executives, she says, are used to meeting young people who are “trying to get jobs, so they’re just concentrating on being polite and trying not to say the wrong thing.” A discussion about business ethics with a top investment banker took a surprising turn when a student brought up Socrates— to the delight of the banker, who had studied philosophy.
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Of course, the world of finance reaches far beyond banking. The Reedies also meet with journalists, analysts, lawyers, and leaders in financial technology. Zach Harding-Laprade ’17, who was a fellow in 2015, says the experience opened his eyes to new possibilities. “I got a chance to talk with a diverse group of people and ask whatever I was curious about,” he says. “It made me realize I might be a 20-something kid, but I didn’t have to be intimidated. I could hold my own.” The fellowship helped him launch his career—after an internship at a New York hedge fund, he now works for Buchan at Martlet.
“The finance world is so complex it can often seem opaque, so what was cool about the trip was getting to meet so many different people and learn about the opportunities you can pursue,” says Sophia Bucci ’17, who now works as a client service research associate at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. Buchan takes an active role in leading the program. Not only does she underwrite the cost, she works with other trustees to select the fellows from a highly competitive pool of applicants and prepare them for the trip. During Paideia, she partners with Reed Treasurer Lorraine Arvin to teach a threeday crash course in understanding capital
mark abramson
markets to prime students on financial concepts, math, and vocabulary. She also accompanies the fellows in Manhattan, where they forego blue jeans and sneakers for full business attire. “What’s fascinating for me is watching the excitement of the students,” she notes. “On the first day they’re overwhelmed, and by the end of the trip, they’re confidently navigating around the city.” Buchan encourages students with diverse backgrounds and interests to apply for the fellowship, whether they mean to pursue careers in finance or not. “It’s really about exploring what’s out there,” she says. “Exposing them to this world will help
them no matter what they do.” Alice Harra, director of the Center for Life Beyond Reed, echoes this idea. “The fellowship is about gaining confidence in oneself and the Reed education as a great foundation for any career, not just finance,” she says. “It is also about learning about how money and power work at the highest levels.” Case in point: Pedro Henriques Da Silva ’18. The economics major applied for the fellowship to seek an “opportunity to be in a new environment, to learn new things and meet new people.” He recalled meeting an executive who stressed making decisions not based on climbing a career ladder, but as “building blocks for personal growth.” That stayed with him as he spent a year teaching high school math for Teach for America. Law or music are more likely career paths for him than finance, but he adds, “I learned so much from the fellowship.” Which is exactly what Buchan is hoping to accomplish. One of the most gratifying bits of feedback she has received came from a student who said the fellowship gave him the confidence boost to ace admissions interviews for medical school. She believes students who go on the trip multiply its impact by sharing their experiences and perspectives with peers on campus. “Reed is great, and the life of the mind is fantastic,” she says. “But you have to be able to plug into the real world if you want to put your ideas to work, whatever you go on to do. This fellowship is not about finding a career in finance, it’s about exploring the world of work.” One of the unexpected benefits of the initiative is that it has strengthened Reed’s alumni connections on Wall Street. Many grads who work in finance now get together to network and have dinner with the fellows during their visit. The fellowship has proven so successful at bringing together students, alumni, and industry leaders that Reed hopes to use it as a model for students to explore careers in other fields. In October, the college will take a band of students to Seattle to focus on technology, thanks to a partnership with alumni and parents. Beyond that, ideas include biotech, the arts, public policy, and more. The opportunities are as endless as the horizon.
IMPACT
What we took away from the FSF. Sophia Bucci ’17 Major: Sociology. “I was really interested in how fast-moving the field is, and how smart the people are, and how quickly a young person can learn and get responsibility.” What I’m up to now: Working at investment management firm Bridgewater Associates.
Prakher Bajpai ’14 Major: Physics “I knew nothing about the banks and had never even been to New York before. FSF introduced a whole new industry to me. Shortly thereafter, I moved to California, then France and now London focusing on all things finance.” What I’m up to now: Working in M&A advisory in London for Morgan Stanley.
Pedro Henriques Da Silva ’18 Major: Economics “I learned so much from the fellowship, including that I want to go my own way.” What I’m up to now: Teach for America.
Tom Hoang ’18 Major: Biochemistry and molecular biology “As a first-generation immigrant and college student, it would be unlikely for me to have the chance to explore the field of financial services without this fellowship. I greatly appreciated the invaluable counsel from the people I met, especially regarding what is needed the most to find a job in this field.” What I’m up to now: Medical student at Oregon Health & Science University.
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THE MOLECULE BENDER Sculptor Byron Rubin ’65 traces the fateful symmetries that govern life—and death.
BY BILL DONAHUE
Proteins. Even now, as you read this sentence, an overworked sophomore is likely holed up in the Arthur Scott Chem Lab, marveling over how these microscopic workhorses pulse with tens of thousands of intricately arrayed atoms. They are the building blocks of life, the mortar of history. The hemlock that Socrates quaffed on his last fatal evening? It killed the old boy only because it contained a toxin, coniine, that bound to receptor proteins in his nervous system. The bubonic plague? That, people, was a matter of fleas passing on to humans a bacteria, yersinia pestis, whose noxious proteins shut down victims’ immune systems. Proteins were first described by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Mulder in 1838, but their true nature remained elusive. In the late 1960s, the study of protein molecules—protein crystallography, it’s called— was still so nascent that, of the millions of proteins in the universe, science knew the molecular structure of fewer than ten. The field was thirsty for pioneers, and Byron Rubin ’65 became one of them, thanks in part to his facility with bending wire. In the years after Byron left Reed, as he earned a PhD at Duke, computers were primitive. Chemists had figured out the formulas for many important proteins. But even if they knew that hemoglobin was C2952H4664N812O832S8Fe4, the formula yields no clue to the molecule’s structure—which determines how it actually works.
photo by BLAIR HORNBUCKLE
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THE MOLECULE BENDER, cont. To attain visual models, biochemists used wooden dowels and plastic balls to create awkward replicas that resembled scale-model roller coasters. “Building one of those models took months,” Byron groans. In 1972, in a flash of insight, he realized that he could capture the nuance, the music of proteins if he rendered each one with a single strategically bent segment of eighth-inch cold-rolled steel wire. He even invented a tool for flexing the wire. Byron’s Bender, as the device is still known, features two vices to clench wire in place and a rotating anvil with which to bend it. Still manufactured by the Charles Supper Company of Boston, the Bender was a vital tool in the days before computer imagery, and it helped crystallographers push the frontiers of knowledge so that today they’ve mapped the structure of 120,000 different proteins. By inventing the Bender, Byron also pioneered a new kind of art—a form that endeavors to capture the structure of complex molecules. Becoming the Picasso of proteins is an unlikely role for a kid raised in Chicago by parents who ran a chain of necktie shops. Growing up, Byron betrayed no aptitude for the visual arts or machinery; he didn’t know how to change the oil in a car. Truth is, when Byron talks about his sculptures, he scarcely regards them as rooted in the art world. He doesn’t refer to
Great Scott: The legendary Prof. Arthur Scott taught chemistry at Reed from 1926–79, during which time his sparkling enthusiasm inspired generations of students. He also published 60 papers, served as president of Reed during WWII, determined the atomic weight of fluorine, and built Reed’s first “pickle barrel” nuclear reactor (although we’re not clear if it actually lived in a pickle barrel). Scotty’s legacy lives on through an endowed chair now held by Prof. Julie Fry, the Scott Chemistry Building, the Reed Reactor, and through the lives of his many students.
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Calder or Brancusi or other legendary sculptors. Instead, he effuses about the “beauty” of proteins. “Isn’t that one pretty?” he’ll say, dewy-eyed with delight. “Isn’t it just amazing?” Bryon is a chemist to his core, and for that we can thank his Reed thesis adviser, Prof. Arthur Scott [1923–79]. Brilliant, avuncular, and slightly pudgy, Scott took a wayward Byron under his wing. Freshman year, he guided the youngster into the Hauser Library and, in showing him how to use it, lifted from the shelves a paper on
Before Byron, biochemists used wooden dowels and plastic balls to create awkward replicas. It took months. how to do gravimetric determinations of barium. (“I was in awe,” Byron remembers.) One Halloween, Byron and his girlfriend were entrusted with passing out candy at the Scott home. Later, as Byron angsted, senior year, over his future, Scott made an offhanded but consequential remark. “Well, Byron,” he said, “chemistry’s been very good to me.” Byron’s introduction to large-scale sculpting was almost as serendipitous— and it came in 1992, a decade after improved computer imaging had made the Bender a tool for amateurs. Byron was by then a pharmaceutical researcher for Eastman Kodak. With others, he determined the molecular structure of a protein called collagenase, which they hoped could be a treatment for arthritis. To celebrate, he spent a couple days shaping a model of the molecule. “I just wanted a nice thing to look at,” he says. But when a colleague spied Byron’s gleaming brass and copper creation, he told Byron he had a favorite molecule he wanted sculpted. Two weeks after Byron delivered that commission, another request came in. Twenty-seven years later, Byron has made multiple pieces for Pfizer and has also done work for Merck & Co. His home workshop outside Rochester, New York, sprawls
Januvia
Think of the sinuous, interlocking thicket of green bronze you see here as a brooding, swampdwelling monster. It’s Byron’s depiction of dipeptidylprotease IV, a protein that wreaks havoc in the gut of type II diabetes patients. The tiny gold chains of atoms are the protease inhibitor sitagliptin phosphate, marketed by Merck as Januvia and made to do David-like battle against the twisting green Goliath.
Human Growth Hormone
Yes, sports fans, this is the very protein that miscreant athletes— Barry Bonds, for instance, and Lance Armstrong—have injected to boost their performance. But HGH can also wear the white hat and is used to stimulate appetite in AIDS patients who are wasting away. For Byron, HGH is a reminder that the manipulation of atoms is fraught with moral complexity. Byron always endeavors to look toward the light. In the 1980s, he resisted the agrochemical giant Monsanto as it jockeyed to hire him. “I didn’t like what they were doing with Roundup,” he says of the lucrative but carcinogenic weed killer. “I really needed a job, but I decided I couldn’t go there.”
