Stetson Magazine

CELEBRATING OUR

STETSON SUCCESS

The return of students brings new spirit to a rich tradition of campus vibrancy and enduring achievement.

Move-In Day 2021

Most years, such an event at Stetson would be more about hoorays than history, but not this time, not in 2021. This was one for the ages at a university established in 1883.

Despite the persistent presence of COVID-19, Hatters had come back home, mostly for the first time since March 18, 2020, when all classes were moved online.

Per pandemic protocols, students began arriving Aug. 14, based on appointment times in the Rinker Field House. By that evening, more than 1,400 students were checked into the residence halls, including approximately 550 new students. Students continued to flow onto campus before classes began on Aug. 19.

In extraordinarily challenging times, a bit of normalcy returned. Historic, indeed.

Photos: Stetson University/Joel Jones

Features

20 ‘My Art and My Stetson’

The novel, authored by Manuel de Queiroz, reveals the whirlwind lives of the Count of Santa Eulalia and Elizabeth Shindler Stetson following the death of Elizabeth’s husband, university benefactor John B. Stetson.

24 Who Is Bert Fish?

The Bert Fish Collection, now on exhibit at Stetson’s duPont-Ball Library, showcases treasures from the storied life of an 1895 alumnus.

28 Improbable Tune

Professor Emeritus T. Wayne Bailey (1935-2021)

Guitar program founder and director Stephen Robinson retired last spring following global acclaim across decades — but he’s not done playing yet.

STETSON

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE

FALL 2021 • VOLUME 37 • ISSUE 2

President

Christopher F. Roellke, PhD

Vice President of University Marketing

Bruce Chong

Editor

Michael Candelaria

Designer Kris Winters

Art and Photography

Faith Jones ’21, Joel Jones, Ciara Ocasio

Writers

Sandra Carr, Rick de Yampert, Wendy Robinson Fernsell ’84, Ricky Hazel, Cory Lancaster, Kelly Larson, MLIS, Ashley McKnight-Taylor, Christopher F. Roellke, PhD, Jack Roth, Susan Ryan, MLS

Class Notes Editor

Cathy Foster

STETSON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE is published by Stetson University, DeLand, FL 32723, and is distributed to its alumni, families, friends, faculty and staff. The magazine is printed on FSC-certified paper.

STETSON UNIVERSITY: The College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business Administration and School of Music are at the historic main campus in DeLand. The College of Law is in Gulfport/St. Petersburg. The university also has one satellite center: the Tampa Law Center. The mission at Stetson is to provide an excellent education in a creative community where learning and values meet, and to foster in students the qualities of mind and heart that will prepare them to reach their full potential as informed citizens of local communities and the world.

Want to add, remove or change your magazine subscription?

Email universitymagazine@stetson.edu. Also, we accept paid advertising. Email inquiries to universitymagazine@stetson.edu.

32 Worth a Cartwheel

In August, after a 24-year odyssey, Nashville music man David Wise was able to sing these words out loud: “I finally graduated.”

36 ‘Be the Best They Can Be’

McEniry Award winner Hala ElAarag, PhD, is changing the lives of her computer science students with her own special code.

40 The Calculus of Conviction

Amid adversity, math whiz Breanna Shi ’20 continues to defy odds and create new equations of achievement.

ON THE COVER:

44 Beyond Borders, Barriers and Expectations

As a student, Ashley Rutherford ’12 never imagined a military career — or the adversity and achievement that would result.

48 Whiskey and War

From Afghanistan to DeLand and now on the way to a new, entirely different campus in Kentucky, John Koko ’86 continues his “everyman story” in uncommon ways.

50 Speed Racer

Cedric Burkhardt ’20 is steering toward a lead position in motor sports — just not from behind the wheel.

First-year student Izais Ocasio represents the celebratory spirit on campus, following a successful return to in-person classes and Stetson’s tradition of vibrancy. The Templeton Fountain, which first came to life in 2019, serves as the background.

Photo: Stetson University/Ciara Ocasio

YES, A TIME TO CELEBRATE

We did it! And, actually, we’re not done yet.

On Sept. 23, we happily reported to our students, faculty and staff that the DeLand campus had reached its goal of an initial 70% overall vaccination rate — 88.5% of employees and 65.72% of students. And, since then, those numbers have increased.

Reaching that overall vaccination rate was a significant milestone in our strategy to achieve a healthy campus. Also, it demonstrated substantial individual commitment to the safety and well-being of our community. As I did in September, I again applaud the community for its work toward that initial goal and expect continued progress toward even higher rates of vaccination on our campuses.

Why is this so important? There are numerous medical reasons that also intertwine with social and political agendas. This isn’t the appropriate space for those discussions. Most importantly for Stetson, higher rates of vaccinations mean greater freedoms across our campuses in DeLand, Gulfport and Tampa. And, with all that our Hatters have and continue to accomplish, currently and in the past, we deserve such simple campus freedoms as increased capacities for gatherings and dining a bit closer with friends.

While we remain vigilant about safety, I’m just so pleased that we were able to announce 70% milestone adjustments for our community.

Looking around at Hatters everywhere, milestone achievements certainly aren’t limited to vaccination rates. They can be found in faculty members, staff, students and alumni.

LOOKING AROUND AT HATTERS

EVERYWHERE, MILESTONE

ACHIEVEMENTS

SURELY AREN’T LIMITED TO VACCINATION RATES. THEY CAN BE FOUND IN FACULTY MEMBERS, STAFF, STUDENTS AND ALUMNI. THEY INCLUDE OUR MCENIRY AWARD WINNER HALA ELAARAG, PHD; ALUMNUS DAVID WISE, A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL MUSIC MAN IN NASHVILLE WHO RETURNED TO STETSON AFTER 24 YEARS TO FINALLY EARN HIS DEGREE; AND STUDENT CEDRIC BURKHARDT, IN GRADUATE SCHOOL, WHO IS HITTING THE ACCELERATOR ON A BUSINESS CAREER IN MOTOR SPORTS.

They include our McEniry Award winner Hala ElAarag, PhD; alumnus David Wise, a highly successful music man in Nashville who returned to Stetson after 24 years to finally earn his degree; and student Cedric Burkhardt, in graduate school, who is hitting the accelerator on a business career in motor sports. And there are many others. Please read their stories in this issue of Stetson University Magazine

Such Hatter spirit is represented on the magazine cover and in the words “Celebrating Our Success.”

Look across from here at the Fall 2021 Census Enrollment Snapshot, and there are other reasons to cheer, particularly regarding our graduate student count in DeLand and our College of Law. The total enrollment for the Fall 2021 Semester is 4,288 students. That includes 637 new first-time-in-college students and 114 new transfer students. During pandemic times, and with the delta variant still surging in Florida, that’s quite an accomplishment.

So, yes, this is a time to celebrate. I have only one final thing to say, and I love these words, too: GO HATTERS!

Christopher F. Roellke, PhD President, Stetson University

FALL 2021 CENSUS ENROLLMENT

TOTAL FALL 2021 ENROLLMENT:

2,884 4,288 979 425

UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE/SCHOOL

1,865

ENROLLMENT

BY BY GENDER

INTELLIGENTSIA

Top 25

Now in the midst of football season, one might ask, “Is Stetson in the Top 25?” Absolutely. Stetson is in the national rankings — for overall excellence as a university.

Stetson ranks No. 5 on U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 list of Best Regional Universities in the South. It’s also No. 11 (tie) for Best Undergraduate Teaching; No. 12 for Best for Veterans; No. 13 for Best Value Schools; and No. 24 for Best Social Mobility. (The tie for Best Undergraduate Teaching is with Georgia College & State University.)

Those rankings are among a total of 137 universities in the South.

As cited by U.S. News & World Report, Stetson emphasizes active learning with a low undergraduate student-teacher ratio of 13:1 — 61% of classes have fewer than 20 students, and only 0.3% of classes have 50 or more students. Also notably, among first-year students, 53% finished in the top quarter of their high school graduating class.

Additionally, U.S. News & World Report ranks Stetson University College of Law No. 2 in Trial Advocacy and No. 5 for Legal Writing in the United States. Stetson has been ranked as the top law school for Trial Advocacy 23 times in 27

years, and it has consistently ranked among the top six legal-writing programs since the inception of the Legal Writing rankings in 2005.

And there’s more. Stetson also has been named as one of the top universities by The Princeton Review’s 2022 edition of The Best 387 Colleges, as well as Money’s Best Colleges and Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges.

The Princeton Review recognized Stetson as one of the leading undergraduate institutions in the country and region (Southeast) for the seventh consecutive year. The honor is given to only about 14% of four-year colleges nationwide.

In its profile of Stetson, The Princeton Review praised the university for its acceptance rate and “attracting go-getters,” and “each year’s freshman class is more impressive than the last.” — Sandra Carr

Stetson ranks among the very best in the South.

NEWS AND NOTES ABOUT KNOWLEDGE

DID YOU KNOW?

Krista Bofill was named vice president for Development and Alumni Engagement. Her appointment began Aug. 1. She succeeded Jeff Ulmer, who retired from Stetson in January 2021.

Bofill arrived on campus with more than 25 years of successful and progressive leadership experience in developing and managing donor, investor and constituent relationships.

Most recently, Bofill was vice president of Institutional Advancement and Communications at Converse College as the institution implemented a new strategic plan and fundraising. Previously, she had spent 23 years at Duke University, and served in numerous leadership positions, including leading development for its Fuqua School of Business and successfully completing The Duke Forward campaign in June 2017, which surpassed the school’s goal of $125 million.

Presidential Inauguration

Finally, Stetson President Christopher F. Roellke, PhD, is getting his day.

Roellke’s official inauguration is set for 9 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 6, at the Stetson Green, a mostly virtual event with attendance limited to only faculty, students, staff, Board of Trustees and other select guests.

Roellke became the 10th president of Stetson in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The inauguration is part of several planned activities, including an Academic Symposium on Nov. 5 (1-5 p.m.) and a School of Music Inauguration Concert (virtual 7-8:30 p.m.).

Also, the inauguration coincides with Stetson Homecoming, Nov. 1-7. On Nov. 6 at 1 p.m., the Hatters take on the University of Dayton in football at Spec Martin Memorial Stadium. — Michael Candelaria

Christopher F. Roellke, PhD

Honors Program Diversifies and Strengthens

New Leadership for Campus Life and Student Success

The summer brought leadership changes to the DeLand campus, as Lua Hancock, EdD, a longtime popular fixture, stepped down as vice president of Campus Life and Student Success.

Hancock arrived at Stetson in September 2010 as the associate Provost, later getting promoted. Hancock left to expand her work as a leadership coach and consultant.

Larry Correll-Hughes, PhD, and Lynn Schoenberg, EdS, were named co-interim vice presidents of Campus Life and Student Success. Correll-Hughes had been assistant vice president for Campus Life and Student Success and executive director of Residential Living and Learning. Schoenberg also is the dean of Students.

Since 2015, Hancock, Correll-Hughes and Schoenberg had worked as a closeknit team.

According to Stetson President Christopher F. Roellke, PhD, the trio was instrumental in the university’s ability to tackle tough tasks related to the pandemic.

“Faced with exceptional challenges in a rapidly evolving public health context, they were responsive, flexible and nimble in addressing community needs and maintaining a safe and healthy campus community. The entire university owes Lua, Larry, Lynn and the Campus Life and Student Success team a big ‘thank you’ for their achievements,” Roellke said. — Cory Lancaster

Three years ago, it was the Quanta-Honors College at Daytona State College. Now, it’s the honors program at Lake-Sumter State College. And more could be on the way — as Stetson’s Honors Program continues to diversify and strengthen.

In 2018, under the guidance of Professor Michael Denner, PhD, honors students from Daytona State began gaining automatic admittance into Stetson Honors while also receiving full scholarships, among other benefits. (Students must already have earned their Associate of Arts degree.)

Likewise, this fall the initial group of honors students from Lake-Sumter began automatic admittance — totaling about 18 from DSC this fall and nine from Lake-Sumter.

As a result, Stetson Honors, established in 1957, making it one of the nation’s oldest, is simultaneously diversifying, strengthening and delivering a multitude of benefits to others.

“Consistently, [the transfers are] among the best students I’ve taught, and my colleagues tell me the same thing over and over again,” said Denner, director of Stetson’s Honors Program and a professor of Russian Studies. “They come here

tremendously well-prepared; they come here, and they succeed. They’re the best students in class.”

One of the original goals of the partnerships was to close what often is called the “leaky pipeline in higher education.” Nationally, fewer than one in seven students with an associate degree transfer to a four-year college and earn a baccalaureate degree, according to published data. And even when they do transfer, there typically are numerous academic, social and financial obstacles to overcome.

That pipeline is now more secure at Stetson, and the transfer students have new pathways to success. — Michael Candelaria

From left: Lynn Schoenberg, EdS, Larry Correll-Hughes, PhD, and Lua Hancock, EdD

Michael Denner, PhD

Business School’s Dascher Scholarship Gets Endowed

When Paul E. Dascher, PhD, served as dean of the School of Business Administration from 1993 to 2004, he was instrumental in turning a run-down, six-story bank building into the school’s showcase home, the Lynn Business Center.

Also, with his leadership, the school obtained the prestigious AACSB accreditation for its business and accounting programs in 1995, one of fewer than 190 business schools worldwide to hold both accreditations. In addition, Dascher hired a number of faculty members who have been key to the advancement of the school.

In 2004, he returned to the faculty, retiring in 2011 and becoming Professor Emeritus of Accounting Information Systems.

Now, the Paul E. Dascher Scholarship has been endowed by the Stetson Business School Foundation, with $33,000 raised during the past year, an effort led by Foundation President and board Chairman George Shierling.

Established in 2011, the scholarship has awarded $1,000 each spring to a graduating business major for outstanding academic performance.

“Somebody each year is going to get the Paul Dascher scholarship, and it’s a wonderful honor for me,” said Dascher, who continues to live in DeLand with his wife, Nancy. — Rick de Yampert

New Leader for Diversity, Collaboration and Inclusion

Over the summer, as Stetson continued to focus on issues throughout its campus communities in DeLand and Gulfport, Carmen Johnson, JD, was selected as its new executive officer for Diversity, Collaboration and Inclusion.

Johnson joined Stetson’s College of Law in 2013 and most recently served as the director of Diversity Initiatives and Recruitment there. She graduated from Stetson Law in 2012.

In her new position, Johnson will lead the development and implementation of proactive diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in collaboration with the university’s existing support systems and in support of the university’s strategic plan to create a learning and working environment where all have an opportunity to succeed.

Most notably, Johnson is leading the university’s Campus Climate Action Plan to address issues raised in a 2020 Campus Climate Report survey. The action plan was launched on Sept. 28. — Cory Lancaster

Carmen Johnson, JD

Guts + Fortitude = Success

Rags to riches? Maybe that play on words doesn’t exactly fit this equation, but it’s an approximation.

The gist: Student arrives in the United States speaking no English after her parents left Cuba seeking a better life for their only child. Then adversity steadily drives classroom success, beginning early and continuing through college, where the student graduates and subsequently receives a national scholarship in accounting that will ensure graduate education at her alma mater, Stetson.

In sum, that tally equals Melissa Ramos Loredo ’21, an accounting major who now is pursuing an accountancy master’s degree — thanks to admirable, perhaps even remarkable, diligence and a $10,000 scholarship from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

The scholarship comes from PCAOB by way of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which mandates that funds generated from the collection of PCAOB monetary penalties be used to fund a merit scholarship program for students in accredited accounting degree programs. The PCAOB Scholars Program was created to identify eligible students and to award funds through the students’ educational institutions.

Loredo, arriving in the United States at age 9, is one of only 253 students from U.S. colleges and universities nationwide to receive the award for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Loredo came to Stetson after almost simultaneously earning an AA degree and two certifications, in addition to her high school diploma. She then became a standout in the classroom and a popular volunteer on campus. Now, she hopes to become a CPA and possibly obtain a doctorate. — Michael Candelaria

DID YOU KNOW?

Alariell Satcher, a junior health sciences major, received the prestigious United Parcel Service Foundation Scholarship Award. Satcher, of Buffalo, New York, received a $3,200 scholarship award for her academic achievements, commitment as a resident assistant and for being a peer leader who helps students while they are living on Stetson’s campus. She was among 30 scholarship recipients selected regionally for the UPS Foundation award, which is funded through a grant from The Council of Independent Colleges.

Satcher, the first woman in her family to attend college, is planning to pursue a medical career and hopes to become a doctor or pharmacist in the future.

The Council of Independent Colleges is an association of more than 750 nonprofit independent colleges and universities, state-based councils of independent colleges, and other higher education affiliates.

Melissa Ramos Loredo ’21

Student-Athletes Score Big

A university-record 254 Stetson student-athletes received ASUN Honor Roll accolades for posting a 3.0 grade-point average or better during the 2020-2021 academic year. That tally surpassed the Hatters’ previous all-time high of 250, set in the 2019-2020 academic year.

Overall, 86.1% of Hatters who compete in the ASUN posted a GPA of 3.0 or better, marking the second-highest percentage total in school history.

Four of Stetson’s teams — women’s cross country, women’s soccer, volleyball and men’s tennis — had 100% of their student-athletes earn ASUN Honor Roll status. Men’s cross country, men’s golf, women’s golf and softball were close behind, each missing that perfection by one student-athlete. (Football and men’s and women’s rowing compete in other conferences and are not included in the ASUN totals.)

Overall, a league-record 79.36% of ASUN student-athletes posted a 3.0 GPA or better to earn Honor Roll recognition. For the first time in the 21-year history of the ASUN Honor Roll, all nine member institutions registered at least 70% of their student-athletes on the Honor Roll. — Ricky Hazel

DID YOU KNOW?

Promoting Access to Regional Cycling Trails

Stetson’s work in the area of socialclimate innovation has hit the accelerator, pun intended.

Second Nature, a Boston-based independent nonprofit organization, awarded Stetson a $10,000 grant from its Acceleration Fund. The dollars are being used to support collaboration among university and community groups focused on memorializing African American experiences through enhanced access to regional cycling trail networks.

Stetson was among eight colleges and universities to receive awards. The Acceleration Fund was first introduced at the 2020 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit.

“The goal is to foster equitable access to cycling trail networks in our region by creating a mobile application (app) for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure that features overlooked local African American histories,” said Tony Abbott, PhD, Stetson professor of environmental science and studies. “Participants will include students and local experts on the African American experience.”

Abbott anticipates final formatting of the mobile map to happen in March and April 2022, with a targeted rollout of May 2022.

