TUlane THE MAGAZINE OF TULANE UNIVERSITY
MEDICINE & THE CITY History of the Tulane School of Medicine
BUILDERS, HEROES AND A VOICE FOR GIRLS Nola4Women
COMMUNITY & CONNECTIONS Jews contribute to culture of New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS LITERATURE Thomas Beller explores influential writers
DECEMBER 2017
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GREEN SPACE With the inviting expanse of the Newcomb Quad in the foreground, the setting sun illuminates evening clouds above Newcomb Hall in July 2017.
Majestic Architecture Front cover: Doorways and windows of Gibson Hall, right, and Tilton Hall glow at dusk. (Photo by Jennifer Zdon ) Back cover: A sliver of land—the Riverview Butterfly—between the Mississippi River and Audubon Park is a popular meeting spot for students. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)
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P R E S I D E N T ’ S
L E T T E R
Letter to New Orleans by Mike Fitts
Dear New Orleans,
Like New Orleans, Tulane sings a siren call that attracts the bold and adventurous. They come to a place that encourages them, above all else, to be themselves. They come to a city they will always call home, wherever else they might roam. Like New Orleans, Tulane has learned hard-fought lessons about courage and resilience, lessons that we are eager to share with the world. Tulane’s outward-facing spirit is one of its greatest strengths—a direct result of the unshakeable bond we’ve always shared with New Orleans. This relationship shapes who we are, and it defines the kind of leaders Tulane continues to generate. For 184 of New Orleans’ 300 years, Tulane and New Orleans have grown and flourished together. And the best is yet to come. So happy birthday, New Orleans. Here’s to another 300.
MARK ANDRESEN
Three years ago, you welcomed me with open arms. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. Because there is no place like you. You are a smile in an afternoon thunderstorm. You are a sno-ball (grape, always) in August. You are golden rays of sun, beaming between limbs of dancing oaks. You are marvelous. Magical. Unexpected. You are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. New Orleans, You are my home. You have my heart. Happy Birthday—300 looks good on you. It is my hope that Tulane will age as gracefully as New Orleans; growing stronger and wiser with every passing year. And, in its 184th year, I think Tulane has the result of New Orleans’ fingerprints dancing across all that we do. From the way we eat, to the way we serve our community, to the way we seek happiness in each day—only in New Orleans could Tulane thrive as the playground for the intellectually curious that it is today. This New Orleans ethos is a critical reason why 2017 continues to be the strongest year in Tulane’s history. You can measure that in the remarkable work and spirit of every Tulanian. Like New Orleans, Tulane fosters entrepreneurship and creativity, a joyful ambition to make the world a better place.
HAPPY TRICENTENNIAL Tulane joins in the celebration of 300 years of New Orleans.
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TUlane C O N T E N T S Medical History Dr. Sheryl Martin-Schild (center), director of the Stroke Center at Tulane Medical Center, consults with students (from left) Drew Bunker and Rahul Rao and resident Nicole Wysocki. See “Medicine & The City” on page 14.
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
2 PRESIDENT’S LETTER Happy 300th birthday
14 M edicine & The City
Tulane School of Medicine doctors have made major national medical breakthroughs— advocating for the creation of Medicare health insurance, discovering the link between smoking and lung cancer, and pioneering vascular surgery—while contributing to the health of the city of New Orleans, to whose fate the school is forever tied. By Katy Reckdahl
20 B uilders, Heroes and a
Voice for Girls
Nola4Women shines a light on women’s contributions to the history of New Orleans while advocating for a better status in the future. By Leslie Cardé
24 C ommunity & Connections nearly the entirety of its 300 years of existence. By Fran Simon
New Orleans Literature
In celebration of the tricentennial of New Orleans, author, professor of creative writing and New Yorker and New York Times frequent contributor Thomas Beller examines writers who have helped him understand the contemporary city. By Thomas Beller
12 SPORTS Men’s basketball team travels to Spain 30 TULANIANS Chia-Chee Chiu • 12 Tulanians • Hanna Gamble • Carolyn Day • Louis Baugier • Honorary alumni 31 WHERE Y'AT! Class notes
Jews in New Orleans have shaped the commerce, culture and philanthropy of the city during
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6 NEWS River-Coastal Science and Engineering • No. 40 in U.S. News • Tulane and the tricentennial of New Orleans • Emily Clark • Peruvian mummy • Toxic hair dye • Jesmyn Ward • Reproductive activism • Rescued Cotton Press Distict map
37 FAREWELL Tribute: Marian Mayer Berkett 38 WAVEMAKERS Evan Trestman • Libby Alexander • Deming gift to medicine 40 NEW ORLEANS City ambassadors
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SITY F TULANE UNIVER THE MAGAZINE O
SLIPPING INTO LOSS OF A THE SEA LEADER A community Remembering its President Emeritus preserves culture Eamon Kelly
LAB TO LIFE PhD bioinnovators change the world through invention
IN THE HUNT FOR A LASSA FEVER CURE Researchers solve a medical puzzle
SEPTEMBER 2017
IT’S IN THE MAIL AND ONLINE Darlene Johnson (SW ’94) of Lithia, Florida, writes to say that she likes getting the “actual magazine” in the mail. The print Tulane magazine is sent to mailboxes around the country—and is available online.