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THE MOLECULE BENDER cont. over 2,800 square feet, and he says that his wife, Sandy, excoriates him for his single-minded focus on sculpting molecules. She asks, “Can’t you make something that’s just artistic?” He cannot. But his chemist’s instincts may save him in the end. In 2017, Byron was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer. He had his tumorous prostate removed, and he also read over 100 scientific papers related to his cancer. He had his DNA sequenced and learned that his body was deficient in one gene, CDK12, which is critical to the synthesis of proteins needed for DNA repair. When Byron goes to his urologist now, the doctor is both student and caretaker. “Tell me what you’ve learned,” he says to Byron. After Byron read a groundbreaking article on CDK12 in Nature, he told his doc that immunotherapy can check mutation caused by CDK12 deficiency. “It’s very successful,” he says. “It could work.” But if it doesn’t? Byron knows how the particles of life are built, and he knows that entropy freights the power to tear life apart. “If immunotherapy doesn’t work,” he says flatly, “I’ll probably die.” He pauses for a moment, ruminating. There are still more sculptures to make, more symmetries to capture. At the molecular level, the world is an intricate, glittering labyrinth, and Byron can’t rest until he traces the path to its heart.
Rantes
Rantes is a protein that’s secreted by the human immune system and nobly works to inhibit AIDS replication by drawing white blood cells to the infected area. Researchers are using Rantes as a template for synthetic proteins designed to fight AIDS. But when Byron regards this two-foot-tall sculpture, he doesn’t think of Rantes’s savior qualities. He remembers the painstaking tedium of gold-plating the stainless steel. “Every time I took Scotch tape to the gold, it would peel off,” he says. “In the end, I had to encoat the gold in plastic.”
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Viracept
Eight feet-tall, this stainless steel sculpture carries the name of an anti-HIV drug and sits in the lobby of Pfizer’s office in La Jolla, California. The gigantic swirl of silver is the villain—the viral protease that destroys an HIV patient’s immune system. At the center of the swirl are a few tiny circles of metal, ridged like so many links on a bicycle chain. This is Viracept, designed to split apart the sinister protease and thereby sustain the patient’s health. “I spent three months polishing this one,” Byron says. “I came home every day covered in soot.”
june 2019 Reed Magazine 27
Reediana Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!
EDITED BY KATIE PELLETIER Email reed.magazine@reed.edu
Lucinda Parker ’66 sits in her studio among paintings for her No Exit exhibition. The title of the show was inspired by the studio’s code-required sign.
Lucinda Parker: Force Fields Acclaimed Pacific Northwest painter “there is unlikely to be a better or more Lucinda Parker ’66, nationally known important painting show in Oregon in 2019.” for her abstract modernist paintings, was In conjunction with the show, a full-color recently the subject of a 50-plus-year ret- book was published, Lucinda Parker: Forcefields, rospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of written by Roger Hull, senior faculty curaArt in Salem. Reviewing the exhibit for tor and professor emeritus of art history at the Oregonian, Paul Sutinen remarked that Willamette University. The book includes over 28 Reed Magazine june 2019
100 full-color photos and reproductions of Lucinda’s dynamic and boldly colorful work. Hull traces the development and transformations of her style, from early self-portraits to the original painting techniques she invented in the ’70s, to her recent paintings of mountains and clouds.
A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History Jewish writers have long had a sense of place in the United States, but troublingly, scholarship on Jewish American literary history often limits itself to an immigrant model, situating the Jewish American literary canon firmly and inescapably among the immigrant authors and environments of the early 20th century. Michael Hoberman ’86 combines literary history and geography to restore Jewish American writers to their roles as critical members of the American literary landscape from the 1850s to the present, and argues that Jewish history, American literary history, and the inhabitation of American geography are, and always have been, contiguous entities. (Rutgers University Press, 2018)
The Harvest of American Racism: The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967 In 1967, in response to violent demonstrations that rocked 164 U.S. cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, a.k.a. the Kerner Commission, was formed. The commission sought reasons for the disturbances, including the role that law enforcement played. Chief among its research projects was a study of 23 American cities, headed by social psychologist Robert Shellow ’51. An early draft of the scientists’ analysis provoked the commission’s staff by uncovering political causes for the unrest; the team of researchers was fired, and the controversial report remained buried at the LBJ Presidential Library—until now. (University of Michigan Press, 2018)
jim lommasson
Lucinda Parker: Force Fields by Roger Hull (HALLIE FORD MUSEUM OF ART, WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY, 2019)
Chasing Rhinos with the Swami, Volume Two Shyamasundar Das ’65 (né Samuel Speerstra) tells of his adventures traveling as the personal secretary to Bhaktivedanta Swami in India in the 1970s on a mission to reignite the dying flames of Krishna consciousness in the land of its ancient origin. (Independently published, 2019)
Strength through Peace: How Demilitarization Led to Peace and Happiness in Costa Rica, and What the Rest of the World Can Learn From a Tiny, Tropical Nation Judith Eve Lipton ’71 and her husband David Barash examine how and why Costa Rica is safe and independent without any military at all, and what the rest of us can learn from its success. (Oxford, 2018)
Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants Pulitzer Prizenominated historian Henry W. Brands MALS ’79 tells how a set of political giants battled to complete the work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy. (Doubleday, 2018)
Pearls of Fire, Dreams of Steel In her latest, Deborah J. Ross ’68 weaves a short fantasy potpourri of dragons and toads, horses and thieves, mothers and daughters, and lovers and villains, with an occasional salamander. (Book View Cafe, 2018) She also recently published Ink Dance: Essays on the Writing Life (with foreword by Mary Rosenblum ‘74), a wise guide for writers new and old. (Book View Cafe, 2019)
A Step Away In a new YA page-turner, G. Randy Kasten ’78 tells of friends dealing with murder, parents, autism, and gender identity. (Black Rose Writing, 2019) He also recently published Rejections from a Literary Agent revealing how agents really think and providing comic relief for anyone who feels they have a book in them. (Virtualbookworm. com, 2019)
Gelyana Nancy Gormley Bevilaqua ’85 titled this new poetry collection with an Aramaic word meaning “manifestation” or “revelation.” The poems touch upon themes covered in her previous collection from a more personal perspective. Her poems have appeared in West Branch, Whiskey Island, Tupelo Quarterly, Hubbub, and Juked, among others. (Independently published, 2019)
june 2019 Reed Magazine 29
REEDIANA
How to Be a Patient The Essential Guide to Navigating the World of Modern Medicine The system is broken. In 2014, Time magazine reported that the U.S. health care system was ranked “the worst among industrialized nations for the fifth time.” But fear not! Or at least, fear less? A new book by Sana Goldberg ’12, How to Be a Patient: The Essential Guide to Navigating the World of Modern Medicine, aims to help you secure the best possible medical care in a flawed system. Early in her career as a registered nurse, Goldberg worked for Adventist and Legacy Health in Portland, Oregon. She is currently enrolled in a master’s program at Yale University focusing on providing psychiatric and mental health services to patients. As a health care insider, Goldberg draws on an abundance of anecdotes, testimonies, and research as she
Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents Lise Funderburg ’82 commissioned 25 original essays by writers about the moment they realize that they’ve turned into their parents. Contributors include Sallie Tisdale (who taught at Reed and was the school nurse for a time), Ann Patchett, Laura Van den Berg, Rumaan Alam, and others. (University of Nebraska Press, 2019)
30 Reed Magazine june 2019
outlines methods for receiving better short-term care; ways of developing positive relationships with your medical providers to ensure better long-term care; and tactics for receiving the best emergency care when necessary. How to Be a Patient imparts little-known strategies for receiving optimal care and attention in a rigged system, like befriending your pharmacist, dressing well for appointments, and choosing a friend or family member to advocate for you during hospital visits. One of the great strengths of Goldberg’s style as a writer is her adeptness at storytelling; many of the strategies she cites are exemplified anecdotally, bringing a personal tone to a system that often seems to snub individual experiences.
Goldberg repeatedly emphasizes that being a patient is a learning process, which requires diligence and resolve as well as time and resources. This approach is based on what for her is a golden rule: “Patient agency in the world of modern medicine is of paramount importance.” One way patients can achieve better outcomes is to avail themselves of the care of nurses. Nurses, she argues, are great at devising “creative solutions to sidestep” the health care system’s “most vexing realities”—like making available to the public a comprehensive guide to successfully navigating the healthcare system.
How To Be A Patient by Sana Goldberg ’12 (HARPERCOLLINS, 2019)
—SEBASTIAN ZINN ’17
Biddy Mason Speaks Up
The Rabbit Princess: The Path
Following her award-winning Fred Korematsu Speaks Up, Laura Atkins ’92 and coauthor Arisa White have released a new middle grade social justice biography, introducing young readers to another real-life champion for civil rights: Bridget “Biddy” Mason. An age-appropriate yet unflinching examination of slavery, racism, and community healing in the United States. (Heyday, 2019)
An incredible adventure of a brother and sister finding their own paths through life, in a world where hope is a stronger potion than magic, and one’s own will to dream can transform one into a hero. Classics major Roger Chen ’97 notes that his new book, geared for middle school readers but a story for all ages, contains a reference to the Odyssey (clue: something about rosy fingers), as well as other subtle references and influences from Hemingway to Raymond Carver. (Osani Studios 2019)
Shipwreck (play) The latest by Anne Washburn ’91 is a history play about 2017 and follows a group of white liberals who gather in an old farmhouse in upstate New York and discuss Trump’s presidency. It premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London in February 2019.