Aside from Stetson’s Center for Community Engagement and the university’s Community Education Project, community partners include the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop Alliance, the Mary S. Harrell Black Heritage Museum, the African American Museum of the Arts and Volusia Remembers, among others. — Michael Candelaria

Stetson Law Professor Roberta Flowers was appointed vice president of the board of directors of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, an association dedicated to improving the quality of legal services for older adults and people with disabilities. Flowers is the director of Stetson Law’s Center for Excellence in Elder Law and teaches ethics in an elder law practice.

Flowers, along with fellow Stetson Law Professor Rebecca Morgan, created a video series used to train and educate attorneys nationwide on the ethical dilemmas faced by elder law attorneys. The Florida Supreme Court awarded them the Florida Supreme Court Professionalism Award for their video productions. Additionally, the pair designed the nation’s first “elder friendly courtroom,” which serves as a model for courtrooms of the future.

The women’s soccer team reached ASUN Honor Roll perfection.

Stetson Hillel’s New National Voice

Growing up, Lana Kolchinsky ’22 assumed leadership roles in an assortment of Jewish communities.

Hailing from Moorestown, New Jersey, she spent seven summers as part of Camp Harlam in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, including a year as a staff member. The popular camp is designed to enrich and strengthen Reform Jewish identities and values while cultivating lifelong friendships.

In high school, Kolchinsky was heavily involved in her youth group, NFTY, where she served as the regional ritual and cultural vice president after returning from a semester abroad in Jerusalem. The organization fosters the youth movement of Reform Judaism in North America.

Also, even before her official arrival as a student at Stetson, she began to make an impact on campus.

On a tour of the university as a high school junior, she met people who now are close friends. Much of that visit involved Stetson University Hillel.

So, Kolchinsky’s most recent ascension as a Jewish leader should come as no surprise. She is part of Hillel International’s 2021-2022 Hillel International Student Cabinet.

Hillel International, the world’s largest Jewish campus organization, operates at more than 550 colleges in 17 countries. Serving a one-year term, cabinet members share advice, opinions and perspectives with Hillel International’s leadership to help Hillels engage Jewish college students everywhere. The members, selected through a highly competitive process, comprise a diverse cohort and were selected to represent a wide range of Jewish backgrounds and interests.

“The role of a student cabinet member is to serve as a ‘voice for students’ on various committees and other efforts as they relate to Jewish life on campus,” said Kolchinsky, a political science major who also is Stetson’s Student Government Association president.

“I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for a while. So, I’m glad that I can finally see that through.” — Michael Candelaria

Jacob deGrom Inducted Into ASUN Hall of Fame

The 2021 season wasn’t exactly stellar for Jacob deGrom ’10 — with the star pitcher shelved by injuries and his New York Mets failing to make the playoffs — but he did gain a distinction. In October, deGrom was inducted into the ASUN Hall of Fame, along with four other former standout conference performers.

DeGrom became the sixth Stetson representative in the ASUN Hall of Fame, and the third from the baseball program. Other Hatters in the ASUN Hall of Fame are Kristy Brown (basketball) from the Class of 2020, Taryn Lynn Morgan (tennis/ volleyball, 2018), Chris Westervelt (baseball, 2017), Corey Kluber (baseball, 2015) and Glenn Wilkes (basketball/administrator, 2015).

Best known for his pitching, deGrom began at Stetson as an infielder during the 2008 season before beginning to pitch during his junior season in 2010.

A three-time Major League Baseball all-star selection (2015, 2018-19), deGrom won a career-best 15 games in 2017 and led all of baseball with a 1.70 ERA in 2018 to earn his first NL Cy Young Award. He became the 10th player in MLB history to win the award in back-to-back seasons after claiming the honor again in 2019 with an 11-8 record, 2.43 ERA and a league-high 255 strikeouts.

Early this season, deGrom again was outstanding before arm injuries sidelined him. — Ricky Hazel

Lana Kolchinsky ’22

Meet Washington García, Achiever Extraordinaire

Weeks before he officially started as dean of the Stetson School of Music, Washington García was busy meeting with people on campus and focusing on his top priorities in the job.

García moved to Central Florida with his family in late May, but he remained director of the University of Nebraska Omaha’s School of Music until July 11. While finishing his work there, he carved out time for his new position, which officially began one day later.

“I’m somebody that is always on the go,” said García, DMA, a concert pianist originally from Ecuador and the university’s first Latin American dean. “I thrive when I am in an environment that I have to do a million things and all of that needs to be done well and on a short deadline.”

At the top of his agenda is securing funding for a new performing arts center on campus. “We really need it,” García said. “It’s almost like a business card for Stetson.”

Equally important will be promoting diversity, accessibility, equity and inclusion — issues that have affected him personally, back when he came to this country as an international student in the 1990s and every once in a while, to this day, he said.

García plans to pursue development initiatives to add more faculty and staff, keeping pace with the increased number of students and also the quality. He wants to explore interdisciplinary programs with other departments in areas such as music entrepreneurship.

García began his musical studies at age 6 and performed throughout his native country at a young age. By age 14, he

School of Music

Dean Washington García, DMA

was traveling internationally alone as a concert pianist. His career has taken him around the world — performing in Europe, Asia, the United States, Canada and South America — and earned him many awards and accolades.

Growing up in Ecuador’s capital city of Quito, García’s parents were not wealthy, and his mother was always searching for scholarships and fellowships to provide the child prodigy with the best opportunities available. He attended the National Conservatory of Music in his hometown and, as a teen, pursued his bachelor’s degree while also attending high school. For his senior year, he received special permission to start school several months late, allowing him to practice 11 hours a day to prepare for a competition in Japan.

When he returned home, he caught up on his schoolwork and college courses, graduating at age 18 with his high school diploma and a Bachelor of Music from the National Conservatory.

Afterward, García received a prestigious $25,000 careerdevelopment grant from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Fellowship of the Americas Program. That led him to the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, where, at age 25, he became the youngest Latin American to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Now, he’s at Stetson, a place he actually heard about as a child in Ecuador.

“I know we have a very strong undergraduate program, a great music education program, a great guitar program also, a great choral program; you name it,” García said. “I could spend already half a day bragging about the School of Music. I would like to strengthen that tradition of excellence that we have and expand it more on the national level and international level.” — Cory Lancaster

Football Champion

The Hatters have a champion football player: Molly Winsten ’15.

On July 24, Winsten, an offensive lineman, and her Boston Renegades teammates won the Women’s Football Alliance championship with a 42-26 victory over the Minnesota Vixen at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio.

It was the team’s third consecutive title and the sixth overall in the WFA, a full-contact American football league that began play in 2009. The league — largest worldwide in women’s football — consists of 60-plus teams across three divisions in 32 states.

Oh, by the way, Winsten is something of a champion foodie, too. She has appeared on two TV culinary competition shows: the Food Network’s “Bakers vs. Fakers,” which aired in 2017, and “Best Leftovers Ever!” which debuted in December 2020 on Netflix.

That’s not the story here, however. Winsten arrived on campus in 2011 and

was a member of Stetson’s club softball team and the women’s rowing team before graduating with a health science degree. She was always a good athlete. While getting her master’s degree at Boston University, she even was on a club sports rugby team that advanced to a national championship tournament.

In February 2020, living in the Boston area, Winsten began Googling “Boston women’s sports teams” and came across the Instagram page for Boston Renegades. At first, she didn’t know what the Renegades were. Yet, within an hour, she received a call from the team’s general manager. Shortly thereafter, she showed up for a practice, having “no idea what I was doing; I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” she recalls.

balance. In the championship game, though, she was needed, with the outcome still in doubt toward the end of the third quarter due to an injury to a starting offensive lineman.

She practiced with the team for a few weeks before, of course, COVID-19 intervened, canceling the season.

Then came 2021. And it turned out to be a season she’ll never forget.

The pandemic-shortened season brought five regular-season games and the playoffs, culminating with the championship. During the season, Winsten was a backup, playing mostly in blowout wins and without the pressure of a title hanging in the

And Winsten got the job done. After a first play that “maybe wasn’t great,” she settled down, thanks to the team’s star quarterback, who told her, “You’ve already done this; you know what you’re doing; you’re good.”

“It was awesome; I don’t know how else to say it. … That [one] series [of playing in the game] was crazy,” Winsten says with a laugh.

The story gets even better. In the days leading up to the game, Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, had literally rolled out the red carpet for the team. He flew the Renegades from Boston on his private AirKraft jet to that title game, and he provided a tour of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. He also joked that “If you win, we will even fly you back.” Promise kept. Finally, the team received a grand send-off back in Boston at the Patriots’ home field, Gillette Stadium.

To no surprise, Winsten doesn’t plan on retiring as a football player anytime soon. Her words: “Oh, heck yeah. I told them they’re stuck with me for the long haul.” — Michael Candelaria Winsten: “It was awesome.”

Molly Winsten ’15

Slime Mold Leads to High-Tech Research

A computer network routing protocol, developed by Stetson students and their professor, and based on the abilities of slime mold, may one day help emergency responders perform more efficiently in the field.

That belief comes from a research paper written by Stetson alumnus Nick Gilmet, who earned his Bachelor of Science in computer science with a minor in mathematics in December 2020. The research paper, “A Novel Routing Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Based on the Behavior of Slime Mold Physarum Polycephalum,” has been presented internationally.

Gilmet advanced the research conducted by Stetson alumnus Hudson DeVoe, who earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science in 2019. Computer Science Professor Hala ElAarag, PhD, collaborated with and mentored both students. (See a related article on Page 36.)

The research began as a paper written by DeVoe for ElAarag’s algorithm analysis class, exploring how slime mold, which has no centralized brain, is able to solve “mazes.” DeVoe’s research wasn’t in a form that could be published. Enter Gilmet and his work.

“Slime mold, without any sort of central brain, is able to distribute resources effectively despite not knowing where anything is,” said Gilmet, who lives in Huntsville, Alabama, where he works remotely for an Atlanta-based “intuitive digital experience analytics” firm.

“[Slime mold] makes a little web sort of thing, and it’s able to solve a little maze, if you think of it that way,” he continued. “That’s how computer networks can work sometimes: One single computer doesn’t know where every other computer is and the right way to send data to something else. This research tries to take a model that describes that sort of decentralized intelligence, maze-solving ability and apply that to a computer network.”

’20

The protocol may have realworld applications.

“[Ad hoc networks] are very useful in emergency situations where there is no network infrastructure, maybe because a hurricane knocked down the network, or in a remote area there is a fire and firefighters want to communicate,” ElAarag said.

— Rick de Yampert

Stetson Time Capsule

Want to go down in Hatters’ history? The 2072 Time Capsule, sponsored by the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, is a guaranteed way to make that happen.

The time capsule will be placed under the new construction of the Cici & Hyatt Brown Hall for Health & Innovation — and will be opened 50 years from now.

Think of all the changes we have gone through in the past two years — a global pandemic! — let alone how much the world will change in the next half a century.

This is an opportunity to literally cement a physical object and a personal message for historical preservation.

How? Twenty lucky members of the Stetson community will be selected to contribute to the time capsule via a random drawing of tickets sold. Tickets sales began in early October and continue through November. The random drawing will take place on Jan. 14.

The entire Stetson community is invited to participate. There will be two different ticket colors, with the tickets of 10 students and 10 non-students selected. Tickets holders receive the chance to include an object in the time capsule plus a message of up to 100 words, which will be placed in a separate, adjacent time capsule on archival thin paper. The capsules will be assembled in March.

Tickets can be purchased for $5 each or five tickets for $20. (Please go to the Stetson Today website for purchase details.)

And here’s another benefit: All proceeds from the sale of tickets will go to fund the Phi Alpha Theta State Conference, hosted by Stetson this spring, as well as academic travel for history students, such as to the 2023 Phi Alpha Theta Nationals in Long Beach, California. — Michael Candelaria

Nick Gilmet

Of the 163 people onboard, only 27 survived.

LESSONS

TO LIVE BY

A

horrific 1985 plane crash grounded me for many years, but not today, not any longer.

BY WENDY ROBINSON FERNSELL ’84

Wendy Robinson Fernsell ’84

The tail section was the only remaining recognizable piece of the plane.

This Lockheed L-1011 TriStar is similar to the plane that went down.

Iwas one of three surviving crew members from Delta Flight 191 that crashed while landing in Dallas-Fort Worth on Aug. 2, 1985.

I wasn’t supposed to work that day. I was a new flight attendant, on the job for six months, and so I was on call as a last-minute crew replacement.

My assignment was to fly from my “home” airport in Fort Lauderdale to Dallas and then change planes and go to Orlando, where I would spend the night before returning to Dallas and back home to West Palm Beach.

It was supposed to be routine, no big deal.

Instead, that flight nearly took away my life. Ultimately, it changed my life. And just maybe, it can help change yours.

I will spare you the gory details — you can search for them on Google.

I will only describe that of the 163 people onboard, 27 survived, including me. The tail section was the only remaining recognizable piece of the plane. Since I was a last-minute crew replacement, I sat in that tail section, seat 4-R, in the back of the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar — along with almost all of the other survivors.

Arrival time at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that day was scheduled for 5:52 p.m. Central Time. It never happened. Wind shear from sudden microbursts caused us to crash-land in a fiery explosion 1 mile away.

It has taken me four decades to tell this story.

Why am I telling you?

I was 23 at the time, having graduated from Stetson a year earlier. I majored in French, and was fluent, and went to work for Delta with the hope of eventually becoming a crew member on Delta’s new route to Paris.

My life was filled with great optimism before crashing, quite literally.

I spent a lot of time reflecting on the moments just before the event, but much more time — decades — coming to grips with the after

There was anger and sadness and shock. Mostly, there was guilt. The question I asked wasn’t “Why me?” such as “Why did this happen to me?” Instead, it was “Why not me?” as in “Why didn’t I die?”

Fact is, only now am I coming to peace with the answers.

For many years, I felt like I didn’t have anything really worth saying. I wasn’t ready to say anything, either. But now I truly realize I was given a gift. And I want to live a life today that’s worthy of being given that second chance.

Five years ago, I began teaching French to young students at a private school in Delray Beach, and it has sparked a new beginning, both for me and in me. Today, I teach English at a public school, my alma mater, Forest Hill High, in West Palm Beach, where I graduated in 1980. (My daughter is a junior at A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, where she is a vocal major, and I hope she goes to Stetson! Two of my three sisters are Hatters, too: Kathy Robinson Gray ’76 and Darcy Robinson Farnan ’81.)

At Forest Hill High, I tell my students, “Listen, I was a selfish, self-centered, spoiled brat when I walked on that plane. Now, I’m just a spoiled brat. And I try not to be selfish and self-centered anymore.”

I tell them, “If you really want something, you might have to persevere. You might fail, but failure is part of learning.” (It took me three times to become certified to teach English — another lesson for them.)

I also tell them, “Yes, you’re going to go through tough times. Yes, it’s not fair. But life’s not fair. But we can still have hope every day. There is still so much good.”

I feel like I’m able to shine a light in a dark world and say, “I don’t know what

you’re going through, but I know what has helped me.”

Following the crash, although I stopped to try to help people, to try to do my job, I never once looked back at the scene. I know now that was a survival instinct. Yet, I’ve spent a lifetime looking back, reconciling the gift given of life. I sought purpose and, I believe, now have found it in teaching, which started with my own children first and now is with other children.

I felt the best job in the world was being a mom to my three daughters. These days, I’m hopefully able to influence my students, to encourage them, particularly during these pandemic times.

I tell them, “These are really tough times. And you’re going to look back at this time and be able to say to yourself, ‘I survived the pandemic.’ Just like I can say, ‘I survived the pandemic and an airplane crash.’” I tell them, “You can be a survivor and a thriver.”

My journey hasn’t been easy. My daughters have been a blessing, but there also have been many ups and downs, such as divorce (two of them) and family financial struggles, especially following the Great Recession years of 2007 to 2009. Maybe they were life’s normal ups and downs. But I wasn’t normal, not really, not at that time. Those difficulties challenged me, and they humbled me. And, as a result, I’ve become very grateful and thankful for everything I have. That’s sort of a gift, too.

Of course, the darkest years were just following the crash. For the first five years, I was in pure recovery mode. I actually got back on a plane six months later, and I went on a second flight. I was stubborn, I guess. But after that second flight, when I returned home and my dog died, I broke down. I didn’t fly again for another five years. I did go back to Delta during that time, but in the marketing office.

I would say the bottom fell out for me in 1986 until about 1988. That’s when I found God. At the time of the crash, I didn’t have a personal relationship with God. I knew God, but we weren’t on a first-name basis or conversant on a daily basis. That changed during my recovery.

I grew to believe in God’s purpose and plan, although they are not always apparent. I began to believe that if something bad, negative or upsetting happens, it could be God prompting change.

That thinking also affected my life, in general. I’ll try anything once because, who knows, that could lead me to the next place I’m supposed to be.

That’s even true for flying.

Am I afraid to fly? Yes. But I do it scared. I’m not going to live in fear. I get afraid of things. It’s not the most comfortable thing for me to fly today. But, as the saying goes, life is too short. You have to live.

Elizabeth Shindler Stetson, after whom Elizabeth Hall is named, and her second husband, the Count of Santa Eulalia

Most Hatters know that the university was named for its major early benefactor, John B. Stetson, the well-known hat-maker and industrialist. Some may also know that Elizabeth Hall, one of the first academic buildings on campus, is named for John B. Stetson’s third wife, Elizabeth Shindler Stetson.

Yet, rare in the Stetson community are those who know much about Elizabeth herself, especially about her life after the 1906 death of husband John Stetson.

The novel, authored by Manuel de Queiroz, reveals the whirlwind lives of the Count of Santa Eulalia and Elizabeth Shindler Stetson following the death of Elizabeth’s husband, university benefactor John B. Stetson.

BY SUSAN RYAN, MLS

A fascinating historical novel, “My Art and My Stetson” (Pleasure Boat Studio: Seattle, Washington, 2021), looks at Elizabeth’s life from 1908 to 1917 — the years of her marriage to her second husband, a Portuguese count, Aleixo de Queiroz Ribeiro, Count of Santa Eulalia.

The novel’s author, Manuel de Queiroz, the great-nephew of the Count, spent years researching the Count’s early life as a sculptor in Europe, his political appointment as the Portuguese Consul in Chicago and his marriage to Elizabeth, a wealthy widow 10 years his senior. Research for the book included extensive input from Lewis Stetson Allen, Elizabeth’s great-grandson with John B. Stetson.

Originally published in Portuguese in 2008, the novel “Os Passos da Gloria” was selected for the 2008 Fernando Namora Award short list and published in English with the new title in 2021.

