Drew Magazine | Winter 2011 by Renee Olson

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WINTER 2011 I New Theo Dean Arrives I Vintage Comic Book Covers What Led Us into War with Iraq? I Rare Jackie Robinson Broadcast I The “F” Returns

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Drew I 2011 MORE DREW EVENTS drew.edu/calendar

January 29 If the beef tenderloin with a red wine reduction or roast veggie ravioli

DREW in tomato basil cream sauce aren’t ATHLETICS enough to draw you out of your drewrangers.com warm home for the 2011 Library Gala, then surely the chance to support the Rose Memorial Library and hear Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annette Gordon-Reed (The Hemingses of Monticello) are reasons enough. Honorary chairs: Cathie C’64 and Board of Trustees Chair John Crawford T’65. drew.edu/library/gala2011 973.408.3471

March 14 From his rollicking Slavonic Dances to the large-scale, fully realized Sextet in A major, Antonín Dvořák was a pioneer in bringing folk music into the concert hall. This evening, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs these works and, for context, adds a middle course of fellow Czech Bedřich Smetana. drew.edu/community • 973.408.3917

Columnist and ABC News Political Commentator George Will wrote last year that Barack Obama’s presidency “has been transformative, but not Will as he intended …. It has resuscitated the right, making 2010 conservatism’s best year in 30 years—since the election of Ronald Reagan.” Hear Will elaborate in this Forum Series program. drew.edu/community 973.408.3917

Save the Date Second Annual Blue & Green Golf Tournament: June 13 Plainﬁeld Country Club, site of the 2011 Barclays Classic. drewrangers.com/golfouting

Visit Ireland!: June 28–July 12 Kiss the Blarney Stone, visit a monastic settlement on the banks of the River Shannon and tuck into a medieval banquet as part of Drew’s 13-day whirlwind tour of the Emerald Isle. Go online for a full itinerary. A Caspersen School of Graduate Studies tour. drew.edu/grad/Irelandtrip

April 30 Allow Drew alumni to help you thrive in a digital world at the Drew Leadership Conference 2011: Networking in a New Age. Sessions include: Connecting with Social Media, Working in Virtual Organizations, How to Stand Out in Cyberspace and Leadership in a Virtual World. Questions? Contact Linda DeTitta. ldetitta@drew.edu 973.408.3536

The Survivor Ramona Belfiore’s Inspiring Journey

Winter 2011

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A self-portrait of Patty Rentschler C’11, the talent behind the photos in the “Where in the Forest?” quiz on page 22.

Patty Rentschler C’11. Cover photo, Bill Cardoni

War Games Did bellicose statements made by the Bush administration after Sept. 11 boost American support for the war against Iraq? Most certainly, says Assistant Professor of Sociology Scott Bonn. By Christopher Hann

Pow! Ka-boom! Take That! A gallery of comic book covers by the legendary Joe Kubert, who got his start from a man whose collection of highbrow/lowbrow books on the graphic arts lives at Drew. By Mary Jo Patterson

Absolutely Positive Moved by a TV broadcast on the plight of orphans in Romania, a Jersey couple adopted four HIV-positive children, all 5 and under. Ramona Belfiore C’11 is one of them. By Ramona Belfiore C’11, as told to Leslie Garisto Pfaff

DEPARTMENTS 3 Mead 207 5 Into the Forest 42 Classnotes 64 BackTalk

Mead 207

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DREW MAGAZINE Volume 38, No. 1, Winter 2011 PRESIDENT Robert Weisbuch

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

will soon revisit the last 50 years of social life on campus.

CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER David W. Muha EDITOR Renée Olson CLASSNOTES Jacqueline Paquet DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS AND ADVERTISING Margaret M. Kiernan ART DIRECTION AND LAYOUT Margaret M. Kiernan, Lynne DeLade, Melanie Shandroff EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE Michael Bressman C’06, Scott Fitzgerald, Brooke Goode, Erin Hennessy C’95, Nina Maynard, Kristen Daily Williams C’98 EDITORIAL INTERNS Renee Blanchard T’12, Patty Rentschler C’11, Cara Swan C’11 VICE PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT Christopher M. Biehn

Drew Magazine (ISSN 0889-0153) is published three times a year by Drew University, 36 Madison Ave., Madison, NJ 07940, USA. Standard rate postage paid at Madison, N.J., and additional mailing office. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Office of Alumni Records, Alumni House, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940. All material in Drew Magazine is ©2011 by Drew University. SUBSCRIPTIONS Through your relationship to Drew University, you are a subscriber to Drew Magazine. ADDRESS CHANGES OR TO UNSUBSCRIBE Office of Alumni Relations, 973.408.3229, alumni@drew.edu LETTERS TO THE EDITOR magazine@drew.edu or to the first address above Drew University is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action employer and educator. Views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official policy of the university.

Stories about once-in-a-lifetime college journeys with fellow Drewids, roommate anecdotes (the good, the bad), sports legends, tales of falling in love, even cringeworthy memories of what you wore—or did to your hair. Starting January 10, visit Drew Magazine on Facebook and “like” us so you’ll see our queries. Then post your stories and photos. Selected material will appear in our article later this year.

VISIT facebook.com/drewmagazine EMAIL us at drewmag@drew.edu SEND mail to the address at left

development of a new strategic plan. I know, I know. “Strategic plan” is one of those concepts with all the excitement of counting dots on acoustical ceiling tile. My family jokes about my excitement. In our kitchen, we now have a strategic pan. Last night at a restaurant, my wife ordered a strategic flan. And so on. My passion, I’d argue, is understandable, especially now that we’re seeing four big goals in The Plan for Drew emerge, the fruit of the tireless efforts of a President’s Task Force of 15 faculty and staff, a separate planning group and a team of committed students. The first two goals mingle the permanent values of a liberal arts education with Drew’s future directions. Our first goal—intellectual engagement—speaks to Drew’s great tradition. We must ensure that students are exposed to the life of the mind, and to the human history of thought and achievement, without which any other goal becomes tantamount to an empty suit. But the second is a departure. It takes account of the ways a liberal education (one befitting a free citizen, as defined by Cicero) is changing. For much of the 20th century, universities defined the liberal arts in opposition to the material world, emphasizing the theoretical over the practical. But we began to see how such an absolute separation fails to empower stuUltimately Drew’s dents and shortens the reach of those academic disciplines that rightly should inform major social decisions. Drew, after future depends on all, was created to employ learning to benefit others. Thus the second goal calls for social engagement—applying growing new sources classroom learning to social urgencies and taking those realof revenue that feel world experiences back to the classroom. It calls as well for global engagement, for widening our horizons to the internaright to us. tional in all fields, for no nation will prosper if the world fails. And finally it includes professional engagement—asking how an academic interest might lead to a practical career. As Louis Menand argues, if we fail to teach our students how the actual world works, we create the ignorance of the well educated. The third and fourth goals are themselves more practical. They involve branding the university to define more sharply and compellingly Drew’s identity and ensuring our financial stability. Ultimately Drew’s future depends on growing new sources of revenue that feel right to us in terms of our academic ideals. Gently and gradually increasing the undergraduate population so that we can grow our faculty and curricular offerings, launching master’s degrees that lead to rewarding careers, and expanding our offerings to local adults can provide more academic impact while garnering resources for Drew that will raise the quality of everything we do.

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We want your stories.

Help Me Help Drew I invite you, the Drew community, to share with me what made your own experience of Drew special. It will help me bridge the Drew of the past with the Drew of the future. Please read The Plan for Drew and leave comments by February 15 at drew.edu/planfor drew.

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Bob Handelman. Facing page, courtesy University Archives

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS Camper Bull C’91, president, College Alumni Association Jeffrey Markay C’88, T’95, president, Theological School Alumni/ae Association

’M TRULY EXCITED BY DREW’S ONGOING

Robert Weisbuch

Cert no. SW-COC-002556

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Squirrel Tales

Into the Forest Winter 2011

Kristen Ackley Zeleny C’04

Paul Coen C’91 Alexander Waegel C’03

Four years after Robinson appeared on Talk Back, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Alex Halpern C’04 Dawn Turner C’90

A Real Home Run How a long-forgotten TV show in the United Methodist Archives grabbed the attention of the Baseball Hall of Fame. BY CHRISTOPHER HANN

DREW Drew University, Madison, NJ

Getty Images

Stay close to Drew. facebook.com/drewuniversity

HE LAST THING CHRIS ANDERSON G’04,’06 EXPECTED TO FIND WHEN HE BEGAN

to sort through a hundred or so films in the archives of the United Methodist Church was a 30-minute, black-and-white television episode featuring what many consider to be the most important American athlete of the 20th century. But there was Jackie Robinson, circa 1958, in jacket and tie, leading a panel of business and religious leaders discussing workplace ethics. “I actually wasn’t watching the films,” says Anderson, then a Ph.D. student at the Theo School and now the librarian at the United Methodist Archives and History Center on Drew’s campus. “But when I saw Robinson appear on one of the frames, I said, Wait a minute, he looks a little familiar.”

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Robinson, of course, was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ electric second baseman who in 1947 became the first African American to play in baseball’s major leagues. His Hall of Fame career was noted for his sure-handed glove, his potent bat and his derringdo on the base path, the most indelible example— seared into the collective psyche of an entire generation of baseball fans from Brooklyn—being his steal of home in front of Yogi Berra in the first game of the 1955 World Series (the only Series, it is duly noted, that Brooklyn ever won). But baseball historians also venerate Robinson for the unflinching grace with which he answered the racial slurs and commensurate misdeeds inflicted on him by fans, opponents and the occasional teammate. Anderson, an avid baseball fan who has taught a course on the history of American sports, was working as a part-time assistant in the Methodist archives when he discovered the Robinson footage in 2003. The film was part of a series titled Talk Back, produced by the Television, Radio and Film Commission of the Methodist Church and broadcast on WOR-TV in New York, among other stations. It begins with a morality play set in a corporate office in which a malingering employee is wrongfully blamed

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for the loss of a large account. Then appear Robinson and the panelists, who proceed to analyze the actions of the principal characters. Anderson catalogued the film, and that was that. Or so he thought. Then, earlier this year, in a flurry of unrelated emails with Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Anderson mentioned the Robinson film. Wiles was intrigued. They worked out an arrangement in which the archives would supply a DVD of the film to Hall of Fame headquarters in Cooperstown, N.Y. “There’s really no baseball-related content on the program,” Wiles says. “But Jackie Robinson is a cultural figure as well as a baseball figure. The mere fact that he would be chosen to lead this panel is an interesting biographical detail. He is arguably the most important cultural figure ever to emerge from baseball. So it’s a real home run for us, a no-brainer that we would want to take it, even though there’s no baseball content.” And so it was that in early November a car departed from the Drew campus, en route to Cooperstown, carrying Anderson; his father, Dave; Bob Williams, the church’s general secretary for the General Commission on Archives and History; and Kevin Newburg, an adjunct professor in the Theo School and a longtime (and presumably long-suffering) fan of the Chicago Cubs. When they arrived in Cooperstown, Wiles led them on a backstage tour of the museum that allowed them to inspect all manner of Robinson memorabilia. “Of course, I need to go back,” says Anderson, echoing the lament of countless baseball fans newly returned from their maiden pilgrimage to the Hall of Fame, “because there’s just so much.” Wiles says the Robinson film, to be kept in a climate-controlled basement in the Hall of Fame’s library, could prove useful to future biographers. “It gives you a little bit of his deportment and his demeanor,” he says. “If you watch someone hosting a TV program, you get a sense of who they think they are.”

The mere fact that [Robinson] would be chosen to lead this panel is an interesting biographical detail.

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The College of Liberal Arts has given the “U,” or unsatisfactory, grade a failing mark itself and replaced it with the flatly unambiguous “F.” Fortunately, it’s a shift few Drewids will notice. As a confident Steve Rosone C’13 told The Acorn, “It’s not something that will affect me, so I really couldn’t care less.”

Rookie zombies take art outside gallery walls.

Zombie Curriculum The vacant stare, check. Skull askew, check. Now all you need is a lumbering shuffle. BY RENÉE

Bill Cardoni

at drewmagazine.com

Return of a Classic

OLSON

HE WAN LIGHT OF A NOVEMBER AFTERNOON CLOAKED A BAND OF

zombies as they ambushed soccer practice and then chased a student through the gym and all the way back to the library. These living dead, aka undergraduates in the New York Semester on Contemporary Art, were players in a piece of performance art by Jillian Mcdonald, a guest video artist based in New York City. Mcdonald, whose work plumbs the complex response to fear that’s served up in mass entertainment, gave students a tutorial on classic zombie mannerisms. “You have to be kind of stiff because you’re decomposing,” explained one student. “And you might twitch because your body is going through changes.” The event left Lee Arnold, the assistant professor of art who curated Mcdonald’s Korn Gallery show, with only one regret. “We should have had them walk through the faculty meeting,” he said, shaking his head. “I should have thought of that.” at drewmagazine.com

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Into the Forest FOR THE

Common Good A quick guide to six socially engaged efforts that weave together classroom learning and the betterment of society. BY RENÉE OLSON

As part of a Drew project with Morristown’s nonprofit Neighborhood House/Pathways to Work program, undergrads from Elise DuBord’s Spanish class, “Service Learning and Translation: The U.S. Latino/a Immigrant Experience,” recently served as interpreters for a Seton Hall University School of Law survey on wage theft among Jersey day laborers.

Drew Civic Scholar Pirianthini Suntharalingam C’14 devotes a half day each week to helping Furniture Assist, a central Jersey nonprofit that makes donated furniture available free to lowincome households. Passionate about issues facing her family’s native Sri Lanka, Suntharalingam, one of 33 civic scholars, is well on her way to learning the skills she’ll need for that work—she’s already taken a seminar exploring the meaning of community service.

Tell It On the Mountaintop

Drew students, together with Marc Boglioli (Anthropology), headed to Appalachia last spring break to learn about mountaintop removal mining, the controversial practice of extracting coal from mountain summits. Students described the 10 days as “lifechanging.” Says Boglioli, “They saw the environmental and social consequences that are paid in regions like eastern Kentucky every time we turn up the thermostat in New Jersey.” Funded by a grant from NASA

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Funded by grants from NASA, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation

Illustrations, Gwenda Kaczor. Photo above, Bill Cardoni. Right, courtesy Gaius Charles

Se Habla Español

Students working with Anthropology Chair Maria Masucci at Drew’s archaeological field station in El Azúcar, Ecuador, interviewed local residents last summer about the toll a new dam has taken on their village. Deforestation topped the list of concerns, and Drewids responded by building the community a pilot tree farm.

Home Making

Dam Nation

t Green Justice A medical waste treatment facility proposed in Newark, N.J., got shot down last fall with help from Zoe Crum C’10. The Ironbound Community Corporation called Crum’s GIS map showing the neighborhood’s high number of preexisting toxic waste sites “useful” in its campaign against the facility. A biology major, Crum created the map during a postgrad internship with Catherine Riihimaki (Biology) and Krista White (GIS support specialist). Funded by a grant from NASA

Friday Night Lights Star Tackles Race Issues in L.A. Best known for portraying “Smash” Williams on NBC’s football drama Friday Night Lights and his role in the 2010 Angelina Jolie flick, Salt, Gaius Charles now spends his days far from Hollywood. As a Theo student working on his M.Div., Charles is busy with the same coursework and exams that try any seminarian. But he slipped back into character last summer to make his work as a Drew Communities of Shalom intern come alive. Playing to an excited house at the Echo Park United Methodist Church in central Los Angeles, Charles—or rather, Smash—screened two episodes of Friday Night Lights in which Smash takes the lead in grappling with a racist coach and teammates. After the second episode, Charles stepped back out of character and led a discussion with members of the largely Hispanic community about gang violence and racial hostility. “It was a really powerful event,” says Charles. “I feel a lot of people were able to let their guard down and have a dialogue about genuine issues that, I think, planted the seeds for transformation in the community.” Funded by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund

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Haiti

Into the Forest

During spring break, Drew’s Communities of Shalom plans to bring undergraduates to work at Haitian Artisans for Peace International, a new Shalom Zone.

New York City Melissa Fuest C’02, Theo School advancement director, finished the New York City Marathon in 3:43:10, ahead of both Chilean miner Edison Peña and Al Roker.

AROUND THE

The Miscellany

Drewniverse An insider’s guide to what’s happening on campus.

The Commons

Caspersen

Taco Day moved to Tuesdays, supplanting Wednesday as the traditional taco-eating day.

Professor of History Christine Kinealy brought to life the Irish nationalist, Speranza, aka Lady Wilde, mother of Oscar, onstage last fall at a Long Island, N.Y., library.

Theo School Last semester, Theo School Associate Dean Anne Yardley multitasked, serving as interim dean and teaching “Spirituality of Chant.”

Arboretum Who knew we had a tree native to Siberia, a deciduous conifer called a European Larch?

Library Faculty and students can now text questions—perfect for term paper research—to the library most waking hours.

In the cherry blossom’s shade There’s no such thing as a stranger. Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828)

Brothers College

The beloved cherry tree whose delicate petals drifted down on Brothers College courtyard each spring took its leave in 2010, its roots likely damaged during repair work. In its place now stands a young new cherry, whose show of beauty we await as warmer weather returns to the Forest.