Diamonds at Dawn. Set in New Mexico, a new young adult novel by Catalina Claussen ’93 is about friendship and love and is the sequel to her awardwinning debut, Diamonds at Dusk. The story follows seventeen-year-old Ahzi Toadlena, who has felt adrift since she was nine. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, something new is stirring. (Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, 2018)
Endangered Orcas: The Story of the Southern Residents The beloved Southern Resident orcas are icons of the Pacific Northwest, and yet they are on the brink of extinction. From the capture era to the whale-watching boom and endangered listing, Monika Wieland Shields ’07 tells the whole story of the Southern Residents. (Orca Watcher, 2019)
Motivating Students on a Time Budget: Pedagogical Frames and Lesson Plans for In-Person and Online Information Literacy Instruction Miriam Rigby ’02 addresses the questions facing librarians as to how to motivate students to learn from outside the traditional structure of our education system. She encourages the spirit of play, autonomy, and active learning in a grade-free environment. (ACRL Press, 2019)
FACULTY BOOKS
The Night Swimmers For a certain kind of swimmer, there is an aliveness to open water that a clean, chlorinated pool just can’t duplicate. For an even rarer swimmer, open water by night seduces in a way that daylight swimming never can. The narrator of The Night Swimmers is that rarer breed, a swimmer on friendly terms with darkness and disorientation, unfazed by “the possibility that I was upside down and the air had gone thick, the water thin, that I was suspended somehow over the blackness of the sky.” In this 10th book by Prof. Pete Rock [creative writing 2001–], a 50-ish, Portland-based writing professor recalls the night in his 20s when he encountered a kindred spirit, a widow in her 50s. On subsequent summer nights, without telling a soul, they swim for miles, barely speaking, naked in Lake
Michigan’s Green Bay. One night, approachable even as he curates a far from shore, the woman stands persona: what to fabricate, what to briefly on a hidden shoal, then van- disclose, what to withhold. ishes. He searches the water franIn a flotation tank in Southeast tically for hours. Days later she Portland, the narrator revisits his emerges—he hasn’t alerted anyone long-ago night swims, “trying to recto her absence—but can’t rationally ollect, to see what will find me as explain how she survived two nights I float in the black silence, a space underwater, alone. It is this fantasti- that is not a space, where I am both cal notion that buoys the story. naked and have no body.” The Night Swimmers is a sort Over the years, siren-like, the of metafictional scrapbook, stud- widow has both discouraged and ded with allusions to supernatural encouraged his inquiries about what phenomena, quotations about life happened to her on that summer and art, and excerpts from corre- night. He returns to the vacation cabspondence with the narrator’s wife ins more than once, alone and with and ex-girlfriends. Teasingly, Rock family; showing his daughters his old shows us a painting of himself at hiding places, sifting through memage 10, and photos of his two real- ory’s detritus. Finishing the book is life daughters. His nameless nar- a bit like completing a jigsaw puzzle rator acknowledges the care he only to find that several pieces are has always taken to present a cer- missing. You can guess what they tain appearance, with just enough show, but you’ll never know for sure. self-disclosure to appear open and —ANGIE JABINE ’79
Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires Argentina has endured military dictatorships, severe economic depression, and national traumas. Prof. Victoria Fortuna [dance 2015–] examines the different ways that contemporary dance practices have responded to climates of political and economic violence. The concept of “moving otherwise” describes how dancers and audiences addressed and reimagined the daily choreographies their bodies were subjected to during these turbulent times. (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Ententes – A partir d’Hélène Cixous Prof. Catherine Witt [French 2005–] collaborated with Stephanie Boulard (Georgia Tech) on a new book about the French writer Hélène Cixous and the interaction between writing and visual arts in her work. International scholars and writers as well as several contemporary artists contributed to the volume, including Hélène Cixous herself. (Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2019)
The Night Swimmers by Prof. Peter Rock [creative writing] (Soho Press, 2019)
Carter Prof. David Schiff [music 1980–] has written the first biography of the great American classical composer Elliot Carter, with whom he studied and remained a close associate for 40 years. Through extensive research into Carter’s personal sketches and letters, Schiff explores his oeuvre and illuminates aspects of the composer’s life about which Carter has said little. (Oxford University Press, 2018)
megan watson
Time Slips: Queer Temporalities, Contemporary Performance, and the Hole of History Prof. Jaclyn Pryor [theatre 2018–] investigates how performance transforms the way people perceive trauma and memory, time and history. Examining their own work and that of other queer artists, they show how performance can make history visible, trauma recognizable, and transformation possible by exposing systems of violence that are embedded in society. (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Performing arts professors with their new books at a recent reception in the PARC.
june 2019 Reed Magazine 31
In Memoriam EDITED BY RANDALL BARTON Email bartonr@reed.edu
Reed’s Ringleader Caroline Horner Locher-Stein ’67 November 15, 2018, in Chewelah, Washington.
As director and assistant director of alumni relations from 1986 to 1998, Caroline laid the foundation of Reed’s current alumni relations program. Her innovations included Alumni College; the alumni education program, including faculty seminars on the road; the formal alumni chapter program; and the alumni travel program. In addition to many meaningful connections, Caroline brought to her job a great store of intelligence, precision, determination, and elegance. Caroline graduated from high school in the Washington, DC, area, but spent a good part of her childhood in Germany and Austria, and came to Reed in 1962 speaking fluent German.
At Reed, she majored in German and French, and learned Old French in order to translate a medieval play for her senior thesis. After graduation, she earned her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. Caroline took a year off during her graduate studies to work on her dissertation on a Fulbright Scholarship in Europe, and she and Prof. Kaspar Locher [German 1950–88] married in Switzerland. Caroline’s first faculty position was at Oregon State University, teaching English composition. She moved on to teach French and German at Pacific University in Forest Grove, a position she held for 12 years, and stayed active in professional associations of medievalists. She was a year from being eligible for tenure at Pacific University when the job at Reed in alumni relations was posted, and she decided that the Reed job would be more fulfilling for her.
“It was an exciting time,” she said in her oral history interview, “and there were lots of new things that could happen in the alumni program.” Caroline left the alumni office after Kaspar’s death in 1998. She later married Dan Stein, and they maintained homes in Portland; Chewelah, Washington; and Cipressa, Italy, on the Ligurian coast. She discovered a love of visual images and showed her paintings in several exhibitions. Prof. Peter Parshall [art 1971–2000], former Reed professor of art history and her longtime friend, said, “When I think of Caroline I remember someone vibrant and tireless, who not only never turned down a challenge, but managed to reinvent herself several times in her professional and avocational life, an odyssey that culminated in a passion for still-life paintings as meticulous and orderly as her handwriting.” —Contributed by Nadine Fiedler ’89
A Scholar and a Showman Prof. Charles Svitavsky [English 1961–98]
January 5, 2019, in Carnation, Washington.
Prof. Charles Svitavsky began acting when he was a seventh grader in Racine, Wisconsin. He later admitted, “I have a streak of ham in me a yard wide.” That showmanship would serve him well as a beloved professor delivering humanities lectures at Reed. After serving in World War II, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Wabash College. Specializing in 19th-century literature, he got a master’s degree from Columbia University, studied comparative literature at the University of Paris, and earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Svitavsky taught at Ripon College, the University of Washington, and the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where he chaired the English department. In 1961, he came to Reed as a professor of English and humanities from the University of Wisconsin. There were about 600 students when he arrived at Reed, most of whom he could identify by sight. He knew most faculty members by name. “That made for an environment where there was a real community,” he remembered. “The faculty and the students were on the same 38 Reed Magazine june 2019
wavelength; there was a sense of what institutional purpose was and people were much more forceful about articulating it.” Reflecting on the change in student behavior during his years at Reed, he said, “In the ’60s, when I walked into class in the morning and said, ‘Good morning,’ the students wrote it down. When I walked in and said ‘Good morning’ in the ’70s, students would say, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, it doesn’t seem that good to me.’” In the late 1980s, Prof. Svitavsky had just returned to his office from a Hum lecture when there was a knock at his door. Seeing six students standing there, his first reaction was that he must have blown the lecture somehow. But they just wanted to let him know they thought he had just given a terrific lecture. “Nothing like that ever happened in the ’60s or the ’70s,” he reflected. “I think students are nicer. They seem to me to be more human, and more concerned on an individual basis with one another, and indeed with the faculty in this respect than they were in the past. Reed has never been a place where you got much praise.” An expert on Shakespeare (one of his students was Steve Jobs), he acted in some 15 Shakespeare productions, including two at Reed, where he played Shylock in The Merchant
of Venice and Duke Senior in As You Like It. The Oregonian lauded his performance in a 1969 Portland Center Stage production of The Crucible, where he played Deputy Gov. Danforth, who conducted the trials. He appeared in several segments of the public television series Great Plays in Rehearsal, and in 1977 played a detective in the television horror film The Possessed, which starred Harrison Ford. Much of the film, about a priest who returns from the dead to battle satanic forces at an all-girls school, was filmed at Reed. In addition to acting, Svitavsky enjoyed golfing and painting. His wife, Shirley, survives him, as does his son, David.
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Fred Leitz ’40
July 4, 2014, in Tacoma, Washington.
Fred’s father, a Germanborn florist living in New York City, had always wanted to see the legendary Columbia River. Eventually he brought his family west and opened a greenhouse in Clackamas, Oregon, where a high school teacher sparked Fred’s interest in chemistry, and Fred was given a scholarship to Reed when he was 15 years old. “At the time, I didn’t recognize quite how good the professors were,” Fred said. “In retrospect, they were spectacular. When you study mathematics under Frank Loxley Griffin [mathematics 1911–56], you recognize you’re dealing with an outstanding teacher. Same with Arthur Scott [chemistry 1923–79], Walter Carmody [chemistry 1926–41] and Lawrence
Griffin [biology 1920–45]. It was nice to be working with what I subsequently recognized were really giants in their fields.” Mathematics was his favorite subject, but he explained, “I was naïve. I didn’t see who would employ mathematicians. It seemed to be you had two job prospects if you majored in mathematics—to become a teacher or an actuary— and I had no desire to work for an insurance company.” He went with his second choice—chemistry—and wrote his thesis, “A Study of the Nephelometric Atomic Weight Endpoint,” with Prof. Scott. Fred understood that the thesis was a way for the faculty to get to know students better and perhaps give them a leg up in their future careers. A great mentor at Reed was Charles Botsford [director of physical education 1912– 52], who introduced Fred to squash. Fred also participated on the track team as a javelin thrower and held the record for the longest distance throw. “Reed didn’t really have a track team,” he explained. “I think Botsford would call a friend—perhaps at one of the small schools in the Willamette Valley—and say, ‘It’s a nice day; let’s have a meet.’ That’s the way sports were at Reed—kind of pure.” Younger and smaller than most of his classmates, Fred also played eight-man football in games that pitted Reed players against local high schools. “I’m sure it wasn’t the high school varsity team,” he mused. “It must have been some jerry-rigged, eight-man team. The high school kids would come over and beat up on us.” When it came time to consider a graduate school, Prof. Scott, who was head of the chemistry department, recommended a number of schools, including UC Berkeley, which offered Fred a teaching assistantship. “A lot of success at getting the appointments to graduate school was the result of school reputation,” Fred said. “At Reed, we didn’t have GPAs. We had a 1 to 10 grading system on a Gaussian curve, with 1 being the highest, 10 the lowest. Nobody got ones, two was an extremely high grade. And you didn’t talk about grade point averages. But it didn’t take long to note who the smarter students were.” At UC, Fred majored in physical chemistry and while at the university was assigned to work on the Manhattan Project. One of the youngest students to earn a PhD in chemistry from that university at the age of 22, he went on to a successful career, working to produce safe nuclear power. In his community, Fred served as president of the PTA, commissioner and coach of the Little League, troop leader of the Boy Scouts, and chairman of the United Way. He spent his long retirement surrounded by his family and his garden. Every year, he and his wife, Katie,
funded a full scholarship for a student to attend he culinary arts program at South Seattle College. He fitted children with bicycle helmets and long after his 80th birthday tutored math in the Puyallup schools. By any measure, his was a long and happy life. His wife, Katie, died in 2018. Fred is survived by his three sons, Fred, Robert, and Steven.