For many years, those of us who worked in Stetson University Archives knew only the outline of a story passed down for decades — that Elizabeth Stetson, widowed at the age of 47, had a marriage of convenience with a Portuguese Count who wanted access to the fortune she inherited upon John B. Stetson’s death. In more recent years, we have uncovered a much different story, first through John B. Stetson IV’s gift of Elizabeth’s 1917 diary and now through the de Queiroz novel.

Aleixo de Queiroz Ribeiro, aka the Count of Santa Eulalia, was the author’s great-uncle.

Left: The Count and Countess were big Stetson news of the day. Below: Part of the time, the couple lived in an estate in Portugal (circa 1912).

Bottom: The Count was a sculptor. Among his works was a bronze bas-relief of Henry DeLand, now mounted on the front of Sampson Hall on campus.

The diary reveals Elizabeth to be a concerned and loving wife who has received word that her husband, the Count, is dying in Portugal, and who sets sail across the Atlantic under the threat of German submarine attack to be by his side — only to be heartbroken by arriving too late.

“My Art and My Stetson” gives us the back story leading up to the Count’s death. The novel opens in 1908 Philadelphia on the day before Elizabeth’s wedding to the Count. The author uses a compelling technique of alternating chapters between the “present” (1908-1917) and Aleixo’s past, beginning with his days as a budding sculptor in Paris in 1896. Although the novel is fiction, the author has meticulously researched his subjects and has stayed true to the facts as uncovered.

The Count’s life as a sculptor, for example, is well-documented, and the story recounts the successes and the occasional disappointments in Aleixo’s artistic career. While he made several large, commissioned sculptures that can still be found in various locations around the world today, any visitor to the DeLand campus has likely walked by one of Aleixo’s pieces — the bronze bas-relief of Henry DeLand mounted on the front of Sampson Hall.

In this well-written, captivating novel about a little-known offshoot of Stetson history, readers will enjoy seeing Aleixo and Elizabeth, the Count and Countess of Santa Eulalia, brought to life as they deal with gossip, hints of scandal, politics and their own relationship that sometimes endured long separations as they attended to their respective responsibilities in Europe and in Philadelphia.

A match of convenience or love? Judge for yourself as you immerse yourself in this turn-of-the-century bit of the Stetson family story.

INSIGHTS FROM THE AUTHOR

Excerpts from an interview with Manuel de Queiroz

Q: So much of the book is based on truth and documentation. Besides actual dialogue, are there parts of the novel that are imagined because you did not know exactly what happened?

A: As I wrote in the Note to the Reader that opens the novel, “having thus scrupulously respected the facts, the characters and their circumstances, the author felt free to invent all the rest.” Of course, there are parts, facts and situations that I had to imagine, but I always tried to be faithful to what I believed was the truth of each character. What I can say is that some facts and situations are closer to the truth, or what we believe is the truth, than others. And some others are completely invented.

Q: Did you have access to any of the Count’s papers or records?

A: Yes, I had access to his official correspondence as Portuguese Consul in Chicago, to some letters and postcards to his brothers and sister, and also [to] other people like Rodin,

Elizabeth and Aleixo were married from 1908 to 1917. The novel begins its storytelling one day before their wedding.

the famous French sculptor. And I could find references, photos and articles in Portuguese, French and American newspapers and magazines about his work as a sculptor. I also found several sculptures made by him, which existence was unknown or that were lost. I identified more than 30 pieces, nearly half of them still existing in different places.

Q: What types of records did Lewis Stetson Allen provide for this novel?

A: Lewis shared with me a great deal of information about his greatgrandmother Elizabeth and also about the Count and their relationship. Most of that information had been transmitted to him by his mother (Elizabeth Stetson Allen), who lived her early years with Elizabeth because her parents separated when she was a child. I had also the privilege to interview Lizzie in 2004 in a rest home near Washington when she was nearly 100 years old but still very lucid. She told me then a few episodes that I used in my novel. But, for me, the most important thing Lewis shared was all the relevant newspaper cuttings about the wedding. That was the decisive factor for me to write the book.

Q: Did you know that the Count and Elizabeth usually spoke French to each other, or is that fiction?

A: I think that it was Lewis who told me that [information]. He said that Elizabeth was fluent in French because she had French ancestors. In fact, in her 1917 diary, she mentions reading books in French. Also, Aleixo lived for seven years in Paris. So, I believe that for him it was much easier to speak in French than in English.

Q: John B. Stetson Jr. seemed to support the marriage of the Count and his mother in your novel. Do you have any evidence of what he thought of the Count?

A: Lewis told me that at the beginning, when they started seeing each other, John and G. Henry [Elizabeth’s two grown sons] were not happy at all with the romance between her mother and this quite mysterious foreigner, sculptor and Count. They even decided at some point to hire a detective to investigate him. However, nothing wrong was found about him. So, after the wedding, they both totally accepted their stepfather as part of the family.

Susan Ryan, MLS, is dean of the duPont-Ball Library and Learning Technologies at Stetson.

BERT FISH? WHO IS

The Bert Fish Collection, now on exhibit at Stetson’s duPont-Ball Library, showcases treasures from the storied life of an 1895 alumnus.

BY KELLY LARSON, MLIS

The Stetson legend of Bert Fish spanned decades and continents.

Ornate furniture from the 19th century, a palace-size Persian rug, invitations to royal banquets and photos taken in the company of kings. Those are just a few of the gems that comprise the Bert Fish Collection, which was acquired by the duPont-Ball Library earlier this year and is now on exhibit. (See Editor’s note.)

Items from the collection, including artifacts, correspondence, scrapbooks and photos, illuminate the intrepid final years of Stetson alumnus Bert Fish.

“Who is Bert Fish?”

DELAND TO DIPLOMAT

Many people associate him with the local hospitals he established. If you were (or are) a Stetson student, you’re probably familiar with the modest street that bears his name on the DeLand campus. Local history buffs know he was once the self-proclaimed “Red Fox of Volusia County,” heavily involved in the DeLand “courthouse ring” (political machine) and, later, a top-ranking U.S. diplomat who played a pivotal role in foreign affairs.

Those who knew him personally undoubtedly had varying opinions of him, but most seemed to agree on one sure thing: He was an ambitious man.

Over the course of his lifetime, Bert Fish went from the public schools and courthouses of Volusia County to the upper echelon of foreign service. Although he was born in Indiana, his family moved to the small town of Spring Garden, Florida, when he was still a child. His father, George Fish, planted citrus groves on roughly 80 acres of land near present-day Barberville, issued to him by the government in 1885. The same year, a simple schoolhouse in the newly established town of DeLand had just become an institution of higher education. That school would eventually be known as Stetson University — and Bert Fish was among its first graduates.

George Fish died in 1895, leaving 19-yearold Bert to care for his mother and three

siblings. Just weeks later, young Fish graduated from Stetson’s preparatory department. By that time, he had already worked as a public-school teacher for at least two years. He held his first public office (superintendent of Volusia County Schools) in 1901, and earned his law degree with Stetson’s first law class in 1902. He went on to create a powerful law firm with Stetson Professor Cary Landis, eventually becoming a county judge and, ultimately, a major player in Volusia politics.

Meanwhile, Fish amassed great wealth through shrewd real estate investments. Many citizens, particularly political opponents, accused him of generating his income by insalubrious means and using his money to dominate county politics. Fish, for his part, denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Whatever the case may have been, he established Bert Fish Inc. to manage his vast real estate holdings in 1923. The company was worth $500,000, an enormous sum at the time.

Fish ended his term as a criminal court judge, and after an unsuccessful bid for the state senate, he backed away from local politics. He retired in 1927 and sold his share of the law firm.

Throughout the late 1920s, ocean-liner

Bert Fish went from the public schools and courthouses of Volusia County to the upper echelon of foreign service.

passenger lists show that he traveled frequently, arriving back in the United States each autumn. One might guess he escaped the Florida summer in favor of more temperate climes abroad. It was during those long trips in the Mediterranean that Fish took a greater interest in global affairs.

CAIRO AND SAUDI ARABIA CALLING

Fish re-entered the political arena in the early 1930s, this time on the state and national levels. A $5,000 donation to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential campaign opened doors for him with the Florida Democratic National Convention, and it wasn’t long before he became its finance director. Following Roosevelt’s victory in 1932, Fish applied for a U.S.

Seen this sign on campus?

Like his life, it’s a bit hidden.

foreign service position, hoping for a diplomatic post in Cuba, Turkey or Egypt. When Roosevelt made patronage appointments for his Florida supporters, Fish was among them, and he accepted an assignment in Cairo, Egypt.

His official title was “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary,” usually shortened to just “Minister.” The State Department doesn’t use that title anymore, but it was once the standard rank for heads of mission, signifying the head of a legation. (An embassy, on the other hand, is led by an ambassador.) Like ambassadors, ministers had full powers to act on the government’s behalf in their assigned posts. As the minister to Egypt, Fish was the highest-ranking U.S. official in that country.

Fish arrived in Cairo in 1933 and rode in a horse-drawn carriage to present his credentials to King Fuad I. The U.S. Legation was located in downtown Cairo, but the foreign service personnel resided at the Mena House Hotel, a luxury resort overlooking the Giza Pyramid complex.

Fish was chauffeured back and forth in a pristine Packard Super Eight automobile, and if the photographs are to be believed, he was attended at all times by at least one scimitar-bearing kavass. A holdover from the Ottoman Empire, the kavass is variously defined in English-language sources as a courier, interpreter, guard or attendant, usually in the service of a foreign diplomat.

At the time, Egyptian politics were convoluted by centuries of Ottoman rule followed by decades of European occupation. Though nominally an independent nation since 1922, the Kingdom of Egypt was still subject to British dominion by 1933, and the political scene amounted to a veritable tug of war between British imperialists, a monarchy of Albanian-Ottoman origin and a thriving nationalist party that dominated Parliament.

In this environment, Fish’s overarching objective was to maintain friendly relations with both Egypt and Great Britain. One of his greatest accomplishments was his role in negotiating the abolishment of the Capitulations. Those agreements, originally made between European powers and the Ottoman Empire, granted foreigners immu-

nity from local laws. This system left Egyptian authorities quite powerless in legal and financial affairs, and allowed for foreign interference.

In 1937, Fish turned heads among the delegates at a convention in Montreux, Switzerland, by speaking fervently in favor of Egyptian self-determination. The treaty that ended the Capitulations was signed a month later, and Fish received glowing praise in both Egypt and America.

In 1939, Fish’s sphere of influence expanded even further. President Roosevelt appointed him minister to Saudi Arabia, a new position to be filled concurrently with the post in Egypt. The United States was eager to develop a diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia, where Standard Oil of California (later ARAMCO) had just discovered what would turn out to be the world’s largest source of petroleum.

Fish arrived in Jeddah in February 1940 amid concerns that Japan or Germany, already entrenched in World War II, would compete for access to Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Fish described his visit in vivid detail — from reports on his many meetings and the personalities of his hosts to descriptions of Bedouin dress and the food and drink served at Jeddah Palace. Most importantly, he wrote of his two meetings with Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, who offered numerous assurances of Saudi Arabia’s alignment with American interests.

A year later, Fish was appointed to his final post in Lisbon, Portugal. As the U.S. minister to Portugal, he headed an important but tricky diplomatic mission during the war. Portugal remained neutral until 1944, and both Allied and Axis powers vied for influence, each seeking to install air and naval bases on the strategically located Azores islands.

Further, Portugal was a major producer of wolfram (tungsten), used in manufacturing war munitions. Portuguese Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar was seemingly impervious to pressure from either side.

Fish was not in Lisbon long enough to make much headway before he died on July 21, 1943. President Salazar attended his

funeral procession, which went from the American Legation to St. George’s Church, escorted by Portuguese cavalry. Fish was later interred in his hometown of DeLand.

A lifelong bachelor with a personal fortune, Fish left a lasting legacy in Florida’s Volusia and Seminole counties by establishing the Bert Fish Testamentary Trust, which built charitable hospitals still in operation today.

The Bert Fish Collection was acquired by Stetson in 2021, as a result of an agreement among the duPont-Ball Library, the Bert Fish Foundation and the West Volusia Historical Society.

CLASSIC COLLECTION ON CAMPUS

Most striking about the duPont-Ball Library’s new collection are two sets of furniture, one Portuguese and the other French. A bookcase and bureau are exquisitely carved in the distinctly Portuguese torcidos e tremidos (“twisted and shaken”) style. Two chairs, a settee and a console table are believed to be examples of the French Empire style, characterized by classical shapes and lines, as well as intricately carved mounts in the shape of mythological griffins.

That elaborate ornamentation reflects the European enthusiasm for ancient civilizations, including the Near East and Egypt, which characterized the Neoclassical era. The exact provenance of those items remains unknown, but it is believed Fish collected the French furniture while in Cairo and acquired the Portuguese set in Lisbon.

The collection also features rare books on Egyptology, scrapbooks brimming with newspaper clippings and ephemera, more than 100 photographs, and some of Fish’s diplomatic correspondence. Furniture and other artifacts are on permanent display within the library, and an online exhibit, called “From Bedford to Lisbon: The Life of Bert Fish,” features collection highlights that illustrate Fish’s life story.

The Bert Fish Collection is open to research and curricular use, and will serve as the basis of future educational and cultural credit events.

Kelly Larson, MLIS, is archivist of Archives & Special Collections at Stetson’s duPont-Ball Library.

Editor’s note: The Bert Fish Collection was made possible by a generous Deed-of-Gift from the Bert Fish Foundation Inc. of DeLand. Foundation General Manager Alice Reid graciously facilitated the process with the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, resulting in the gift, with leadership provided at Stetson by Sue Ryan, dean of the duPont-Ball Library and Learning Technologies, and vision and support provided by Jackie Kersh, Sarah Thorncroft and Sidney Johnston of the West Volusia Historical Society Inc.

Ornamental and elaborate, the Bert Fish Collection is housed at the duPont-Ball Library.

IMPROBABLE

TUNE

Guitar program founder and director

Stephen Robinson retired last spring following global acclaim across decades — but he’s not done playing yet.

BY RICK DE YAMPERT

Stephen Robinson, DM

Classical guitarist Stephen Robinson, DM — whom the legendary Andrés Segovia called “one of the most brilliant guitarists of our times” and who in spring 2021 retired from Stetson 38 years after founding the university’s guitar program — is thinking of taking up … accordion?

“A dear friend just gave me an accordion,” Robinson says. “I want to be an amateur at something. I’m hoping to piddle around with it because I love the sound. But I’m already finding — people told me this — when you retire, you actually seem to be busier.”

Learning accordion in his late 60s wouldn’t be the most improbable happening in Robinson’s life. It’s a life — or call it a tune — in which he seemed primed for a career as an international touring and recording artist, but instead he and his wife, Patrece, chose the road that led to DeLand.

Those “improbables” for Robinson included playing guitar in rock and rhythm and blues cover bands, beginning at age 14, and not even taking up classical guitar until he was 23 in 1976.

“Yeah, a late start,” Robinson says nonchalantly, his tousled, longish black hair still hinting, four decades later, at the rock ’n’ roller he used to be.

Those improbables also included a last-minute application to study under Segovia, an errant “Stetson University” pencil at Yale and his pitch in 1983 to create a guitar program at Stetson, when “I didn’t even have to open my mouth” at the interview, he notes.

‘THE PEPPERMINT TWIST’

Robinson’s affair with the guitar began when he was growing up in Port Chester, New York, 30 miles north of Manhattan. A cousin played folk guitar, and an uncle played guitar, mandolin and … accordion. They showed the youngster a few things on their instruments.

“On my ninth birthday, my parents took me to a music store and got me a guitar,” Robinson recalls. “I started when The Beatles were around, the early ’60s. I took lessons in the back of the music store with an old jazzer.”

At 14, he began playing gigs in rock and R&B cover bands. He later enrolled at West Chester University of Pennsylvania as a voice major. “After two years, I realized I wasn’t a singer; I was a guitarist,” he says.

After a summer playing the Jersey Shore with a rock band six nights a week, he enrolled at The State University of New York, where he took a classical guitar class “and found that I excelled at it.”

An opportunity, however, came up to tour Florida playing with Joey Dee and the Starliters, who had scored a huge No. 1 hit in 1962 with “Peppermint Twist.” The band played Disney hotels and Miami Beach.

“It was a lot of fun,” Robinson says. “But I hit a point where it was like ‘Time to take life seriously. I don’t want to be in a bar six nights a week for the rest of my life.’ So, I went home and started working at classical guitar, did some auditions and ended up at Florida State [University].”

WHEN STEPHEN MET PATRECE

Robinson met Patrece, a dark-eyed Miami native, when both were attending FSU in the late 1970s. Robinson was studying guitar under Bruce Holzman, director of FSU’s Guitar Program. Patrece was earning her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance.

They married while still at FSU. After a year of graduate study at Yale, Robinson returned to FSU, where he earned his master’s and then became the first recipient of FSU’s Doctor of Music in Guitar.

It was Patrece who “decided it would be better if both of us worked on one career rather than try to do two separate careers,” Robinson remembers. “She has incredibly great business skills. She’s a doer. So, we became this team. I’m kind of the creative one, and she was my agent, my manager. She took care of everything. Still does.”

AT THE FOOT OF THE MASTER

What Picasso is to painting, Andrés Segovia is to 20th-century classical guitar — he’s the universally acclaimed godfather of the instrument. While at FSU, Robinson heard that Segovia would be teaching a master class at the University of Southern California.

“Patrece said, ‘You need to do this,’” Robinson explains, adding, “We had just gotten married. We didn’t have a lot of money.” He applied at the last minute and was accepted.

“It was really competitive to get in. They picked 12 players worldwide,” Robinson says. “At this time, I had never been to a Segovia concert, so he’s hearing me before I heard him live, which is really kind of weird.”

That became the first of numerous encounters and lessons Robinson would have with Segovia before his death in 1987. Those encounters led Segovia, the master, to proclaim that Robinson is “a magnificent guitarist, one of the most brilliant guitarists of our times.”

While Robinson treasures the techniques he learned from Segovia, “It was such a great experience because it was more about the spirit and the devotion to the instrument, the poetry,” he says.

STETSON CALLING AND CALLING ON STETSON

As a graduate student at FSU, Robinson taught beginning classical guitar to education majors. And, as a grad student at Yale, he not only taught but worked as a receptionist for the music school. Enter Stetson.

“One night at work, I found this pencil — it said ‘Stetson University’ on it,” he says, chuckling. “I’m up at Yale, and somebody left it there. It was like things were steering me.”

He completed his master’s and doctoral degrees at FSU, and “when it came time to get a job, I remembered Stetson.”

Robinson arranged to meet with Paul Langston, then dean of Stetson’s School of Music. FSU’s music school Dean Bob Glidden told Robinson he was “great friends” with Langston and that he would put in a good word for him.