Advancement

Undergraduate retention is up, especially among Civic Scholars (100 percent from 2009–10) and Baldwin Scholars (97 percent).

A $150,000 grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund will jumpstart a new campus energy conservation initiative, including the submetering of 15 buildings to identify potential savings.

Hall of Sciences As a tribute, The Journal of Antibiotics dedicated its August 2010 issue to RISE Fellow Arnold Demain.

Time called 2011 commencement speaker Shirley Ann Jackson “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science.”

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In January, Wyatt Evans in the history department launched a new film-centric course: “Monsters, Gangsters and the Great Depression.”

Homepage The right-here, right-now spirit of the Forest is palpable in Drew’s new Flickr gallery, “A Year in Photos,” at drew.edu.

Map by Anne Smith; Justine Beckett

January Term Commencement

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Into the Forest

Up in Flames Caspersen Dean Richard Greenwald appears in a new PBS doc about the horrific Triangle Factory fire. BY MARY JO PATTERSON

The Bio

shocks because most of the 146 victims were girls or young women. Or because many jumped to their deaths, driven by flames that had already ignited their clothing. Maybe it’s because exits were locked, and fire ladders were too short. Whatever the reason, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 in New York City is an event worth revisiting, again and again—with powerful lessons for the present, says history professor Richard Greenwald, dean of the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies. Greenwald, author of a 2005 book and numerous articles about the fire, discusses the garment industry of that era in a new documentary airing

Dean Kuan is the first Asian American to head a Methodist seminary.

Global Shift Methodist Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan arrives as the new dean of the Theological School. BY BRUCE WALLACE

After completing your undergraduate degree, you were a pastor in Malaysia. Do you find that your pastoral experience influences your academic life? Absolutely. For me, teaching in a seminary is ministry. A lot of my own seminary students struggle with whether or not this is really what they are called to do and other issues as they think about moving into religious leadership. So in many contexts I have had to put myself in a pastoral role in relating to my students. Your scholarly work often deals with issues of Biblical interpretation and Asian and Asian-American identity. Why does that area interest you? As Asian Americans continue to think about and construct Asian-American identity, I see the same thing happening in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is written in the context of the exile. If you look at what the writers were trying to do, much of it is also about constructing their own identity of what it means to be an Israelite, what it means to be a Jew.

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You’ve said that Drew is poised to be a pioneer in preparing religious leaders and scholars for global societies—how so? In theological education, Drew has perhaps the most diverse faculty. But more important is that this is an amazing collection of faculty who are pushing the edges of theological education and theological religious scholarship. And I get a sense that they are ready to rethink theological education. What will that mean in terms of what the school looks like in a year or two or five? It’s more like five to 10 years, but it is a matter of staying ahead of the game. In terms of the U.S. population, the demographics are showing quite clearly that probably by 2042 the non-Hispanic white population is no longer going to be in the majority. Secondly, when you think about global Christianity, the majority of Christians will no longer be in North America and in Europe. It will be in Africa and Asia. So the question that I’m posing for myself and Drew is: How do we prepare ourselves to do theological education for a new reality?

Bill Cardoni. Facing page, illustration, Pep Montserrat; Lynne DeLade, Shelley Kusnetz (2)

Birthplace Born in Malaysia in 1957 to Chinese parents Ph.D. Old Testament, 1994, Emory University Languages learned during Ph.D. study Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian, Syriac, Ugaritic Previous position Associate professor of Old Testament, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif. Service Vice president, board of directors, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, United Methodist Church Family Kuan and his wife, Valentine Poh-Gaik Toh, have two daughters: Valene, an elementary school teacher, and Janene, a high school sophomore.

AYBE THE TRAGEDY STILL

nationally on PBS stations on February 28. The film, Triangle Fire, part of the American Experience series, marks the 100th anniversary of the disaster, the city’s worst workplace calamity prior to Sept. 11. Many people know that a government investigation into the inferno led to improved fire safety codes, labor laws and a new reform movement. But fewer understand the broader context of the fire, according to Greenwald. “The fire occurred during the Progressive Era, at a time when many New Yorkers thought some of these issues had been solved. The city had passed some new reform laws. There was a new awareness of fire and safety and zoning,” he says. A strike by women working in the city’s shirtwaist, or blouse, factories had been settled the previous year, with significant gains. But workers at Triangle went back to work without a union agreement. Greenwald believes the building’s location in Greenwich Village helped fuel outrage and reform. “Middleclass folks were watching,” he says, “people like Frances Perkins,” who later became U.S. Labor Department secretary. “The fire also gave Tammany Hall, which had been losing its hold on its city, a cause. Labor relations went from being private to being public.”

All Hail! President Robert Weisbuch lauded three faculty members in 2010 for their teaching, guided by student comments like these: Caspersen School of Graduate Studies

Thomas H. Kean Distinguished Professor of the Year PHILIP SCIBILIA Director of Medical Humanities

“His firm grip on content, lucid class presentations and encouragement of students were a (nonalcoholic) tonic.” Theological School

Scholar-Teacher of the Year DANNA NOLAN FEWELL Professor of Hebrew Bible

“She’s an exemplary professor who encourages intellectual curiosity in her students as they critically engage Biblical text.” College of Liberal Arts

President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching MARC TOMLJANOVICH Associate Professor of Economics

“The best teacher ever.”

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AS: It’s about a deaf boy who starts at a new high school and has to solve a mystery at a local coal mine. You took a big leap in deciding to make your main character deaf. The real fun of the book is that because Hamburger Halpin is deaf, his powers are in observation, but you get full access to his mind. AS: Why a deaf protagonist? JB: I had a short dream about seeing lip reading on a school bus. It seemed like an interesting scene, and so I wrote it, and then realized I had to build a character around it. Even though I knew nothing about the deaf world, I wanted this character to be able to spy on his classmates and solve the mystery. I did a lot of research to get the details right. JB: Did you anticipate being a writer while at Drew? AS: I was leaning towards getting into film or playwriting, but I just liked to tell stories. I’ve found this outlet in children’s fiction, which right now is the most robust part of the publishing industry because, surprisingly, kids are still reading, and you can let your imagination run wild in ways you can’t do in other forms. AS: What about you? JB: No, absolutely not. I was a political science major, and I really wanted to get involved in politics as a way to effect change in a world I saw as unjust.

We Meet at Last JB: Aaron, is Dweeb the first novel you’ve published? AS: After Drew, I wrote a big mess of a novel I couldn’t sell, but after I finished that I realized that the strongest parts of it were these stories about relationships between younger kids. So I said, Well, why don’t I take a shot at a novel for young people. AS: How would you describe my book to someone? JB: It reminds me of a classic teen movie.

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There are these five kids who get involved in this plot where their principal is trying to use them to skew the test results for their school. I don’t want to give too much away, but the kids get trapped in this test-taking dungeon, and they uncover a much bigger plot at their school. They are five awesome nerds figuring out how to save the world. It’s great. I loved it. JB: How would you describe my book, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin?

Linda Helton. Facing page, courtesy the authors

Up-and-coming tween novelists Josh Berk and Aaron Starmer, both C’98, didn’t know each other at Drew, but that didn’t stop us from asking them to interview each other.

JB: Was there a professor at Drew who played a role in you becoming a writer? AS: I wasn’t very good at poetry, but I took a poetry class with Peggy Samuels, and she was the type of professor who would push you to do more. She saw that I had a spark, that I wanted to be better at this and she encouraged me. I took a playwriting class with Rosemary McLaughlin, and it was one of the most fun classes I had at Drew. All my writing classes were fantastic opportunities to learn from people who were professional or amateur writers who had a passion for it and to be there with other students who were into it too. It was a really fun atmosphere.

AS: What was your experience as a writer working with editors and a big publishing company, on things like titles and covers and the editorial process? That’s been the biggest learning experience for me. JB: One of the things you learn is that writing a book is much less of a solitary experience than you would think. We went around with the title a million times. There are a lot of people involved: your agent, people in publicity and marketing and the head of line sometimes. I sent an email out to a group of my friends from Drew, and they all helped with my brainstorming. JB: What about your title? How did your experience with that go? AS: I came up with Dweeb early on, and everyone loved it. They were like, what 11year-old boy wouldn’t like to read a book called Dweeb? It is actually an acronym for the five main characters’ first names. AS: When I Googled you to learn about your book, I found out that when you sold it, it was announced on Publisher’s Marketplace the same week as mine. JB: It was?

Josh Berk

Aaron Starmer

AS: Yeah, it is certainly a small world. Especially given how few people were in our class, and then our books appear the same week. JB: That’s wild. Starmer, a Hoboken, N.J., resident whose book, Dweeb: Burgers, Beasts and Brainwashed Bullies, was released by Delacorte in 2009, will publish a new novel, The Only Ones, in September. Berk, who lives in a “cornfield in Allentown, Pa.,” plans to follow The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (Knopf, 2010) with Crime Scene Procrastinator in 2012.

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Motion Picture OES CLENCHED, THE VIVIDLY costumed dancer’s feet thump the stage with a driving, percussive beat in Kathakali, or story play, from South India. With an elaborate set of hand gestures and eye expressions that convey much of the narrative, Kathakali is “a very physical type of theater that involves rigorous training,” says Associate Professor of Theatre Arts Lisa Brenner, who brought the performance to Drew last fall as a way to familiarize students with Asian theater.

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Patty Rentschler C’11

Into the Forest

Having a Ball

The Big Turnoff It’s war. From January 1 through March 31, Alumni House and neighboring Madison House, Drew’s finance HQ, are going head to head to see who can slash electricity use furthest. Each militia, … er, staff, will get a monthly report summarizing energy use in kilowatts, dollars and pounds of CO2. Stay tuned for results: The spoils in this war are outcomes on which to base campuswide energy-reduction efforts—and bagels for the victor.

Cooper devoted a full third of his lecture to audience questions.

Bearing Witness At the Drew Forum last fall, CNN’s silver-haired anchor Anderson Cooper talked about how emotion fuels his work. BY MAURA MCDERMOTT

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S ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZED

broadcast journalists today, AC360° host Anderson Cooper has reported from nearly every hot spot on the globe: Somalia, New Orleans after Katrina, Haiti, Congo and, most recently, the BP oil spill in the Gulf. But landing his first job after graduating from Yale took a bit of moxie. In mid-November, he told an audience of about 1,500 in the Simon Forum that when he couldn’t get a job in journalism, he forged a press pass and took a camera into war-torn Burma. But what led him there was even more surprising. The year before he graduated, his older brother committed suicide, prompting the grief-stricken Cooper to seek refuge in “places where the pain outside would match the pain I was feeling inside.” Reporting from Somalia in the early days of that country’s famine, “I knew I had found my calling,” said Cooper. “I knew I couldn’t stop the war, I knew I couldn’t save people’s lives; but I

could bear witness to their struggle, and I think there’s value in that.” The 43-year-old journalist achieved fame for his emotionally charged reports in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He spoke about his fury upon hearing politicians thank each other while bodies lay on the streets. To hide his outrage, he said, would have been “as false as trying to inject too much emotion.” Gercy Jean-Pierre, a first-year student who grew up in Haiti, said he was impressed to hear about the time Cooper was filming a violent melee in that country and saw a young boy struck in the head by a concrete block. Cooper rushed to the boy’s aid. “It really shows that he has a heart,” Jean-Pierre said. “Most of the time we just take these things for granted, we’re just living our lives and don’t think about the people around us. He’s trying to help others, to think about the lives that people are living around the world.” at drewmagazine.com

Getty Images, Karen Mancinelli Paige. Facing page, Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; Lynne DeLade.

Miya Carey slid into the satin-and-lace history of African-American cotillions, thanks to the new Leavell-Oberg Fellowship. BY CHRISTOPHER HANN

HEN HER ACADEMIC ADVISER

told Miya Carey C’11 that her daughter was taking part in a debutante program in Essex County, the history major from East Windsor, N.J., wanted to know more. Carey’s curiosity led to a $3,000 fellowship that enabled her to conduct research last summer on the cultural significance of African-American cotillions, or debutante balls, in the first half of the 20th century. The practice of formally presenting young women to polite society with an ornate ball is well documented among privileged white Americans, but Carey says historians have largely overlooked black cotillions. “There’s nothing specifically written about them,” she says. “It makes it even better to research.” Carey says she was surprised to learn that young African-American women were less interested in using cotillions to search for potential husbands. “It was not as major a focus as I thought it was going to be,” says Carey, who did her research at the Schomburg Center for

Research in Black Culture in New York City and both the National Archives and Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington, D.C. Carey intends to use her work, underwritten by the inaugural Leavell-Oberg Summer Fellowship, to inform her senior thesis. “Cotillions were a way for wealthy and middle-class blacks to demonstrate their achievements,” says Carey. “If you look at cotillion programs and look at what the girls said they wanted to do, a lot of them said they wanted to go into professional fields like medicine or teaching or law.” The fellowship honors history professor Perry Leavell, who retired in 2008, and his wife, Barbara Oberg, general editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University. Leavell acolyte and Invesco Advisers Senior Analyst Gerry Lian C’77 launched the fellowship as a way to honor his former professor, and to date, his appeals to alumni have led to commitments of more than $118,000 to the fund.

Heard at Drew

“

It was the people. Everyone at this school was more down-toearth and friendly.

”

—Colts Neck, N.J., native and ﬁrst-year student Robert DePalma in The Daily Record last fall on why he chose Drew.

The 1947 BachelorBenedict Presentation Ball in Washington, D.C.

Winter 2011 19

Into the Forest | Sports

INTERVIEW

Matt Poskay The Major League Lacrosse 2010 MVP and Offensive Player of the Year on playing for the Boston Cannons, beating cancer and coaching at Drew. BY SCOTT FITZGERALD What’s daily life like for a professional lacrosse player? I imagine it’s a little bit different than a day in the life of an Alex Rodriguez. Major league lacrosse is in its

Athletic SHORTS WOMEN’S SOCCER (15–7–1) In a season for the record books, the Rangers took home their first-ever ECAC Metro/Upstate Championship with a 1–0 win over SUNY Brockport. Earlier, Drew had seven players named to the All-Conference Team—a Landmark Conference record. The women’s 15 victories gave them their winningest season in 11 years.

10th year. And, you know, the league’s excited by how much it has grown—we’re calling ourselves the pioneers of the sport. We practice a couple times a week, but I still live in Clark, N.J. I go up on Thursday, have Friday practice, play Saturday, maybe head home Sunday. What’s your position? This past year I moved to attack. You’ve been with the Cannons five years now. I had a little bit of a sophomore slump, but still scored a good amount of goals. My third year I was named team MVP. And then, my fourth year, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I had surgery, missed only four games and ended up playing through radiation treatments.

MEN’S SOCCER (14–4–4) The Rangers walked away with multiple postseason accolades, including a Landmark Conference Offensive Player of the Year Award for senior Matthew Greenberg.

Wow. Obviously my goal total was limited that year, and I just came back this past year, becoming the all-time leading scorer in Boston Cannon’s history. But beating the cancer was more important than the accolades.

Poskay’s favorite food? Salad.

20 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

Jordan Maslin. Facing page, courtesy Major League Lacrosse

In high school in Clark, you set the national record for most goals in a career. Does that still stand? Yes.

I think there are a good 80 goals between me and the No. 2 guy. If it’s broken, I don’t have a problem with it, but I kinda put it out of reach for a while. As men’s assistant lacrosse coach, what do you have the Rangers do? We do the same drills here that I do

at the Boston Cannons. That’s the best part of my day, the two hours we get to practice. I will do anything to teach guys the knowledge I’ve gained over my lacrosse career.

Sophomore Michelle Malone’s goal landed Drew their first Landmark Conference championship game. Matthew Gragnano C’14 led the conference with 10 goals in 2010.

FIELD HOCKEY (15–7) Captain Kati Eggert C’11 was named Landmark Conference Offensive Player of the Year for her spectacular senior season. The three-sport star led the Landmark Conference in goals (18) and points (45). The Rangers posted 15 wins, the most under fourth-year coach Felicia Cappabianca and highest total since the NCAA tournament team of 1986. CROSS COUNTRY Junior Steve Monteleone had one of the best years of any runner in recent Drew history and is the first Drew runner to earn Landmark All-Conference honors. Women’s soccer victory

drewmagazine.com

Winter 2011 21

Into the Forest

WHERE

in the Forest

To see campus through the lens of senior Patty Rentschler is to enter a heightened reality where drama reigns and the mundane becomes mesmerizing. Test yourself—how many of her Forest photos can you identify? If you’re stuck, the answers are on page 24. By Patty Rentschler C’11

<1 2

Winter 2011 23

24 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

9 1. S. W. Bowne Hall 2. The entry to Asbury Hall 3. Radiator in Seminary Hall 4. Mailboxes in the University Center 5. Shed door near athletic ďŹ eld 6. Davies House exterior wall 7. Doorway in Brothers College 8. Light ďŹ xtures in Brothers College 9. Dorothy Young Center for the Arts

8 6 5 7 4

WAR Games In his new book, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S. War on Iraq, Assistant Professor of Sociology Scott Bonn lays out how George W. Bush marched into battle while the American media napped. By Christopher Hann

Bill Cardoni

The theory of moral panic was first advanced in the 1970s. Can you describe what it means generally and how it applies to your book?