Mary Margaret Arnn ’43 May 23, 2015, in Pacific Grove, California.
A native of Eugene, Oregon, Mary received her bachelor’s degree in literature from Reed and then worked as a cowgirl on a ranch in New Mexico. She married John Oliver Arnn in 1946 and moved once a year for 15 years as her husband’s army career dictated. While they were stationed in Japan, she volunteered to teach English and history to Japanese wives of American servicemen. After John died in Vietnam in 1965, she moved to Carmel, California. A charter member of the Carmel Area Coalition—a group whose actions led to the scenic preservation of the agricultural land at the mouth of the Carmel Valley—she was also active in the World Affairs Council, the United Nations Foundation, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union. A generous supporter of Reed, she wrote, “I live in a retirement home where someone asked me to lead a Great Issues group. I now carry on with Reed-like discussions on various subjects.” Mary is survived by her children, James and Barbara.
Edward L. Bennett ’43 December 2018, in Berkeley, California.
Edward enjoyed a distinguished career as a research chemist and was a tireless advocate for parks and open space, leaving a legacy for all to enjoy. He and his younger sister, Patricia Bennett Hunt ’50, grew up in Hood River, Oregon, and in the years before the Bonneville Dam was built, he would spend summer days on Koberg Beach, swimming the Columbia River. Interested in science, Ed dreamed of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ernest Boyd MacNaughton, a Reed trustee, suggested he take advantage of a program that would allow him to attend Reed for three years and then switch to MIT for two years, resulting in a master’s degree. Though Ed began at Reed, he never went to MIT. In addition to receiving a $200 scholarship, he paid for school by working in orchards at 25 cents an hour. “In the summer, you’d work 60 hours a week and make $15, which was some money in those days,” he remembered. He chose chemistry as his major, and on june 2019 Reed Magazine 39
In Memoriam the second day of class, Prof. Ansel Knowlton [physics 1915–48] administered a test with some trigonometry questions. Ed had never heard of trigonometry before, but found it easy to comprehend when it was explained to him. In his second year, he got a job sweeping up the lab, which paid 40 cents an hour. He was sweeping out a lecture room in the chemistry department when he heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Ed and other chemistry students realized their world would be changing; they’d soon be called up to serve. They proposed to their professors that they hold classes that summer, giving students the chance to complete their theses in 1942. During the summer, Edward began his thesis, “The Preparation of Sodium Trifluoroacetate,” with Prof. Arthur Scott [chemistry 1923–79]. Prof. Scott learned that Caltech was looking for people to do research, and after Edward completed his thesis in November, he headed for California. Doing warrelated research kept him from being drafted. “I was in Florida, doing work with chemical warfare agents,” Edward said. “They were testing mustard gas. But after a year and a half, a little town of 500 people in Florida didn’t seem very exciting.” He earned his PhD in 1949 and took a job doing research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, managed by UC Berkeley, where he worked until retiring in 1987. His research interests were in neuroscience, learning, and memory. During his time at the laboratory, Ed worked with a research group to study the impact that the environment has on the brain. Renowned biochemist and chemistr y professor Melvin Calvin introduced Edward to a couple of professors from the psychology department—David Krech and Mark Rosenzweig—who had ideas about how the brain might work. The three men began researching various aspects of the brain, working with rats that had been bred for years to be maze bright and maze dull. After anatomist Marian Diamond joined the group, they got the idea of raising rats in what they called enriched or impoverished environments. They discovered that the acetylcholineesterase levels differed in these animals’ brain cortices, and postulated the idea that the brains of the rats raised in enriched environments had brains that exhibited plasticity. “I can honestly say that we did have an influence in getting across the idea that the brain was ‘plastic,’ as we termed it then,” Edward summarized. “To show that the brain cortex could be thicker if the animal had been kept active.” The takeaway, he said, was that the brain needs to be exercised. “Don’t sit in front of the 40 Reed Magazine june 2019
boob tube and drink beer.” Diamond left the group and Edward, Krech, and Rosenzweig switched to working with chicks, giving them a substance on the tip of a small silver bead, which they would peck at, thinking it was food. If the bead was coated with a bitter substance, the chicks wouldn’t like it and wouldn’t peck at it again. “It’s one-trial learning,” Edward explained. “Sometime later you can test the chick again. If it avoids pecking, it remembered; the chick had learned the problem. You can test many different types of drugs after the training test. One group of compounds blocked memory— short-term memory—very quickly, and there was an intermediate phase and a longer phase. We ascribed the long-term memory to this necessity for protein synthesis. I think we were basically right. Eric Kandel also reported much the same thing, and he got the Nobel Prize. Not that we did that much. But that was fun research; very good for the students.” Ed became a member of the Sierra Club when he moved to Berkeley and was an active member until his death. He served on the San Francisco Bay chapter executive committee and was chapter chair and treasurer, as well as a member of the conservation and East Bay public land committees. The chapter’s Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award is named in his honor. A lifelong advocate for conservation, Ed took special pride in his work on the successful campaign in 1972 for Proposition 20, the Coastal Initiative, which provides protection for much of the California coastline, and Proposition 70, the Wildlife, Coastal, and Park Land Conservation Act of 1988, which provided $25 million to help establish what is now known as the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park. Ed cofounded Citizens for East Shore Parks, which brought together area residents, organizations, and local and state governments to fulfill the dream of open shoreline accessible to all. The resulting 8.5-mile-long park is a “necklace” of trails and wildlife habitat stretching through five cities—from the foot of the Bay Bridge in Oakland through Emeryville, Berkeley, and Albany to Richmond. In one of the nation’s most densely populated urban regions, the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park is an outstanding achievement in the history of open space protection. Ed was also instrumental in stopping the commercial development at what is now the habitat preserve called the Berkeley Meadow in the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park. He helped create the beautiful César Chávez Park from what was once the Berkeley dump, and served on the Berkeley Waterfront Commission for more than eight years. Prior to that, he was on the Berkeley Recreation Commission for six years and was also a steadfast advocate for the mission of the East Bay
Regional Park District. “Marian Diamond says to keep your head going, you’ve got to keep busy,” Ed said. Ed’s wife, Mildred, died in 2012. He is survived by his children, Anita Bennett ’87, Keith Bennett, and Reid Bennett.
Alan Holtzman ’43
November 28, 2018, in Los Angeles, California.
Alan was born in Portland, Oregon, the youngest of five children. He got his bachelor of science degree in biology from Reed and his MD from the University of Oregon. He met his wife, Roberta, in Portland in 1949, and they had their first child, Jeffrey, in 1951. During the Korean War, Alan served in the army as a pediatrician for children of military personnel stationed in Japan. After the war, he moved his family to Los Angeles, where his daughter Elizabeth was born. He helped found Northridge Hospital, where he served as chief of staff, maintaining his private pediatric practice and serving as an adjunct professor at UCLA. After retiring, he began a second career conducting groundbreaking research in a variety of areas. Alan’s empathy, wisdom, and compassion were matched only by his razor-sharp wit. It was monumentally important to him that you not “call him Shirley.” In addition to his love for medicine, he was an artist who taught himself to carve wood and stone. During his lifetime, he lost his son, wife, and daughter-in-law. He is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth.
Billy Joe Storseth ’44
January 13, 2017, in Granbury, Texas, in his sleep.
Born in Amarillo, Texas, Billy Joe was the last survivor of eight siblings. In 1946, he marr ied Frances “Jean” Barnes, who preceded him in death in 2016. Bill graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in petroleum engineering and had a very successful career in the oil business. Proud to have served in World War II, he attended Reed’s Army Premeteorology Program. In 1972, Bill and Jean moved from Oklahoma to Houston, where they lived for more than 40 years before relocating to Granbury, Texas, to be close to their daughter, Nancy. Jean died in 2016. Bill is survived by his two daughters, Vicki Storseth Cronin and Nancy Storseth McDonald.
Marian Whitehead ’44
September 19, 2018, in Oakland, California.
Marian was a particle physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Stanford Linear Accelerator and a professor of physics at California State University, Hayward (now California State University, East Bay). Both of her parents taught high school, and Marian found that the best instructors in her Los Angeles high school were the math and physics teachers. “I don’t know why I got into science,” she mused, “probably because I didn’t want to talk out loud in those days. We had a teacher who must have been very good, a woman who had studied for medical school and her husband died, so she had to go to work. She took up teaching physics. By the end of her career, more PhD physicists had come from that high school than any other high school in the city of Los Angeles, even though it was the smallest high school.” It was taken for granted that Marian would go to college. “You know,” she said, “the sun rises, you go to college.” Her brother, Theodore Carleton Whitehead ’41, had preceded her at Reed, and Marian was given a scholarship. But she found her freshman year somewhat disappointing. In those days, there was no Hum course for freshmen. Most students took History of Literature, but because it was thought that science majors were not taking enough courses outside of their discipline, a first-year course was designed for them, which was a compendium of sociology, political science, and other disciplines called Contemporary Society. “If I’d been dumped in with a bunch of people who had a lot to say, I probably would have had something to say,” she recalled of that class. “But when there was a bunch of people who weren’t saying anything, I wasn’t going to say anything either. It was a disappointment when I realized what was happening in other classes.” On the plus side, Marian made friendships that year that lasted for the rest of her life. She already knew she wanted to major in physics, and her physics and chemistry teachers were “exceedingly good.” Her freshman year was also the last year of peace. “After that,” she said, “there was a war and everybody vanished.” Progressing through Reed, Marian found professors outside her discipline who were also exceedingly good. She remembered that Prof. Barry Cerf [literature 1921–48] was a great teacher, but noted, “By the middle of 1943, he was wandering around campus, walking through sprinklers. It was probably Alzheimer’s, though he wasn’t that old. Not quite 60.”