“I planned my whole spiel — why Stetson needs a guitar program and why I’m the guy to do it,” Robinson recounts of his meeting with Langston. “He comes out and says, ‘Bob Glidden told me all about you. I’ve always wanted to start a guitar program, and I’ve just never gotten around to it. Bob says you’re the guy to do it. Let’s do it.’

“I didn’t even have to open my mouth.”

STETSON AND BEYOND

Robinson founded Stetson’s guitar program in 1983 as “a part-time gig.” It became a full-time program in 1987.

“When I was teaching at Stetson in the early days, we had four kids running around the house,” Robinson says, alluding to sons Anthony, Nicolas, Alexander and Benjamin. “I was coaching soccer for 13 years. Playing a gazillion concerts. Teaching a full load. I look back and think ‘How in the world did I do that?’”

Robinson garnered international and national awards, fellowships and grants, including several from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a Fulbright Fellow. Early in his career, he was a top-prize winner in five major international competitions, including the XXIII Concours International de Guitare in Paris and the VI

Concurso Internacional de Guitarra in Venezuela. Those competitions were very big deals.

In the late 1980s, he performed Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” perhaps the world’s most beloved guitar concerto, on successive weekends with the Boston Pops. He played concerts in Europe, South America and across the United States.

Robinson recorded eight critically acclaimed CDs, including “Imagine,” which featured his classical guitar rendition of the John Lennon song. He was honored with Stetson’s Hand Award for Excellence in Research and Creativity for his performances and recordings.

He and Patrece, who served as an adjunct music professor at Stetson from 2002 to 2015, established and directed the Stetson International Guitar Workshop from 1991

to 2005, bringing such world-class players as Roland Dyens, the Amadeus Guitar Duo and Holzman, the FSU guitar professor, to campus to perform public concerts and lead master classes for students.

Meanwhile, Robinson’s students were excelling at guitar competitions, including the Florida Guitar Festival and the Southern Guitar Festival and Competition.

‘DOORS WERE OPENING’

Given Segovia’s accolades and Robinson’s stellar performances at prestigious guitar competitions, he seemed primed for a career as a concert and recording artist on par with such star classical guitarists as Julian Bream, Angel Romero and John Williams.

“The doors were opening; I could have done it,” Robinson says. “I kind of credit Patrice for that not happening, because I’ve

Bruce Holzman about Robinson, his former student: “No guitarists who ever attended one of his festivals could ever forget it.”

Jonathan Smith, a former student of Robinson’s: “Every note was important to Steve — every note.”

ended up with this really nicely balanced life. I always knew I wanted a family, but I also wanted to be there for my kids.

“I’d had enough of life on the road. It seems really glamorous, but it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. You’re on stage and that’s beautiful, but in the end everybody goes home and you’re alone in a hotel room. Fortunately, I had somebody to call.”

When the world-renowned Eastman

LEGACY

School of Music came calling, hoping to lure Robinson and his guitar to its campus at Rochester, New York, he passed.

“Stetson gave me incredibly great flexibility to do everything,” says Robinson, who was named Professor Emeritus upon retiring. “I had so much support from that university. I couldn’t imagine having that kind of support at a bigger institution. I knew what I had.”

‘ATTENTION TO DETAIL’

Holzman believes his protégé has left indelible marks on his students, colleagues and friends.

“I have always been amazed by Dr. Robinson’s attention to detail as a teacher,” Holzman comments. “The musicality, the phrasing, the attention to dynamics and color details. He was able to communicate that to his students.” His playing, Holzman describes, is “just beautiful.”

Yet, Robinson’s impact went beyond plucking those six strings, Holzman adds, calling Robinson a “great person” and “charismatic.”

“No guitarists who ever attended one of his festivals could ever forget it. What a joyous and loving and musical and artistic time,” Holzman concludes.

Jonathan Smith, a DeLand native, studied guitar privately under Robinson as a high-school student, then continued his studies at Stetson, graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Music degree with an emphasis on guitar performance.

“He taught me that it’s not just what you practice but how you practice,” says Smith, who works as a performer, music producer and teacher of all styles of music in Sarasota. “Every note was important to Steve — every note.

“He taught me how to be professional, him and also the overall spirit that’s at Stetson and in the music school. He was very fatherly to me, always smiling, full of joy, just radiating positivity. He and his wife, Patrece, have been very helpful. I go to them for career advice even now.”

Part of Robinson’s “retirement plan” is to post performance videos on YouTube, stream his music and keep his new website, srclassicguitar.com, up to date with news of his upcoming concerts. Also, he’s rereleasing all of his recordings and recording new material in his home studio, as he always has (now in New Smyrna Beach).

He gets a bit sentimental and philosophical, too, particularly about his legacy at Stetson.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen. But if I was really worried about it, I would’ve hung onto it for life,” Robinson says with a laugh. “I had always thought I would do that — until they carry you out with the sheet over you.”

Robinson pauses and then continues: “My students are my legacy. Children of students have studied with me. That’s pretty cool. The festival, my recordings. And I see my legacy as my family. I have four sons, six grandkids.”

And perhaps Robinson’s guitar journey will come full circle.

“The electric guitar is on the wall,” he says. “I just noodle. I have a passing interest in jazz. What happens next is still brewing.”

In August, after a 24-year odyssey, Nashville music man David Wise was able to sing these words out loud: “I finally graduated.”

BY RICK DE YAMPERT

CARTWHEEL WORTH A

David Wise ‘21

Craig Maddox, DM, associate professor of music and voice, remembers his student David Wise ’21 “up there on the stage doing gymnastics, full cartwheels and backflips across the stage — literally.”

Maddox chuckles at the memory from back in the day when students in Stetson’s School of Music created, directed and performed an annual Broadway revue.

“Purely a student-run thing,” Maddox says. “David was … one of those wiry guys who could just pop out 25 pullups. He was just a bundle of energy all the time.

“By the time David was an upperclassman, he was the top tenor in his class. He was singing the principal tenor role in whatever opera we were doing.”

That Class of 2021 designation beside Wise’s name, however, masks an unlikely story: His graduation comes roughly 24 years later than expected. Emphasis on roughly. Wise attended Stetson from fall 1993 through spring 1997. Two days before he was set to walk — or cartwheel — across the commencement stage and receive his diploma in June 1997, he got a call from his academic adviser and was told he had failed his German language course. That left him five credit hours short of the requirements needed for his vocal performance degree.

Wise wasn’t able to graduate, and he was devastated.

What followed was a 24-year odyssey in which a music video created by Wise early in the pandemic, along with some Stetson serendipity and a father-son bond, all combined to finally give Wise reason to do a few handsprings again. He completed his degree this summer.

Never mind that he had long ago established himself as a respected, Nashville-based,

full-time vocalist, session singer, music arranger and producer. Wise’s credits include working with country superstar Dolly Parton and gospel legend Sandi Patty, plus on the “Jersey Boys” movie soundtrack and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, among many other highlights.

Yet, that elusive piece of paper, that Stetson diploma, was something special. And it didn’t exist.

‘COULDN’T

BACK IT UP’

Lacking a degree “didn’t keep me from my career. But I always wanted to feel that pride of being a Stetson alum,” Wise says by phone from Nashville during a break from working on the music for “Into the Spotlight,” an upcoming Christian film. “I’ve done so much in my career that I’m proud of — and there’s so much of my career that I owe to the teaching and foundation that Stetson gave me.

“I would always say in my bio ‘attended Stetson University with a vocal performance emphasis.’ But I always wanted to be able to say, ‘graduated from Stetson University.’ I never wrote that sentence, ever, because I was always ashamed because I couldn’t back it up.”

Wise grew up in Crestview, a town in the Florida Panhandle. His father was an engi-

neer at nearby Eglin Air Force Base, as well as a part-time pastor and an accomplished musician himself who played acoustic guitar, upright bass and clarinet.

From the age of 2, Wise was a singer in church. He began playing piano at 7, and French horn at 11. “I was never going to be a straight-A student, but I knew from as early as I can remember that music was really all I was ever going to do,” he says.

In high school, he took private voice lessons from Penny Tolbert, a Stetson alumna (Class of 1987, Bachelor of Music) who recommended he check out the university. Wise enrolled as a vocal performance major, and his studies went well, gymnastics and all, until the day of that fateful news from his adviser.

So, Wise would simply extend his Stetson tenure through that summer, buckle down and pick up those remaining credit hours, right? No.

Instead, the real world intervened. Wise had been working as a singer at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando since October 1996, and he was scheduled to start work two days after graduation as a singer in a show at Six Flags in Atlanta. Even before that job ended, he had landed a gig singing on a cruise ship in Italy. While still aboard ship as that job was ending, Disney called

Emotions soared during Wise’s campus visit in July. He first arrived at Stetson in fall 1993.

and hired him back as a full-time singer at the park. He was a busy performer.

“And the rest is history,” Wise says, “because that was my career.”

STETSON SERENDIPITY

He periodically inquired with Maddox and a succession of music-school deans about completing his degree, but each changing of the guard necessitated virtually starting over from scratch. And besides, “There was never an opportunity for me to go back and get it,” Wise remembers. “I got married; we started having children. I was working full time in the industry, and there was no way for me to stop.”

Then Stetson serendipity arose.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Wise was firmly ensconced in the Nashville music scene. Like multitudes of Americans, though, he suddenly found his career on lockdown, too.

“I was sitting in my bed, and I thought, ‘I just sang a session with all these people in a room, and I have no idea when I’m going to be in a room with them again,’” Wise recalls. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could still find a way to make music together?’”

That night, a new arrangement of “It Is Well With My Soul,” the old gospel hymn, “just poured out” of him. He emailed dozens of his session-singer friends, who each enthusiastically agreed to video themselves singing seven- to 10-second snippets of the lyrics into their cellphones and text back the clips to

him. The video, also including Wise in song, was completed with help from a video producer and an audio engineer.

“From the moment I had the idea to the day that it was released was one week [in March 2020],” Wise recounts. “Within three days, we had over a million views.”

At least one of those viewers was Woody O’Cain, then-assistant vice president of Alumni and Parent Engagement, who shared that YouTube video on the Stetson University Alumni Facebook page. Serendipity.

In February 2021, 11 months after that video’s release, O’Cain saw it once again on his Facebook feed and was once again pro-

Hoping to make music “together” during the pandemic, Wise recruited session-singer friends to collaborate virtually on a new arrangement of the old gospel hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.” It became a smash YouTube hit that reached important Stetson eyes.

foundly moved. Only this time, he was struck by the belief that his father, Joe O’Cain, a retired Presbyterian minister living in Bethany Center for Rehabilitation & Healing, a Nashville nursing home, should see this version of the song. (Woody O’Cain is now vice president of enrollment at Presbyterian College in South Carolina.)

So, O’Cain arranged for his father to see the video via an iPad that his father’s church, Glendale Baptist, had given him so that he could still continue to watch their Sunday services online. O’Cain quickly heard back from the nursing home that his father had gotten “really emotional” when he heard the song.

Also, O’Cain recalled someone had mentioned that Wise once attended Stetson, but O’Cain couldn’t find him in any records. He tracked down Wise’s website and emailed him with a note that the video had brought tears to his father’s eyes. And O’Cain asked Wise if he actually had attended Stetson. Wise’s response was almost immediate.

“[Wise] was so excited and mentioned that he had often tried to figure out how to finish his degree. That was not only his dream but also his father’s dream, and he would love nothing more than to finish it,” O’Cain says about Wise’s return email.

AT LONG LAST

O’Cain contacted Timothy Peter, DMA, then-interim dean of the School of Music; Andrew Larson, DMA, associate dean and Woody

O’Cain met Wise on campus in July.

professor of music and choral conducting; and Maddox. Not long afterward, Wise was on his way to becoming, finally, officially, a Hatter.

Spearheaded by Larson, a plan was devised to have Wise take a class related to his field at Columbia State Community College in the Nashville area. That class, ironically, was Introduction to Theater.

“It was super-funny because here was I, this old guy, taking this class with younger kids,” says Wise. “Once the professor realized who I was and what I was doing, he said, ‘Man, could you work with our students? It would be so great.’ It was really cool to be able to take a class and mentor some of these younger people.”

Wise, of course, passed the class, completing his degree requirements, which enabled him to graduate in August.

A month earlier, Wise returned to the Stetson campus for the first time in five years, this time with his wife and their four children. On that visit, he sent O’Cain the following text, “Hey man! Gonna swing by Stetson today. Just wanted to shake your hand and say hello if you are there.”

By the time that campus visit was coming to an end, O’Cain had procured a cap and gown and snapped photos of the new graduate and his family on Stetson Green in front of the Holler Fountain.

Also, Wise surprised Maddox with a phone call and asked if his former voice professor could meet him on campus.

“Dr. Maddox is one of the most influential people in my life, and he helped me more than just learning how to be a good singer,” Wise says. “My dad’s amazing, but when I went to college I was kind of alone, and Craig was just a godly man who spoke truth into my life. He taught me how to grow up and be a man.”

Maddox recalls their reunion in a campus parking lot in great detail: “The first thing he says is ‘I finally graduated.’ I put my hands up in the air, I looked up at the heavens and did a dance and said, ‘Thank you, God. Will wonders never cease!’ Then I gave him a big ol’ hug and met his family. They were perfectly delightful, which doesn’t surprise me at all. It was one for the ages for me.”

“Walking back on campus,” Wise says, “all the memories flooded back, and it was one of those moments that was very surreal. I could remember being here, so immature, no knowledge, a young kid who had this passion of wanting to do music for a living, and this was my first start at trying to make that become a reality. To see it all come full circle, to walk those halls again and to walk around the campus and see the fountain — I don’t know that I can put into words how special that was.”

texted O’Cain again to say, “This truly is an amazing story, and I am so grateful for all you did to make it happen! Can’t wait to hold that diploma and make sure you see it! We need to be Facebook friends so I can tag you!”

Now, Wise would like to, just maybe, inspire others.

“I just hope my story encourages somebody who’s a class or two or three away from graduating, and they want to go back and do it,” he says. “Twenty-four years may be the record for someone to go back and get their degree. But if I can do it, anybody can do it.”

“Walking back on campus, all the memories flooded back, and it was one of those moments that was very surreal. I could remember being here, so immature, no knowledge, a young kid who had this passion of wanting to do music for a living, and this was my first start at trying to make that become a reality. To see it all come full circle, to walk those halls again and to walk around the campus and see the fountain — I don’t know that I can put into words how special that was.”

- David Wise

Wise

Wise and his family (from left): Dawson, wife Heather, David, Hannah and Taylor. In front: Autumn.

THEY CAN {‘BE THE BEST

McEniry Award winner

Hala ElAarag, PhD, is changing the lives of her computer science students with her own special code.

BY CORY LANCASTER

Professor Hala ElAarag, PhD

CAN BE’ }

Madison Gipson had never written computer code when she changed her major to computer science after her first semester at Stetson.

Once she declared a new major, she was assigned a new faculty adviser, Computer Science Professor Hala ElAarag, PhD. And that assignment, as she would later say, would have a “huge” impact on her college experience and professional development.

“I felt very out of my element, and having Dr. ElAarag as my faculty adviser was such a blessing,” says Gipson ’20, who was named an Outstanding Senior in Computer Science. “She helped welcome me in and encourage me when everything was still very new and overwhelming.”

ElAarag also recommended Gipson get involved in activities outside of the classroom — internships, conferences and research projects — activities that make a résumé stand out in the job market, as ElAarag likes to tell students.

ElAarag: “What really makes me so happy about my job is the connection to the students.”

Gipson took her advice and became active in the Harvard WECode Conference, the largest student-run tech conference for women. She helped to develop an app on campus, called StetsonScene, and worked on her own student research. Now a data scientist for NASA, she is pursuing an MBA in data analytics at Stetson.

ElAarag’s dedication to student learning and success were cited in May when she received the 2021 McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching, considered Stetson’s most prestigious award for faculty.

“What really makes me so happy about my job is the connection to the students,” comments ElAarag, who also received the 2020 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from the Florida Council of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

“The feeling that I give them is sincere. This is really what I like to do, and they feel it. I want them to be the best they can be.”

PASSION FOR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

Ou Zheng graduated with a BS in computer science in 2017 and still trades emails with ElAarag every few months. He is pursuing a doctorate from the University of Central Florida while working at UCF’s Smart & Safe Transportation Lab as a lead software engineer.

“She has had a significant impact on my career side,” Zheng says. “I feel as though her

help and advice took my career to new heights. Her experience and excellent advice will always remain with me.”

Christian Micklisch graduated in 2015 and is seeking a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He works there as a research assistant in the High Performance Computing Architecture and System Lab, and as a contract application programmer for Mitchell Martin.

“Some of her classes were challenging, but her method of teaching really helped me to be independent academically and professionally,” Micklisch says. “We had co-written some papers, and I’ve always asked her to be my recommendation when applying to universities. She helped me get into the master’s and doctoral program at UNCC.”

ElAarag spends many, many hours guiding students and talking about the importance of skills like critical thinking. She encourages them to ask why things are done a certain way and if they can be done differently. Communications skills are key, too, including the ability to write research articles and make effective oral presentations.

“I tell them you can be the most talented programmer. You’re sitting in a cubicle or now at home doing an excellent job, but if you cannot defend your work and show your work, either in a written format or an oral format, then you will not succeed. You will not go up the ladder,” she explains.

ElAarag has written one book, edited 11 others and written 63 articles for journals and conference proceedings. Many of these articles were co-written with her students.

Her 44-page curriculum vitae lists the accomplishments of numerous students, under headings like “Student Recognition Under My Supervision” and “Supervision of Research Projects.” The student projects have titles such as “An Approach to Wireless Ad Hoc Network Routing Based on the Behavior of Slime Mold Physarum Polycephalum,” which ElAarag presented at an international conference in July.

“I have a passion to do undergraduate research,” ElAarag says. “When the students come in after high school with no knowledge at all about computer science, some of them may think, ‘Oh, I’m good at it because I play games, or I can do a website.’

“But then, you work with them over the years, and after four years you’ll be able to bring them to a level that they can undergo this type of high-level research, and it gets published not in undergraduate venues. It gets published in regular research venues. Some of my students actually, when we send to a journal — maybe Elsevier or SAGE — they address my undergrad as doctor.”

FASCINATED AT AN EARLY AGE

ElAarag credits her mother for inspiring her to become a computer scientist. As a young girl, she remembers her mother working on her doctorate in engineering in Alexandria, Egypt, where Hala was born and raised. In those days, computers used punch cards for data processing, such as statistics and other computations.

“I was like, ‘Oh, these punch cards do a lot. See the result?’ I was really fascinated,” Hala recalls. “At a very young age, I wanted to be a computer scientist. … Maybe the fascination started, I was in elementary school, but I was really decided in middle school.”