Bonn, here at Ground Zero, walked away from corporate life to immerse himself in criminal justice.

A moral panic is a situation where a particular group or condition becomes perceived as being threatening to society through the attention of the media and the articulation of political leaders. But this alleged threat is exaggerated. The reality is grossly overstated. There’s a notion here of a symbiotic relationship between the media and the political elite, that sometimes it’s in both their best interests to promote this fear. If you have an issue or agenda and you want to sell that agenda, there’s nothing like fear to promote your point of view. Politicians rely on the media

to promote their positions and rhetoric. At the same time, the media rely on the political elite for juicy stories. I’m not implying there’s a conspiracy. I’m not arguing that the Bush administration sat down with Time Inc. and said, OK, how can we scare the hell out of the public? I’m saying the news media was uncritical of the Bush administration, uncritical of their claims of weapons of mass destruction, and they just passively went along for the ride. Before becoming an academic, you spent 20 years as a media and advertising executive, including a time as vice president for client marketing at NBC Television. Did that give you insight into the workings of a major news organization?

Winter 2011 27

cited commonsense concerns about Saddam Hussein and his potential threat, given his track record?

All you have to do is look at the ownership of a opinion polls that measured the nation’s willingness to go to war against Iraq, starting in February 2001, given news organization to understand the political a month after Bush took office, and ending in March orientation of that news organization. There’s no 2003. I looked at the extent to which the presidencoincidence that Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, tial rhetoric that preceded these polls influenced who describes himself as one of the most conservapublic support for war. And I found that, yes, it did. tive men in the world, is the most conservative news As the rhetoric became more punitive, public supoutlet. An example that I have looked at since leavport for war increased. It maxed out at almost 70 ing NBC: General Electric is, if not the most heavily percent of the American public in support of going fined, one of the most heavily fined corporations for to war. And the same percentage believed that Iraq various infractions—such as consumer injury, faulty possessed weapons of mass products and false advertisedestruction and that it was ments—and is penalized by involved in the Sept. 11 the federal government attacks. The Bush propaaccordingly. I did an analysis When they finally ganda campaign worked where I looked at the covvery effectively in manuerage of General Electric’s captured Saddam Hussein facturing support for war. infractions by various telehe had a pistol with him. vision networks. At the time, In what way did the NBC was owned by General rhetoric become more Electric. NBC provided pracinflammatory? tically no coverage of General kept that pistol on his The administration began Electric’s infractions, where desk in the Oval Office. to use terminology like evilthe other networks provided doers, mad men, axis of evil, meaningful coverage. It was weapons of mass destruction, my exposure being on the imminent threat, mushroom inside of the machine, if you cloud. All this terminology was essentially introduced will, that led me to even ask these kinds of questions after Sept. 11 and specifically so in the context of in the first place. Iraq. Bush knew there wasn’t evidence to link Iraq to Sept. 11. Instead he did it through decepWhat are you teaching at Drew? tion. He would say things like, “We can’t have I teach the sociology of deviance, which is really any another situation like the falling of the Twin thing considered different or unusual. My interest Towers.” He was trying to incite retaliation and is more at the elite level—white-collar crimes and fear regarding Iraq, without saying that Iraq was crimes of the state. I’m very interested in how the responsible for Sept. 11. media portray and frame issues related to crime and terrorism and the perceptions that the public Does moral panic require the collaboration, develops.

They did do that as part of the argument, but that alone would not have constituted a valid justification for the war. Instead, they came up with the Bush doctrine of preemptive self-defense. Preemptive self-defense is an oxymoron. It’s either self-defense or it’s not. Preemptive self-defense is something different. Their argument was that the United States has a right to preemptively strike against another country if it’s believed that country potentially poses a threat to our security, whether or not that threat has manifested itself. The trouble with that is that it’s in direct violation of the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter and the Geneva

“

George Bush

”

I looked at more than 5,000 news stories about Iraq in The New York Times from March 20, 2000, to March 19, 2003. Only 1,100 of them had direct quotes about Iraq from the administration; those are the ones I used. I compared the presidential rhetoric published during the 18-month period beginning the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and ending the day before the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, to the rhetoric concerning Iraq published during the 18 months before Sept. 11. I found that the presidential rhetoric became much more punitive and inflammatory toward Iraq almost immediately after Sept. 11. I then compared the rhetoric to 24 Gallup public

28 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

Why do you think George Bush was so hellbent on taking out Saddam Hussein? In the book you theorize that he was trying to finish a job that his father had started.

Absolutely. These are not just unsubstantiated accusations. Scott McClellan—Bush’s press secretary and a close personal friend—talks in his book about being very disenchanted about essentially being used. Yes, it was very personal. Bush’s father was much criticized in conservative circles at the end of the Gulf War. There were a lot of people, a lot of neo-cons, who wanted his father to take Saddam out. I think part of the rationale was finishing his dad’s business. When they finally captured Saddam Hussein in that hole in the ground, he had a pistol with him. George Bush kept that pistol on his desk in the Oval Office. That’s an indication of how personally he took it. Does the book give lessons on how to prevent a moral panic from occurring again?

implicit or explicit, of both the ruling political class and the media?

There are two types of moral panic: grassroots moral panic and elite-engineered moral panic. An example of grassroots moral panic is something like satanic cults in schools or the witch hunts in Salem during Colonial times, where the fervor of society in general created the moral panic and political leaders jumped on later. In an elite-engineered moral panic, yes, it requires both. It requires the elites, whoever controls the rhetoric, with the assistance of the media. This methodology has never been applied to an international event before, or specifically a war situation. Why do you think the Bush administration had to create a moral panic in order to go to war with Iraq? Couldn’t the administration have

Bill Cardoni

In the book, you analyzed statements from the Bush administration in news accounts. Can you describe what you did?

Convention, all of which the United States helped write. The invasion of Iraq violated all of those. Not only was an attack not imminent, but Saddam Hussein declared that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In terms of international law, even if he had weapons of mass destruction, it still wouldn’t have been allowed. Oh, by the way, he wasn’t involved in Sept. 11 either.

Bonn signs copies of Mass Deception (Rutgers University Press, 2010) in Drew’s bookstore.

My message is essentially Let’s not get fooled again. The average person tends to be rather uncritical. The Bush administration very effectively created a moral panic, using language such as axis of evil and weapons of mass destruction. The party that uses the word evil is generally trying to strip out humanity. Once you do that, you’ve removed any possibility of discourse. You can’t have dialogue with evil. The Bush administration created a dichotomy in the world. Good people were the ones who went along with them. Evil people were the ones who didn’t.

Winter 2011 29

A gallery of comic book covers by Joe Kubert, who got a lucky break in the business from a man whose name lives on in Drew’s Special Collections. By Mary Jo Patterson

30 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

All art by Joe Kubert. All covers courtesy of DC Comics.

! w Po oom! b a K ke Ta hat! T

Above: A 1978 cover for DC Comics’ vaguely supernatural war comic. Facing page: Kubert’s caveman hero, Tor.

Winter 2011 31

Kubert interpreted Tarzan, starting with the first DC cover in 1972.

32 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

Librado Romero/The New York Times/Redux

OE KUBERT started drawing before most children learn to talk, grasping a pencil as a toddler and chalking pictures in the streets of his Brooklyn neighborhood by the time he was 3 or 4. Before he could read he fell in love with the Sunday comics in the newspaper, excited by the brightly colored figures that seemed to jump off the page and into his imagination. Joe, the son of a Jewish immigrant butcher, dreamed of becoming a cartoonist but had to learn how. And he did, by knocking on doors of art studios in lower Manhattan during the Depression. By age 12 he had landed at MLJ Studios, forerunner of Archie Comics, where kindly artists gave him drawing materials and tutored him in penciling and inking. But his first professional job—a six-page story starring Voltron, paying $5 a page—came during his next apprenticeship, at the Harry “A” Chesler Studio, where Kubert also found a nurturing atmosphere. “Harry allowed me to come in as often as I wanted” after class at Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art, he says. Chesler, whose studio churned out

comic strips and books for publishers, amassed an extensive personal collection of popular art, original comic art and literature about the genre. Originally gifted to the Friendship Library at Fairleigh Dickinson University, the art was eventually sent to the Library of Congress and the books to Drew. Today the Rose Memorial Library houses the Chesler Collection of Studies on Cartoon Art and Graphic Satire, a valuable resource for students of cultural history. The collection, which centers on 19th- and 20th-century studies and compendia, holds some 3,000 items, from a 1890 edition of Thomas Nast’s Christmas Drawings for the Human Race and The Katzenjammer Kids: Early Strips in Full Color to the more recent Poison Maiden and The Great Bitch: Female Stereotypes in Marvel Superhero Comics. Kubert went on to become a legend in his industry. Though best known for his war comics—DC characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman and the syndicated daily Tales of the Green Beret strip—he also illustrated horror, Westerns and animal themes. “I’m fortunate to have been able to make a livelihood at something I

Kubert, here in his Dover, N.J., studio, estimates that he’s drawn at least 5,000 covers in his career, many with military themes.

(Cont. on page 35)

Winter 2011 33

Kubert’s haunting portrayal “ of war and the men who fought it was distilled through the eyes of the battle-weary Rock.

”

—from the foreword of The Sgt. Rock Archives

Kubert is well known for creating Sgt. Rock, a long-running series (far left) that debuted in 1959, but he’s proved himself capable of drawing everything from his own creation, Tor (above), to superheroes like Batman.

He drew Hawkman, an alien policeman from the planet Thanagar (1962).

34 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

love to do,” says the father of five from Dover, N.J., who also runs a school for artists. In the 1990s he moved into the realm of graphic novels, writing and illustrating somber subjects like the Holocaust and the 1992 siege of Sarajevo. Last year Dean of Libraries Andrew Scrimgeour gave Kubert, 84, a tour of the Chesler Collection, a warmup for Kubert’s keynote lecture at a 2010 Drew symposium on the graphic

novel, led by lecturer Sloane DraysonKnigge T’86, G’90,’02, and library staffer Bruce Lancaster. Kubert is honored, though amused, to find his work worthy of study by academics. “It amazes me,” he says. “I mean, it’s wonderful, it feels good that the work is so accepted. To me, it was just a job.” Still, he did manage to save some of his output. “Not because I collected it,” he laughs, “but because I couldn’t bear to throw it away.”

Winter 2011 35

Infected with HIV as an infant, Ramona Belfiore spent her earliest years in an orphanage in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. Two decades later, she’s on the verge of graduating college, with all her dreams before her. By Ramona Belﬁore C’11, as told to Leslie Garisto Pfaff

36 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

Bill Cardoni. All familly photos courtesy Belﬁore family

Absolutely Positive

Me, today at age 23. Facing page: With my younger sisters Loredana (left) and Mihaela (center).

that had hay on the floor, and they had nine other kids to take care of, and their cattle were dying, and they couldn’t take care of a sick child on top of that. So they left me, assuming that I’d find a good place to live, and I ended up in the orphanage. I try to block out a lot of what I went through in that place. It saved my life, but it put me through a lot.

It was TV that got me to America.

My mom, Susan Belfiore, around 1993, about a year after she adopted us. I’m on the right, with my siblings, from left, Mihaela, Loredana and Ionel.

he day I found out I’d gotten into Drew I was so excited that, running back to my house, I fell and scraped both my knees. That’s also the day my anxieties began.

They got worse once I started school, when all the memories sprang up out of nowhere. My mother believed it was because I was on my own again. I remembered Alinka, one of the orphans I grew up with in Romania, and how she’d found seven stray puppies under the stairs; I remembered her dress, and her face, and the color of the puppies, and the smells. I remembered the kids who grew up with me in the orphanage, their faces and their names. And one night I had a dream: I was in a pool, and I turned to the boy next to me and he was very dark skinned.

38 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

The next morning I told my mother about it, and she said, “We threw a pool party for you guys when you got adopted, and Tavi”—one of the kids from the orphanage, who might have been Romany—“was in the pool next to you.” I was born in Romania in 1987. I was very, very ill—premature, probably—and I needed a transfusion immediately. When I got sicker, they tested me and found out I was HIV positive. In those days, the hospitals in Romania didn’t have enough money for new needles, so they used the same ones over and over again, which is probably how I was infected. My mother thinks that my parents had already abandoned me in the hospital before I was diagnosed; they lived on a farm, in a tiny house

One night in 1990, Susan Belfiore, my adoptive mother, was home with my dad, and she saw a commercial asking for volunteers to come to Romania to rock dying kids who had HIV. She turned to him and said, “I know I’m meant to go there.” So she got on a plane and went to Romania. She’d never been able to have children and, after a few months of being there with me and four other orphans, she called my dad and said, “I want to adopt one of the kids. What do you think?” He said, “How can you choose? Adopt them all.” First, though, she had to find all of our parents and get their permission to adopt us. The only ones who turned her down were Costine’s parents, so he had to stay in Romania; I don’t think he’s alive anymore. The adoption took a year and a half, since the Romanian government wouldn’t let my mother take four sick kids out of the country—they said we were going to die anyway. But in 1992 we left for America: 2-year-old Loredana; Mihaela and Ionel, who were 3; and 5-year-old me. Three years ago the four of us got tattoos that say “92,” representing the year that we came to the United States. When I was 9 and my mother was 45, she got pregnant and gave birth to my little brother, Aidan. Like all little brothers, he’s a pain in the butt, but he’s also very understanding with us. In fact, he sometimes gets upset because he’s the only one of us who doesn’t have HIV. During an interview a few years ago, he said, “If they weren’t here, I’d be a small child living in a very big house.” I never questioned that Susan and Bill Belfiore were my parents. Eventually, though, my mother sat me down and said, “You have actual parents in Romania somewhere. If you want to know about them,

we’re more than glad to help you write them.” I must have written them 10 times before I got my first letter. It listed my siblings’ names, and I suppose it was nice, but I didn’t care. Because as far as I was concerned, the people who’d adopted me and raised me were my parents. I’d always known that my siblings and I had HIV: My mom wanted us to believe that having it made us extraordinary, that it was a gift and we were meant to do something with it. But I never really understood it. And then when my brother Ionel was 8 or 9 years old, a child told him he wasn’t going to make it past 10 because he had HIV. My mom found him in the bathroom, crying, and that day she sat us down and told us, “You need to understand that people die of this virus.” That was the day I started to become an advocate. In seventh grade, we were learning about HIV in health class, and while my teacher was speaking, I just stood up and blurted it out: “I have HIV.” I sat right back down, and I heard people’s necks cracking as they turned to look at me. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done (that and the slide at Atlantis—that was bad). But after class, a kid came up to me and said, “You’re so brave.” And that’s when I knew I had to keep talking about it. My siblings and I do AIDS dance marathons, and I visit schools and talk about my experience. I’m also a family ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Since seventh grade, I’ve known that if

Top: Me around age 8. Bottom: All of us (I’m standing to the right of the surfboard) in the late 1990s on Long Beach Island, N.J.

Winter 2011 39

“My mom found him in the bathroom, crying, and that day she sat us down and told us, ‘You need to understand that people die of this virus.’”

40 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

nurse. She’ll tell you that I’m a different case and that I’m completely healthy.” And now I think she understands that and accepts me, which is fantastic. Matt has cerebral palsy, and we share the same outlook on our “disabilities”: We’ve never regretted what we have, and we know we’re stronger, better people because of it.

Like any college senior, I think a lot about the future: I want to be a professor someday, and I want to teach poetry. I’ve loved poetry since eighth grade, when my teacher introduced us to “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas; I wrote my college essay on it—about how the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” really paralleled my life. And then, at Drew, I took English 9 with Patrick Phillips, and I fell in love with the class— that’s when I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I wanted to teach poetry, and to be as passionate about it as Professor Phillips is when he teaches. But the people who’ve inspired me most are my parents. I can tell my mother anything and never doubt that she’ll understand. And both my mom and dad have taught me so much. If I had to choose the single most important thing

My room in Asbury Hall is filled with family photos and collages I’ve made.

Bill Cardoni

Me with my boyfriend, Matt Fay, at his graduation from Drew last May.

I can make a difference in someone’s life, it’s totally worth it. My mother says that my not being afraid to tell people about being HIV positive has helped my siblings talk about it, too, and that’s what I wanted. During my first year at Drew, I decided I’d tell all my professors about my status before I started a class, in case something went wrong, like a bloody nose. The school suggested I wear a medical band, but I didn’t want to be marked like that; I’d rather talk about it. When I meet new people now, I tell them right away that I have HIV. That’s how it was when I met my boyfriend, Matt. Within three hours of knowing him, I said, “I want you to know that I have HIV, but HIV doesn’t have me. I’m stronger than it, and I’m healthy, and I can fight it.” I’d always felt insecure about dating: I was afraid that no one would accept me once they knew about me—that I’d always be “the girlfriend with HIV.” And then I found out that Matt’s mother was afraid because he was dating me, and that just reinforced my fears. It was rough because I’d really fallen for him and didn’t want my virus to be a problem. In fact, I’ve been undetectable since I was 8: My viral load is below 50 (which means that the virus isn’t actively reproducing) and, except when I’ve gotten sick, it’s never really spiked. I’m not on any kind of medication, except vitamins. So I called Matt’s mother, and I said, “Talk to my

I’ve learned from them it would have to be not to let anyone treat me differently because I have HIV, to keep my head up high in the darkest hours and to keep fighting. When I call my mother to tell her I’m upset about something, she’ll tell me, “Ramona, you were dying in Romania; you’ve been through a lot

worse. You’re going to be fine.” In fact, it was talking to her every night during freshman year that got me through the anxieties that threatened to overwhelm me. She’d tell me, “Life doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” and I know she was right. Because I’m still here and loving it.