The Plight of Isle de Jean Charles
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WELCOME DONATION Spurred by reading “Gallery: Outsider Writers, Circa 1960s” in the June 2017 Tulane magazine, Edwin Blair, a noted New Orleans collector, donated ephemera related to the Louisiana Research Collection’s Loujon Press holdings. “Ephemera” are small printed items meant to be glanced at and then thrown away, and so are especially rare and important to preserve. Blair’s donation included order forms, broadsides, programs and even a Christmas card from the founders of the Loujon Press. The Louisiana Research Collection is delighted to permanently preserve these and make them available to researchers. Leon Miller Head, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University DÉJÀ VU The current issue [September 2017 Tulane] reminds me that it is déjà vu all over again.
The Outsider, No. 1, by Loujon Press
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“Slipping Into the Sea” author [Danny] Heitman chose to pollute his human interest story of the plight of the residents of Isle de Jean Charles with several references to “human-caused climate change.” No quantization of this nebulous claim is given as to exactly how much such influence has produced a claimed corresponding change in sea level or storm severity. Climate change speculation is not science, nor is it needed to document natural coastal phenomena dating back over 100 years, and well before the current hysteria over CO2. My letter [in the December 2015 Tulane, regarding “Water, Water, Everywhere” in the September 2015 Tulane] included a specific reference to a National Geographic article, which documented these coastal changes/sinkings way back in 1897 and the abandonment of coastal settlements. … If author Heitman were more fully informed, he would acknowledge that central Scandinavia is experiencing an annual landmass rise of about 1 cm. So how is it that the same global “climate change” results in loss of Gulf coastal landmass, and an increase of landmass in Scandinavia? It has nothing measurable related to climate and everything to do with tectonic land shifts. Charles G. Battig, E ’55, G ’57, M ’61 Houston HEALING ART I am reaching out because I am very interested in the article that you wrote recently, “Karen Oser Edmunds and Healing Art” [Tulane, September 2017]. This is a beautiful
story and one that is extremely relevant to the work that I do at Tulane Medical Center. I run a program called Arts in Medicine. We bring creative outlets to patients all over both the Tulane Lakeside Hospital and the Tulane downtown facility. Anything from painting and drawing to arts and crafts, music, creative writing. ... Karen Edmunds’ story was very powerful. Julie Connelly New Orleans ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE Do you see the irony in the article featuring Dan Grandal, Tulane engineering graduate, E ’93 (Dispatch) [September 2017 Tulane] as the lead designer for the [Lake Pontchartrain Permanent Canal Closures and Pumps] project since Tulane decided to kill off the School of Engineering? Don Michael, E ’68 Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida Editor’s Note: While the School of Engineering ended in 2006 as part of the post-Katrina Renewal Plan, the School of Science and Engineering was created that same year to better integrate science and engineering. One third of Tulane undergraduate students are now majoring in a science and/or engineering discipline. LOYAL FAN I love the Tulane mag. I take it and read it everywhere. People always stop me, and say, “Did you go to Tulane? So did I!” I am a loyal fan and I request that you keep sending me the paper copy as you are now doing. When people ask me where I went to college, I say so proudly Tulane University Newcomb College. Some of them know Newcomb. Some do not. Gayle Maxwell Rosenthal, NC ’64 Dallas
MONROE HALL, 1969 I started at Tulane in the fall of 1969. My room was Monroe 314, and I made friends with the guys in my wing—all graduate students. I … cannot remember the names. Do any residents on my wing at Monroe during the fall of 1969 want to get in touch? If so, I would appreciate hearing from you. Gerard Morales, B ’71, L ’75 Phoenix BASKETBALL PHENOM I note in reading the obits in the most recent Tulane magazine [September 2017] that Harold Cervini (A&S ’58) died in June 2017. Hal Cervini was the master of the cat and mouse. He could freeze a basketball game if Tulane was winning by dribbling by himself for several minutes. They put in the 30-second clock because of Cervini and his ilk in college basketball. George Meyer, M ’66 Fair Oaks, California Editor’s Note: Harold Cervini was a four-year letterman and captain of the Green Wave basketball team, named to All-SEC teams in 1954 and 1955. According to the AllState Sugar Bowl website, Cervini was “considered one of the best point guards and ball-handlers in the nation, the young guard broke numerous records at Tulane and still holds eight records.” SAILOR AND COMPUTER CENTER DIRECTOR Saw the “Farewell” entry [Daniel Killeen (E ’66), September 2017 Tulane]. Danny deserved a one-third-page entry. A 25-year faculty member, he founded the Tulane Computer Center. He was a solid New Orleanian, a sailor and a helluva of a good guy. Thomas E. “Tom” Hendricks, B ’66 Dallas