Her parents were kind, thoughtful people, and she brings those qualities to her interactions with students. Her father, who was an engineer, has passed away, while her mother remains an engineering professor at Alexandria University. Hala earned her BS and MS in computer science from that same university.

Christian Micklisch ’15

Ou Zheng ’17

While there, she also met her future husband. And after they both graduated, the two decided to apply to doctoral programs in the United States.

He was accepted at the University of California at Davis and, after earning his PhD in civil engineering, was hired at the University of Central Florida. He is a Pegasus Professor and chair of UCF’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, as well as team leader at the UCF Smart & Safe Transportation Lab.

Early in their marriage, ElAarag remembers: “I found it very hard to have two parents doing PhDs when we had a child, so I decided to put my family first, stay with my daughter and then my son. I just worked part time at a research lab at UC Davis.”

Once the family relocated to Orlando, she entered the doctoral program at UCF. She graduated in 2001, worked as an adjunct professor at UCF, and was hired the next year as a faculty member at Stetson.

Higher education provides a nice work-family balance, she said. Still, it wasn’t easy, commuting one hour each way from Orlando to Stetson and then shuttling her kids to karate, tennis, soccer, book clubs, science clubs and math clubs.

“When I think back, I don’t know how I did it,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t sleep that much. It’s maybe a gift, but what helps is organization and efficiency. I’m very, very organized and efficient.”

Today, her daughter is an otolaryngology-head and neck surgeon, finishing up her residency at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Next year, she will start a fellowship in a combined program at Columbia and Cornell universities. Her son just finished his medical degree and master’s degree in health sciences from Yale University, and has started an ophthalmology residency.

“I had high expectations for them [her children] and that same expectation I have for my students,” ElAarag says.

REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE

Each spring, Stetson presents the William Hugh McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching to a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in classroom teaching, academic activities outside the classroom, service to students and other accomplishments. The award was established in 1974 by then-Stetson President John E. Johns, PhD, and honors the exemplary leadership and accomplishments of McEniry, a professor of English and dean of the university.

McEniry, for instance, launched a “re-evaluation of the total undergraduate curriculum in the years following World War II. These resulted in the rapid rise of the university in academic stature,” Johns explained in Stetson’s Cupola magazine in November 1974.

“His influence on the academic excellence of Stetson is, perhaps, as great as any single individual’s in the 92-year history of the school,” Johns added in the article, located in the Stetson Digital Archives.

As this year’s winner of the McEniry Award, ElAarag gave the Fall 2021 Convocation address, which was livestreamed to students, faculty and staff in August. In introducing her, Provost Noel Painter, PhD, said she “has demonstrated excellence as a pedagogue, scholar, university contributor and colleague.”

ElAarag told students that the next few years would be some of the best of their lives. They will face challenges and difficulties, and will be pushed to excel.

“I want you to know that we are all here to help you find your passion. We are here to guide you every step of the way,” she said during the address. “We will provide so many opportunities inside and outside the classroom. I encourage you to take them.

“As we transition back to face-to-face learning, we still need to remember that the pandemic is not over yet,” she continued. “We still face challenges, but we will always be there for each other as a Stetson family. We are so pleased to have you, and we want to do all we can to help you obtain a well-rounded liberal arts education.”

‘A LIFELONG RELATIONSHIP’

For Gipson, the NASA data scientist, ElAarag helped her discover her passion for computer science as an undergraduate, including that suggestion of attending Harvard WECode (Women Engineers Code at Harvard University). The group connects college-aged women in computer science and other STEM fields, and provides workshops and panels with industry experts.

“Because of Dr. ElAarag, I was able to go to this conference on a Stetson-funded scholarship,” Gipson says. “I consider that conference the turning point of my college career. I learned more than I ever thought I would from it, and came back to Stetson inspired and more passionate about my field than I thought I ever could be!”

Not surprisingly, such experiences create lasting bonds between students and the professor. ElAarag tries to gently guide them every step of the way. When she recommends a conference, she will follow up and make sure the student has registered. Before students start their senior year, she asks, “‘OK, do you have your résumé ready? I’ll be very happy to look at it.’

“Sometimes, I get a job announcement,” ElAarag continues. “Employers reach out to me all the time, and I just forward it. And then, a week later someone says, ‘Oh, thank you. I got the job.’ It took me 30 seconds, and I changed one person’s life. It’s just a very nice feeling that you are impacting those students’ life in a good way, and they feel that they have me not until they graduate, but it’s a lifelong relationship.”

Madison Gipson ’20

THE CALCULUS OF CONVICTION

Amid adversity, math whiz Breanna Shi ’20 continues to defy odds and create new equations of achievement.

BY MICHAEL CANDELARIA

Breanna Shi ’20

The numbers, even in the mind of Breanna Shi ’20, don’t quite add up. Looking at this particular equation, such a successful outcome was, in her words, “improbable.”

Yet, there Shi is, a mathematics whiz already with a master’s degree in hand, receiving it from the University of Minnesota in August and now attending the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) to pursue a doctorate in bioinformatics — with full tuition paid and a stipend. Plus, she will conduct machine-learning research in a customized lab as a GEM Diversity fellow.

Bioinformatics is a science field that uses computation to better understand biology. GEM represents a network of leading corporations, government laboratories, and top universities and research institutions that enables qualified students from underrepresented communities to receive graduate education in applied science and engineering.

For Shi, whose mother is Puerto Rican and Jewish, the fellowship could support her for the next five years.

Similarly, Shi’s master’s degree came by virtue of the University of Minnesota Diversity of Views and Experiences Fellowship Program, which recruits and supports academically excellent students with diverse ethnic, racial, economic and educational backgrounds.

Impressive.

RESILIENCE TO THE POWER OF ONE

And all is being achieved with this as a backdrop: Shi attended two Florida high schools, at least partly because of needed family moves, and she spent considerable time living in a Kissimmee trailer park with her four siblings while both parents, at one point, were working at the Walt Disney World Resort.

Indeed, Shi traveled no easy road growing up. By contrast, it was littered with potholes.

Spending ninth grade in Kissimmee, Shi didn’t believe she had a future in higher education. So, she attended Osceola Technical College to study in a program for licensed practical nursing. TECO, as the public school is called, awards certificates in programs designed to train individuals for entry-level employment. While there, she found a passion for caring for others, but not in nursing.

As a sophomore, she went to the area’s large public school, Gateway High, for its international baccalaureate track. However, there was a midyear move to Auburndale in a different county, necessitating more classroom change and bringing personal tragedy.

Failing to connect with one particular teacher after that move, she received a D in chemistry — imagine that for Shi? It turned out to be her only such grade ever (followed by an A in that same class). Much worse, that 10th grade was the year her father died of a heart attack.

The family had moved to Auburndale because Craig Shi started a job as a Polk County correctional officer. Shi and her dad had been on a run, with her running first and him setting out upon her return. Later, he suffered the heart attack while talking with her in her room.

“My dad and I were very close … ,” Shi says softly, sadly, noting that he had been pursuing a degree in criminal justice from Florida State University when he died.

Shi again had to recalculate.

“My father was always the rock, the tough one,” she says. “I felt like I had to take on that role for my family; I had to be the strong one. And so I told myself I had to keep going. And I had to just ball up all the stuff I was feeling and pursue my academic career.”

In the semester following his death, Shi

began dual enrollment at Polk State College. “He is the reason I decided to go to college at 15,” she affirms. “I thought, ‘This is what my father would want me to do.’

“That is a huge drive for me, every day thinking about ‘what would my dad want me to do?’ I do put a lot of pressure on myself to meet that expectation. But, at the end of the day, my dad was always a person that bragged about his kids all the time to anybody that

At Stetson, Shi also became a leader of other students, shining at national conferences.

would listen. And I knew in my heart that he would be very proud of me, that he would not shut up about me.”

Further, only one day after his death, she still took her final exam in Algebra II, declining to delay the test. Actually, it was a class she “pretty much taught” that year since “I was super into the material because it was math, and I was learning that I really loved math.”

Meanwhile, her mother, Julie Shi, remained a steadfast supporter with her own special influence. She had returned to school later in life to become a teacher and is a 2011 alumna of Stetson’s MBA program (graduating cum laude and on the Dean’s List). That helped pave her daughter’s way to DeLand.

And, as for her prowess in math, Shi doesn’t hesitate about citing the reason: “That would be my mother.”

ABUNDANT GIFTS ON STETSON DISPLAY

At Stetson, young Shi stood out for a number of reasons, not the least of which was her age. Through the dual enrollment, she simultaneously graduated with her diploma from Auburndale High and her

associate degree from Polk State in 2018 — at age 17 — before arriving at Stetson that fall.

Shi was drawn to the math department, particularly faculty members such as Tom Vogel, PhD, associate professor of math and computer science and chair of that program. Vogel promised her that she could graduate in two years. Promise kept.

At the time of her arrival on campus, Fazal Abbas, PhD, then a new assistant professor of mathematics, couldn’t have known Shi had been a phenomenon at Polk State, becoming, among other distinctions, the first female math tutor at the tutoring center. Shi was only 16, “which was unheard of at the time because they didn’t hire people who were under 18, and I got the job,” she described.

Abbas, who had just arrived from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, initially taught Shi in an algebra class and then began working with her on an astrophysics project. Prior to Stetson, Abbas had worked closely with other talented students, and he witnessed something special in Shi: maturity, professionalism and passion to go along with her math prowess.

TOP: Shi is now attending Georgia Tech to pursue a doctorate in bioinformatics and conduct machine-learning research — analyzing the genetic codes of fish.

BOTTOM: Shi with her mother, Julie Shi, a 2011 alumna of Stetson’s MBA program

“She’s very respectful, and she’s a very good listener, and also very disciplined. There are multiple qualities,” Abbas comments. “And she is confident — she can talk.”

Those qualities were on full display, Abbas notes, at the January 2019 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, a huge annual academic gathering. In past years, Abbas regularly had invited top students to join him at the event, as a way for “gifted students to get exposure” and possibly earn graduate-school scholarships.

There, students made poster presentations and competed for attention. Shi shined. For her presentation, she received “Excellent,” the highest rating. Also, she met with admissions representatives from a variety of graduate schools nationwide.

“That’s how I got interested in going to grad school; it was at that conference,” she remembers before adding, “It was the first time I saw snow, so that was interesting.”

Later that year, Shi again was a star, this time at another national conference, ultimately receiving a 2019 Stetson Undergraduate Research Education grant. Then she returned with Abbas and other Stetson students for the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings, where new traits emerged, according to Abbas. Shi stood out as a helpful, compassionate leader — characteristics of her father, who “could never just pass someone by on the side of the road that needed help,” she says.

Abbas also saw great confidence in his prized student. “She has the ability to showcase in front of others. While some gifted students might be shy or reluctant, she excelled when given the chance. She saw her value,” says Abbas, who still today continues to work with her on research projects.

And, to no surprise, Shi had become a regular at Stetson’s popular Uncouth Hour, a weekly open-mic event where the university’s community of artists share their works of art and literature. Robustly, Shi sang.

“That was like the night when I didn’t have to be a math person. I’m a performer. That’s always been me,” she explains, adding she was a member in church choirs growing up and has performed as a baton twirler.

FINDING A NEW VOICE

Notably, Abbas wasn’t Shi’s first mentor/ adviser. At Polk State, one summer algebra class was all math professor Li Zhou, PhD, needed to be convinced of her potential. “He was like, ‘You need to do mathematics,” Shi recalls. And earlier at Gateway High, a geometry teacher took special interest and made an impression, says Shi, who remembers being “good in math” since middle school.

“I’m glad,” Shi says, “that people did push me.”

As a result, Shi’s options in education have multiplied. This summer, she worked remotely on generating better biofuels for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Department of Energy in Colorado. She ran an image-analysis machine learning algorithm on protein images for biologists.

Before choosing Georgia Tech, she strongly considered a scholarship offer from Lehigh University in its doctorate program for computer sciences.

At Georgia Tech, Shi’s research will center on analyzing the genetic codes of certain fish, as those codes correlate to aggressive behavior. In straightforward terms, she explains: “Because fish are simpler than the human brain, we can actually analyze the fish and learn things about human aggression.”

Shi anticipates being at Georgia Tech for four years. Aside from academics, her priority will be lab work and gaining experience as a teacher. Last spring at Minnesota, she taught a class in differential equations. “My focus is really preparing myself to be a professor, and that’s really what I want to do when I graduate,” she says.

Further, she has found a new voice — one she hopes to pass on to others like her, especially young girls.

Lesson one: Believe in yourself, which just might be the key variable to her entire equation.

“The first thing I would tell them is, ‘Do not listen to anybody that is not doing what you want to do,’” Shi concludes. “If someone

is telling you that you can do something, and they’re not doing it, they have no expertise to be telling you that. And, another thing is, there are so many people that would like to support you, and want to see you succeed. So, don’t worry about the people who don’t want to see you succeed, because you don’t have time for those people.”

Lesson two: Remain focused. “I do sometimes get overwhelmed,” she says, pointing to the idea that focus is a superpower.

“You do have a lot of things that you can do, and you have a lot of opportunities that sound exciting. So, you really have to pick what is the most important to you.”

Shi picked math — and has raised it to extraordinary levels.

Shi was a regular on stage at Stetson’s popular Uncouth Hour, a weekly open-mic event.

BEYOND BORDERS, BARRIERS AND EXPECTATIONS

As a student, Ashley Rutherford ’12 never imagined a military career — or the adversity and achievement that would result.

BY JACK ROTH

As Stetson’s Department of Health Sciences reaches even greater levels of success, Ashley Rutherford, Capt., USAF, BSC, serves as a case study in global impact.

Rutherford ’12 is a salute to the past and a beacon of hope going forward.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Rutherford was working in Afghanistan as the only military epidemiologist in that country. This spring, she served as the Surgeon General representative and coordinated vaccine distribution in Orlando, Atlanta and St. Louis for FEMA Type I COVID Vaccine distribution operations. Those are only two of her recent highlights.

A former Hatters volleyball player (both indoor and beach volleyball), Rutherford has ascended and excelled in an especially important field for Stetson — currently serving as a public health consultant, theater epidemiology team member, and the Public Health Officer Course director for the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM), 711th Human Performance Wing, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Yes, her affiliations make for cumbersome titles, but her influences reach far.

USAFSAM is the premier institute for education and worldwide operational consultation in aerospace and operational medicine. The school trains 5,000 Department of Defense, international and civilian students each year. Also, it services 6,000 requests for expert consultation; provides clinical, radiation, environmental and industrial laboratory services; and manages a $20 million aerospace and operational medicine research portfolio spanning six geographically separated locations.

Indeed, her roles are expansive — and fueled by very early ambition.

“I always wanted to be a doctor,” Rutherford says. “In high school, my best friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor. So, I went to Stetson for health sciences and

pre-med, but I was slowly nudged in the direction of medical research. This put me on the path towards epidemiology, infectious disease research, and that line follows public health.”

Michele Skelton, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences, did much of the nudging.

“We want to educate the next generation of health care practitioners who have the perspective of treating our community holistically, which means as a whole, not just as a physical body, and Ashley is a perfect representative of what public health is all about,” says Skelton, who now is both mentor and friend to Rutherford.

“We don’t pigeonhole students into a specific curriculum, so they can think more about what they want to get into. Our courses and curriculum made Ashley start to think about different

things and areas in which she was really interested. She has embraced her talents and done phenomenal things on a global level.”

AIR FORCE BECKONS

After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Rutherford went on to obtain a master’s in public health from the University of South Carolina in 2013 and received an opportunity to work at the University of South Carolina’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program.

There, she learned a few financial lessons, too.

“We had millions of dollars in grant funding, and we came in under budget, but because it was national grant funding, it was ‘use it or lose it.’ So, I became disenchanted,” she explains. “The economics behind cancer research, or any epidemiology research, is difficult.”

Ashley Rutherford, Capt., USAF, BSC

Michele Skelton, PhD (right), is now a mentor and friend to her former student.

Rutherford decided to get a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Central Florida in 2017 and received grant funding to do more research as an adjunct faculty member. She finished her doctorate at age 26 and began applying for university tenure-track positions, only to hear what became a familiar refrain: She was too young and didn’t have the depth of experience needed to work at the big research agencies.

Consequently, she turned in an unexpected direction: the military.

“Along the way, I kept seeing Air Force research positions pop up. If you would’ve told me in my Stetson days I’d wind up in the Air Force, I would’ve laughed. But I realized I could get a lot more accomplished in the Air Force doing what I do than I ever could in the private sector,” she comments.

ROAD TO AFGHANISTAN

Commissioned into the Air Force Medical Service’s Biomedical Sciences Corps in spring 2017, Rutherford served as public health flight commander at Joint Base Charleston

Rutherford: “If you would’ve told me in my Stetson days I’d wind up in the Air Force, I would’ve laughed.”

sources of food and water. There were a lot of gastrointestinal issues because a soldier’s diet changes so drastically. If they’re not near a cafeteria, they eat meals that come in pouches, so it takes time for the body to get accustomed to that.”

In December 2019, the Taliban hit Bagram Airfield with a ground attack that became an all-day, all-out firefight. Standing 6 feet, athletic and muscular, Rutherford was put on the team to help carry wounded people into the hospital. During the attack, she also ensured the reopening of five dining facilities in less than four hours, providing 41,000 safe meals and water while enabling rapid base operations recovery.

(South Carolina), where she assisted in inspection trials and identified decontamination process improvements for Air Mobility Command’s $15 million Transport Isolation System platform. Also, she performed research with the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which provides advice and recommendations on matters and policies relating to the recruitment, retention, employment, integration, well-being and treatment of servicewomen in the armed forces.

Then, sarcastically, the real fun began.

From October 2019 to June 2020, Rutherford deployed to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Resolute Support Mission. While there, she managed the medical surveillance program and analyzed 10,200 patient visits for 18 categories of disease and non-battle injuries.

“We were the critical trauma hub in the country,” she describes. “Day in and day out, it was mostly about ensuring the stability and

“There was an explosion eight blocks from the hospital, and the blast wave shattered some windows,” she remembers. “It was definitely an active day for combat. We had some combat training, but none of us thought we were going to experience a firefight. But when you join the military, you go where they send you.”

IRANIAN THREAT AND GLOBAL PANDEMIC

In January 2020, the United States killed Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was considered the creator of the IED (improvised explosive device). As a result, Iran started delivering threats, and the Americans stationed at Bagram Airfield were named as a top target.

“This is when the medical intelligence piece came into play,” Rutherford says. “We had to look at chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear warfare (CBRN), explosive threats and those medical ramifications. We knew Iran had quite a few chemical weapons, so we had to plan for that medical response.”