Winter 2011 41

Classnotes

THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

SADLY, WE REPORT THE DEATHS OF

Classnotes

Robert Hamilton C’38, Chester B. Dugdale C’39, Frank B. Brandon Jr. C’40, T’43, Natalie Blazek C’47, Richard A. Rohde C’51, Carol N. Kelly C’60 and Claudia Luecke C’89. See In Memoriam, pages 62–63.

Abraham Mishkin recently lost his dear wife, Naomi.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Perfect Typecasting “Hisblondringletsandchildlikesmile recall noneother thanHarpoMarx,” TheNewYorkTimeswrotein2009.

65 Reunion

Silent Star Actor JonathanRandell Silver C’07 talksabout landingtheroleof HarpoMarxinTheMost RidiculousThingYouEver Hoid inNewYorklast fall. show was being done, I said, “This is the part I was born to play.” I’ve been a Marx Brothers fan for many, many years, and I do have a strange resemblance to him. We have similar facial features, and my hair—this is giving away a little secret—is like the wig he wore in most of his films. I grew my hair out extra long for the production. Howdidtheauditiongo? I brought in a trench coat, a goofy tie, some very loose pants and a little horn. The scene takes place in a courtroom. Harpo is called up to the stand to testify, and he pantomimes what happened. I had a bit with Chiclets, where I put them in my mouth to spit out as teeth. They loved it. They called me back, and I did the same bit again, followed by a dance call. Wasit frustratingtoplaysomeonewhodoesn’tspeak?I thought it might be, but it wasn’t. This was actually my sec-

42 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

ond musical in a row where I played a mute. Doyoumisswalkingaroundwithahorntuckedinthefront of your pants? Is it weird if I say yes? Honestly, it’s much more comfortable without it. Whenyou’renot onstage, youworkinIT. Youalsoworkasamagicianand musician. Wouldyourather act full time? Yes. It’s hard, but I’m getting there slowly. Doyoudreamof becomingastar? That would be wonderful, but I’m not looking to be famous. I’m looking to be successful. Those are different things. My mentor, Ray DeMattis, is this wonderful actor who is incredibly successful. He has worked consistently in theater for 40 years, from show to show to show. That’s something I would love to do.—MARYJOPATTERSON

Bill Cardoni

What promptedyoutowant toplayHarpo? When I saw this

After a varied career serving as a leader of the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Ethical Culture Society and Unitarian minister in Ottawa, th Canada, Howard Box and his wife, Jean, have returned to Oak Ridge, Tenn., where Howard had been minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church for 15 years. Howard has three children and three grandchildren—all of whom visited him for an exhausting (for Howard) week last summer. From Maxville, Ontario, Fred Cappuccino and his wife, Bonnie, are involved in Child Haven International, which now cares for 1,100 formerly destitute children in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Tibet. He says, “We have 20 surviving kids, 17 grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.” Since his college years at Drew, Joel Hemmendinger—younger brother of Larry C’44, who was my roommate during my first year at college—served as a naval officer during World War II, and went back to college at the Columbia School of Business. He became a sales trainee, was called back to the Navy for two years, came home, married in 1954 and is living happily ever after. Joel worked as a life insurance agent for Equitable Life until 1990. He has three sons and six grandchildren, aged 8 to 19. He and his wife live in a retirement community near Princeton, N.J.

Reid Issac retired from the clergy staff of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in 1990. Since then he has organized the Cleveland Ecumenical Institute for Religious Studies and mentored two classes of diaconal candidates for the Diocese of Ohio. For the past 11 years he has been living at the Judson Retirement Community in Cleveland, where he goes to the swimming pool three mornings a week, plays bridge two nights a week and does a lot of his own cooking “with the help of a cookbook by my former parishioner Judith Jones, The Pleasures of Cooking for One.” Sumiko Kobayashi worked for 19 years in information technology for FMC Corporation. Sumikorecallsthat she arrivedat DrewinOctober 1943 “freshout of adesert internment campcalledTopaz inthestateof Utah.”

This experience with the evacuation and internment of her family led her to later become a volunteer lobbyist for passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1968, which provided an apology and monetary remuneration for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Although she majored in English at Drew, Renee (Vaintrob) Weinberg never had a job related to her major. She has become a watercolor and collage artist. Her husband, two sons, granddaughter and father-in-law all are doctors—four generations in the profession! Renee participated in the medical enterprise as a receptionist in her husband’s office. She lives in Delray Beach, Fla. FrankAuld, frankauld@sbcglobal.net

June (Hoffman) Bello lives with her husband, Eugene C’50, in Webster, N.Y. She finished her B.A. summa cum laude at the State University of New York in Brockport. She and Gene married in 1947 and are now expecting their eighth great-grandchild! Hope (Whittaker) Vandegriff and her husband, Paul, have seven

children. She comes from five generations of Methodist ministers. She taught in elementary schools while Paul served 12 years in three Methodist churches in Ohio. After earning his D.Min., Paul was appointed to a church of 100 members, which grew to 1,800 in his 12-year pastorate! Eli Gonick and his wife, Abbie, retired to Lancaster, Pa., in 1990 after a very fruitful career with DuPont and International Paper. He serves on a Drew science committee charged with examining ways to provide additional facilities for the sciences at Drew. In October 2010, your secretaries increased their grand total of greatgrandchildren to six! ElaineandJimDewart, holeyo1@ verizon.net

Both Joan (Franke) and John Cimaglia and Deenie and Sidney Schlosser celebrated their 60th wedding anniversaries in 2010.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

What a treat it was to be able to attend our 60th reunion! There were nine of us in attendance. First and foremost, our class president, Bob Gentile, and his dear “other half,” Alice “Cappie,” were there. In

University Advancement VICE PRESIDENT Christopher M. Biehn cbiehn@drew.edu ALUMNI & PARENT RELATIONS 973.408.3229 800.979.DREW alumni@drew.edu giving@drew.edu ALUMNI HOUSE 36 Madison Avenue Madison, NJ 07940

Winter 2011 43

Classnotes

THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

addition to myself and Jack C’43, Diana (Lum) “Dee” and Bob Cunningham traveled all the way from Texas. Marge (Freeman) Hull made the trip from Maryland, and Bob Carlson represented the D.C. area, reporting he would soon have the privilege of giving the wedding vows to his oldest granddaughter. Virginia (Witzler) Kadri and always loyal Dot (Pellet) Reutlinger were nearby New Jersey attendees. Ruth (Sorensen) Lloyd C’51 was also there. Frankly, I think we are all holding up pretty well! Our time together provided us with wonderful memories of our years at Drew for a long time to come. Awaiting my return to North Carolina was a note from Howard Sanborn. He and his wife, Peg, moved to a lovely retirement community near their former home in Venice, Fla. They are most happy with their decision. The recent move prevented Howie from being at our 60th. John Wellesley Lawson passed away on May 19, 2010. See In Memoriam, page 63. AnneEvansHorner, 706AConstitutionDrive, Durham, NC277052802

Blanche Hirsch, Beth Carlson,

Haris Joseph and Judith Rowe spent their 80th birthdays in Charleston, S.C. All live in the Washington, D.C., area with their husbands and hold weekly gatherings.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Bob Falk is among the busiest of retirees. I called him in the midst of cooking. He explained that he attended a cooking school in France a few years ago and is now chef de maison. Bob took classes in painting—he’s transformed his former plant room into his studio. Last year Bob and wife Amy, a French teacher, enjoyed living for two months in the Marais section of Paris, coinciding with their daughter’s study-abroad semester in Strasbourg, France. Afterwards the Falks traveled on to northwest Italy to the Cinque Terre. He described the little town of Vernazza where they stayed as “idyllic.” I received an email from Bill Berman titled “Lunch with Norm.” (I wondered if he’d composed one of those human interest stories he used to write for the Morristown

DREW Alumni Homecoming Weekend 2011

ComeBack, GiveBack • September 23–24 Celebrate your reunion! If you graduated in a year ending in “1”or “6,” join us as we honor your class. Visit your class page at drew.edu/homecoming. Save the date and watch your mail for more information coming soon.

44 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

newspaper while at Drew.) It turned out he’d met with Norman Shachat for lunch, the first time the men had seen each other in 35 years! Norm read our report on our 55th reunion in Drew Magazine and realized that they live fairly close to each other. Norman and his wife, Janet, are retired and live in Yardley, Pa. Your reporter ishappy toknowthat DrewMagazine cancut acrosstheyearsandbringclassmatestogether.

Joan (Fisher) and John McLellan C’53 enjoyed a summer vacation to Alaska, where they took a short cruise to the Portage Glacier and a bus tour to Denali National Park. In a phone conversation, David Carmen talked with humor and serious reflection about changes that come with retirement from the ministry. Dave, who lives in Boise, Idaho, then wrote: “Retirement, sitting in a church pew rather than at work at the pulpit, has unknown hazards for some ministers, namely me. Churches provided housing when I was working, but in retirement, we own our first house! Thank God for tradesmen!” Dave also had a reading recommendation for us: the series of historical novels by Patrick O’Brian. Since retiring from his medical practice, Bob McKee has taken up the clarinet and plays in the Ulster County (N.Y.) Community Band. But, he noted, one never quite gives up being a medical doctor. Onanoverseasflight toIreland, thecrewcalledfor helpfromany doctor onboardfor atraveler withaheart problem. Bob wasupandassistingright away—not thefirst suchoccurrencefor himonaflight. Bob and his wife,

Grace, live in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., not far from my hometown, Middletown, where I attended my high school 60th class reunion this last fall. Marion Pinsdorf has not been easy to find. Thanks to Bob McKee I learned that for two months she was in extensive therapy recovering from fractured vertebrae resulting from several falls. She is still writing. Her latest project examines

leadership, tentatively titled Surviving Toxic Bosses: Seagulls, Peacocks and Sharks. She expects it to be completed and published soon. I’ve added it to my reading list! Marianne (Kirchoff) Campbell enjoyed coming out of retirement briefly to substitute teach a course on English for non-English speakers. Warren Campbell C’55 has been working at home on a new hobby— getting a metal shop up and going. Last winter the Campbells spent a week in Costa Rica and were impressed with its beauty and culture and its 98 percent literacy rate. A few days after we saw Marianne and Warren at Reunion in 2009, they left on their annual family visit to Germany, a trip they’ve made each autumn for the last 20 years. Jane E. Broughton passed away on Sept. 4, 2010. See In Memoriam, page 62. Please do let me hear from you! Mary (Zoghby) Hepburn, mhepburn@ uga.edu

Well, our 55th reunion has come and gone, and I was saddened by the small attendance from our class! The activities started on Friday night, with the Drew Athletic Hall of Fame dinner. My teammate and our almost classmate Sid Zwerling C’56 was inducted posthumously. Sol Gittleman, who had known Sid since fifth grade and came to Drew with him, said a few words. Sid’s widow, Nancy, was there, with a number of family members. Dick Semeraro and his wife, Dana, and Stan Wilson also attended. After the formal ceremony, Sid’s four classmates—Sol, Dick, Stan and I—were surprised and honored to be recognized with a special Drew “D” Athletic Certificate. I missed the breakfast on Saturday morning but went out to the baseball field for the alumni game. My good buddy Warner Johnson C’57 always plays in this game and was there again this year. Baseball Coach

Masco asked Warner and me to throw out the first pitch. I nolonger can throwworthahoot, soWarner threwout thepitch, andI caught it, formingabattery of well over 150 yearsof age. I left the baseball game to go to

the luncheon, which Stan, Dick and Dana also attended. I had the pleasure of seeing James Pain and Bob Gentile there. Stan left after the luncheon, but Dick and Dana stayed for the dinner at night, where we were joined by Nish Najarian T’59, G’82 and his wife, Lil. I also went over to the gym to watch the alumni basketball game, but needless to say, no one from our era was participating. I did, however, meet the basketball coach, who had written all of the former players a letter about participating. Bob Janes had health issues that prevented him from attending. Don Sparks and Mary Lou (Herrmann) Lunin both thought they might make it but were apparently unable to. John MacLean indicated that he was not planning on attending. Hilma (Vesterdal) Jenus and Ruth (Smyres) Zecchini had conflicting plans. Since my last column, I heard from Eleanor Daniels, our longtime class secretary, who said that she was not traveling much due to her osteoporosis. I also received emails from two classmates who had been listed in our 50th reunion booklet as lost: Frode Ulvedal, retired and living in Colorado overlooking Pikes Peak and the Air Force Academy, and Ed Weiss T’96, pastor of the Church of Our Savior in Okeechobee, Fla. Before receiving his doctorate from Drew’s Theo School, Ed was a physician; his medical efforts now are pretty much limited to pro bono work with the sizable immigrant population in Okeechobee. Efforts to contact many other classmates failed, so I have requested an up-to-date roster from Drew. In the meantime, before our 60th reunion in 2015, let’s hear from more of you! I plan to retire by March and move to Jacksonville,

Fla., so I will have to get a new email address to continue as class secretary … unless someone else wants to take over? Bill Ottinger, bottinger@landispa.com

Nominated for the most automated device on campus from 1952 to 1956 are the following: telegrams, alarm radios, color TVs, long-distance calls, telephones, typewriters, washers, dryers, thermostats, the autoclave in the greenhouse, the bell to change class, a Van Slyke unit in the chemistry lab and, my th favorite, housemothers in the girls’ dorms. The word for next time: Beasty. Within the past year, Neal Secor and Ricardo have been to East Africa, up the Danube in Eastern Europe and to Italy. Neal also frequently travels to Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. He works with a nonprofit organization that educates young people in Myanmar. Winter finds Neal ensconced in his casita on the north shore of the Dominican Republic.

56 55 Reunion

Last April, Mimi (Brewster) Hollister Gardner andDonvisitedthehouse inFujianProvince, China, whereshewasborn. It hap-

pened to be the 150th anniversary of Union Hospital, where her father, Harold Brewster, was the last Western administrator before the liberation in 1950. It is now the third-largest hospital in China. They also spent a week in Shanghai, stopping at the school where Mimi attended eighth and ninth grades. Walt Everett speaks several times a month at universities, churches and banquets in an effort to abolish the death penalty in all states that still have it. In other news, the oldest of his grandchildren is a sophomore in college, with two more about to enter. Patty (Kiefer) Vander Schaaf and I took a Russian river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow, spending

Winter 2011 45

Classnotes

THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

three days in each city and seven days on several waterways including the Neva and Volga rivers. Clyde Lawrence Noyce T’59 passed away on June 3, 2010. See In Memoriam, page 63.

Every Gift Counts

RonaldVander Schaaf, van5256@ yahoo.com

lumni playapivotal roleinadvancingtheuniversity’sreputationandeconomicstability. Thereisacorrelation betweenhighalumni participationandthereputationthat aliberal artscollegeenjoys. Seehowyourclass faredinsupportingtheuniversitylast fiscal year(July1, 2009–June30, 2010). Congratulationstothefollowingclassesfortheirleadershipingiving.

sionals who have allied with the LGBT community. Joan Schnieder’s property overlooking the Navesink River in New Jersey includes a carriage house and a barn that she rents out. She is a member of the Highlands Garden Club and the Historical Society and regularly practices t’ai chi chih. Brad Spangenber tries to go on trips every other year—Greece and Turkey in the fall of 2010. He is very involved in church music. Larry Story still works in real estate. All his children are married, and two of them live nearby. He and his wife toured Ireland last year. They enjoy their sailboat. Sue (Krist) Sumner is an artist who occasionally sells her paintings. She enjoys Maine and Canada and has also visited France, Italy, Greece, India and Portugal. She will visit Cape Cod in the spring and maybe Spain after that. She has one son and a granddaughter. Herb Yeager is retired from the ministry. His daughter lives in South Carolina with her 7-year-old son. Herb now has the opportunity to sing in the church choir, which he could not do before retirement.

1939

$300

33.3%

1958

$15,180

54.5%

1977

$9,126

24.7%

1996

$4,276

18.5%

1940

$6,000

66.7%

1959

$15,715

66.7%

1978

$14,206

25.2%

1997

$6,030

18.7%

1941

$1,115

60.0%

1960

$14,120

51.4%

1979

$28,265

22.7%

1998

$5,320

13.3%

1942

$2,812

66.7%

1961

$7,655

34.5%

1980

$569,815

23.3%

1999

$2,434

15.7%

1943

$6,140

43.8%

1962

$12,749

49.4%

1981

$22,803

19.3%

2000

$3,717

15.2%

1944

$2,325

75.0%

1963

$7,684

44.9%

1982

$9,348

19.3%

2001

$3,190

10.9%

1945

$3,410

64.3%

1964

$9,700

45.1%

1983

$6,954

12.7%

2002

$833

9.9%

Dottie (Strout) de Silva reported that Janet Porcelli died on May 23, 2010, due to complications from pneumonia. She was still conducting art classes up to that time. Dottie and her husband, Art, visited Janet in Ocala in December 2009 and had a great time reminiscing and catching up. Sam Olsher retired in 2003 after practicing dentistry in the Army and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for 43 years and now lives in The Villages, Fla. He had a double bypass in August 2009 followed by back surgery in December of that year. He writes that after over 60 years of tennis, he has become the clichéd couch potato. He is hoping to overcome his back pain and play again in the future. Sam and his significant other spent a week on the Gulf Coast near Clearwater hoping that the oil spill wouldn’t hit any of the beaches. He hopes that any old friends living in or visiting Florida will get together with him. Jan and Stan Wiley T’61 have moved back to New Jersey, where Stan will continue treatment for lymphoma at the University of Pennsylvania. We wish him a return to good health.