She wrote a thesis, “Construction of a Geiger Counter,” officially with Prof. A.A. Knowlton [physics 1915–48], but what with the chaos of all the army students on campus, Marian ended up doing most of it herself. At Reed, she was the lone woman majoring in physics, but it never entered her mind that she would have any trouble in physics. “I seem to have led some sort of charmed life in which I never had any trouble,” she said. Marian went on to earn her master’s at Columbia University and a doctorate at UC Berkeley. At that time, she was one of the few women in nuclear and experimental physics. Her research was part of the worldwide effort in physics that changed understanding of elementary particles. Marian’s career included a year as a postdoctoral fellow in the Luis Alvarez physics group at UC Berkeley; two years on a Fulbright-Hays postdoctoral fellowship in Bologna, Italy; and a year at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, where she was in charge of the health physics group. As a researcher and teacher, she was highly appreciated for her boundless energy, authoritative presence, and adherence to high standards in research and teaching. She listened attentively to her students and loved the diversity and energy in the Hayward student population. While at Hayward, Marian met research physicist Burns MacDonald. They were married for 43 years, and their life together included frequent travel. Her retirement at age 62 started a new phase as Burns took a job in Los Angeles. In 1992, they returned to their home and friends in Oakland, including a weekly Wednesday night supper group that formed when they were all grad students at Cal. Marian was an active bird watcher, Sierra Club member, and hiker. She was a member of the Unitarian Church in Los Angeles and an influential member of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Berkeley, serving on its first curriculum committee and designing a peer-led study called Teaching Each Other. Marian was predeceased by her older brother, Carleton, who held a number of administrative positions at Reed, including director of alumni and college relations and director of development. She is survived by her husband, Burns MacDonald.
Elaine Mitchell Attias ’45 December 4, 2018, in Los Angeles, California.
Filmmaker, journalist, and activist, Elaine identified with the less fortunate in society. She attended Reed and the University of Chicago, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. After university, she worked for the International Longshoremen’s Association and the legendary labor leader Harry Bridges. As a progressive activist in the late ’40s, she campaigned for Henry Wallace. She married soon afterwards to Henry Attias
and had two children she raised with great love and devotion. Elaine resumed her education at UCLA and received a graduate degree in theater arts. She produced several documentary films, including Italianamerican, an early effort of director Martin Scorsese, and was a freelance journalist published in newspapers including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Social activism was a constant in her life and she was honored to have been included on President Nixon’s “enemies list.” Through it all, Elaine was beloved by many who experienced her graciousness, generosity, humor, and spirit. She is survived by her daughter, Jane Attias, and her son, Dan Attias.
Shirley Petersen Goldberg ’45
In 2018, in Nanaimo, BC, Canada.
Passionately dedicated to teaching and film, Shirley eventually combined the two. At the a ge of 89, she was awarded the Film Paragon Award at the Vancouver Island Short Film Festival, acknowledging a lifetime not only of teaching, exhibiting, and reviewing film, but of inspiring others to produce, exhibit, and love film. She majored in literature at Reed and wrote her thesis, “Morgen and Marco, a Play,” with Prof. Victor Chittick [English 1921–48] advising. During her years at Reed, Shirley cherished the lectures of Prof. Barry Cerf [literature 1921–48], Prof. Monte Griffith’s [psychology 1926–54] jokes, and the intellectual history seminars of Prof. Rex Arragon [history 1923– 74]. She loved classes with Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [art & English 1929–69], ice skating on the lagoon, and the endless debates about Stalin and Trotsky. Shirley would long remember the haunting first night on campus after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “Reed’s combination of a high-class multidisciplinary liberal studies program with a zesty infusion of iconoclasm provides a rare and invaluable educational background,” she said. “It doesn’t exactly make one a team player in academia—but so much the better!” After earning her master’s degree in English from UCLA, she taught at Los Angeles City College, at Southwestern Oregon Community College in Coos Bay, and finally at Vancouver Island University (formerly Malaspina College) in Nanaimo, Canada. She arrived at Malaspina in 1973, shortly after the college opened, and started a weekly international cinema series, which continues to this day. When she retired from teaching English and literature full time, she developed and taught the first film studies course at the university as a part-time instructor. She experimented with postcolonial, multicultural, and science fiction film courses june 2019 Reed Magazine 41
In Memoriam for British Columbia’s Knowledge Network and was an organizer for Nanaimo’s annual Global Film Festival, which screens documentary films on peace, environment, and justice. A journalist and arts critic, Shirley was the film and media columnist for Humanist Perspectives magazine, and her film reviews for Canadian Dimension magazine provided readers with political context. She cohosted a radio show, and eventually wrote a blog, The Big Picture. For Shirley, film literacy went hand in glove with global humanist causes. “Film is the most deeply humanistic art form today,” she said. “I love the way film effortlessly crosses cultural boundaries. It offers fresh new ways to interpret, understand, and deal with the issues of our time. Film enriches our lives by offering revelatory glimpses into the beauty of our world and of human potential itself.” Shirley was actively involved with her community, including the Nanaimo Film Commission, the Global Village society, Crimson Coast Dance Society, United for Peace and Justice, and many other local organizations. She is survived by her children, Kim and Lawrence Goldberg.
Jacqueline Boklan Paulson ’48 November 1, 2018, in New York City.
A pioneer in the development of curriculum for prevention of child abuse and neglect in teacher education, Jacqueline came to Reed from New York City. She was here a year and met her spouse, Har r y Murphy ’40, whom she later divorced. Jacqueline earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA and then a master’s in psychology from the College of Staten Island. For many years, she was an associate professor at the College of Staten Island, one of the four-year senior colleges within the City University of New York system. Jacqueline specialized in and coordinated early childhood education specialization, and presented a paper on the prevention of child abuse at the International Congress for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect in Paris in 1982. Of her year at Reed, Jacqueline said, “What keeps me loyal to Reed after 50 years was the thrill and delight to be in a college environment that respected and encouraged intelligent and intellectual pursuits.” She continued to contribute to the college. She later married Alfred Paulson and is survived by her children, Theodora, William, John, and Julia.
42 Reed Magazine june 2019
Robert Greensfelder ’50 November 7, 2018, in Grass Valley, California, at the age of 95.
Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Robert was seven when his father died suddenly from pneumonia. He moved with his mother to Spokane, Washington, where he graduated from Lewis and Clark High School. Bob entered Reed in 1941 and enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve after Pearl Harbor. Called into service at the end of his sophomore year, he was assigned to the USS Highlands and guided troop transport landing crafts onto the beaches during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Over the next five years, Bob completed another six semesters at Reed, studied in Mexico City under the GI Bill, and drove coast to coast as a marketing agent for a cooperative venture of California craftspeople. He married Jean Greiner Martin, a brilliant, imposing, and beautiful woman who had been an artist’s model for such painters as John Sloan and Salvador Dalí. The couple settled in Mill Valley in Marin County, and for the next 23 years Bob worked in myriad positions in the field of independent and experimental film. He played a key role in founding the American Federation of Film Societies, promoting San Francisco’s nascent International Film Festival, distributing independent films through his company, Kinesis, Inc., and serving on the advisory committee of the Pacific Film Archive. Bob became the western manager for Contemporary Films—a widely respected film distribution company with an exceptional selection of cultural, foreign, art, and documentary films—and worked there for 11 years. Personally, he funded and supported the making of The End, one of four films by visionary director Christopher Maclaine, and was instrumental in helping French director Agnès Varda create her short film Uncle Yanco. He also donated his time to produce the film Dreamwood by Beat poet and filmmaker James Broughton. Bob and Jean’s home in Mill Valley became a gathering point for a mélange of artists, writers,
filmmakers, and intellectuals, some of whom viewed the family as a haven from the tumultuous years of the 1960s. Bob served on the board of the ACLU of Northern California, marched against the Vietnam War, was a founder of the Homestead Valley Improvement Club, and lent support to friends under attack by McCarthy-era witch hunts. Trips into the Idaho wilderness as a youth ignited a lifelong passion for backpacking, and Bob kindled the same passion in his young children, leading them over monster passes in the Sierra Nevada and sleeping in tents he rigged from sheets of plastic. For his 50th birthday, he trekked the mountains of Nepal. Less than a year later, he and Jean moved to the San Juan Ridge in rural Nevada County to homestead miles from paved roads or power lines. It was near Bob’s lifelong friend from Reed, poet Gary Snyder ’51. Bob became a mentor to many of the homesteaders who arrived after him, always gracious in sharing his labor and knowledge. He helped found the San Juan Ridge Taxpayers Association and the Yuba Watershed Institute and worked for decades on committees riding herd on gold mining proposals. In 2016, unable to keep up with the demands of rural life, he moved to Atria Assisted Living in Grass Valley. Throughout his life, Bob loved offbeat humor, including the Marx Brothers and cartoonists R. Crumb and George Herriman. A champion of English grammar, he crusaded for the proper use of “lay” and “lie” up to his dying day. He is survived by his children Anne, Sara, Liese, and Ben Greensfelder.
Mary Piper Leber ’50
January 4, 2019, in Mercer Island, Washington.
Born to John and Marian Piper, Mary was raised on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill and graduated from Queen Anne High School. She chose Reed because one of her best friends was going here. “I was not what you would call a star at Reed,” she recalled. “My background in high school was science and math, and the humanities hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a real tough time with it.” Mary had planned to major in math, but in her junior year, she began having trouble within the discipline. “A whole new concept of math had come along about that time and I never really got it,” she said. “Prof. Lloyd Williams [math 1947–81] kindly gave me a D, because he didn’t want to flunk me and I needed the credit. I knew I had to change my major, and the easiest way to stay at Reed was to go into the education department.” One of Mary’s favorite professors was Prof. Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84].