Plus, a new enemy emerged. In January 2020,

China reported early COVID-19 cases; these then made it through Europe, and by March the Middle East began to experience substantial outbreaks. As the sole epidemiologist in that region, Rutherford had to spearhead COVID-19 prevention and mitigation efforts for all U.S. and NATO forces, civilians, contractors and other country nationals.

Also, she oversaw the construction and management of isolation and quarantine facilities, designed surveillance testing protocols, and leveraged traditional intelligence collection methods to forecast host nation COVID severity and mission impact.

“The start of a pandemic is scary because you don’t know its severity or impact on the mission,” Rutherford says. “We had to find ways to get our own data and determine if we were going to continue operations. Add the pandemic to what was already going on there — hostile fire and combat, terrorist attacks, floods and ruined crops, and economic upheaval — and you have a very unstable environment.”

When Rutherford deployed to Afghanistan, she believed her time there would be fairly uneventful. That didn’t happen.

“Bad things happen, but you have to make the best of it,” she notes. “To be in a third-world terrorist-infested country when a pandemic hits was incredibly stressful, but also an amazing learning environment where you can really help. I grew as a person and got a little tougher.”

BACK TO THE STATES

At the end of June 2020, Rutherford was sent home and assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio two months later. Her accomplishments, though, haven’t slowed.

Since then, she has led the Air Force Reportable Medical Event surveillance process, analyzed 40,000 COVID cases and protected the health of 9.5 million DoD beneficiaries. Further, she investigated a USAF Europe COVID outbreak, which tested 260 members, detected 32 positive cases, instituted a five-week restriction of movement and prevented international COVID spread.

The efforts were dizzying, for sure. Nonetheless, she took them in stride.

“To be honest, I’ve always been a go-getter, but I never went on this path to do what I’ve done … a lot of it just got thrown at me. When opportunities pop up, you have to seize the day and take advantage of it,” she

asserts. “I mean combat training … talk about being uncomfortable. I was way out of my comfort zone, but I didn’t let that deter me. You have to have an attitude to say, ‘I’m here, I’m a body, and I can help.’”

Rutherford credits Stetson for much of her thinking, with the belief that everything she learned and experienced while on campus helped her prepare for everything else.

“Stetson prepared me educationally to get higher degrees because it has great professors who inspire you,” she says. “The curriculum is also writing-intensive and critical-thinking-centric, so you learn how to think on your feet and apply it. This has helped me in the military.”

For good measure, aside from being a student-athlete, she was a member of the clay-target shooting club, and she enjoyed Greek life.

Skelton is openly proud.

“To be the only public health person in Afghanistan when COVID hit and having to coordinate all of that is remarkable,” she comments. “We know our students have great critical thinking skills, and what you see in Ashley is her incredible adaptability.

“We’re the springboard, but they’re doing all the work. Ashley has already made a significant impact on community health, both here and abroad.”

For Rutherford, the work — beginning with her “pop up” career discovery years ago — makes it all worthwhile.

“I found a vocation I love and in an environment where I can get the most accomplished,” she concludes. “What the future holds I’m not sure, but it will definitely be in public health, helping people and communities to achieve and maintain good health and quality of life. That to me is extremely gratifying.”

Representing the Surgeon General, Rutherford coordinated FEMA Type I COVID Vaccine distribution operations, including at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Whiskey War AND J

ohn Koko has been on an incredible journey. From elite warrior to elite bourbon maker, he has approached his life and career with grit, determination and the ability to adapt, traits seen in many Stetson alumni.

“My life has been a series of God winks,” says Koko ’86, who, during a seven-year career with the U.S. Army, was a Ranger, a Green Beret and an intelligence officer. “I’m a faith-driven rough guy. You don’t send guys who aren’t rough to do rough work. I always say if I’d been born in a different time, I would’ve been one of those gun-toting preachers.”

Now, he’s president of American Freedom Distillery.

American Freedom Distillery was founded in 2016 by Koko and fellow retired Green Berets Tyler Garner, Rob Schaefer, Scott Neil, Mark Nutsch and Bob Pennington. The veteran-owned and veteran-operated artisan distillery is located in St. Petersburg (not far from Stetson University College of Law) and produces Horse Soldier Bourbon, which Koko describes as a “Triple A: Authentic, AllAmerican and Award-winning.”

SOLDIER’S STORY

From Afghanistan to DeLand and now on the way to a new, entirely different campus in Kentucky, John Koko ’86 continues his “everyman story” in uncommon ways.

BY JACK ROTH

The American Freedom Distillery story didn’t start in 2016, as much of the brotherhood that created it was forged in fire during the first days after the 9/11 attacks, when the United States responded with a daring insertion of small teams of Green Berets into northern Afghanistan. For one special ops team, the region’s mountainous terrain necessitated engagements on wild Afghan horses, thus earning the nickname “Horse Soldiers.” Despite often being cut off from communica-

John Koko: Horse Soldier turned entrepreneur

Much of the American Freedom Distillery effort is a salute to military veterans, particularly Horse Soldiers. Among the future highlights is the sprawling distribution center/museum/interactive experience taking shape in Somerset, Kentucky.

tions with command headquarters and outnumbered 40 to 1, the Horse Soldiers fought in a series of intense battles side by side with militia allies and successfully captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban. Their story inspired a book (“Horse Soldiers”), a movie (“12 Strong”), a documentary (“Legion of Brothers”) and a monument that can be seen at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.

Today, the team is retired from the military, and now its mission is to serve Horse Soldier Bourbon — their legacy in a bottle. The bourbon is sold in bottles pressed in molds made from steel salvaged from the World Trade Center site.

To make that happen, however, the team had to use skills mastered in the Special Forces, including the scouting of locations, getting to know the locals and developing a plan of action to achieve an objective. This time, instead of battling the Taliban, they battled bureaucracy, the real estate market and the challenges of finding a home for a 19-foot-tall commercial still.

Koko and his wife, Elizabeth, put up the first $5 million to start the business as a way to help others in his Operational Detachment Alpha Team 595.

Fast-forward five years and American Freedom Distillery has won numerous awards for making some of the finest bourbon in the world and offers an immersive distillery experience in the Urban Stillhouse that encompasses two stylish bars, educators and bourbon-inspired dining.

“The bottom line is we make really good bourbon,” asserts Koko, who also speaks fluent Arabic and Spanish. “There’s nothing more American than bourbon. It’s audacious and bold. Ours is not a ‘military’ brand. Instead, it’s an ultra-premium, lifestyle brand for both men and women.”

LEGACY CREATION

American Freedom Distillery’s small-batch stills in St. Petersburg create acclaimed bourbon and artisanal rums, vodka and gins. Those efforts are aided by a collaborative distilling process at Middle West Spirits in Columbus, Ohio, which gives American Freedom access to multiple stills, invaluable insight and experience from world-class operators. In addition, Koko

and his team are in the process of creating an entirely different legacy — a $160 million, 250-acre distribution center, museum and interactive experience in Somerset, Kentucky.

STETSON DAYS

The sprawling “campus” will become the 19th stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a program sponsored by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association to promote the bourbon whiskey industry in Kentucky. The campus also will house a high-end hotel with cabins, horse stables, two concert venues, a village, a distilling area and distillery rackhouses. Further, the plan is to make the campus a net-zero property with zero carbon emissions.

“The expectation is for about 200,000 [people] to visit from around the world every year to see the attraction and learn about our American journey, the everyman story and how we make award-winning bourbon,” Koko says. “Suffice to say, this is the biggest thing we’ve tried to accomplish with the company.”

Capital fundraising for the project has, so far, been successful, thanks to several retired U.S. Army and government personnel who have invested to support their former colleagues. An architectural firm has already been selected following an international search, and a firm that specializes in designed experiences for visitors has been hired. Those two firms will collaborate with American Freedom to create an immersive, interactive experience.

Koko hopes the project will be completed by June 2024, at which point he will be 65.

“My days of making whiskey are over because it’s backbreaking work, but those years it took us to get to this point were invaluable,” he says. “We went from a bunch of people crafting bourbon to explosive growth in the ultra-premium category. It’s a wonderful thing to leave a legacy, and the legacy we’re leaving is to inspire people to believe that anything is possible.”

A young, married soldier at the time, Koko remembers Stetson as being simultaneously challenging, embracing and comfortable. He had gone to high school in St. Petersburg and joined the military before arriving in DeLand in 1982.

“I felt part of a community there, and I also had nowhere to hide,” he reflects. “I had been a notoriously lazy student, but my professors forced me to show up at classes every day and learn. I got so much out of that experience. I really came into my own.”

Koko studied art history along with economics — receiving an economics degree — and believes that his liberal arts background gave him balance and enabled him to be “part diplomat and part warrior.”

He also cites being fortunate to have really strong leaders around him, and he learned that a view is different from a vision, and not to let other views block your own.

As for his leap from Green Beret to whiskey maker, Koko considers it is all part of his American journey, his everyman story.

“As soldiers, we lived our lives in the shadows, but this was a chance for us to create a legacy for our families,” he says. “Everyone will know we made an authentic, lasting product. We’re hanging our reputations on this, so hopefully people will talk about it in a positive way for a long time.

“Our culture is the quiet professionals. We had thrilling experiences we really don’t talk about. We do a lot for charities but don’t really talk about that, either. You don’t quit serving because you start making whiskey; you just find other ways to serve. And it’s never about just one person; it’s about all of us.”

SPEED RACER

Cedric Burkhardt ’20 is steering toward a lead position in motor sports — just not from behind the wheel.

BY MICHAEL CANDELARIA

Cedric Burkhardt ’20 remembers his first big break in motor sports. Characteristically, he lapped the field, figuratively speaking.

In 2018 while on spring break with his roommate in North Carolina, Burkhardt received an urgent call from his father, who worked at a car dealership in Orlando. Burkhardt was told a Mazda race team was going to be at the dealership for a promotional appearance, but that the event would be tomorrow.

Burkhardt had planned his return home for that next day, but now had to speed up his timing. On his return, he sprinted south to Jacksonville, dropping off his roommate, and made a pit stop at home near Orlando for a quick change of clothes. Then he dashed to the dealership to not only catch the action, but be part of it.

After mingling a bit, Burkhardt walked up to a guy standing by himself in the corner. They talked. In conversation, Burkhardt was asked what his dream job would be. His response: “the business side of motor sports.”

The guy replied, “That was my dream job, too. My name is John Doonan, director of motor sports for Mazda.”

Burkhardt, now a graduate student at Stetson, describes what happened next: “My jaw hits the floor.”

Not long afterward, Burkhardt was offered a chance at an internship. The random meeting marked his official career start and, in typical style, he hasn’t looked back.

“John Doonan has a very, very special place in my heart, because he’s the guy who gave me my start in racing,” Burkhardt says.

Doonan, by the way, is now president of the International Motor Sports Association. In other words, he’s a big, big deal in auto racing.

Burkhardt, meanwhile, is in the driver’s seat (again, figuratively) for a career in the industry — just not behind the wheel.

Both his mother and father are racing enthusiasts, and young Burkhardt fell hard in love with the sport. “I always loved cars. I loved playing with Hot Wheels when I was little; that was my go-to toy,” he says.

Yet, there were limits. “My mom never let me drive even a go-cart [growing up],” he adds. “… I knew very early on in high school that racing was where I wanted to end up. I just needed to figure out where in racing I could end up.

“I realized somebody has to run this whole circus; somebody has to pay for it; somebody

has to market it. I realized there was a whole other side to it — the business side.”

So, when Burkhardt hit the road from Winter Park High School near Orlando to Stetson’s School of Business Administration, he was “really looking for the best way to get into motor sport.”

Burkhardt was attracted to Stetson’s small-school atmosphere. “It just felt right when I was on campus; it just had a feel of this is where I’m supposed to be,” he says about his arrival in 2018.

Truth be told, however, there was something more important about the setting. Although he didn’t tell his parents at the time, Burkhardt knew he wasn’t far from Daytona International Speedway. “If there was anything happening at the track and I wanted to go be a part of it, I could be there in 25 minutes or less,” he openly reveals now.

At Stetson, as a double major in professional sales and marketing, he found his ideal pit crew in the form of a supportive

faculty led by professors John Riggs, DBA, and James Fyles, MBA (now at Appalachian State University).

“They really shaped who I am today in terms of how I communicate and how I interact with people,” comments Burkhardt, who will receive his MBA from Stetson in December.

“That was really one of the biggest takeaways. I came through the educational side of Stetson really learning much more than what’s in a textbook. I learned how to interact with people, which I think is far more beneficial than just memorizing some information out of a textbook.”

His work experiences certainly haven’t slowed him. That random dealership introduction with Doonan resulted in a 2018 internship at Mazda Motorsports, putting him on the right track within the company’s operations and business development department. A year later, he returned to Mazda Motorsports and worked for its creative agency, The Garage Team Mazda, where he learned about the advertising and marketing sides.

In June, Burkhardt became the first recipient of the inaugural Rod Campbell Award. Campbell was a motor sports marketing pioneer who passed away in March 2020. The recognition included another paid summer apprenticeship in the industry. So, this summer, Burkhardt worked with entities such as Bryan Herta Autosport and Racer Media & Marketing, among others. His efforts encompassed marketing, sales, promotions, communications and sports business. And he continued to make his mark.

One example: A PowerPoint template created at Stetson in a class taught by Scott Jones, PhD, was used to attract potential sponsors. It worked. “[People] were kind of blown away that somebody coming out of college could create [something] like this, and I give all credit for that to Dr. Jones,” Burkhardt says.

Riggs, also the founding director of Stetson’s Centurion Sales Program, calls Burkhardt’s journey a “model” for leveraging internships and experiences for personal and career growth.

“I have had the opportunity to observe, as well as work with, many individuals in my over 30 years as a business executive and eight years in academia, and can say that Cedric is among the more energetic, driven

and committed individuals I have known,” Riggs says. “Through his experiences at Stetson and world travel, Cedric has acquired a uniquely broad understanding of his capabilities and a wise outlook on life, especially for being in his early 20s.”

Not coincidentally, Burkhardt also is a Centurion Sales Program delegate (a representative), and is credited with establishing a collaborative initiative with NASCAR to give Stetson students hands-on experience during race events and opportunities for internships and jobs. The program also allows students to join NASCAR’s Group Sales team during events and receive instruction. The partnership came by virtue of connections made during Burkhardt’s two internships with Mazda Motorsports.

While pressing on the career accelerator, Burkhardt’s time at Stetson hasn’t been all business. Appropriately enough for sales and marketing, he’s social. “I made a lot of really, really close friends,” he notes.

He met his fiancee on campus, too. Bethany Moore graduated magna cum laude in December 2020 with a major in religious studies and a minor in history.

Burkhardt: “I’m shooting for the very, very top, and hopefully I can get there.”

Fact is, although nothing is guaranteed, most signs for Burkhardt point toward the winner’s circle. Driven by desire, his course is plotted. “You can’t work in racing or really anywhere if you don’t have passion for what you do. And I have an absolute passion for motor sport, every part of it,” he asserts.

And, in particular, there’s one job he’d really love to have, or something close to it. It’s John Doonan’s — that guy he met so fatefully three years ago.

“I’m shooting for the very, very top,” Burkhardt says, “and hopefully I can get there.”

Cedric Burkhardt (on left, wearing black cap) is learning the motor sports industry inside and out, thanks to connections, commitment and drive.

LEGACY FORMATION

New coach Brian Young is building his football program with this fundamental belief: “It’s a 40-year decision when you come to a place such as Stetson.”

BY MICHAEL CANDELARIA

Young: “We are going to earn everything.”

This is Brian Young’s second coaching stint with the Hatters.

Don’t ask first-year head coach Brian Young about wins and losses for his football team, not right now anyway. He has a bigger picture in mind.

Young wants his Hatters program to grow the right way — with discipline, determination and grit.

Given his background, he’s certainly on the right path.

This is Young’s second tour of duty in DeLand. He was originally hired in late 2012, just as the Hatters were resuming college football, and served as defensive coordinator for eight years before spending last year as a member of the football staff at Georgia Southern University, his alma mater. He played defensive back there, and in 1997 earned a Bachelor of Science in parks and recreation administration.

Prior to Stetson, the native of Savannah, Georgia, spent two seasons as a defensive backs coach at Cornell University. In all, Young has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a coach at multiple levels, including time in the National Football League.

In other words, there will be few excuses — OK, make that no excuses.

“We’re going to have a blue-collar work ethic. … We are going to earn everything,” he said before the season’s first kickoff. “There are no excuses. We’re straightforward and straight ahead. We’ve got blinders on. Things are going to happen, and when they do, we have to handle adversity and respond in an appropriate manner. Don’t get too high, and don’t get too low. Just stay in the middle.”

The Hatters, of course, do seek to get ahead. That’s why, with great confidence, Young was hired last June to succeed Roger Hughes, PhD, who left coaching to become the president of his alma mater, Doane University.

Yet, as everyone has learned with the COVID-19 pandemic, there are no guarantees.

“With the road to success,” Young continued, “you have to go through some hurdles.”

Just further down the road, he has big plans.

His words: “Stetson is no different than the Ivy League. It’s like the Ivy League of the South. … We have a strong academic reputation, and we will be recruiting high-character student-athletes who understand that college is not a four-year decision. It’s a 40-year decision when you come to a place such as Stetson. … You want to be attached to the name and to the Stetson network. That’s what you get here.”

While victories are cause for celebration, such as his first one this fall against Warner Southern, there’s a bigger goal: a winning culture on and off the field.

GRAND BASEBALL FINALE

Former star catcher Nick Rickles completes his Hatters legacy in Tokyo at the 2020 Olympics.

BY MICHAEL CANDELARIA

Nick Rickles ’11 had it all under control for his date with history. Well, mostly.

Rickles knew he would be the first Hatter ever to participate in an Olympics — and he was a member of the Israeli baseball team. There was great pride. So, as he prepared for the Tokyo Olympics (July 23-Aug. 8) he vowed to maintain perspective.

“For me, going in, I tried not to set expectations,” Rickles said from his home in Las Vegas, just after returning from play. “So, I went in saying to myself, ‘No matter what happens I’m an Olympian at the end of the day. That’s something to be very proud of.’

“I went into this really wanting to cherish the moment. I knew this was the last baseball thing I was going to do. So, I wanted to make sure I took in the sights, took in the feelings and really appreciated what I was going through.”

The only problem was, in characteristic Rickles style, he ultimately wanted more.