1946

$1,140

56.5%

1965

$26,396

45.9%

1984

$14,670

21.3%

2003

$2,470

6.3%

Eleanor Stearns, ebstearns@rochester. rr.com

DickEdel, 7869 CrosswindsWay, Mount Dora, FL32757; 352.357.9428

1947

$3,810

56.3%

1966

$8,705

40.4%

1985

$341,375

16.0%

2004

$2,907

9.6%

1948

$14,461

59.1%

1967

$11,165

35.0%

1986

$19,545

15.5%

2005

$1,203

9.3%

1949

$11,570

49.0%

1968

$19,125

34.2%

1987

$12,880

17.9%

2006

$2,007

7.3%

1950

$3,270

66.0%

1969

$32,631

40.5%

1988

$11,358

16.9%

2007

$1,463

5.8%

1951

$4,595

50.0%

1970

$23,341

31.7%

1989

$14,135

16.8%

2008

$575

4.6%

1952

$2,455

51.3%

1971

$17,558

29.7%

1990

$17,082

16.2%

2009

$1,075

2.3%

1953

$4,822

49.0%

1972

$43,402

30.8%

1991

$13,699

21.0%

2010

$935

1.7%

1954

$17,277

44.4%

1973

$16,029

25.0%

1992

$26,915

13.9%

1955

$5,631

56.3%

1974

$97,024

24.4%

1993

$3,857

12.8%

It was a lovely day for David Morse’s annual birthday bike ride. Usually one mile for every year of his life (plus 10 percent), this year he peddled 105 miles! (No, he is not 105 years old.) Helsell Fetterman law partner Llewlyn G. Pritchard received the 2010 Allies for Justice Award in San Francisco, honoring legal profes-

Bob Dryer and his wife, Betty, have been married 28 years; they met in Hawaii and moved there when he retired in 2002. They have three daughters between them and three grandchildren; the oldest graduated from high school in June. Bob manages their investment portfolio online, Betty gardens and they love to show the sights of Molokai to visitors. Bob

BROTHERS COLLEGE AWARD

GATEWAY AWARD

GOLD AWARD

BLUEAND GREENAWARD

SPECIAL MENTION

Highest total annual giving

Highest giving to the Annual Fund

Highest participation in a class with 50 or more alumni

Highest participation in a class graduated in last 10 years

Most improved participation

Classof 1980 $569,815

Classof 1974 $32,264

Classof 1956* 72.4%

Classof 2001 10.9%

Classof 1946 56.5%

*2nd year in a row!

Class

Total Giving

1937

$250

1938

$250

Participation Rate

Total Giving

Class

Total Giving

100.0%

1956

$29,008

72.4%

1975

$32,453

25.0%

1957

$3,045

55.6%

1976

$10,476

Class

Participation Rate

Class

Total Giving

Participation Rate

27.7%

1994

$11,336

17.0%

25.6%

1995

$3,750

17.3%

Please consider making a gift to your alma mater this year. To learn more, visit drew.edu/givingor call 973.408.3229.

46 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

John Borden, Peter Rushbrook andGisele andMaury Green can’t wait until our 55threuniontoseeeveryoneagain, sotheyare planningaClassof 1958 bashinbeautiful Monterey, Calif., September 9–11, 2011. If you think

you may attend, please email mauryg3@comcast.net so they may finalize arrangements.

was disappointed that he was one of only three of our class who wrote anything for the alumni directory. Bobwaspleasedtolearnthat our classwasthefirst to graduate100 fromtheCollegeof Liberal Arts.

George Groom missed our 50th reunion due to a painful bout of shingles, and then on New Year’s Day, he slipped on the ice and snapped his ankle. “Other than that, things have been great,” says George. He and Sandy (Chere) C’65 went to the United Kingdom in June 2010, visiting friends in North Wales and Guernsey, and last summer vacationed in New Harbor, Maine, right on the water. Celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary last April, Jodi (DellaCerra) C’60 and Peter Headley took a 16-day cruise through the Panama Canal out of Charleston, S.C., with many stops. Peter is busy with Rolling Thunder meetings; he helps at the VA hospital, at flag raisings and military funerals in the area. The Headleys ride their motorcycle in the mountains of Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina almost daily. Walt Lidman still teaches English to Latino laborers at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J., as well as developmental reading and writing at Union County College in Cranford, N.J., to students who were unable to pass their college entrance exam. He is also a volunteer bilingual Domestic Violence Response Team counselor for local police departments, where his Spanish comes in handy. Walt says that despite being “retired,” he’s furiously busy. Enid (Smith) and Sidney Tate T’60 had a great time with their children and grandchildren at their cabin in the north Georgia mountains over the Fourth of July, celebrating Sidney’s 75th birthday. They spent Labor Day weekend at an annual get-together with other cabin owners at the church-related Camp Glisson and looked forward to a retirees’ house party at another

Winter 2011 47

Classnotes

THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

church facility near Atlanta. They keep in touch with Russell Gilmore, husband of our late classmate Shirley (Smith) Gilmore. “Same old, same old” writes Bea (Hussa) Tuxbury. She volunteers as a master gardener at a thrift shop, and she and husband Ron C’61 belong to a small group for wine tasting and gourmet food. A spring break visit to their granddaughter spending two terms in England gave them the opportunity to revisit London, their “second” home when they lived in Saudi Arabia. Another granddaughter helped care for wounded birds and animals this summer at a wildlife rescue shelter on the Florida Keys. Another arranged a trip to California for them and her family. Their fifth grandchild arrived in November 2009. Author Richard Wainwright sent a catalog of his children’s books and a nice note too. Dickadmits

Hayward, Jodi (Della-Cerra) and Peter Headley C’59, Deanna (Formica) Lewis, Peggy and George Littlejohn, Norman MacArthur, Adele and Reid Morrow, Ruth (Epping) Olsson, Nicki Ridenour, Wilson Roberts and wife Diane Esser, Judy Smith, Nancy (Marshall) Stroh, Ken Thompson, Carol (Purdy) and John Twomey, Elaine and Carl Verrusio, Alice (Chiariello) and Dale Walker T’62 and Jerry Wolfson enjoyed a wonderful cocktail party Friday evening at Midge and Ed Campbell’s C’58 home in Madison. In honor of the 50th reunion and to leave a class legacy at Drew, the group established the Class of 1960 Internship Fund. We shared memories and photos in the special 1960

commemorative issue of Oak Leaves. Nancy (Marshall) Strohworeher freshmandinktheentire weekend, and Peggy Littlejohn wowed

the crowd with her toast to the class during the Golden Oak luncheon, where former class chaplain, mentor and friend James Pain gave the invocation. A big round of applause goes to Midge, Nancy, George Hayward, Ruth, Jodi and Peggy for their tireless work on the reunion committee, with the assistance of Rosemarie Collingwood-Cole in the University Advancement Office. Here’s to the Class of 1960! Cheers! Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Robert Bossdorf is planning on attending our 50th reunion but commented that he didn’t recognize

tobeing75; hismother is102 andsays, “Dick, I still havehopefor you!” He is devoting the next

five years to a climate change/pollution writing contest for young people worldwide (likeadropofwater.org). He and his wife, Judy, spent two to three months learning from people all over the world, most recently on a three-week safari to Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Egypt. I’ve been doing some home improvements, so I curtailed travel this year. It’s always good to hear from you! As Bob and Ray used to say, “Don’t forget to write!”

48 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

MarianDickinsonFielder, 807 Langley Drive, Silver Spring, MD 20901; mdfield@ tularosa.net

At the Leominster (Mass.) Art Association’s launch meeting of its 46th year, Virginia Hill was the guest demonstrator. She is past president and lifetime member of the Danvers (Mass.) Art Association. In 2009, she received a blue ribbon from that association.

61 50 Reunion

Patricia (Gee) Whitney and her husband, Lyman, are both retired and enjoying life in Minnesota. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Ellen (Earp) Baker and her husband bring greetings from their new home in a Continuing Care Retirement Community.

“Lifehereissimilar toour cruiseshipexperienceinJanuary 2010, only theshipnever moves!”

Continue to send news to eebaker@aol.com or her Facebook page.

EllenM. deLalla, edelalla@verizon.net

The Class of 1960 had the best turnout ever—more than 50 percent!—for their 50th class reunion during Homecoming Weekend, September 23–24, 2010. Francis Berkoff, Marian C’65 and Peter Cain, Sae Ho and Kay Han Chung, Franki and Richard Edel C’58, Bill Evans, Helen Foster, Mary Ellen and John Gill, Jim Grace, Bob Hastings, George

most of the old people at his 50th high school reunion. Peg and Mac Hulslander had a weeklong reunion with Sharon and Neal Mosher at Chatauqua Institution last July, which included an all-too-brief meeting with Nickie (Clements) and Bob Richards, who have served on th the board of the United Methodist House for several years. Tony Shipley retired after 45 years as a Methodist pastor, his last appointment at the Christ United Methodist Church on Detroit’s East Side. He and his wife, Barbara, have traveled occasionally with Sylvia and Andy Skonberg. Their next trip together to Egypt will also include fellow alum Donald Rudalevige and wife Sue.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

THE CLASS OF 1960 CELEBRATING THEIR 50TH REUNION DURING HOMECOMING 2010 Front row: Bill Evans, AnnNicki Ridenour, Peggy Littlejohn, MidgeCampbell, FrancisBerkoff. Second row: Jerry Wolfson, George Littlejohn, Kay HanChung(red-patterned shirt), Nancy (Marshall) Stroh(with green and gold ribbon). Third row: Reid Morrow(blue shirt), AliceChirielloWalker, Deanna(Formica) Lewis(white blouse), Ruth(Epping) Olsson, ElaineVerrusio. Fourth row: JudySmith, JimGrace, Franki Edel, Carl Verrusio(navy blazer). Fifth row: GeorgeHayward, Carol (Purdy) Twomey, Peter Cain(blue shirt), NormanMacArthur (white shirt). Top row: JohnGill, Jodi (Della-Cerra) Headley, WilsonRoberts.

Having retired from her self-owned consulting business, Cynthia Vance is now president of the Venice (Fla.) Area Orchid Society. She is having a ball and invites people to visit their website, vaos.org. George Engelhardt and his wife, Carolyn, bought a condo in Hamden, Conn. Carolyn continues her work at Yale Divinity School. George has a

half-time church about 40 minutes away. He also is doing some consulting in stewardship for their Methodist conference. He plans to retire this year. They continue to travel, having made a trip to Central America, Chile and Easter Island in June 2010. Your correspondingsecretary returnedfromour 45th classreunionandisall firedupfor the50th. I was

delighted to see the other nine members of the class who attended. I dearly hope every classmate remaining on this earth will commit themselves to coming to our 50th. A special request: If you have not received emails from me within the past year, please send your current email address to allenhood3@gmail. com. Even if you don’t have news to share, let’s keep in touch. AllenHood, allenhood3@gmail.com

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

It was great to reconnect with old friends at our 40th reunion! Marge Starr is retired and lives in Hackensack, N.J. Kathy (Sexon) Hall and her husband, Richard C’68, live in Red Bank, N.J. Kathy is a consultant in arts administration to several nonprofit organizations. Richard is the financial officer for Child Care Resources of Monmouth County, N.J. Nicole (Romano) Gans and her husband, Hank, came to the reunion from Edgewater, N.J. Nicole has retired from banking and is now helping Hank run his photography business. To view their creative

68 70

works, check hankgans.com. Tom Hackett retired from IBM in May 2010 and “loves being retired!” He and his wife, Linda, live in Kingston, N.Y. Tom is devoting his leisure time to photography, and you can see his pictures at TomHackettPhotography.com. Suzanne Calder-Stad and her husband, Ben, live in Cinnaminson, N.J. Recently, much of their time has been focused on the rehabilitative care of their son. We send them our best wishes for strength and support. David Richlin P’10 is an anesthesiologist and pain-management specialist in East Stroudsburg, Pa. It was wonderful to see the legacy of Drew continue in his family. The prize for the person who traveled the greatest distance to attend the reunion went to Penny Jessop, who came from New Orleans. She is an assistant professor of public health in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, teaching undergraduate and graduate students. She loved being back on her “first” campus. Laura Damon and her husband, Tim, came down from Needham, Mass. Laura is an active volunteer in her church and community. Tim is working at General Dynamics. They have three children, two of whom are still in university. Penny and Lauradiscoveredthey hadbothgoneintothePeaceCorps right after Drew, Penny toNiger andLauratotheMarshall Islands. They wondered if others in our

class had entered the Peace Corps. Let’s hear from you! Mary Stringfield, in her 16th year as a Drew trustee, was a tremendous source of information about what’s new at Drew. She is living in Glen Rock, N.J. Mary was the catalyst for several of us to attend reunion. Join us in making a commitment to come back to the Forest for our 45th reunion in 2015. Lastly, some sad news: Roy W.

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Dodsworth died on Aug. 6, 2010. See In Memoriam, page 62. DianeBourne, dianeholly@ gmail.com; Penny Jessop, pjessop@tulane.edu

Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, William K. Boss has been a practicing surgeon for more than 20 years. Published in numerous academic journals, William’s work has also been featured in several educational videos on surgical techniques. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Sam Zeichner’s daughter is auditing a German course at Drew, which brings him on campus twice a week. He enjoys being her taxi service as it permits him to chat with former professors and th meet some new additions. He’s very proud that she was selected for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Young Artist Institute and Wachovia Jazz for Teens programs. Sam spent part of last summer living in a 700year-old monastery in Camerino in northern Italy. Classmates who attended Robert Schmidle’s C’75 Alumni Achievement presentation at Homecoming were Neil Arbuckle, Mark Armbrust, Rory Corrigan and Jeff King, along with his friends from the Class of ’74. One change on campus I noticed after touring the new McLendon Hall: Students can no longer play touch football on the Tolley-Brown circle; the five large oaks in the circle make those games a memory.

71 40 Reunion

DavidGreen, greendavid@aol.com

Fort Lewis (Colo.) College chemistry professor Ron Estler followed the suggestion of an adviser and took teaching jobs at some of the country’s most prestigious scientific research institutions—Southern California, Stanford and Columbia—before

50 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

settling into Fort Lewis. Seven years ago Ron took a job as an assistant professor at the Fort. In 2009, he was the winner of the Colorado Professor of the Year Award. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Our freshman and sophomore classmate Robert Schmidle C’75 of the United States Marine Corps was honored at Alumni Homecoming Weekend 2010 and awarded the Alumni Achievement Award. And I, once Robert’s roommate, completed my 23rd marathon and ninth half Ironman race, and was elected to the Martindale Hubbell’s Bar Registry of Preeminent Lawyers in the United States. MarkLang, mlang@langlaw.net

I’m very sorry to report that Craig Kozlow suffered a heart attack and passed away on Oct. 10, 2010, at his home in Asheboro, N.C. Craig and I met early in our freshman year when we both lived in Haselton and had been friends ever since. In all the years since then, I cannot think of a conversation in which we didn’t make each other laugh—usually with a reference to something that had happened during our college days.