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Letter From the Editor
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CREATIVE DIRECTOR Melinda Whatley Viles
COURTESY THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Faith Dawson
Detail of Le Missisipi ou la Louisiane dans l’Amérique Septentrionale; ca. 1720; hand-colored engraving by François Chéreau; The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1959.210
SPIRIT OF TRICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION This is our New Orleans tricentennial As the city of New Orleans gears up issue of Tulane. to celebrate the tricentennial, Tulane Tulane University, of course, hasn’t naturally is joining in. The university is been around the whole 300 years of co-sponsoring a symposium, “Making the city’s existence. The city traces its New Orleans Home,” on March 8–11. founding to 1718, and the university The event will honor “all the diverse was established in 1834 as the Medical groups who have made the city home,” College of Louisiana. says history professor Emily Clark, Tulane, however, from its beginnings chair of the symposium, which is a has been inextricably tied to the city. project of the Mayor of New Orleans’ Moreover, Tulane expects to be integral Tricentennial Commission. to the city it calls home for the next Clark is the author of “New Orleans 300 years. Is Home” on page 8. At the symposium, In this issue, we present a history which is free and open to the public, of the contributions of Tulane School Tulane professors Rich Campanella, Laura of Medicine in “Medicine & The City” D. Kelley, Ann Masson, Larry Powell, Bruce on page 14. In “Builders, Heroes and a Raeburn, Nick Spitzer and other experts Voice for Girls” on page 20, the efforts will explore “those things that have of the nonprofit organization Nolaendowed New Orleans with the unique 4Women to bring attention to the status qualities that make it home in a way that of women in the city are highlighted. In no other place can be.” “Community and Connections” on page Tulane, indeed, could only be at 24, we look at the indelible mark that home in New Orleans. And what would Jews have made on New Orleans. And, New Orleans be without Tulane? That’s on page 28, associate professor of Enga question for all associated with this lish and creative writing Thomas Beller great university and vibrant city to ask gives his particular and fascinating look as we celebrate the tricentennial of at “New Orleans Literature.” New Orleans.—MARY ANN TRAVIS
CONTRIBUTORS Marianna Barry Barri Bronston Mary Cross, SLA ’10 Alicia Jasmin Angus Lind, A&S ’66 Ryan Rivet, UC ’02 Aidan Smith Mary Sparacello Mike Strecker, G ’03 Hannah Topping SENIOR UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHER Paula Burch-Celentano, SW ’17 SENIOR PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Sharon Freeman GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Marian Herbert-Bruno Kimberly D. Rainey IPAD AND ANDROID VERSIONS OF TULANE ARE AVAILABLE.
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY Michael A. Fitts SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES AND INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS Richard Matasar VICE PRESIDENT FOR UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Deborah L. Grant, PHTM ’86 Tulane (ISSN 21619255) is a quarterly magazine published by the Tulane Office of University Communications and Marketing, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624. Periodical postage at New Orleans, LA 70113 and additional mailing offices. Send editorial correspondence to the above address or email tulanemag@tulane.edu. Opinions expressed in Tulane are not necessarily those of Tulane representatives and do not necessarily reflect university policies. Material may be reprinted only with permission. Tulane University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Tulane, Tulane Office of University Communications and Marketing, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624. DECEMBER 2017/VOL. 89, NO. 2
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STEM AWARD Psychology professor Michael Cunningham, biomedical engineering associate professor Michael Moore and doctoral student Katherine Elfer were recognized in INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine as leaders who have made a difference in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
High Marks
Rivers & Coasts
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Natural Resource A cargo ship heads down the Mississippi River past the Algiers Courthouse.