Since grade school, almost the only thing he had ever cared about was baseball. And

Nick Rickles ’11

Rickles’ new team: fiancee Jessyka Virdell and son Chandler Virdell, and daughter Riley.

he was good. Rickles arrived at Stetson from Palm Beach Gardens in 2008 and immediately became a standout catcher, earning Freshman All-America honors in 2009, recognition on the Johnny Bench Award watch list in 2010 and All-America honors in 2011, as he helped the Hatters to a 48-win season in his junior year.

During his Stetson career, Rickles played in 178 games, starting 173 of them. He posted a .309 career batting average with 50 doubles, 20 home runs and 138 RBI. His junior season included a string of more than 140 at-bats between strikeouts, and he finished the year having been struck out a mere 10 times in 283 plate appearances.

Drafted by the Oakland Athletics in June 2011, Rickles spent seven years in the minor leagues, playing for 12 different teams. He never made it to the Major Leagues, but he came close, reaching as high as AAA in 2015 with Nashville in the Athletics organization, in 2016 with Syracuse in the Washington Nationals system, and again in 2017 and 2018 with Lehigh Valley for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Following perhaps his best year in pro ball, Rickles retired as a player in 2018 after the birth of his daughter, Riley, and coached in the Milwaukee Brewers minor-league system in 2019.

Still, he held out hope for one last baseball chance with the Israeli team, where as an Israeli American he had been a member since 2013. Through the years, he played in various world tournaments, including the 2020 Olympic qualifier tournament, where his team advanced to the Olympics’ six-team field.

Yet, his grand baseball finale was delayed by the pandemic, which postponed those 2020 Olympics until this year.

So, upon arrival at Yokohama Stadium in July, the fact that Rickles was one of only about 11,000 Summer Olympians worldwide was good, sure — but it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to go out a winner.

“Being the competitor I am, once I got there, I was like, ‘You know what, just being there is not good enough for me. I wanted to leave with a medal or at least having the opportunity to play for a medal,” he explained.

Rickles and his teammates didn’t quite make it to the medal round. Nonetheless, despite losing four of five games in Tokyo, they

battled, including an underdog victory against Mexico, 12-5. It was Israel’s first-ever win in Olympics baseball. Rickles had two hits that drove in three runs in the game, which eliminated Mexico from the competition.

That, no doubt, was a highlight.

“Even the Mexico coach came out [in the media] and said, I think the exact quote was, ‘In his worse nightmare he didn’t see himself in that position [losing the game].’ That felt good, with somebody leaving there remembering you and your team that way,” Rickles commented.

The big crusher, however, was a following loss to the Dominican Republic, 7-6, in the bottom of the ninth inning, ending Israel’s hopes for a medal. A win would have guaranteed playing in the medal round. It didn’t happen.

“I don’t want to say ‘disappointing,’ but … ,” said Rickles about that game.

“That’s probably the first game in my life that I felt sick to my stomach and felt like we deserved to win that game. Unfortunately, you know how baseball goes. It doesn’t always go the way you expect it to go. The best team doesn’t always win.”

In the end, the Dominican Republic won the bronze medal, the United States finished second for silver, and Japan captured gold.

Ultimately, Rickles headed back home, yes, without a medal, but with Olympic-sized memories from his 14 days in Tokyo.

While there were no fans in the stands, and he was unable to watch other Olympic events because of COVID-19 protocols, he

became the first Israeli baseball player to get a hit in the Olympics — a double in his first at-bat against Korea. “As far as history books go, that was pretty good,” he said.

Also, the playing of Israel’s national anthem prompted great emotion, and the Japanese citizens who helped their host country as Olympic volunteers brought amazement. Rickles described those volunteers as “probably the nicest people I’ve ever come across,” adding, “It was awesome.”

In the days immediately following his return home, Rickles wrestled with mixed feelings about the end, both of baseball and the Olympics. “I go back and forth with that every day,” he said.

At the same time, Rickles insisted there is much to look forward to in his life. He is getting married in January, and charting pitches during a game has been replaced by charting patients for a Las Vegas-area skilled nursing facility. He is a hospital liaison — “kind of like a nurse, but not hands-on.”

Plus, there is Riley.

In the real end, above all, young Riley has made his career as a dad worth putting everything else behind him. Baseball. Even the Olympics.

Before the Olympics began, Rickles had said, “I can’t think of a better way to end it than with the Olympics.”

After the Olympics, he modified his view slightly.

“The Olympics,” Rickles concluded, “was a once-in-a-lifetime experience — second only to my daughter being born.”

Israel’s win against Mexico was the team’s first in Olympic competition. Rickles was a big part of the victory.

‘WE ALL HAVE STETSON

SCOTT BOORE ’76, THE ALUMNI BOARD’S NEW PRESIDENT-ELECT, TALKS ABOUT HIS STUDENT PAST AND HIS PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

When Scott Boore returned to the Stetson campus in 2014 — for the first time since he had graduated in 1976 with his marketing degree — he had “a nostalgic moment” as he gazed at the Lynn Business Center.

“The Lynn Business Center used to be a bank,” said Boore, the new president-elect of Stetson’s Alumni Board. “I’m intimately familiar with it because while I was on hiatus [from classes] for a year, I started out as a laborer moving stuff around and ended up being the labor foreman on the job, building that bank, until I put the money together and went back to school.”

Stetson acquired and renovated the building in 2002 to house its School of Business Administration, and so Boore can now say that he literally helped build the university.

As president-elect of the Alumni Board, a

role that will lead to his becoming board president on July 1, 2022, Boore will be building up the university in a different way.

“The Alumni Board’s mission, in essence, is to get alums engaged with the university on some level,” Boore continued by phone from his home in Lincoln, California, near Sacramento, where he works as a business, sales and marketing consultant.

“We want to get them engaged with the university, whether that’s attending a social event where they reacquaint themselves with alums that maybe they’ve lost track of, or with newer alums, younger alums, because we all have Stetson in common. As president, the job is to guide that and to help grow those relationships.”

Boore has many fond memories of his time at Stetson in the early 1970s.

“I was on the six-year plan — I was having such a good time that I decided to stretch it out,” he joked.

He recalled seeing bands on fraternity row in an area called The Pit, and they put a platform in there and held concerts. “I kid you not,” he noted. “We were sitting on the edge of this sinkhole and watching them play.”

Still, Boore was detached from Stetson life for 38 years after his graduation, until the reintroduction of football in 2013. Then-head football coach Roger Hughes and Trustee Bob Pocica ’75 met with alumni in the San Francisco area, and “I got reengaged,” Boore said. “I found Bob and Roger to be really genuine people. We got talking, and I left thinking, ‘Well, maybe my wife and I will catch a football game at some point. That will be great.’”

Soon after that, Boore was invited to attend Leadership Stetson, a program presented by the Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement in which Stetson alumni can interact with their alma mater and

university leaders on an in-depth, personal level. Boore was then invited to become a member of the Alumni Board in July 2014, and the rest is history.

“Throughout his time on the board, he’s been able to engage alumni locally in his city, help with admissions events, work on recruiting new members for the board and has helped guide the board to its current structure and vision. His charisma and passion for Stetson are contagious,” commented Amy Dedes ’04, director of Alumni and Parent Engagement.

In this role, Boore will be more involved in upper-level decisions and interactions with current President Ranell Tinsley Mason ’00, who will use this final year in her term as president to help mentor Scott before officially handing over the reins.

Mason’s time as president, beginning in July 2019, certainly hasn’t been normal, given COVID-19, but it has been successful.

Most recently, Mason and members of the board nominated and approved four new members to join as district chairs for their local areas. The new members had been involved as volunteers in their local areas, as well as guest speakers for the Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement.

Two of the new members are representatives in Miami and Boston, where a “presence has been needed for years,” Dedes cited, adding, “We’re excited to get the opportunity to engage more alumni.”

Dedes, who became director of the Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement last March, is hoping the new energy on the board will help to connect alumni, even while most in-person gatherings still aren’t happening.

“Having some new people as partners and collaborators,” said Dedes, “will bring new ideas and opportunities.”

President-elect Scott Boore ‘76

STETSON IN COMMON’

THE NEW ALUMNI BOARD MEMBERS

DANNY HUMPHREY ’16

District Chair for Miami

Employment: attorney at Brodsky Fotiu-Wojtowicz Law Firm

JENNIFER LONG ’92

District Chair for Fort Lauderdale

Employment: alumni association coordinator for Broward Technical Colleges

DARASH DESAI ’08

District Chair for Boston, Massachusetts

Employment: senior research scientist and part-time lecturer at Boston University

JOSEF MCNEAL ’04

District Chair for Dallas, Texas

Employment: national sales director for Abbott Nutrition

RIP PATTON REMEMBERING

(1940-2021)

A Stetson hero of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement taught students beyond the classroom.

In 2006, Stetson Law Professor Robert Bickel (now Emeritus) believed the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s could reveal lessons to students that would develop their emotional intelligence regarding the social justice issues they have inherited. He also hoped those lessons would help them understand their role in sustaining and advancing the promise of the democracy, which in turn would shape their professional and personal lives.

Bickel’s vision was that, unlike other watershed moments in history, the lessons and thus the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement — which produced America’s two greatest civil rights laws — was a living history. So, his idea was to take Stetson students to the places where the watershed events of the Movement transformed America, enabling students to learn by visiting with the very people who were at the center of the Movement.

Enter Ernest “Rip” Patton Jr., PhD.

As the students met those Movement heroes in 2006, Bickel quickly determined this experiential learning would be at its best if an original Movement veteran could mentor them throughout their journey — and that this

veteran should be someone who was in college when he was a part of those watershed events.

That special person was Rip, as he was popularly known.

Rip Patton was a gifted storyteller who had helped create the Nashville Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (the college student cohort of the Civil Rights Movement). Also, he was a prominent member of the first 1960 Nashville sit-ins, and he was a 1961 Freedom Rider.

As a Freedom Rider, he was a part of the legendary group of college students arrested and imprisoned in Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Penitentiary — merely for entering the all-white section of a Greyhound bus station, which the Freedom Riders had a legal right to do under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Boynton v. Virginia. Patton spent 40 days in that penitentiary, also called Parchman Prison Farm for its brutal conditions.

Patton spent 11 years traveling each summer with Stetson students and with professors Bickel, Greg Sapp, PhD (religious studies), and Tammy Briant (law). Patton provided students the opportunity to have ongoing conversations

about the places they were visiting and the events that had occurred there, as well as to process the experiences they had and the stories they heard. Also, he visited Stetson’s campuses during those years, speaking to hundreds of students about the Movement and its legacy.

Patton was a true teacher. He contributed directly to Stetson’s belief in the Liberal Arts tradition by developing the emotional intelligence of students, their sense of empathy, and their ability to serve the public interest and common good in any profession to which they aspire.

Time with him was learning at its best, and the Stetson students who came to know him will never forget him as a teacher, and as a friend who cared for each and every one of them. He passed away on Aug. 24.

Stetson Law Professor Emeritus Robert Bickel (left) with the late Ernest “Rip” Patton Jr., PhD

DETOUR Fruitful

What do you do when your brand-new travel company gets sidelined by a global pandemic? You drink wine, of course!

When Ed White ’06 and Julie Farricker ’04 met at Stetson, they had no idea that 15 years later their friendship would take them across the ocean countless times to their favorite destination: Italy. Due to their love for the country, its history and culture, they started The Italian Tour — a travel agency focused on bespoke Italian travel.

The Italian Tour was created during summer 2020. Now, as the saying goes, here’s the rest of the story.

As COVID-19 spread and all travel came to a screeching halt, The Italian Tour, well, had to detour. White and Farricker, along with White’s sister Lindsey, continued to research and explore Italy in other ways. Eventually, their efforts became fruitful — with grapes. Voila, vino. They formed The Italian Cellar to keep the spirit of Italy alive in people’s hearts, minds and glasses.

Today, with Farricker as a Vinitaly Italian Wine Ambassador and White as the corporate mastermind, they work with small vineyards in Italy to bring Italian wine to their customers in the States via virtual tastings, their “Wine

Passport” program or being a “personal wine adviser.”

Recently, the Hatter duo hosted a trio of Immersive Wine Tastings for Stetson alumni, each focused on a particular region of Italy, with wines that can be found in that region.

The plan for the future — although one never truly knows, right? — is to host more events, public and private, while also looking to possibly plant new seeds of enterprise. You can keep up with their latest moves on the web (www.theitaliancellar.com), Instagram (theitaliancellarllc) and Facebook (The Italian Cellar).

“Each class inherits the obligation to make the Stetson of Tomorrow an even better place to meet the challenge of new generations.”

– J. Ollie Edmunds

On Nov. 5, the Stetson community is coming together for the Stetson of Tomorrow. We will be celebrating what has made Stetson great for the past 138 years and looking forward to the future as we inaugurate our 10th president, Dr. Christopher Roellke.

Thanks to the generosity of several alumni and various foundations, this year your gift of any size to any fund will be matched with a gift to the Stetson Fund. Be sure to stay tuned, as we announce challenge donors and share updates, by following us on Facebook and Instagram, @StetsonAlumni.

Save the Date: Nov. 5, 2021

Julie Farricker ’04 (left) with Lindsey White and Ed White ’06

Send Us Your Class Note

STETSON UNIVERSITY is proud of its alumni and their accomplishments. We would love to hear about your achievements. If you are a graduate from the DeLand campus, please send your class note to Stetson University, Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement, 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8257, DeLand, FL 32723, or email your news to alumni@ stetson.edu.

If you are a graduate of the College of Law, send your class note to Stetson University College of Law, Office of Development and Alumni Engagement, 1401 61st St. South, Gulfport, FL 33707, or email your class note to alumni@law.stetson. edu. College of Law graduates also can fill out the online form at Stetson.edu/ lawalumninews.

We can only use photos that are high-resolution, and because of space limitations, we cannot guarantee use of all photographs.

1960s

Lorna Jean Hagstrom, MA ’64, DeLand, was honored as a Distinguished Alumna for 2020 by Florida Southern College, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1961. She also was named the DeLand Woman Leader of the Year 2020 by the DeLand Junior Service League.

Adrian P. Bambini Jr., ’65, Owensboro, Kentucky, was inducted into the Kentucky Veterans Hall of Fame. Bambini spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel before his retirement. Following, he has dedicated most of his life to volunteer work, including 20 years on the Radcliff Forestry and Conservation Board.

Diana Verdun Smartt Braddom ’68, The Villages, has published a children’s book, “Margot’s Missing Scrunchie,” inspired by her

granddaughter. Braddom is an alumna of Pi Beta Phi Sorority and president of P.E.O. Chapter IF in The Villages, a philanthropic group.

1970s

Jon E. Soskis ’71, Havana, created a NetCE continuing-education course, Pit Viper Snakebite Assessment and Treatment. NetCE offers nationally accredited certificates for health care professionals. Soskis has spent more than 30 years helping medical staff become familiar with snakebite treatments. Soskis’ course is the only one available in the United States for pit viper snakebites.

1980s

L. Dean Barley ’80, Westfield, North Carolina, had his first book published by Zondervan Press, “The Vineyard Book of Devotions, A Daily Devotional.”

Allen W. Groves ’82, Charlottesville, Virginia, became vice president of student experience at Syracuse University. He had been dean of students at the University of Virginia for more than 14 years.

Joseph T. O’Leary ’83, North Grafton, Massachusetts, joined Brookline Bank as senior vice president. He will lead a growing team of Brookline Bank’s commercial bankers, as well as support-related strategies.

Jaime Clark-Soles ’89, Richardson, Texas, is professor of New Testament and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, and director of the Baptist House of Studies, at Perkins School of Theology. She also has authored two books in the past year.

1990s

Andrew P. Daire ’91, MS ’93, Moseley, Virginia, was selected as the 2021 Academic and Administrative Leadership recipient of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Presidential Awards for Community Multicultural Enrichment. Daire is dean and the Ruth Harris Professor in VCU’s School of Education.

D. Wayne Olson, JD ’91, Sandy, Utah, had his latest book, “Fundraising for Nonprofit Board Members,” published. The book, available on Amazon, gives board members the tools they need to be effective and efficient fundraisers.

Brian D. Ray ’91, Gainesville, was appointed as an adjunct faculty member for the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. In that role, he will teach the ethics course for the Master of International Policy and Practice program.

Cindy Lovell ’94, MA ’96, Edgewater, co-edited the fourth edition of “Preparing the Way: Teaching ELs in the Pre-K-12 Classroom” and coauthored “Linguistics for K-12 Classroom Application,” both published by

Kendall Hunt. She also received the University of South Florida’s Excellence in Undergraduate Education Award.

Joseph Clay Meux Jr., JD ’94, Jacksonville, was elected to the firm of Rogers Towers as chairman of the board, managing director and president. He has served on the firm’s board of directors since 2017 and is a shareholder in the Estates and Trusts Department.

Patricia Koen Babischkin ’95, Lakewood, Illinois, was elected trustee for the Village of Lakewood, a suburb of Chicago, where she looks forward to serving her community by bringing positive, strategic planning.

Nirupa Netram ’95, JD ’98, Cape Coral, launched Lotus Solutions LLC, a Florida certified womanand minority-owned enterprise, to help businesses create workplace diversity and inclusion. Also, Netram was appointed to serve on the Florida Bar’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She co-chairs the Immigration Law Practice Section of the Lee County Bar Association and serves on numerous other committees.

Stephanie Friese Aron ’96, Atlanta, Georgia, was named co-managing shareholder of Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s Atlanta office. Aron chairs Chamberlain’s Real Estate Practice and is a member of the firm’s board of directors. She is a past president of the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers and CREW, and a former board member of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation and the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors.

Jason GilliamAlexander ’97, Miami Gardens, assistant men’s basketball coach at Florida Memorial University, was selected to the USA East Coast Basketball coaching staff. USA East Coast is composed of top college players and participates in international competitions, becoming college basketball’s unofficial study abroad program.

Lee M. Morrison ’99, Hialeah, is an investment adviser with Cornerstone Private Advisors. Also, he continues to be involved in the Miami music community, serving as the principal saxophonist of Miami Wind Symphony, as a guest conductor and clinician to bands throughout South Florida, and on the board of directors of Music Mentor Network. In addition, Morrison serves on the board of directors of Boy Scouts of America - South Florida Council.

2000s

Reneé Goble ’02, Denver, Colorado, was appointed to the Denver County Court. Previously, she was a senior assistant city attorney in the Denver City Attorney’s Office, serving as the senior litigator for the Municipal Operations Section, representing and advocating for various city agencies and departments.

Nicholas DeLucia ’03, Boca Raton, received his master’s degree from American College of Education in Educational Leadership.

Jordan Witson Fronk ’03, Austin, Texas, was featured in Tribeza, Austin Curated, a local online showcase of products and services. She is the owner and creator of Fronks, a producer of fresh organic nut milks. She began making her own nut milks in 2015 and launched Fresh Fronks a year later.