ThosewhoknewCraigremember agentlegiant withalot of talent, agreat senseof humor andaneasygoing way—afriendtoall. He was a

big fan of the Yankees and the Giants and enjoyed a good slice of pizza, even Romanelli’s. He was a huge fan (I’m not sure “fan” does it justice) of Deep Purple. Craig is survived by his wife, Sue, and many other family members. See In Memoriam, page 63. 2010 Drew Alumni Achievement Award recipient Robert Schmidle was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Marines. He is pursuing an interdisciplinary doctorate in social psychology, philosophy and literature at Georgetown

University in Washington, D.C. BobZwengler, robert.zwengler@cbre.com

Christine (Stack) Bell visited me in Virginia from Jacksonville, Fla., in February 2010 over Valentine’s Day weekend, just after the blizzard. I heard from her in late September 2009 when Laura Papa Babbin sent an email shout-out to our former Holloway quad/Foster suitemates, Robin Stern, Jenny Beaver, Chris and me. Chris is married to Paul Bell C’76, and their son, Alex, now 24, moved into an apartment near his job in Jacksonville. Their daughter, Callan, is a senior at Florida State and has an internship with AmeriCorps working for Jumpstart—a program working with underprivileged preschoolers to get them ready for school. Laura Papa Babbin and Larry Babbin C’78 were in town for a conference in late March, and Chas and I enjoyed visiting with them over dinner. We also had dinner with Kathy Floyd C’78 and Michael Boyle C’75 last July. Kathy is deputy director of investor education for the SEC, and Michael manages a budgetary department at the NIH. Michael and wife Maureen’s daughter, Kate, began first grade in September. Elizabeth Peterson is currently completing a master’s degree in the global field program at Miami University of Ohio. Susan Schnitzer is operations director and volunteer coordinator for Parenting Place, a nonprofit family resource center. I had lunch with Chip Gertzog in September. He retired Oct. 1, 2010, after 31 years with the Fairfax County (Va.) government. Most recently, he led a division that instituted process improvement and organization design for the county. Congratulations, Chip! He and Barbara Gertzog have been involved for 10 years in the Providence Players, a community

theater group here in Northern Virginia. Barbara works in commercial real estate in the Washington/ Baltimore area for SunTrust. Their oldest child, Jimmy, 24, also involved in theater, is living in Arlington and working for a defense consultant at Fort Belvoir. Their middle child, Margaret, is a junior psychology major at Dickinson University. Their youngest, Charlotte, is a sophomore in high school. Our daughter, Taylor, just graduated from George Mason University with a master’s in applied developmental psychology, and her twin, Kate, continues to work for JWT advertising agency and lives in New York. Needless to say, we are big Mad Men fans. We took a vacation to Fripp Island, S.C., the last week in September 2010. D. BethYingling, dbyingling@hotmail.com

I stopped by reunion briefly. I was booked that day and only made it to the Pub late. While I didn’t see much of anyone from C’78, I hung out for a bit on the UC patio with alums from the Class of ’80 who were there for their 30th. Several rememberedI’dgiven themtheir Drewtour whenthey wereprospectivestudents (I didn’t askif they heldit against meor not). I promised to list their

names in the C’78 section, and since I am a man of my word, here you go: Luanne (Paulter) Koper, Melissa (Friedman) Graff, Denis Polis, Andrea Pappenheimer, Linda Pagan, Phyllis Sorelli, Kevin Marino (and his wife), Carol Malinowski, Ann Miles, Mike Alter, Steve Dultz, Tony Ehinger and Laura (Becker) Lawlor. My family and I went to San Francisco last summer. We visited relatives and did the usual tourist stuff. The unexpected highlight was an unofficial tour of PIXAR studios —no small deal since it’s closed to the public in general. My son, Philip, now wants to work there, and so

do I! Philip started playing travel soccer this fall. Turns out one of his teammates is the son of Drew soccer legend Gerry McGrath C’76. We had a lot of laughs meeting again for the first time in years! Thanks to Facebook, I was delighted to get birthday greetings from many friends from Drew! Thanks to Marla Boren, Chuck Dooley, Nicky Sadgrove, Sheri (Tenca) Galvez Guida, Larry Babbin, Lisa (Skemer) Baldwin, Chuck Redfern, Wendy (Obssuth) Green C’79, Paul Bell, Sue Schnitzer C’76, Bob Joyce, Ralph Sorrentino C’80, Tony Buttacavoli and Ann Thompson C’82. Honorary C’78 Sherry Harris C’79 is in Las Vegas working as a chief strategy officer (not a likely place for my sensibilities) on a multibillion-dollar casino resort project (cosmopolitanlasvegas.com). Marla and Paul Boren sent their regrets for missing the reunion. Paul is traveling quite a bit these days, and their sons, David and Michael, are doing well and living in Chicago. Finally, Bob Nemeroff got his update in just under the deadline! He and his wife, Robyn, got together with Tom Menke and his significant other in June 2010. Tom is doing well, having opened a private surgery center in New Hampshire with a partner. Bob and Robyn shared their 30th wedding anniversary on June 7, 2010. His daughter Julie, 24, lives in New York and works with the two vice presidents of global marketing for the NBA. Daughter Michelle, 19, is a sophomore at Syracuse. He said, “If I had it to do over again, I would not change a thing.” I suspect most of us feel the same way. TomTani, ctsquared@optonline.net

Are You a New Founder? The Drew New Founders Society links Drew’s current benefactors to its early philanthropists, Daniel Drew and Arthur and Leonard Baldwin. With more than 175 members, the New Founders Society recognizes the thoughtful individuals who have established a planned gift with Drew or included Drew in their estate plan.

For more information on planned gifts or to notify Drew of an estate gift, please contact: Office of Gift Planning 973.408.3988 gellmer@drew.edu drew.edu/giftplanning

YOUR LEGACY IS DREW’S FUTURE firm’s Drug, Device and Life Sciences Industry Group, has been recognized in Chambers USA as a leading practitioner in the practice area of health care in Washington, D.C. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Donna K. Thiel, shareholder in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC and co-chair of the

Rick Mullin’s book-length poem, Huncke, was published by Seven Towers in Dublin, Ireland, last year.

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The poem, a 12-canto epic written in ottava rima, spins from a 2009 memorial reading for Beat progenitor Herbert Huncke. Thanks to Linda Pagan and Ann (Johnston) Miles, who went to the launch reading at the Nightingale Lounge in New York. And to Wayne Fonteix, who stopped in at a reading in Frenchtown, N.J. The latter markedanimpromptu30thanniversary reunionof the editorial staff of PlateauC’79/’80, referredtoinliterary circlestothisday asTheGangof Two.

We celebrated the 30th anniversary of our graduation from Drew in September during Homecoming Weekend. Some of the attendees were Michael Ravensbergen and his wife, Anna, who live a couple of miles from me in Bergen County; Roberta (Schupack) Conover, who came down from the Boston area; Jim Fleming, also a Bergen County resident; Glenn Kessler, who owns a “pet hotel” in Los Angeles; Linda Pagan, who owns a hat shop in SoHo and had just returned from London and Africa on charitable endeavors; Matt Walden, who lives in Southern California and worked in the entertainment industry for years and now owns a consulting firm; Walter “Terry” Lukens and his wife, Joanne, from Virginia, where he is president of the Lukens Company; Don Press and Lou Keezing, who drove down together from New York; and Laura (Moorhead) Milsom, down from West Point, N.Y. Keith Martin made his normal quinquennial appearance. He is an attorney in Philly. Jack Gaylord, Rick Quick and Bob Epstein came back to recreate their famous Pub photo, with me standing in for Steve Casey C’79. Bob’s wife, Judy (Dolinko) C’82 was also on campus. Kathy (Krautsack) Forbes traveled up from the Atlanta area, as did Craig Keyworth. Michael “MFE” Stern is no longer a Jersey resident, having moved to New England sev-

52 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

eral months ago, but he did return to celebrate the anniversary. More attendees: Steve Dultz, Jill (Wilkinson) and Rich Riker, Alison Grillo, Tony Ehinger, Kevin Marino, Phil Schwartz, Karen Oliveto, Laura (Becker) Lawlor, Tammy (Signorello) Clark, Mindy (Taubel) Mintz (with her son, Sean), Ann Miles, Pam (Heyman) Lavender, Andrea Pappenheimer, Melissa (Friedman) Graff, Laura Bund, Denis (Polis) Small, Luanne (Paulter) Koper and Steve Barrows. For about the 30th time, an alumni rugby game was held—this time pitting mostly students against mostly alumni. Some of the alumni players were Jeff Lunin C’85, Erik (Taco) Kaeuper C’03 and yours truly. On the sidelines were some of the usual suspects: Rich Fisch C’77, Greg Leuser C’77, “Bouncing” Bob Chussler C’78, Ken Fredette C’85 and Tom (Flame) Keoughan C’81. Notable for their absence were Ralph Scoville, who was on a cruise to the South Pacific, Tony Buttacavoli C’82, who was training to fly a new kind of jet, Kurt Hoffman C’78, who was down South, and Tom Tani C’78. This summer Ann (Kischell) C’85 and Steve Thomson C’83 hosted their annual “Loadstock” extravaganza. Some of the Drewids in attendance were MFE, Bill Ehlers C’82 and his wife, Brenda (Wheeler) Ehlers C’84, T’05, Bob Joyce C’82, Ricky Curran C’82, Rich Onorato C’81 and John Spanarkle C’82. Drop me a line. Let me know what you’re up to. ChrisWalsh, chris.walsh@alumni. drew.edu

Jonathan B. “J.B.” Harris was awarded the Excellence in Writing Award by the Florida Bar Journal for an article he wrote on Florida’s Patients’ Bill of Rights, adopted under Amendment 7 to the state constitution. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@drew.edu

Erik Matson is principal, strategic development, at Edgewood Partners Insurance Center, a retail property, casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage in Bridgewater, N.J. JudithCampbell, jcampb6739@aol.com; WilliamEhlers, ehlers61@yahoo.com

Maryann Melloan Woods and husband John relocated to Morristown th in 2009, where she’s taking time off from TV writing to raise their 4year-old daughter, Sara. Sophia (Soldatos) and Wayne Flynn’s C’82 children attend colleges in Indiana. Emily is a senior at Purdue, studying biology, forensics and economics, while son Alex is in his first year at Wabash, taking up economics and playing baseball. Jose A. Carmona moved to Dade City, Fla., and teaches English at Hillsborough Community College, Ybor City Campus, in Tampa. Jose’s latest book, Language Teaching and Learning in ESL Education: Current Issues, Collaborations, and Practice, is an e-book and will soon be available in printed form. Mordechai Bermann is the anesthesia chairman at Southern Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin, N.J., founder and director of the simulation lab at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and vice president of the New Jersey State Society of Anesthesiologists. A biking enthusiast, Mordechai lives in East Brunswick with his wife, Debra, and daughters, Mia, 23, and Dina, 18.

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Susan(Kessler) Apter, apter4@gmail.com

In 2003, Jordan Glatt became the first Democratic mayor to be elected in Summit, N.J., in 100 years. He

was reelected in November 2007 with more than 60 percent of the vote. Jordan is the president of Magla Products, LLC, a consumer household and work glove company headquartered in Morristown. Brenda (Wheeler) Ehlers T’05 is an associate pastor at Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in Maplewood, N.J. Frederic T. Kolman passed away on July 25, 2010. See In Memoriam, page 63.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

C’85 returned for its 25th reunion at Homecoming Weekend, Sept. 24–25, 2010. With a full load of activities, the class participated in sporting events, lectures and a big barbecue on Hoyt Lawn. While tours of McLendon Hall, Drew’s new eco-friendly dorm, were offered, many wished aloud for tours down memory lane of Hoyt, Baldwin, Haselton and others. On Friday night, we enjoyed the chance to reconnect in the Space before moving into the Pub and discovering it hadn’t changed too much after 25 years! Saturday night was the highlight with a class gathering at the Brothers College Courtyard (see photo, above). Thanks to Pam Goldsmith and her ’80s mix, an impromptu dance party took off, and we danced well past our scheduled end time. The “Women of Welch” gathered for a group photo too. Several of us raised a toast to honor those who couldn’t attend— and we hope they can be at Drew for our 30th. As for alumni, Steve Brownell got our “You look like it’s still 1985” award. Sarah Sloat was the alumna who traveled the farthest to attend (from Germany!). Several realized they live in close proximity to one another, in the D.C. metro area: Lisa (Aires) McKinley, Bill Bolin, Jake Bradley, Bill Layton,

THE CLASS OF 1985 CELEBRATING THEIR 25TH REUNION DURING HOMECOMING 2010 Front row: MarkDingley, MichelleHampton, SteveBrownell, Bill “Barney” Pezzuti, JeanGogarty. Second row: KenFredette(standing), Bill Landis, Judy (Cavalli) Cromwell, Carle(Del Prete) Falk, Rosemary (Stanley) Carrara, Carrie(Genovese) Wittenstein, SarahSloat, Steve Grout, DavidThomson(blue-checkered shirt). Third row: TripMestanas, DonnaO’Meally, Lisa(Aires) McKinley, JonathanTaub, AdrieneDobrow. Fourth row: LisaSpitz, Jeff Lunin, ElizabethScannella, JakeBradley, GaryFriars, PattyTordik, Sally-Jo(Placa) Madsen(standing), Mena(Scavina) Baldi, Anna-BethWinograd. Back row: BernadetteMicchelli, MikeDooman, Bill Layton, PamelaGoldsmith, Bill Bolin, Don Rasweiler, Kate(Gavigan) Rasweiler, Dru(Hannabury) St. John, LauraBiber.

Patty Tordik (the Navy’s endodontics specialty leader) and Jeff Lunin. Many others found geographic as well as other connections. Carle (Del Prete) Falk, who came from Vermont with her husband and boys, observed, “25 years, and we still look great.” Congratulations to two of our own, Dean Criares and Michelle Hampton, winners of the Alumni Achievement Award in Business and the Alumni Service Award, respectively. Their continued commitment to Drew is quite deserving of recognition. Special thanks to our 25th reunion committee that worked with Drew’s Advancement Office to plan our events: Denise (Brown) Driscoll, Bill “Barney” Pezzuti, Sally-Jo (Placa) Madsen, Pamela Goldsmith and Anna-Beth Winograd. To view photos from our 25th reunion, visit the Facebook page “Drew

University C’1985 25th Reunion.” One classmate summed it up best: “It was great spending time with everyone at reunion, reminiscing about our Drew years and catching up on what’s been happening since [1985]. Many happy memories, many good friends!” Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

It was a cool summer in California’s northern Santa Barbara County, according to Darrell Parker. He and his wife and three children warmed up on a white-water rafting trip on the American River north of Sacramento, followed by a hike in Big Sur and camping on the floor of a redwood forest. Darrell alsowatchedhisdaughter ridehertrustysteedinthelocal rodeo. Summer temperatures arrived just as his children boarded the bus back to school. Amy (Rosta) Boris decided to leave her job at the corporate real

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Honor Roll of Donors 2009–2010

Susan Campbell, director of marketing for Taygan Point Consulting Group in Lambertville, N.J., won a primary in June 2010 for a seat on the Township Committee of Franklin, N.J. She served on the township school board from 2004 to 2008. Leola Ross and husband Bill announce the birth of their son, Casey Ross Spiers, on March 7, 2010. The family resides in Seattle. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

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54 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

Asusual, Marc Scarduffa wroteonthe go—thistimewhileheading off toIschia—theItalianislandwherethey filmed CleopatrawithLiz Taylor andRichardBurton—for a

10-day break. Marc reconnected with Christopher Holt, general counsel for the New York firm Cerberus. Chris has two children and lives in New Jersey. Elise (Kravet) and Ken Haderer live in North Carolina with their two children, but Elise and the children spent the month of July at the Jersey Shore. Sonnie (Hirsch) Carpenter and her husband, Greg, came for a visit, as did Donna (Jordan) Edelstein and her two boys. Elise and Ken also met up with Russell Stephan and his family for dinner one evening. Instead of their traditional Rhode Island beach vacation, Lisa (Lemery) and Dan Chiarello took a two-week trip to Europe with their sons, David, 15, and Jared, 11. For the first week, they stayed in a small German town where Dan lived for two years as a teenager. After a day in Heidelberg, they went on to Rome. Keep the updates coming. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you. Sandi Miller, SandraAMiller@aol.com

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Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Kay Robinson is an advisory board member for the nonprofit Camp Marcella in Rockaway, N.J., an organization that serves children between 6 and 16 with disabilities (campmarcella.org).

David Rosciszewski happily announces the arrival of son James, born Oct. 18, 2009.

Monika“Moe” Walters, gefnmoe@ hotmail.com

enchanted liberal arts college we know as Drew. Facebook continues to be a great source of information and updates, but please keep the news coming. Matthew Spaulding has been working at The Press of Atlantic City for almost 10 years. The majority of his time has been spent at the sports copy desk, but he moved over to the news copy desk in June 2010. Anne Fierro spent her summer overseeing renovations to the apartment she purchased in June 2010. Although it seems there were some headaches along the way, Anne is happy with the end result. Reagan th Baughman is a professor of economics at the University of New Hampshire, but she recently completed a sabbatical as a visiting fellow at the United States Congressional Budget Office. Although she enjoyed her time in D.C., Reagan is happy to be back in her professor role at UNH. “Aunt Reagan” is also godmother to Jessica (Fulginiti)

87 estate company Oracle to spend more time with husband David and kids, Isaac, 9, and th Mia, 6. To celebrate the transition, Amy’s family took a trip to Puerto Rico, where they hiked the rainforest, toured old forts and cathedrals, listened to the tree frogs singing at night and relaxed at a variety of beaches and pools. In an unusual coincidence, Amy’s successor at Oracle is fellow alumna Meggin (Baker) Elliott C’85. To celebrate the eighth-grade graduation of his daughter, Alyssa, Charlie Sperrazza and his family took an amazing trip to London, Paris, Rome and Calabria where they visited with Italian relatives for the first time. It was also a big travel year for JoAnn Boscarino, who completed an eight-day meditation retreat in Massachusetts in April, then spent two weeks of the summer in Tuscany doing illustrations for an archaeological excavation. A few months later she embarked on a three-week journey to Tibet!

was named to the New Jersey Law Journal’s 2010 “10 Under 40” list, an honor given to the state’s top attorneys. Alexander E. Previdi joined Cassidy Turley’s Teaneck, N.J., office as vice president, specializing in industrial sales, leasing and marketing with a concentration in the northern New Jersey market.

Shelly L. Nice married Marc J. Schumacher, founder of Equishare USA. The couple resides in Morristown, N.J. Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

In 2009, Gregory Gordon joined Morgan Stanley as a managing director. He previously held positions at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Institutional Investor recognizes Greg as one of the top research analysts in his field.