IN THE TOP 40 Tulane ranks highly in several U.S. News categories this year.
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
A new Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering has been created in the Tulane School of Science and Engineering. Mead Allison, professor of earth and environmental sciences, is chairing the first-of-its-kind academic department dedicated to research and education in river-coastal issues. The department begins offering classes in spring 2018. It is unique in that it will focus on the world’s river, deltaic and coastal systems using a combined science and engineering approach. It will recognize the linkages among these settings—such as the effects of engineered structures like river dams—on the health of deltas and the adjacent coast. The department is dedicated to “educating a new generation and new breed of scientists, engineers, planners and decision-makers,” Allison said. “This means the new department will play an important role in workforce and economic development in our region.” Undergraduate and graduate degree programs will be developed that reflect a holistic approach to understanding river and coastal systems, where a large portion of the global population lives and which are critical economically and as a natural resource. “Improving our understanding of river-coastal systems is vital today in order to find protection and restoration solutions to the acute problems resulting from rising sea levels, climate change and the effects of destructive storms,” said Allison. In addition to Allison, the faculty will include Ehab Meselhe, a coastal engineer and technical leader in the development of Louisiana’s Master Plan for Coastal Protection and Restoration. Both Allison and Meselhe hold joint appointments with the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge, a not-for-profit, independent applied research and technical services institution. The new department will also closely collaborate with the Tulane ByWater Institute.—Barri Bronston
Tulane ranked No. 40 among Best National Universities in the 2018 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges list. The U.S. News rankings give the university high marks in several categories, noting it as a national research university known for the innovation of its curriculum, its focus on student success, its welcoming of veterans and its dedication to public service. Tulane’s undergraduate business school placed 45th among the nation’s Best Business Programs. Tulane is also ranked 24th among the Most Innovative Schools. University presidents, provosts and admission deans evaluated the schools in this category for the innovative improvements the schools have made in their curriculum, faculty, students, campus life, technology or facilities. In the High School Counselors Top College Picks category Tulane is ranked 39th. The rankings also highlight Tulane’s focus on initiatives that encourage student success, including its service-learning program, which is ranked in the nation’s top 25. “These rankings indicate the success of Tulane’s interdisciplinary approach to research, teaching and learning,” Tulane President Mike Fitts said. “Student and faculty at Tulane combine knowledge from fields as diverse as the arts, engineering, music, medicine and more to address the challenges of our community and our world.”—Mike Strecker
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In That Number Tulane and the Tricentennial As New Orleans prepares to celebrate its 300th anniversary, Tulane University is remembering all the ways in which the university is entwined in the fabric of the city’s existence. It has been said that “there would be no Tulane without New Orleans and there would be a very different New Orleans without Tulane.” Take a look at some of the ways Tulane and New Orleans have grown up together.
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JENNIFER ZDON
A 2017 gift of $25 million to Tulane School of Medicine names the John W. Deming Department of Medicine in honor of internal medicine physician Dr. John Winton Deming (M ’44) and his family. The gift is the largest ever in the School of Medicine’s history.
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1834
The Medical College of Louisiana, precursor to Tulane University, was founded in 1834 by seven young doctors—all under the age of 26—to raise medical standards and to help combat yellow fever and cholera in New Orleans.
Tulane University has had 15 presidents since its founding. The 15th and current university president is Michael A. Fitts.
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JENNIFER ZDON
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The incoming class for the 2017–2018 school year is 22 percent students of color, a significant increase since just three years ago, when the class was 16 percent students of color.
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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
Tulane is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, a select group of 62 leading research universities with “preeminent programs of graduate and professional education and scholarly research.”
Tulane has called New Orleans home since 1834—more than half of the city’s existence—so there’s no surprise that Tulane is excited about the city’s 300th anniversary.