“Dorothy Jo was absolutely fabulous,” Mary remembered. “I loved her American history class so much. She knew all these true stories about all these characters in the West. She had a way of teaching that was just marvelous, because she would give you a book list—and she knew books that weren’t boring—and you could pick out anything you wanted to read, and then she would lecture.” Though Mary majored in education, she basically wrote a history thesis, “A History of the Denominational Academies of Portland in the Nineteenth Century,” about private education in Portland. “The most important thing about the whole thing was the process,” Mary remembered. “I didn’t quite get it at first. I had all this information. I came into Dorothy Jo’s thesis conference and she said, ‘Well, Mary Jean, this is wonderful. You’ve done marvelous research. There’s only one problem—you haven’t got a thesis. What are you trying to prove?’” Many years later, after raising four children, Mary got into a master of arts in values program at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. It was then she realized, “My Reed College education was superb. I had this point of view that you get from Reed that you look at all different sides of the thing.” During her sophomore year at Reed, Mary began dating Lewis Leber ’50. When he was given his orders to go to Korea, they were married in a small ceremony on October 2, 1951. Mary became an elementary school teacher and taught for two years in Portland and Seattle. Mary gave birth to their first child, Janet, in 1954 and quit teaching. The Lebers built a home on Mercer Island, Washington, where they lived for more than 60 years, raising their daughter and three sons. She had enormous energy and along with raising a family, she volunteered and became a political activist. Mary was involved with the first King County farmlands preservation ballot issue and ran several political campaigns. She worked for the Church Council of Greater Seattle and was a longtime member of the Seattle Arboretum Club. In her late 40s, she studied for a master’s degree at San Francisco Theological Seminary. “They don’t teach you this, but somehow you come out of Reed wanting to give back somehow or other,” she reflected. “Maybe not everybody does that, but I think that’s something that comes from the way you learn, but they don’t talk about it or make a big deal out of it.” Mary approached all endeavors with zeal, had a creative flair, and had an incredible eye for detail. Her garden drew the admiration of neighbors and dog walkers. Originally, she wanted to hire a landscape designer to create a Japanese-style garden, but concluded her own style was better. When she could no longer garden, she produced meticulous and beautiful needlepoints. After Lewis sold the family business in 1985,
the couple purchased an RV and traveled to nearly every state in the union. Mary is survived by her daughter, Janet, and her sons, Brock, Todd, and Matthew.
William Macbeth ’51
December 4, 2018, in Oregon City, Oregon, of heart failure.
Born in Yakima, Washington, William graduated from Reed with a degree in mathematics and then joined the U.S. Army, where he was admitted to officer training. A Portland resident, he married Phyllis Broms of Multnomah, Oregon, in 1950. He enjoyed a long career with Portland Power and Light. He and Phyllis spent many years salmon fishing and touring the Northwest coastal waters in their seafaring vessels.
Nancy Meigs Brandriss ’52
December 10, 2010, in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Born in Santa Barbara, California, Nancy and her brother grew up in Chico, California, and Arlington, Virginia. After graduating from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, Nancy enrolled at Reed. After a year, she transferred to Drew University, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in botany. She taught horticulture at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, further developing her love of plants and gardens. In New York, she met Michael Brandriss, a medical student at New York University, and they married in 1955. The couple moved to Maryland to pursue Michael’s medical career and begin a family before eventually settling down in Pittsford, New York. Nancy was an inspiring mother to her four children, with whom she shared her love of open skies, fresh air, woods, lakes, and mountains. She is survived by her brother, Willard Meigs; her sons, David, Peter, and Mark; and her daughter, Deborah Sullivan.
Ronald Bryan ’53
October 22, 2018, in College Station, Texas.
The third of four children born to Robert and Gladys Leonards Bryan ’53, Ronald was raised in Portland and appreciated the education and classical music training received during his formative years. He attended Reed for one semester and then earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Yale University and a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Rochester, where he studied with Prof. Robert Marshak. In 1968, Ron joined the physics faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught, researched, and published until his retirement in 2011. When he was studying at Yale, Ron made frequent forays to discover the wonders of Manhattan—in particular Greenwich Village,
where he honed his skills as a jazz pianist. Music was a part of Ron’s life. Sometimes he used it to earn money, but mostly he loved it and the camaraderie of fellow musicians. In addition to music at home and at departmental parties, Ron was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Brazos Valley for 50 years, where he participated in the music services nearly every Sunday and at ceremonies and social gatherings. In 1962, while a postdoc at UCLA, Ron predicted the existence of a scalar meson. After some 48 years, that particle was finally listed in the official particle data tables. For many years he helped analyze nucleon-nucleon data in terms of phase shifts, facilitating construction of models of nucleon-nucleon reactions. He proposed the first model of elementary particles in which the particles exist in a higher-dimensional space-time that stretches off to infinity in all directions. Ron was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, elected for his research in nuclear physics. At Texas A&M, he received a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Association of Former Students, participated in the faculty senate, and in 2011 was granted emeritus status. In recent years, Ron became interested in the possibility that distant healing, remote viewing, chi, and other such phenomena are mediated by a physical field like the electromagnetic field, but which does not weaken over distances and is not impeded by obstructions like walls and mountains. He proposed an experiment to look for a higher-dimensional field; this work continues, funded by private donors, through his fellow researchers in Germany. In his early years at TAMU, Ron gathered scientists and philosophers together to discuss shared issues such as determinism. More recently he gathered diverse academics and lay people together weekly for Monday lunch to discuss material and spiritual ideas and to share personal beliefs and experiences. Through these meetings, many ideas were shared and bonds formed that continue to blossom today. Ron is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mary Lind Bryan; their two daughters, Phoebe and Penny; and two sons from a previous marriage, William and Scott.
William McDonald ’53
December 18, 2018, in Milwaukie, Oregon.
An icon of Milwaukie and the Clackamas County area, Bill passed away on his 93rd birthday at his home with loved ones by his side. He was born in Colchester, England, to a family that was not wealthy, but his extreme intelligence provided an opportunity to attend private school on scholarship. In 1940, at age 14, he and his younger sister, Fay, crossed the june 2019 Reed Magazine 43
In Memoriam Atlantic to escape the bombings in England, landing in New York and then traveling to Portland by train. They were sponsored by a local Milwaukie couple, the Fetchlands. His loving parents paid for the voyage and keep with their very limited funds, and Bill worked jobs as well. It was a hard childhood that he accepted without complaint. After graduating from Milwaukie High School, he served five years in the U.S. military, including the 17th Infantry of the U.S. Army in Okinawa and Korea. After two years, he enlisted in the air force and served in Bavaria with the First Radio Relay Squadron. Bill was forever scarred by his service, but like many of that brave generation, he did not share much. It was a duty to the new country that became his home. While serving in Bavaria, he met Christa Stelzmann, who became his wife. She had escaped from the Nazis and Russians in what was East Germany. They built a wonderful life and enjoyed 45 years together before her death in 1994. Following his military service, Bill entered Reed when he was 24 years old. After two years, he transferred to the College of Law at Willamette University. He worked for Ticor Title until 1959, when he began his lifelong career as a private practice attorney in Milwaukie, retiring in late 2017. His next chapter of life started near the time he started his law practice, when Christa gave birth to twin girls—only one baby had been expected. Bill’s civic duties began as a youth in DeMolay. He served as president of the Clackamas Bar Association and on the boards for the Ledding Library, Friends of the Milwaukie Center, and the Providence Milwaukie Foundation. Active in the Lions Club, the Elks Lodge, the Milwaukie Historical Society, and the North Clackamas Chamber of Commerce, he represented North Clackamas Schools in the early ’70s. He was honored with the Irwin Adams Lifetime Achievement award and elected as a Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow. Bill’s last years were spent at Glenmoore Retirement, where he made many good friends and enjoyed activities provided. He was a brilliant, stoic man with a loving heart, hardworking, honest, and with a dash of impatience for ignorance. He is survived by his twin daughters, Margaret Sheldon and Christine Larson, and his special friend, Wilda Parks.
Nancy Goodspeed Roche ’53 February 11, 2019, in Portland, Oregon.
Nancy started at Reed in 1947 as an English major. After two years she transferred to the University of Washington where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She returned to Reed to get her MALS in 1969. In addition to “really special people,” she remembered the sense 44 Reed Magazine june 2019
of freedom and intellectual awakening that the college engendered. For 27 years, she taught English at Portland high schools, including Portland’s G i r l s Po l y t e c h n i c , W ilson, and C leveland. She was an active union member and a lobbyist for women’s rights. As president of both the Oregon Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Rights Coalition, she represented issues including bills regarding stalking, domestic violence, and child custody. “We have two major goals,” she said as president of the Oregon Women’s Political Caucus in 1982, “to elect women to office and to support women’s issues. Our bottom-line issues are concerned with human and civil rights, freedom of choice in abortion, availability of quality child care, and affirmative action.” She is survived by her daughter, Maura Roche.
Marshall Nechtow ’59
January 8, 2019, in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Born in Los Angeles, Marshall earned a bachelor’s degree from Reed and a master’s from Johns Hopkins University, both in physics. He was a pioneer in designing and manufacturing semiconductors, blazing a trail with integrated circuits and major improvements in CMOS circuits. A principal engineer and scientist at McDonnell Douglas and senior principal engineer and scientist at Boeing, Marshall held multiple patents and his products went into space, starting in the NASA Mercury program. After retiring from Boeing in 2002, he continued to pursue such interests as electronics, aikido, tennis, sailing, Reiki, art, and volunteering with Habitat construction. He is survived by Friederica Nechtow, his wife of 25 years, and his stepchildren, Keith, Liz, Emilie, and Geoffrey Clayton.
Jane Galbraith Shell Raymond ’59
December 16, 2018, in Panorama City, California, from septic shock.