ChristinaCarlson, cmcarlson@ optonline.net

Toni (Zuccarini) Ackley gave birth to daughter Zoe Ruth on Oct. 30, 2009.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Nicole (Bearce) Abano, a Morris Plains, N.J., resident and Roseland, N.J., attorney, earned the 2010 NJBIZ “Forty Under 40” Award, recognizing excellence in business, professional achievement and commitment to community. She also

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Wearerapidly approachingthe15-year markandhave beenabusy bunchsince our days at the

96 15 Reunion

Waltman’s third baby, Luke, born April 3, 2010. Luke joins big siblings Madeline and Billy to form a very cute trio. In September, Juliette (Gaffney) Dame visited Al Valentino in his adopted hometown of Celebration, Fla. In addition to visiting with Al, Juliette and her two sons, Adam and Ryan, took in SeaWorld and Busch Gardens. Caroline (Harmon) Stead wrote that she was looking forward to an upcoming visit with Alyson Miller. Caroline’s daughter, Sally, turned 10 this September! Katie and Charles Clinton enjoyed a visit with Shannon (Laudermilch) and Peter Bruckmann this summer. Katie is teaching Spanish at Syracuse University, and Charles teaches math and serves as the technology coordinator at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. Katie and Charles have “three little munchkins,” full of curiosity, fun and adventures. Thank you to everyone who responded to my desperate pleas for news! LeahK. Parker-Moldover, leahkparker@hotmail.com

J.D. Urbach is a business optimization and training manager at McCormick & Company, Inc. Andria Zaia completed a graduate degree in anthropology at New Mexico Highlands University and is the curator of the Sigal Museum and the house museums of the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society in Easton, Pa. Aaron Bone has 10 years’ experience participating in global transfer pricing remediation for Fortune 500 companies and coordinating global transfer-pricing engagements. He was one of the senior-level consultants to join the transfer pricing practice since September 2009. As part of a retrospective marking the 35th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Jennifer N. Noone

and her mother, Lana Noone, spoke about Operation Babylift—a humanitarian effort that provided for the evacuation of over 2,500 Vietnamese children during the final weeks of the war—at the New Jersey Vietnam Era Educational Center in Holmdel. Jennifer, one of the adoptees, is a social worker in Manhattan. Lastly, I am now supervisor of mathematics and business for Mahwah (N.J.) Public Schools. I also had a series of AP calculus lessons using graphing technology published by Texas Instruments, and an article published in Mathematics Teacher. Daniel Ilaria, dilariaj@msn.com

Stacey Trzensinski moved to Berlin, N.J., last spring to be with her fiancé, Ryan McLain. She started a new job with Elliott Marketing Group, an arts-marketing consulting company, in October 2010. Gina (Costa) Ramirez was married on Jan. 31, 2008, to Jose Ramirez in San Francisco. She has spent the past few years working for Gap as a field merchandise manager in several of its flagship locations. She lives in New Jersey. Derek Ziegler has been working for the city of Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management since September 2008. When he is not tracking blizzards or responding to multialarm fires, he keeps busy playing Ultimate Frisbee. Derekalsorecently appeared

asacontestant onWhoWantstoBeaMillionaire.

Josh Berk and Aaron Starmer are both bona fide novelists. See story, page 14. Cesar Cabrera is a school psychologist with the child-study team in New Jersey’s Passaic County. Diana Gamarra, a preschool teacher at La Casa de Don Pedro in Newark, N.J., was married in 2006 and has three daughters. Alicia (Gregson) Aghevli married on Oct. 11, 2009.

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White House Intern | Melissa

Tooley C’99

Finding the right career after college took Melissa Tooley down many paths. But her latest experience—a White House internship—confirmed she’s on the right track. “The impact I want to make is on alleviating poverty, and the most likely place for me to do that is Washington,” says Tooley, a former psychology major now enrolled in the master of public policy program at the Harris School of the University of Chicago. “As long as I can remember, I’ve been motivated by a sense of social justice. I lived in a small town in rural southern Delaware, where numerous friends and classmates lived in poverty. As I got older, I recognized that the opportunity to achieve ‘the American dream’ was not the same for these classmates as it was for classmates from more well-off backgrounds.” Tooley was assigned to the Domestic Policy Council and worked in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the West Wing. Her boss was Martha Coven, special assistant to the president on mobility and opportunity. She concentrated on two issues—workplace flexibility and childhood obesity—and learned how federal policy is shaped at the executive level. As a volunteer she also pulled weeds in the White House garden and assembled care packages for soldiers alongside Second Lady Jill Biden. Interns also met President Obama and were invited to talks by administration heavies like David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. Yet the most valuable lesson came from Washington insiders. “Obviously it was exciting to work in the White House, but one of the most helpful things was to be able to talk to and network with people who work there, to figure out the issues I want to work on,” Tooley says. “This is the sort of thing you don’t learn in school.” —MARYJOPATTERSON

ChristinaMeoHayman, cpemeo@ yahoo.com

Jessica Bramowicz-Petty and her husband, David Petty, announce the birth of their first child together, Nolen Michael, born Oct. 15, 2009. Nolen was 9 pounds, 4 ounces and 21¾ inches long. James Fiorentino’s paintings of legendary sports stars were hung at a show in Frenchtown, N.J., commemorating the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Hall of Fame. A percentage of the pro-

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ceeds from sales of his artwork go to Operation Shoebox New Jersey, the nonprofit corporation that ships personal care packages to U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kristy Materasso, kmiskoff99@alumni. drew.edu

Todd Hodgson, former head coach of Manhattanville College’s men’s lacrosse team in Purchase, N.Y., is now head coach at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa. Justin Marcucci is founder and

CEO of Nicklefish Interactive Design and Marketing in Mendham, N.J., which he started in 2002. He has a son named Declan, born in 2008. Margaret Wohltmann, margaretwohltmann@hotmail.com

During the past few months, Drewids from the Class of 2001 have been busy expanding their families by getting married and having little Drewlers. On May 8, 2010, Teresa Aiello married Matt Covey on Long Island, N.Y., and there were many Drew alums in attendance: bridesmaid Erica Filocco C’00 and groomsman Michael Kurnellas C’00, Chris D’Angelo C’00, Derek Culnan C’00, Layla (Wuthrick) HedleyNoble C’00, Jessica (Friedman) Culnan, Greg Basralian, Lisa Connell and the Revs. Jennifer T’06 and Jeremiah Williamson T’05. The Rev. Michael Sniffen T’05 performed the wedding. See photo, page 57. Teresa met her husband, Matt (who is from New Zealand), through Mike Kurnellas, th when he was living with Michael Sniffen and Jen and Jeremiah Williamson (“a double Drew connection!”). The newlyweds live in Miller Place on Long Island. Teresa continues to work at the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office as an assistant district attorney, and Matt works at SUNY Stonybrook as a postdoc in a research lab. The couple honeymooned in St. Kitts and Anguilla. On May 29, 2010, Sarah Dannenfelser married Sean Heegan in Frederick, Md. Shannon (Stanwick) and Shawn Carlson C’00, Liz (Zuzzio) Bezares, Melissa (Valade) Mulvey, Erin (Walker) Bascug and Maria Draucikas attended. On Aug. 14, 2010, Colin Lynch married Anne Evans at the Hermi-

01 10 Reunion

tage in Marion, Mass. According to Colin, there was a good “Ranger contingent” in attendance, including Tim Lawlor C’99, Joe Desantis C’00 and Matt Gmyrek, who were groomsmen. A good time was had by all. See photo, page 58. In baby news, Pam Carpentier and her husband, Kevin, welcomed their first child, Aiden Nesburg, on April 13, 2010. He was 8 pounds and 20¾ inches long. Pam is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University Medical School. Pam, Kevin and Aiden are doing well. I also gave birth to a happy and healthy baby. Matilda Kathleen Calzia was born on May 31, 2010. My husband, Kevin, andI decidedthat havinganewbaby wasn’t nearlystressful enoughandaddedtotheexcitement of parenthoodby travelingto12 statesbeforeTilly was3 monthsold, then buying a house and

moving from Philadelphia to Maynard, Mass. Matt Callagher graduated with his master’s from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania on May 16, 2010. Miguel Gonzalez is completing the Executive MBA program at Columbia Business School. He and fiancée Elisa Garcia C’03 are planning a May 2011 wedding. After four seasons as head coach at American University, Katie Woods is now the head women’s lacrosse coach at the University of Connecticut. She was named the 2008 Patriot League Coach of the Year, and in 2010, four of her student-athletes were named All-Patriot League. Most sadly, Jacob Stults died on May 8, 2010, leaving behind his new wife, Irene Saxton. Our hearts go out to his family. See In Memoriam, page 63.

girls star worked the crowd during an audience-participation number. Rhenotha currently works with the Against All Odds Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving educational opportunities for poor children. DavidLee, dlee@alumni.drew.edu; SarahMarchitto, sarahmarchitto@ yahoo.com

Oktawia Wojcik earned her doctorate degree in epidemiology from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in September 2010. She’s just begun a fellowship in the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training in Copenhagen at the Statens Serum Institut. Alaina Hart Paris in engaged to be married to Daniel Frank Garcia in 2011. Nicole Solari is pursuing a master’s degree in health administration with a focus on education.

Derrick C. Wood, chemistry educator at ConestogaHighSchool inBerwyn, Pa., receiveda $10,000 award from the Christopher

Julie Madison Silvestro, born May 4, 2010, to Allison(Weigang) C’04 and DougSilves-troC’04.

Columbus Fellowship Foundation, an independent federal agency dedicated to recognizing pioneering individuals, for his work showing students that “chemistry is not an exercise in futility,” says Wood, “but is extremely relevant to their lives.” Christina Lioudis and Russell Jaffe C’03 married on June 20, 2010. See photo, at right. Frances Lioudis C’01 and Jim Lacotte C’02 were in the wedding party.

MarenWatkins-Calzia, MarenCalziaPhD@ gmail.com

Rhenotha O. Whitaker sangwithheridol, JenniferHudson, at theannual NewJersey PerformingArts Center Spotlight Galaon Oct. 2, 2010.

Rhenotha, a former NJPAC intern, impressed Hudson while the Dream-

TeresaAielloC’01 married Matt Covey on May 8, 2010.

Winter 2011 57

Classnotes

THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

Allison (Weigang) and Doug Silvestro had their first child, Julie Madison Silvestro, on May 4, 2010. See photo, page 57. Corey (Bunje) Bower, coreybower@ gmail.com

Joy Engel is an account supervisor in VOX Global’s Portland, Maine, office. Joy previously worked at Racepoint Group in San Francisco. Colleen Mahon is the head coach for both the field hockey and softball programs at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. Her fiancé, Stephen Moyer, is an environmental scientist at Tetra Tech. ChristineDempsey, cdempsey@law. villanova.edu

Jonathan Stone started his neurosurgery residency at the University of Rochester (N.Y.). Alicia Vurchio, a first-grade teacher at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in South Plainfield, N.J., is engaged to Louis Berardocco. Bethany Raffanello, braffanello@ gmail.com

THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL

Head of the Latin department at East Woods School on Long Island, N.Y., Olivia Dreizen is engaged to Eric Howell, an audio designer and bluegrass musician. MelissaOffenberg, moffenbe@gmail.com

Danielle Lambert was one of 26 team leaders to direct 30 members of AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps during 10 months of full-time service to communities in need.

50s

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

Amanda Tsukamoto was th the featured musician in an organ recital at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, N.J., as part of the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey’s 2010 Summer Festival of Baroque Music. She began her teaching career at Chatham (N.J.) Middle School last fall. Michelle Gbelama

5 Reunion

in Mutare, Zimbabwe, where Bill preached at a chapel service. Donna Lou just returned from a two-week seminar in Palestine/Israel with a group led by the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace. Marjorie, the wife of Robert O. Bryant T’54, passed away in March 2010. Lawrence Loftus C’53, T’56 retired for the third time as interim pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in LaGrande, Ore., and is looking forward to celebrating his 80th birthday this spring. He spends his time splitting wood, bicycling and walking with his two collies. He helps his wife, Katherine, with her theater projects and still preaches occasionally.

On June 20, 2010, ChristinaLioudisC’04 and Russell JaffeC’03 were married.

became the first player from Drew to win the New Jersey Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women tournament. Stephen Yellin is working toward his master’s degree in public policy at Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

Officeof Alumni Relations, classnotes@ drew.edu

WE REGRET TO REPORT THE PASS-

ing of Frank B. Brandon Jr. C’40, T’43, James Samuel Thomas T’44, Richard E. Johnson T’47, Joseph Harley Thompson T’47, J. Robert Williams T’49, LeRoy Stoney Graham T’52, G’65, John D. Godsey T’53, J. Roger Geyer T’59, Clyde Lawrence Noyce C’56, T’59, William W. Dew Jr. T’61, Allan Thomas Reading T’74 and Alfonso Sherald T’78. See In Memoriam, pages 62–63.

Jan and Stan Wiley C’57, T’61 have moved back to New Jersey, where Stan will continue treatment for lymphoma at the University of Pennsylvania. We wish him a return to good health. R. Earle Rabb T’64 retired after 43 years of ministry from the Florida Conference of the UMC. He and his wife reside in Brevard, N.C. His newest book, The Case of the Missing

Person (Wipf and Stock, 2009), is a fresh look at the human Jesus of Nazareth. James Spraker T’66 retired from chaplaincy at Highline Medical Center in Seattle after 27 years. He serves parishes in the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ. Wife Barbara T’66 continues to teach at Antioch University. In his 60th year of preaching, Rich Baker T’71 has written and recorded many gospel songs and ministered in the churches of more than 40 denominations. He is the author of the book The Living Word (Xlibris, 2009). He is retired in Pennsylvania, retreaded and still preaching and teaching. B. Bruce Cook Jr. T’71 completed his book, Redeeming the Wounded (Xulon, 2010), about being both a prison chaplain and a chaplain for crime victims. A portion of booksale proceeds will be donated to the Crime Victims Advocacy Council. Bruce thanks the Theo School and its professors for their time and training.

60s

Lloyd Saunders T’80 is an editor at the San Diego Museum of Man.

Robin R. Meyers T’81, author of Saving Jesus from the Church (Harper-One, 2009), lectured at the United Church of Christ in Norman, Okla., last September. Jeffery Pugh T’81, G’85, Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in Elon, N.C., was the 11th recipient of that university’s Distinguished Scholar Award, which recognizes faculty members who have earned peer commendation and respect and who have made significant contributions to their field of studies. Szabolcs S.G. Nagy T’83, P’97 retired from the Presbyterian Church in New Brunswick, N.J. Lee van Rensburg T’88 retired from the United Methodist Church and is now serving with Educational Opportunities, which specializes in tours to the Holy Land, Egypt, Jordan, Greece and Turkey. Lee will be in Tiberius, Israel, on the Sea of Galilee through this March lecturing each week on Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Paul Wesley Harmon T’89 was named Spartanburg District Superintendent, part of the South

70s

80s

THE EVANS-LYNCH WEDDING, AUGUST 14, 2010 Front row: Anne Evans Lynch (bride), ColinLynchC’01 (groom), ShandaDavisC’01, TimLawlor C’99, ToddPurdy C’02. Back row: Emily DesantisC’02, JoeDesantisC’00, BrianKishC’01, DerekPoppC’01, Matt GmyrekC’01.

58 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

Bill T’51 and Donna Lou Imler T’68 have been married 61 years and reside on the shore of Lake Gage in Angola, Ind. They participate in the local UMC and Indiana Conference. In the fall of 2009, they were part of a Volunteers in Mission visit to Methodist-related Africa University

THEO SCHOOL CLASS OF 1960 CELEBRATING THEIR 50TH REUNION DURING THE 2010 TIPPLE-VOSBURGH LECTURES Randolf Nugent, Roger Day, LouisRowley, StephenParr, Roy Hassel, DavidMeyers. Not pictured: EdwinMuller.

Winter 2011 59

Classnotes

THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL

Harvard Divinity School Professor

Mayra Rivera Rivera T’01, G’04,’05 Science and religion don’t always get along. In Mayra Rivera Rivera’s life, though, their relationship makes good sense. Before beginning to study religion full time—which led to degrees from Drew, four years teaching at the Pacific School of Religion and, last fall, an assistant professorship at Harvard Divinity School—Rivera spent over a decade working as a chemical engineer in her native Puerto Rico. She worked for Coca-Cola and consulted with a variety of pharmaceutical companies. “Engineering is about constructing models,” she says. “So there’s a form of analysis that involves a lot of abstraction even though it’s something very concrete. I think that helped me think theologically and philosophically.” Engineering ran in her family through her father. Theology she got from her mother, whose informal religious study group Rivera remembers overhearing as a girl. Her study deepened in a New Testament class taught by a Drew alum in Puerto Rico in 1998. She started at Drew the following year, getting a master’s in theological studies in 2001 and a Ph.D. in theological and religious studies in 2005. She says Drew gave her approach to theology “a broader sense of the relation between different realms of thinking.” She notes a similar sense developing at Harvard, signaled by the school bringing her and a specialist in AfroCaribbean religion on board. Says Rivera, “In both cases that brings additional materials to the learning in the school.”—BRUCEWALLACE

Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Cathy L. Deats T’96, longtime rector at St. James Episcopal Church in Hackettstown, N.J., was named president of the board of trustees at the House of the Good Shepherd, a continuing-care retirement community in Hackettstown. Ed Weiss C’55, T’96 is a pastor of the Church of Our Savior in Okeechobee, Fla. Before receiving his doctorate from Drew’s Theo School, Ed was a physician; his medical efforts focus on pro bono work with the sizable immigrant

60 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

THE CASPERSEN SCHOOL

C’84, T’05 is an associate pastor at Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in Maplewood, N.J. Dorothy A. Patterson T’05 is the first female pastor of Wallace Temple AME Zion Church, a 117year-old congregation in Bayonne, N.J. Robert Visscher T’05 stepped down from his pastoral role at Hemlock Grove UMC in Greentown, Pa., to serve as executive director of Mission Central, the mission warehouse of the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church, located in Mechanicsburg, Pa. Anna Mercedes G’07, T’09 received the Sister Linda Kulzer Gender Educator Award, recognizing her work as an assistant professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota and the impact she’s had on gendereducation development.