Dionne Fajardo, JD ’06, Miami, was promoted to chief compliance officer and general counsel at Element Pointe Advisors LLC.

William P. Perry Jr. ’06, Garland, Texas, was named as the first president of the Georgia College LGBTQ+ Alumni Group.

Dana SchumacherSchmidt ’06, Tecumseh, Michigan, an associate professor of English at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, appeared on the television show Jeopardy! in April.

MARRIAGES

1 Theresa Moreau ’02 to Jose Rodriguez, Jan. 18, 2021.

2 Ashley Maisel ’11 to Gerson Zerpa, March 20, 2021.

3 Cole Walters ’12 to Nikki Hamm, Nov. 14, 2020.

4 Victoria Aldea ’16 to Terrin Smith ’15, July 14, 2021.

5 Jordan Ewud ’18 to Tatum Carroll ’19, June 26, 2021.

Anna Torres, MS ’07, Palm Coast, is the founder of Trauma and Recovery Therapy LLC, which provides specialized therapy for clients with significant history of trauma, depression and anxiety. In 2017, she was named the Clinician of the Year by the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association.

Carlos Betancourt ’08, MBA ’09, Los Angeles, California, is a founding principal of BKCoin Capital LP. He oversees the firm’s daily operations, including legal and compliance, and manages the research staff.

Gabriel-Maroun T. Shibly ’08, MAcc ’09, Oviedo, was promoted to chief financial officer at Hillpointe LLC, a fully integrated real estate development firm. Shibly leads the firm’s accounting, financial reporting and human resource functions.

Stephanie Champagne Parks ’09, Deltona, of FUTURES Foundation for Volusia County Schools, was named Nonprofit Young Professional of the Year by The Daytona Beach News-Journal in its “40 Under Forty.”

Kyle M. Schmitt ’09, New Orleans, Louisiana, has completed his General Surgery Residency at Louisiana State University Health Science Center, and he’s accepted a trauma and surgical critical care fellowship at University of Illinois Advocate Illinois Masonic Center in Chicago.

2010s

Bernie LeFils, MAcc ’12, Deltona, of LeFils & Co. LLC, was named Young Small Business Professional of the Year by The Daytona Beach News-Journal in “40 Under Forty.”

Kallie Ricker ’14, St. Petersburg, is one of the founders of recently launched company Faux Fan, which manufactures a bathroom noise-masking device of that same name.

Alexandrina Andre ’14, Los Angeles, California, has written and directed two short films, “Flora” and “Reversed,” and has worked on numerous other projects in the industry. Andre production-managed “The Endless,” a feature film that premiered in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. She recently premiered her first feature documentary, “One Life to Blossom,” about trans-activist Blossom C. Brown, at the 2021 Pan African Film Festival. That documentary is currently streaming on multiple platforms.

Warren H. Campbell ’15, Richmond, Virginia, is singer-songwriter and

guitarist of the Dead Billionaires, a power pop-and-punk rock band. In June, the band self-released its debut album and music video, available on YouTube, and is planning a tour in the South.

Ben Sorrell, JD ’16, Ellenton, an associate attorney with the Sarasota law firm of Syprett Meshad, was selected by Super Lawyers, part of Thomson Reuters, to its 2021 Florida “Rising Stars” list in the Civil Litigation category.

BIRTHS

1 Sidney Jackson ’04 and Sonel Jackson, a daughter, Sloane, May 2021.

2 Heather Cobb ’07, MAcc ’08 and Derek Cobb, a son, Tennyson Brooks, February 2019.

3 Catherine Kuchar Moats ’07 and Brian Moats, a daughter, Claire Copeland, June 2021.

4 Daniel Roscoe ’09 and Haley Roscoe, a son, Johnathon Louis, December 2020.

Nickolas Saffan ’17, St. Petersburg, joined The Washington Post as a multiplatform editor on the Emerging News Products Stories team. He previously was with The Seattle Times, where he worked since 2019, managing the homepage, creating social media content and crafting push notifications.

Alyssa Soto ’18, Orlando, is the animal nutritionist assistant at the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Sanford.

Michael A. Rodriguez ’18, Houston, Texas, is a resident artist with the Houston Grand Opera for its 2021-2022 season. While completing his graduate studies at Louisiana State University, Rodriguez came to national attention as a district winner and regional encouragement winner of

the Met’s National Council Auditions in 2021. He also has performed as a featured soloist and ensemble member with several other regional operas.

Rachel Noble ’19, Tampa, was named one of the 2021 AVCA Thirty Under 30 Beach Award winners. The award was created in 2021 to honor up-andcoming beach coaching talent at all levels of the sport.

5 Meg Ferrell Young, MBA ’11 and Chassidy Ferrell Young, a son, Sebastian Lafayette, February 2021.

6 Cathleen Vogelgesang Neiser ’14 and Raymond Neiser, a son, Raymond Joshua, December 2020.

7 Dana Dolbow, MBA ’17 and Rusty Bragg, a son, Otto Pierce, April 2021.

8 Tyler Nelson ’19 and Samantha Fink ’19 a daughter, Hadlee Lyn, January 2021.

9 Matthew Casterline ’21 and Aubrianna Hall-Casterline ’18 a son, Theodore William, February 2021.

ANNIVERSARIES

Richard Layer ’57, MEd ’70 and Barbara Layer, celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary in June 2021. Barbara is a former secretary to George Hood, PhD, then-Stetson dean of men. Richard was elected to Stetson’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 as a basketball player.

ENGAGEMENTS

Harrison Watkins ’19 to Lauren O’Toole ’19

Spirit of Advocacy

William A. “Bill” Watson Jr. ’59, the 1981 president of Florida Realtors and a member of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, was recognized as the 2021 winner of the Spirit of Advocacy Award.

The award honors a member of Florida Realtors who has demonstrated excellence in advocacy at the local board, state association, national association and community within the governmental or political arena over their lifetime.

At the local level, Watson has been an active voice for real estate and the profession since the late 1970s. He has voted in every related election since 1961. Florida’s 10-mill limitation on school taxes exists because Watson and a colleague introduced legislation to the Florida

speaker of the House in 1968. He served on the Board of Governors Multiple Listing Service 1967-1975. He was president of the Jacksonville Area Mortgage Brokers in 1966 and president of Jacksonville Association of Realtors in 1968. His local association named him its Realtor of the Year in 1972.

At the state level, Watson organized the largest Legislative Days in history, with 2,500 Realtors attending in 1981. The event is now called Great American Realtor Days and continues to serve as a dedicated forum, enabling Realtors to meet their legislators and share their voice on issues of importance to all Floridians.

Over the years, Watson has chaired or been a member of numerous committees for Florida Realtors, and he was the District 1 vice president in 1973, in addition to serving as Florida Realtors president in 1981. He has been a member of the state association’s Board of Directors since 1962 — and, since 1961, has only missed the Florida Realtors convention twice.

At the national level, through the National Association of Realtors, Watson was one of 20 Realtors in 2003 who met with

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and made a presentation to the board.

In the Jacksonville-area community, the list of committees and local organizations that Watson has chaired or been a member of is lengthy, dating back to the 1960s, and it includes being a past member of the Mayor’s Economic Council for Jacksonville and a director of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce for many years.

Watson received Stetson’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1981 and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma business honorary society as a Stetson Chapter honoree in April 2015.

Also, he has been recognized for his charitable giving to Stetson. In 2017, Watson and son William A. Watson III were honored with the university’s permanent naming of Watson Field, a football practice field on campus.

Describing his support of Stetson Athletics as an “honor and privilege,” Watson pointed to the university’s influence on the success of his family. “My four years at Stetson University was a turning point in the development of my goals and objectives,” he said. “I am grateful to the many outstanding individuals who contributed to my growth at Stetson University.”

Watson Realty Corp. and Watson Mortgage Corp. sponsored the first sales lab at Stetson’s School of Business Administration, called the Watson Sales Lab.

Additionally, he and his wife, Janelle Watson ‘59, were presented Stetson’s Doyle E. Carlton Award in recognition of devotion to Christian higher education and in appreciation for his/ her extraordinary contribution to the life and development of the university, the city of DeLand and the state of Florida.

William A. “Bill” Watson Jr. ’59

The practice field on campus was named in 2017.

‘One of the Best Jobs in Sports’

How does one get from Stetson to Kansas City and become director of business development/corporate sponsorships for the Chiefs of the National Football League?

Anthony Cangelosi ’09 will tell you the route goes from DeLand to Germany to California to Australia to Cleveland to New York. Then, finally, it was Kansas City here we come. And those were only the major stops of his circuitous journey.

Cangelosi joined the Chiefs in July 2019, just as the team was beginning its summer training camp to begin a new season, which culminated in a Super Bowl championship.

Coincidental? Yes, absolutely — but Cangelosi’s sales team did make marked improvement after he began suiting up to “help business grow through football.”

That’s because Cangelosi already had become a veteran of the sponsorship game in pro sports.

The highlights: From Stetson’s School of Business Administration, where he majored in marketing and family business, there first was an internship with Adidas in Germany, following a dogged pursuit of job opportunities. When Nike passed on his repeated applications, he turned to Adidas, leaving before a semester was over (with the blessing of professors).

Cangelosi could have remained in Germany, but with one semester still remaining before graduation, he returned to get his degree before leaving again. In Germany, he had fallen in love with soccer — its business side, of course — leading to a job in Los Angeles by way of Minnesota, where he was a National Sales Center trainee for Major League Soccer.

After a year in LA, it was on to San Diego as a manager of brand marketing and operations. In essence, he spent a year (2011-2012) traveling the country, attending games, acting like a fan and reporting on the overall fan experience. His description: “being a secret shopper on steroids.”

After briefly returning to metro Orlando, where the native New Yorker grew up, Cangelosi’s industry connections in ticket sales and sponsorships quickly landed him a job in Australia as the assistant general manager of a baseball team. That was 2012-2014.

While loving the Aussie life, he came back to the States and wound up in Cleveland and the NFL’s Browns, simply noting, “They wanted to take a shot on a kid that was in Australia.”

Never mind the Browns didn’t win many games. That stint from 2014 to 2017 as manager of partnership activation wound up being invaluable. “I learned that sponsorship was where I belonged,” says Cangelosi, who added an MBA in 2016 from the University of Findlay.

From there, he was recruited to New York City and mega advertising agency Horizon Media as the director of Scout Sports & Entertainment, this time learning from a buyer’s perspective.

Then, he made the move to Kansas City, where a certain young quarterback was emerging as a star, Patrick Mahomes.

With the Chiefs, Super Bowl champs in 2020, while the “winning helps … it’s kind of my [business-development] team — to make sure that we’re doing really creative and forward-thinking initiatives with these brands.”

“We have to put together partnerships that are still groundbreaking and transformational,” Cangelosi continues.

“It doesn’t really matter what we do on the field.”

Not coincidentally, iconic Arrowhead Stadium is now GEHA Field at Arrowhead. For the first time in 50 years, the stadium gained a naming-rights partner. “That took a lot of blocking and tackling to get that over the line,” Cangelosi says about the partnership with GEHA, a health-plan company that exclusively serves federal employees, federal retirees, military retirees and their families.

Cangelosi credits his success to having an “opportunity obsession,” as well as taking risks, and he looks back on Stetson professors fondly.

“They gave me some tools and the foundation to understand what I needed to know,” he says, also citing that they “forced me to have a hard discussion with myself” about his future “early versus after you graduate.”

Ultimately, with that knowledge, Cangelosi took the ball and ran with it. —Michael Candelaria

Anthony Cangelosi ’09

Cangelosi arrived just before the Chiefs’ Super Bowl season.

In Memoriam

1950s

Arlia Frink Almond ’50

Seaward F. Bartholf ’50

Anne Ward Cork ’50

Donald H. Dillard ’50

Jean Clark Fullerton ’50

Thad T. George ’50

James H. “Booty” Nance ’53

Robert M. Newby ’50, MA ’53

Richard G. Pumphrey ’50

Jay C. Rotan ’50

Jayne Weitzel Spieker ’50

Janice Osteen Taylor ’50

John H. Toggweiler ’50

Mary Phillips Wollam ’50

Gloria Solbrig Altemus ’51

Marilyn Nelson Birnbaum ’51

George I. Chassey ’51, MA ’55

Jennings B. Joye Jr. ’51

Wayne M. Lamb ’51

Robert D. May ’51

Joseph P. Meriwether Jr. ’51

Walter F. Pinder ’51

Frances Hall Crisp ’52

Anita Edenfield Ferris ’52

Roger Larson ’52

Barbara Cross Leemis ’52

Louise Joyner Barrington ’53

Jack H. Coldiron ’53

Estelle Minton Horton ’53

Betty Lund Welch ’53

Mary West Bagwell ’54

Edwin G. Townsend ’54

Jane Miller Feezell ’55

Frank K. Creech Jr. ’55

Lewis T. Jacobs ’55

John E. Akers, MA ’56

Vivian Kemp Cate ’56

Bernice Kohlmeyer Endsley ’56

Chester W. Plank ’56

Troas D. Williams Sr. ’56

John L. DuRant ’57

Robert R. Yates ’57

Carol Belcher Abernathy ’58, JD ’82

Mollie Parrish Barrow ’58

Joseph C. Crankshaw III ’58

James E. Hodge ’58

Gwendolyn Kelly James ’58

Joanne Bolton Knight ’58

Charles R. Woodward ’58

Stanley L. Brumley ’59

Arthur L. Dasher ’59

Peggy Etheridge Dennard ’59

David M. Wahlstad ’59

Mary Dorsett Waller ’59

Donald L. Wood ’59

1960s

Harry E. Allen ’60

James L. Anderson ’60

Margaret Holmes Hays ’60

S. Strome Maxwell ’60

Mary Bell Stevenson ’60, MA ’65

Samuel L. Cornelius ’61

Fredericka Gibbons ’61

Mary Folk Leeper ’61

Diane Eppert Marquis ’61

Etta Hubbard Schaffer ’61

Wilma Gatson Sebastian ’61

Myron J. Wambaugh ’61

William R. Korp ’62

Charles L. Clark ’63

Linda Corbett Goecker ’63

Peggy Setzer Mowery ’63

Jack C. Robinson ’63

Frank E. Underhill Jr. ’63

James S. Jarrett Jr. ’64

James B. Chaplin ’65, JD ’68

Audrey Mills Robertson ’65

Joseph B. Basine Jr. ’66

Lester B. Hargrave Jr. ’66

Clara Cox Todd ’66

Stanley B. Gelman, JD ’67

Theodore H. Brousseau Jr. ’68, JD ’71

Robert L. Dean, MA ’68

Donald S. Dertod ’68, MA ’70

Donald W. Pyles ’68

Lynn Bauknight ’69

Mary Cabaniss Eikum, MA ’69

Jerome A. Patterson III, JD ’69

Bette Peacock Skates ’69, MEd ’78

Kenneth H. Vail, JD ’69

1970s

Berrien H. Becks Jr., JD ’70

Marian Hanley McGrath ’70

Stephen M. Straight ’70

Sidney G. LaCroix Jr., MBA ’71

Anita Humphries Lenssen ’72

Nina Sammons O’Keefe ’72

Sonia Thresher Richardson, MA ’72

Theodore Kolb, MBA ’73

Gladys Reams Earnest, MEd ’74, EdS ’77

Martia Curry Bohren ’75

Carolyn Hague ’75

Joseph P. McCullough ’75

Wade Dillon Key ’76

Alice Katz Nelson, JD ’76

Robert S. Kellar Jr. ’77

Judy Urban Tison ’77

James H. Beardall, MBA ’78

Leonard E. Rochefort ’78

Wendy Orr Rubel ’78

1980s

Daryl A. Alfrey ’80

Carmel Bitondo Dyer ’80

Fannie Slyke Hart, MEd ’80

Jeanne Hollister McCauley, MBA ’80

Bettyann Auman Wenbert, MEd ’80

Wilda Whitman Oakley, MEd ’81

Elizabeth White Carlile, MEd ’82

Linda Lloyd Davis ’82

Paul A. Guthrie, MA ’82

Ninette Ste. Claire, MEd ’82

Mary Whitaker, MBA ’82

Ruth Dubreuil, MEd ’83

Kathleen Ganey, MA ’83

Halbert G. Gillette, EdS ’83

Nancy Cupp McAdams, MEd ’83

Patricia Tredway ’84

John N. Wheeler Jr., MEd ’84

Stephen M. Farinacci ’86

Ann Staub McFall ’86

1990s

Michael H. Wilson Jr. ’90

Birger A. Wiresee ’90

Sherry DeMore Salimone ’91

Carl H. Poedtke III ’92

2000s

Jean Doyle, MS ’00

Cassandra Leighvard ’01

Leigh Bertrand Lambert, JD ’07

Matthew K. Brown ’12

John S. Valenti Jr., JD ’12

Willa Dean Lowery 1927-2021

Dr. Willa Dean Lowery ’48 — former student and philanthropic stalwart — passed away on July 14.

Lowery earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Stetson in 1948 before continuing her formal education for another 14 years, including a degree in medicine from the University of Miami.

In 2003, Stetson honored Lowery with the Distinguished Alumni Award. A year later, she established the Willa Dean Lowery Endowed Scholarship at Stetson for students majoring in the natural sciences, and in 2013 established the Lowery Endowment for Faculty Research in the Natural Sciences.

As the Stetson community can attest, Lowery was widely known to have spent her entire life striving to make the world a better place. She was a healer, a teacher, a scientist and a champion of those who were downtrodden, and she was a warrior for justice.

Professor Emeritus T. Wayne Bailey (1935-2021)

Few people impacted as many lives at Stetson as T. Wayne Bailey, PhD, who arrived on campus in 1963, when he founded the university’s Department of Political Science.

Emblematic of his impact, upon Bailey’s retirement from Stetson in 2016, longtime colleague Professor Gene Huskey, PhD, had this to say: “More than a few students have said that Wayne believed in them when they didn’t believe in themselves. He

wasn’t just their teacher or adviser, or even their mentor; he was their champion. For me, that is the essence of Wayne Bailey: a champion for generations of Stetson students.”

Decorated Vietnam veteran and politician Max Cleland ’64, once commented, “Dr. T. Wayne Bailey had a tremendous influence on me as a young man from Georgia who was a student at Stetson and who later became administrator of the U.S.

Veterans Administration and a U.S. Senator from Georgia.” The T. Wayne Bailey Politicos Room of the duPontBall Library on campus now houses a collection of Cleland’s personal, military and political memorabilia, along with distinguished collections of other Stetson alumni.

On the morning of June 29, Bailey passed away, leaving a legacy of extraordinary impact.

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