Born in Portland, Oregon, to Stanley Shell and Katharine Galbraith Shell, Jane spent her early years in Wallowa in eastern Oregon. After losing her mother at age 6, Jane moved to Portland and lived under the care of her grandmother and her maternal aunt, Helen. She spent some vacations with her father (who suffered recurrent illnesses due to injuries sustained in World War I). Aunt Helen taught grammar school and
encouraged Jane intellectually. W hen her grandmother passed away during her senior year of high school, Jane wished to continue living with her aunt. She was drawn to the academic climate at Reed, where she flourished and made many close friends. An accomplished violinist and pianist, Jane enjoyed being part of the active campus music community. Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69] inspired her with his calligraphy, and Prof. Arthur F. Scott [chemistry 1923–79] was a large influence, fostering her love of lab work. Jane wrote two theses: a chemistry thesis, “A Determination of the Ratio of Ag:C by the Synthesis and Analysis of Silver Trifluoroacetate,” and a math thesis, “Boolean Algebra,” written with Prof. Lloyd Williams [math 1947–81] advising. Jane loved solving puzzles, and math studies appealed to that drive. Feeling that a degree in chemistry would lead to more career options, Jane went on to MIT and earned an organic chemistry PhD in 1962. She was one of few women in the department and was disappointed that women were not allowed to act as teaching assistants at that time. Jane returned to Reed in the fall of 1962 and taught in both the chemistry and math departments. Happy to be back at Reed, she enjoyed mentoring students, including chemistry major Arlene Blum ’66, who became a lifelong friend, mountain climber, and environmental health scientist. In 1965, Jane married Kenneth Raymond ’64 and moved to Chicago, where she taught chemistry at the University of Chicago and coauthored the second edition of Principles of Physical Science with Melba Phillips and Francis T. Bonner. After her divorce, Jane was briefly a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley before joining the faculty of Caltech in 1977. Shortly after her arrival, she redesigned not only the undergraduate chemistry laboratory curriculum but also the laboratory space, working closely with the architect. Highly regarded by her Caltech students and colleagues, she received an Associated Students of Caltech award for excellence in teaching in 1990. She was a devoted mother who carefully balanced her professional and family duties. She retired in 2009 due to health problems related to multiple sclerosis and passed away in December 2018 after a long decline. She is survived by her daughter, Mary Katherine Raymond Johansson ’91, and son, Alan Raymond. The Dr. Jane Galbraith Shell Raymond Student Research Fund will provide annual grants to students in chemistry at Reed. Donations may be added to the fund. —Contributed by Mary Katherine Raymond Johansson ’91
Richard Atwater ’72
April 5, 2013, in Seattle, Washington.
Born in Seattle, Richard grew up in Yakima, Washington. He got a bachelor’s degree in literature from Reed and then a medical degree from the University of Washington. He practiced as an orthopedic surgeon in the Redmond and Seattle areas for more than 30 years. Surviving are his wife, Bambi Harvey; his son, Ryan Atwater, his daughter, Mollie Yates; his brother, O. Thomas Atwater; his stepson Jared Harvey; and his stepdaughter, Jennifer McGregor.
Stephen A. Marder ’75
November 21, 2017, in Narberth, Pennsylvania.
Born in Philadelphia, Stephen grew up with a fascination for life, and in particular its intellectual aspects. From an early age, he pursued the natural sciences and geology, and collected all forms of antiques— from African art to Sandwich glass (named after the glass made in Sandwich, Massachusetts) to real photo postcards (versus the lithographic or offset printing processes used in most postcards). He earned his bachelor’s degree in art history from Reed and wrote his thesis, “The Sources of Maillart’s Mature Bridge Forms: A Problem of ‘Form and Function,’” with Prof. Charles Rhyne [art history 1960–97]. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and then completed his certification to become a professional engineer. His area of specialty was in the fluid and thermal sciences. In addition to his career in the utility industry, Stephen pursued his passions of history and art. He came to believe history and its remnants could be regarded as a measure of people’s souls. In addition to publishing several papers on railroad and canal history of Pennsylvania and New York, he wrote a book, From Scranton to Cadosia: Along the N.Y.O.&W. Ry. Co. (1998), a historical sketch of the Scranton Division of the New York Ontario and Western Railway from 1890 to the present. He also conducted classes and seminars on regional history, Colonial metalware, and digital preservation. Stephen is survived by his son, Matthew Reed Marder, and his wife of nearly 28 years, Mary E. (Maribeth) Eldridge ’79.
Otavio Rodrigues Lima ’76 November 10, 2018, in Olympia, Washington, of multiple myeloma.
Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Orbelia Carvalho Ramos and Otacilio Rodrigues Lima, Otavio moved to Oakland, California, at the age of 10 when his mother married Donald Robinson,
an architect who had w o r k e d fo r K a i s e r Engineers International in Brazil. After the family relocated to London, Otavio attended the Leysin American School in Switzerland and won its top prize at graduation. Otavio earned a bachelor of arts in philosophy and religion at Reed, where he wrote his thesis, “Kierkegaard: Critical Questions and Speculations on Authority and the Social Role of a Christian,” with Prof. William Peck [philosophy 1961–2002] advising. He continued his education in Massachusetts, first at GordonConwell Theological Seminary, and then at Andover Newton Seminary to study more pastoral counseling. After receiving his masters of divinity degree, he was ordained as pastor of the North Street Congregational Church in West Medford, Massachusetts. He later served as the Protestant chaplain of the Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts, and as an associate pastor at the Sudbury Presbyterian Church in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Otavio had a child, Kathryn Ruth (Katie), born in 1985, with his former wife, Kristine Roop Champagne, the sister-in-law of his Reed College classmate, Mark Roop-Kharasch ’75. In the early 2000s, Otavio relocated to Olympia, Washington, where he retired. He was an active member of the Mountain View Church of the Nazarene in Tumwater, Washington, a welcoming place that he enjoyed very much. Otavio never lost his love of rousing, challenging, Reed-style discussions of many topics, but especially philosophy, religion, and comparing various cultures. He loved music, including opera, and was fond of pointing out that in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, it was Don Ottavio who was the good guy. He loved singing in his rich bass voice. The pitch could falter at times, but the enthusiasm was constant. One of the defining characteristics of Otavio’s life was his Christian faith, which began at a Presbyterian camp while he was in high school. His journals were filled with prayers asking God to strengthen him and thanking God for his grace. In his final years, Otavio’s health slowly declined. In November 2018, after a fall, he was admitted to a hospital, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and died, all within the space of eight days. He is survived by his daughter, Katie; his mother, Orbelia; and his stepsiblings, Linda Robinson, Kenneth Robinson, and Teresa Robinson Luttenberger. —Contributed by Kristine Champagne and Katie Rodrigues Lima.
Aida Bogas Metzenberg ’77
March 18, 2018, in Northridge, California, from the progression of a neurodegenerative disorder.
Aida was an accomplished scientist, genetic counselor, and professor. For her last 20 years, she fought valiantly against an unknown neurodegenerative disorder and was essentially quadriplegic for 10 of those years. She was born and raised in Berkeley, California, to parents who were both professional musicians. When asked how to pronounce her first name, Aida would respond, “It’s Aida, like ‘I eat a banana.’” After high school, she took a trip to Portland with a friend to check out the colleges. Her friend chose Lewis & Clark, but Aida applied to Reed and was offered a full-ride scholarship, which sealed the deal. And even though her high school guidance counselor had advised her, “Women don’t really go into science,” Aida pursued the sciences. She loved to sing and sang in the chorus under the direction of Prof. Virginia Hancock [music 1991–2016]. “Aida Bogas arrived at Reed as an experienced and excellent singer,” Prof. Hancock recalled. “She joined the Collegium Musicum right away and sang with us through her Reed career. I believe it was in her senior year, an attractive freshman baritone joined us, and she and Stan made an instant connection that never weakened even in the face of her serious physical challenges later in life. She continued singing beautifully for many years; I remember a video of a recital she gave with a friend, and the voice and musicianship she always had were still there.” Aida was a house adviser and met Stan Metzenberg ’80 [see obituary below] when he was a freshman. “I think my father was pretty instantly smitten with her,” said their daughter, Gretchen Metzenberg ’07. “He could recall exactly what she wore the first day of the welcoming orientation.” Even though Aida was dating someone else, Stan pursued her fervently, and they began dating at the end of her senior year. They married during his senior year at Reed. Aida wrote her thesis, “Biological Effects of Radioactive Substances from Nuclear Power Plants,” with her adviser, Prof. Bert Brehm [biology 1962–93]. After graduating, she did a genetic counseling master’s program at the UC Irvine. When Stan graduated, they both headed to the University of Wisconsin for doctoral degrees. Their daughter, Gretchen, was born during this time. Aida and Stan headed to the UC San Francisco for postdoctoral fellowships, working in research labs. Subsequently both were offered professorships at California State University, Northridge, where Aida was a professor in the biology department and the director of the genetic counseling program. A genetic counselor meets with the family june 2019 Reed Magazine 45
In Memoriam when a child is born with a genetic disorder. The counselor looks for patterns in the family tree, orders tests, and helps the family through the process. Great people skills are necessary in translating medical and scientific jargon into something a layperson can understand, and the counselor outlines what future risks might be for the child—or adult, if it’s an adult-onset disorder. In her late 30s, Aida began experiencing such symptoms as weakness and migraines. Over the course of four or five years, her unknown neurodegenerative disorder worsened so that she used a wheelchair—eventually losing function in her arms as well. For the last 10 years of her life, she was functionally quadriplegic. Despite this, she worked full time and had a dedicated posse of assistants to type her dictations and help her run a small empire of students. One of her greatest joys was in mentoring students. With Stan’s guidance and the student help, she was able to continue teaching. “She really pioneered online teaching at the university for big classes where she would oversee hundreds of students,” Gretchen said. Aida would dictate and her students would do all of the computer work. She continued running a research lab and would provide guidance to students working in the lab, discussing experiments with them, helping with their theses, and doing all of the edits on their theses. When every professor had to give a formal talk about the research they were doing and Aida could no longer really vocalize, she hired an actor from the theatre department to read her talk for her. She coached him through the pronunciations, resulting in an awesome presentation. It was ironic that Aida’s disorder followed her interest in the field. Since she knew so many people in the field, she had everything tested, but there was no pinpoint. “We could never figure out if there was a genetic basis or if it was just an unfortunate autoimmune process or something that can’t yet be screened for,” Gretchen explained. “She lived with this a total of about 20 years, and you could not imagine someone facing it more bravely, or with more joy than Aida. She had always been a very joyful, vivacious person, and she maintained that in the face of this horrific, progressive disability. She was full of grit and continued finding joy in life, supporting people about her, and celebrating their victories.” Aida had loved singing opera. After her disability, she wasn’t able to sing any more but would attend operas and symphonies and loved classical music. She also loved cooking. When her student assistants came to the house, she would give them cooking lessons because “most people don’t know how to cook these days.” Aida’s life would not have been as fulfilling or 46 Reed Magazine june 2019
meaningful without Stan, who died of a brain tumor four months after her death. Aida is survived by her father, Roy Boas; her mother, Marilyn Sherwin; her stepmother, Susan Bogas; her daughter, Gretchen; and her son, André.