00s

On June 15, 2010, Donna (Powell) Owusu-Ansah T’10 began work as the assistant to the Rev. Dr. Allen Paul Weaver Jr. at the Bethesda Baptist Church of New Rochelle, N.Y. Ten days later, she married Joseph Owusu-Ansah. On August 1, she was ordained to the gospel ministry.

population in Okeechobee. Stephen Ayers T’00 is set to teach an off-campus course for people in Kentucky’s Campbellsville University area who want to work toward a theology degree. Wayne E. Croft T’02,’09, G’05— the first person in Drew’s history to earn two doctorates—is the Jeremiah A. Wright Sr. Associate Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics in AfricanAmerican Studies at Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. A deacon of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference of the UMC, Brenda (Wheeler) Ehlers

90s

10s

WE’RE SORRY TO REPORT THE

deaths of Vernon Grounds G’60, LeRoy Stoney Graham T’52, G’65 and Douglas Fullerton G’69. See In Memoriam, pages 62–63.

Ph.D.

The Samaritan Counseling Center of ShreveportBossier, La., named Donald Webb G’66 the 2010 Samaritan of the Year, for over two decades of service to the community. A United Methodist minister, Donald served as president of Shreveport’s Centenary College, where he is now president emeritus. Donald works with Volunteers of America, which founded the Donald A. Webb Academy for Leadership and Service in 2003. He has authored three books, the proceeds of which benefit the Volunteers of America. Dennis P. Hollinger G’79,’81, president and the Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., was the guest preacher at St. John’s Baptist Church in Woburn, Mass. He has served as vice provost at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., pastor of the Washington (D.C.) Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill and associate professor of church and society at Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, N.Y. He has served as an adjunct and visiting professor at several international seminaries. Dennis and his wife, Mary Ann, live in Beverly, Mass., and have two adult daughters and a granddaughter. Emele M. Uka G’79,’80 was elected as the new moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, making him the new national leader of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria. He will serve for the next six years. Jeffrey Richards G’83,’85 released his seventh book, War Time Preaching and Teaching (Cambridge Scholars, 2009), which highlights the work of World War II–era theologians Rudolf Bultmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Richards presents their views on scriptural interpretation and how these were put forward during that war. Jeffery Pugh T’81, G’85, Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in Elon, N.C., was the 11th recipient of that university’s Distinguished Scholar Award, which recognizes faculty members who have earned peer commendation and respect and who have made significant contributions to their field of studies. Cynthia Bandish G’92,’98 is an associate professor of English at Bluffton University in Ohio. Paul R. Powell G’96,’98 was recently recognized as a fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. This acknowledgment was based on his editorship of The Dictionary of North America Hymnology, a resource that includes almost 5,000 hymnals published from 1640 to 1978. Jorshinelle Taleon-Sonza G’96, ’99 presented a trilogy of one-act plays called Migration Blues, produced by the New School (N.Y.) University’s Diversity Initiative at Theatre Row’s Clurman Theater in July 2010. Wayne E. Croft T’02,’09, G’05— the first person in Drew’s history to earn two doctorates—resigned as assistant professor of homiletics and liturgics at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa., in June 2010. He is now the Jeremiah A. Wright Sr. Associate Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics in African-American Studies at Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. Nichole Bennett-Bealer G’06, ’07 was recently appointed director of the Learning Center at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pa. Anna Mercedes G’07, T’09 received the Sister Linda Kulzer Gender Educator Award, recognizing her work as an assistant professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota

and the impact she’s had on gendereducation development.

M.A.

Paul A. Poe G’79,’80 is director of government affairs for the American Forest and Paper Association.

D.Litt.

Ron Felber G’07, president and CEO of Chemetall US, Inc., based his upcoming book, Presidential Lessons in Leadership, on his doctoral thesis. The book will be his ninth published work.

M.Litt.

Stephen Wilkowski G’94 recently observed 30 years of service with Alcatel-Lucent. He began his career in 1980 with Bell Laboratories in Whippany, N.J. After reassignment to Advancement Mobil Phone Service, Inc., AT&T and Lucent Technologies, he is now working in Murray Hill, N.J.

D.M.H.

Joseph Segriff G’07, a professor at William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J., and a doctoral student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., is studying to become a psychotherapist.

Due to an editing error, the name of the spouse of Karla (Simcikova) Kovalova G’02,’04 was incorrect in the Fall 2010 issue. His name is David Koval.

Winter 2011 61

Classnotes

IN MEMORIAM

The Drew community and its alumni associations extend their heartfelt sympathy to the families and friends of those alumni and members of the Drew community listed. Our ranks are diminished by their loss. Natalie Blazek C’47, married Robert Blazek in 1950, moved to Lancaster, Pa., in 1963, taught fifth grade at Pequea Elementary School in Willow Street, Pa., worked in her iris and tulip gardens, of Tucson, Ariz., on Aug. 4, 2010; survived by sister Marilyn and son Gary. Frank B. Brandon Jr. C’40, T’43, ordained minister in the Troy (N.Y.) Conference of the UMC, active Mason, member of New York lodges in Schenectady, Fultonville and Schuylerville, former grand chaplain of the Grand Lodge of the State of New York, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Aug. 20, 2010; survived by wife Dorothy; children Frank B. and Nancy; brother Gordon; and grandson Cosmo. Jane E. Broughton C’54, on Sept. 4, 2010. Alice Tear Copeland, former head of cataloging at Drew’s library, formerly of Madison, N.J., 50-year member of the Madison, N.J., Presbyterian Church, of State College, Pa., on July 28, 2010; survived by daughters Mary Alice Amidon, Ann W. Copeland and Susan Tear Copeland; and six grandchildren. William W. Dew Jr. T’61, elected bishop of the UMC in 1988, of Elk Grove, Calif., on July 14, 2010; survived by wife Mae; children Linda Dew-Hiersoux, William W. Dew III and Marilyn Dew Delgado; and six grandchildren. Roy W. Dodsworth C’70, senior director/global head of regulatory affairs at Schering-Plough Corporation, vice president of global therapeutic area for Novartis, responsible for more than 25 new medications/drugs worldwide, of Flanders, N.J., on Aug. 6, 2010; survived by wife Marta; children Roger, Dawn, Michael, Anthony and Nichole; and two grandchildren. Chester B. Dugdale C’39, biology

62 Drew Magazine I classnotes@drew.edu

professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University over 25 years, author of several botanical books, founder of New Jersey Cactus and Succulent Society, frequent baritone soloist at church and other functions, member of Federated Church of Orleans (Mass.), past president of Orleans Men’s Garden Club, of Orleans, on Sept. 29, 2010; survived by wife Anne Paterson Dugdale; daughters Leslie, Ruth and Jane Bussard C’69; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Douglas Fullerton G’69, devoted minister, died peacefully at home the day before his 90th birthday, of Victoria, Australia, on April 18, 2008; survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Ethel. J. Roger Geyer T’59, member of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference UMC, ministered in Rockaway, N.J., church for 23 years, last appointment Bergen Highlands Church in Upper Saddle River, N.J., retired in 1994, with wife moved to Lake Junaluska United Methodist Assembly, received Chief Junaluska Award in 2000 for volunteer efforts, of Lake Junaluska, N.C., on May 28, 2010; survived by wife Nancy; daughters Kathy and Bonnie; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. John D. Godsey T’53, on Oct. 12, 2010. LeRoy Stoney Graham T’52, G’65, veteran of the U.S. Navy, UMC minister, director of Washington (D.C.) Pastoral Counseling, director of pastoral counseling for Louisville Conference of the UMC, professor at Columbia (S.C.) College, university chaplain and sociology professor at American University in Washington, D.C., of Bowling Green, Ky., on Aug. 23, 2010; sur-

vived by wife Patricia Walker Graham; son Roy; daughters Lynn Carmouche, Melanie Driscoll and Jennifer Driscoll; and four grandchildren. Vernon Grounds G’60, former longtime dean and president of Denver Seminary and worldwide evangelical leader, former pastor at Paterson, N.J., church, dean and professor of theology at Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, N.Y., author of five books and hundreds of scholarly articles, of Wichita, Kan., on Sept. 12, 2010; survived by wife Ann; a daughter; and three grandchildren. Robert Hamilton C’38, worked with Italian prisoners of war as an interpreter during World War II, met and after a six-week courtship married Doris Bell, called into parish ministry, served as pastor of United Methodist churches in East Berlin, New Haven, North Haven, Southington and Trumbull, Conn., volunteered at Connecticut Hospice in retirement, board member of Branford Food Council since 1981, of Branford, Conn., on Feb. 17, 2010; survived by daughter Marion H. Sachdeva; son Robert S.; and two grandchildren. Richard E. Johnson T’47, married childhood sweetheart Gladys Eliason on Christmas Day 1941, served churches in Perth Amboy, N.J., and Harcourt, Iowa, before moving into the mission field in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, campus minister to the Wesley Foundation at Kansas State College in Pittsburg, many positions as member of the Kansas East Conference of the UMC, in retirement was active participant at Platte Woods United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Mo., willed his body to University of Kansas

Medical Center, of Kansas City, Mo., on July 22, 2010; survived by children Annette C. Smart, David R., Mark A., Howard E. and Steven L.; 10 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Carol N. Kelly C’60, head librarian at St. Paul’s School for Girls in Brooklandville, Md., active member at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Timonium, Md., met husband John Frederic Kelly C’60 at Drew, accomplished artist and member of Baltimore-based Jezic Singers, on Sept. 29, 2010, of Cockeysville, Md.; survived by sons Mark L. and Scott F.; and four grandchildren. Frederic T. Kolman C’84, teacher of elementary through college-level students, of Goodyear, Ariz., on July 25, 2010; survived by mother Frances M. McGimpsey; sisters Jane, Judith Simko and Barbara (Blas) Urena. Craig Kozlow C’75, selfemployed computer programmer and software analyst at many institutions including TIAA-CREF and the Mayo Clinic, of Asheboro, N.C., on Oct. 10, 2010; survived by wife Sue; parents Patricia and Eugene; sister Lesley and brother Eric. John Wellesley Lawson C’50, Eagle Scout, auditor for Beneficial Finance in Morristown, N.J., and for Greater New Jersey Conference of the UMC, tracked all veterans’ memorials in Madison, N.J., for historical society, accomplished clarinetist, member of the Union Band, season ticket holder at the Metropolitan Opera for more than 50 years, of Madison, N.J., on May 19, 2010; survived by wife Lois; sons Robert, William, Thomas and Peter; and 10 grandchildren. Claudia Luecke C’89, corporate counsel at Verizon Wireless, consultant to Citigroup in Manhattan, volunteer Komen Foundation, Young Survival Coalition and Robert Wood Johnson Institutional Review Board, very active in Lithuanian-

American community, traveled to all seven continents, courageously fought breast cancer for 12 years, of Westfield, N.J., on Oct. 15, 2010; survived by parents Helen and Jerry Luecke; siblings Nicole and Matt; a niece; and two nephews. Clyde Lawrence Noyce C’56, T’59, UMC minister for 35 years in Kansas East Conference, continued service as pastor emeritus after retirement in 1994, member and former president of the school board in Iola, Ark., of Subiaco, Ark., on June 3, 2010; survived by wife Dottie; brother Edwin Clark; sister Jeanne Pilger; children Larry, Tom, Tim, Tina and Lisa; and nine grandchildren. Allan Thomas Reading T’74, special education and sixth-grade robotics teacher at Somerset Intermediate School in North Plainfield, N.J., member of the First Unitarian Society of Plainfield choir, school drama coach, active in community theater, of Plainfield, N.J., on May 6, 2010; survived by wife Martha; children Emma, Annie, Carolyn, Robert, Matthew and Frances; stepchildren Michael Goodnough, Cynthia Martin, Wendy Swanson and Eric Swanson; three brothers; and four grandchildren. Richard A. Rohde C’51, professor and chair of the Department of Plant Pathology and associate dean of the College of Food and Natural Resources at the University of Massachusetts, member of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Amherst, involved in Amherst-Pelham, Mass., town politics, of Amherst-Pelham, on Sept. 16, 2010; survived by wife Suzanne; children Melissa, Leigh, Kate Smith and David; eight grandchildren; and two greatgranddaughters. Alfonso Sherald T’78, pastor of Bethel AME Church in Morristown, N.J., president of the Morristown NAACP, of Morristown, N.J., on Sept. 5, 2010; survived by father Jay T. Muldrow; sisters Geraldine

Sherald and Denise Muldrow; and brother Jeffrey Muldrow. Jacob Stults C’01, died after suffering a traumatic brain injury, teacher at the Churchill School in New York and the Stuart Country Day School in Princeton, moved to Portland, Ore., in 2007, married Irene Saxton in 2009, summered in Homer, Alaska, wintered in Portland, taught at Oregon Episcopal School, working toward second master’s degree at Portland State University, of Portland, Ore., on May 8, 2010; survived by wife Irene; parents Molly and Bud Stults; two aunts; and an uncle. James Samuel Thomas T’44, first African American appointed a bishop in the North Central Jurisdiction of the Methodist Church, deacon and elder, chaplain at South Carolina State College, pastor in York, Pa., professor and acting president at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, president of the Claflin University (Orangeburg, S.C.) Board of Trustees, named to Claflin Hall of Fame, associate general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Education, elected to the episcopacy by the Central Jurisdictional Conference, bishop-in-residence at both Candler School of Theology at Emory University and Clark Atlanta University, of Orangeburg, on Oct. 10, 2010; survived by his wife, Ruth, and their four daughters. Joseph Harley Thompson T’47, member of the board of directors of Dakota Wesleyan University, where he received a doctor of divinity degree, shepherded five parishes in his 40 years as a UMC minister, of Panama City Beach, Fla., on June 22, 2010; survived by wife Mavis; children Darlene Anderson, James, Doug and Elizabeth Farber; eight grandchildren; and eight greatgrandchildren. J. Robert Williams T’49, on July 29, 2008.

Winter 2011 63

BackTalk

James Brown University locksmith I go back to when we made skeleton keys on campus. A skeleton key is the old key with the ornamental head, like what you see in Dark Shadows. There are a couple of doors that still have that type of lock. It’s essentially 60 buildings, with somewhere in the neighborhood of

10,000 locks. I’ve had student helpers through the course of all this. The first

thing I teach them is how to recore the door lock and how to make keys. Drew’s policy is that if you lose your key, we have to change the lock. I get calls when kids get locked out of their room—or locked in their room. In the evenings I try to talk the maintenance guys through it.

You’re on call quite a bit. I remember the morning of the Mead Hall fire, August of 1989. My

window faced Mead Hall. That morning everybody was saying that they smelled smoke. It was like 6:30, 7:00 in the morning. All of a sudden I just looked over at Mead Hall and the whole roof section, flames were shooting out. It was surreal because just everything started to come together—the smell of smoke, seeing flames and the sirens going off. It was really a sad, sad day. In 2007 they had Dancing with the Stars, which included students and faculty and staff. We didn’t want to compete with the students. That would have been ridiculous—geriatric dancing as opposed to hip-hop! I happened to be chosen with Pam Gunter-Smith, who is the provost

on campus. We had a coach, so at 6:30 in the morning we would get together before we’d go to work. We did that for two, three months. So the night of the show we got up there, and we won. We did the Hustle. My shirt was gold-sequined. It looked like something Liberace would wear. I keep one key for my car in my wallet, and I keep a whole set for my

Brown keeps his Dancing with the Stars shirt handy on the back of his office door.

64 Drew Magazine I drewmagazine.com

Bill Cardoni

house in my car. So if I lose my keys, I can go to my wallet. That’s how I always tell people to do it. If you lock yourself out, you get your wallet out, get that key and you’re ready to roll.—CHRISTOPHER HANN

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WINTER 2011 I New Theo Dean Arrives I Vintage Comic Book Covers What Led Us into War with Iraq? I Rare Jackie Robinson Broadcast I The “F” Returns

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January 29 If the beef tenderloin with a red wine reduction or roast veggie ravioli

Save the Date Second Annual Blue & Green Golf Tournament: June 13 Plainﬁeld Country Club, site of the 2011 Barclays Classic. drewrangers.com/golfouting

The Survivor Ramona Belfiore’s Inspiring Journey