Stan Metzenberg ’80
July 24, 2018, in San Mateo, California, of a brain tumor.
“In our family, Stan was the Hero with a capital H,” said his daughter, Gretchen Metzenberg ’07. “He was completely devoted to supporting my mother in her life and career despite her profound disability in the last 20 years of her life. She could not have continued without him, and through her work they changed the courses of many students’ lives.” Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Stan was described as “the consummate nerd,” a good Boy Scout who built rockets, went on backpacking trips in the backcountry, and long canoe trips. His father, a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, passed on his interest in science. When Stan was visiting his older brother at Oberlin, he rifled through a stack of college pamphlets and was drawn to the beautiful calligraphic typeface on the Reed pamphlet. That—and word of mouth— put Reed on Stan’s short list. He knew it was a serious, academic place, and that’s what he wanted. At Reed, Stan did a full double major, resulting in his doing a biology thesis (“An In Vitro Protein Synthesis System Using Ribosomes from the Ascomycete Neurospora Crassa”) with Prof. Peter Russell [biology 1972–2011] and a math thesis (“Topological Spaces and Topological Groups”) with Prof. Raymond Mayer [math 1974–2002]. He did folk dancing and sang with his future wife, Aida, in the Collegium and with Peter J. Ribosome and the Subunits, a band put together by Prof. Russell that played at Reedrelated gigs. Very much into computer programming, Stan was one of the original terminal watchers back when there were actual computer terminals. He did computer programming and sent Aida chat messages before such applications were really a thing. In January of his senior year, Stan married Aida at the county courthouse and then went right back to working on his theses. He and Aida both got their doctorate degrees from the University of Wisconsin and then went to UC San Francisco for post-doctoral fellowships. They were subsequently both offered professorships at CalState Northridge. Stan worked as a molecular biology professor at the university for more than 20 years, with a lab that adjoined Aida’s. He had a dark and irreverent sense of humor that often surprised those lulled by his mild-mannered exterior. Gretchen, his daughter, remembers his once writing a problem set involving a paramecium and amoeba in the style of Jaws.
He was a champion for veterans returning from service and developed an award and scholarship to promote their achievements. Passionate about K–12 science education, he worked extensively with other scientists to ensure rigorous academic standards. Stan was completely devoted to Aida, who for 20 years fought valiantly against an unknown neurodegenerative disorder that functionally left her quadriplegic. He also cared for his son, André, who is autistic. “He brought patience and humor to their lives, making my mother laugh many times a day,” Gretchen recalled. “I remember our very wonderful but odd father/daughter bonding over dissections at home, experiments in his lab, a homemade circuit board, or math games that he invented, and rearticulating my guinea pig’s skeleton that we dug up. He taught me the joys of intellectual rigor, of steady skepticism, and the joys of poking holes in someone’s argument, especially if you can do it calmly. He was a true scientist. I’ll also remember the pleasure he took in tormenting me as a teenager, and his readiness to dance to “Play That Funky Music White Boy” with abject joy. Every conversation included his wanting to be useful to people, and one of his last questions to me before his coma was, ‘Is my work done?’” Aida died in 2018. Stan is survived by his daughter, Gretchen; his son, André; his brother, Howard Metzenberg; and his mother, Helene Metzenberg.
Marie O’Shea ’81
November 10, 2018, in Greenport, New York, from bile duct cancer.
Marie’s great respect for the world around her and those inhabiting it was evident in all aspects of her life. Her professionalism and dedication at the Environmental Protection Agency have
been acknowledged by naming an agency-wide award for excellence in research in her honor. A child of the Pacific Northwest, Marie lived in the Chicago area as a teen. She graduated valedictorian from Lockport High School— where she proved her aptitude for math and science—and used her hand skills to make clothing for her mother’s coworkers. Science and craft were woven throughout Marie’s life, which was cut short by her death from bile duct cancer that had been diagnosed only three months earlier. Generous financial support from Reed brought Marie back to her birthplace. She majored in chemistry, but studied physics and art history with equal enthusiasm. She was awarded the Norman F. Coleman Honorary Scholarship, and the Dr. Dorothy O. Johansen Honorary Scholarship, and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society. Marie’s love of the humanities and science culminated in her thesis, “An Historical and Chemical Analysis of the Artists’ Pigment Naples Yellow,” with Prof. Michael Kay [chemistry 1985–86] advising. After graduating, she continued to ponder— now from a more enlightened perspective— whether to make a living using her hand skills or in a career that demanded science. She first sought the answer to this question by traveling, spending nearly a year in Europe and the United Kingdom, and northern Europe with her good friend, Karen Andersen Toyooka ’81. Upon her return, she learned how to apply her sewing skills to bookbinding restoration under the mentorship of Jack Thompson, owner of Thompson Conservation Laboratory of Portland. Hoping to ultimately land work in a museum setting, she accepted an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and worked extensively on an exhibition commemorating the centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1983. It gave her the opportunity to warmly reflect on Prof. Charles Rhyne’s [art history 1960– 97] engaging lectures on bridges. Marie realized that if she wanted to treat museum objects unsupervised, it would be necessary to pursue graduate training in conservation. Fully funded as an Arco Scholar, she earned a PhD in physical chemistry at New York University, where two professors were working in cultural heritage science, a discipline that
provides scientific support to practicing conservators. Her thesis focused on the characterization of polymer degradation processes, and Marie’s research led her into the field of environmental science. At NYU, she met Chris McGlinchey, a fellow scientist and kindred spirit. Their early courtship consisted of waiting in line together for standing-room tickets at the Metropolitan Opera, hiking in the Catskills, and stalking NYC flea markets for bargain items, typically those in need of repair. The courtship was cemented with the adoption of their first rescue cat, Kit. They married in 1986 near Mount Hood in Welches and spent their honeymoon in the San Juan Islands and Seattle, where they attended Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Marie accepted a postdoc at the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development in the Urban Stormwater Management Research Program. She gained expertise on the complex science of nonpoint source pollutants and coauthored articles that, according to her colleague, Richard Field, “enlightened the profession regarding the indiscriminate employment of municipal wastewater pathogen indicators for stormwater.” After her postdoc, she joined the New York City Department of Environmental Protection as a project scientist. Working with her New York City colleagues, she monitored water quality, coauthored the NYC Harbor Survey Report, wrote papers on urban watershed management, and was a contributing author and editor of Integrated Stormwater Management. Returning to the EPA in 1997, Marie initially focused on pollution in the Niagara River area, but she became a regional science liaison, coordinating nationwide and local research in air, water, and soil pollution. She was proud of the support she provided for EPA’s pioneering effort in citizen science. Marie was particularly instrumental in an early effort to work with residents of Newark, New Jersey’s Ironbound District, named for the bridges and elevated roadways that fenced in the district and compromised its air quality. The Ironbound project supported residents in making simple observations in a scientific manner and more advanced quantitative metrics by sharing robustly designed monitoring equipment and teaching important aspects of data gathering. George Pavlou, former deputy regional administrator for Region 2, observed, “Marie was not only a tremendous asset to EPA and the region, but also a wonderful and decent person whom all her colleagues sought for advice and friendship.” Outside of work, Marie divided her time between craft, gardening, culture, and travel. She did upholstering and knit her own designs based on wood-grain paneling or geometric designs lifted from her collection of Turkish rugs. When the couple renovated their home in
the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens, Marie disassembled and rebuilt the original windows, did electrical work, and retiled the bathrooms. The beautiful gardens she created at their homes—filled with native plants without need for pesticide or fertilizer—were appreciated by wildlife, neighbors, and passers-by. She is survived by her mother, Louisa; her husband, Chris McGlinchey; and their cats Sandy, Mort, and Sparky.
Mark Redhead ’90
December 18, 2018, in Santa Monica, California, after a long illness.
A Santa Monica native, Mark studied political science at Reed, where he wrote his thesis, “A Communicative Transvaluation: Habermas in Light of Nietzschean and Marcusian Critique,” with Prof. Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–] advising. He continued on to study political science and philosophy at the New School in New York City, where he received both his master’s degree and his PhD. Mark taught at a number of different universities, including Colgate University, Notre Dame, and Oregon State University, before beginning his tenure at California State University, Fullerton, where he worked as a full professor of political thought. In addition to numerous published articles in peer-reviewed journals, he authored two scholarly books: Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity; and Reasoning with Who We Are: Democratic Theory For a Not So Liberal Era. Mark is survived by his wife, Ornell Torralba; his sons, Astor and Cesc; his parents, Alan and Eva Redhead; and his sister, Susan Redhead.
Pending: David L. Gass ’40, Ethel Katz Suher Briller ’46, Eva Ann Rydalch Dalton ’46 Bobbie Jean Taylor Dodds ’46, Marguerite A. Fox ’47, John A. Beck ’49, Mary Elizabeth Strasser Bishop ’49, Morton T. Rosenblum ’49, Patricia Bennett Hunt ’50, John Buckringer ’55, Margaret Zundel Shirley ’55, William H. Wood ’57, William Charles Buss ’60, Joanna Baker ’61, Leslie W. Holzer ’65, Charles Richard Lehne ’65, Stephen Kahn ’66, Jon Lauglo ’66, Philip Douglas Uhlinger ’72, Lisa Shara Hall ’74, Esther Gwinnell ’75, Roberta Siegel ’76, David Nadal ’77, James Edward Walsh Jr. ’77, Michelle Fulton ’87, Walter LeBrun ’93, Marcus Thomas ’95.
A number of these memorialized were members of Reed’s Eliot Society and included a gift to the college in their estates. We are grateful for their contributions to the world and to the college.
june 2019 Reed Magazine 47
Object of Study The Great Migration This spring, students in Humanities 110 studied the Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence in a unit on the Harlem Renaissance. Completed in 1941, the series consists of 60 panels, each measuring 12 by 18 inches, depicting scenes from the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans fled intolerable conditions in the rural south for the industrial north. Lawrence painted all the panels simultaneously, working color by color to tell a story that had until then received scant public attention. The caption for this panel, Number 28, is: “The labor agent sent south by northern industry was a familiar presence in the black communities.�
What we’re looking at in class
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Serafina Martínez Ridgely ’21 samples a delectable treat at the Great Reedie Bake-Off, in which an astonishing 37 campus teams battled for timê—while onlookers enjoyed the spoils.