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In Your Own Words New Orleans Is Home
History professor Emily Clark is chairing a symposium on the tricentennial of New Orleans in March 2018.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS Emily Clark is the Clement Chambers Benenson Professor in Colonial History in the Tulane Department of History. She earned a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Social Work and PhD from Tulane. Since I spent much of the first half of my life trying to get away from New Orleans, it’s more than a little ironic that I ended up a Tulane professor who specializes in New Orleans history in charge of planning the city’s official tricentennial symposium. There was nothing charming or culturally stimulating about the New Orleans of my childhood, a desert of tract houses and bad public schools on the outer fringes of the city. I dreamt of going away to college to escape, but there wasn’t even enough money to go to LSU in Baton Rouge. It was Tulane on scholarship or nothing. Thanks to a succession of degrees from Tulane, I did manage to live, work and learn in other places—England, France, Greece, Chicago, Oregon. They were as wonderful and
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fascinating as I’d imagined they would be, but I kept coming home to New Orleans and Tulane. My last homecoming was in 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina. Any doubts I had about whether I was ready to stay for good evaporated. The city would only have a future with a different past, the real history that lies beneath the exotic myths that have passed for New Orleans history for too long. As a historian, I had a job to do. New Orleans knows how to make music and cook food like no place else on earth. These things that bring people so much joy today didn’t come easily, nor is the history that lies behind them found in obvious places. It’s not as simple as reading the letters the French founders sent home. Royal engineers from France plotted out the grid of streets that became the French Quarter, but it was Native Americans who first saw and exploited the potential of this place for trade, a strip of high ground threaded by a bayou connecting Lake
Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. We know about them from the pottery fragments they left behind. A dense virgin forest had to be cleared before the streets of the grid could be laid out and the ground planted. We learn how from a remarkable watercolor sketch painted in 1726 that depicts teams of enslaved Africans felling huge trees on the riverbank, fending off alligators with techniques they brought across the Atlantic with them. Thousands of enslaved Africans brought other things too, like okra and knowledge about how to grow rice. We owe the culinary treasure of gumbo to them. Twenty historians of New Orleans will converge in March 2018 to talk about what they have uncovered from the traces left behind in the archives and the earth, on canvas and in brick and mortar. Come to hear them and fall in love with New Orleans all over again.—EMILY CLARK
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MA IN COSTA RICA The Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies is offering a new 10-month Master of Arts program with classes taught at the Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Politico Administrativo (CIAPA), a campus near San José co-founded by Tulane in 1975. Application deadline is Feb. 1, 2018.
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COURTESY EL BRUJO ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPLEX
Hair Dye Danger
Mummy’s Face Ancient Peruvian The face of a 1,700year-old mummified noblewoman, known as the Lady of Cao, is recreated with 3-D imaging technology and forensics archaeology.
CAREFUL WASHING GREY OUT The use of hair coloring products with lead acetate as an ingredient may be related to health problems, including mental deterioration.
THINKSTOCK
When scientists at the El Brujo Archaeological Complex in Peru unveiled the reconstructed face of a 1,700-year-old mummy in July, Tulane anthropology professor John Verano was among those at the press conference. No stranger to mummies or Peru—where he travels every summer to do research—Verano served in an advisory capacity on the project, which used 3-D imaging technology and forensics archaeology to recreate the face of the noblewoman known as the Lady of Cao. “I was asked by the El Brujo project to review the facial reconstruction as it progressed from skull to final facial features,” said Verano, who has collaborated with the museum since it opened in 1990. “I participated in the unwrapping of the funerary bundle and conducted the study of Lady of Cao’s body.” Archaeologists discovered the mummy in 2005 while working at the El Brujo site in northwest Peru. She had been wrapped in 20 layers of fabric, was wearing a crown and sported tattoos of snakes, spiders and religious symbols. Buried with her were more than two dozen weapons, among them clubs and spear throwers. In November 2016, the museum’s curators assembled a team of experts to begin the process of recreating her face. The experts included archaeologists, physical anthropologists, forensic scientists and artists, and 3-D technology experts. The reconstructed face is now on permanent display at the El Brujo museum. Although Verano said it is hard to know exactly who the woman was without written records, he told National Geographic that the face reconstruction “will be particularly important for children. Looking into her eyes, they’ll be able to see their own relatives from town, and their own ancestry. It’s something that a mummified face just can’t give you.”—Barri Bronston
A research professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Tulane School of Medicine, Howard W. Mielke has spent decades investigating the ill effects of lead in garden soil on children’s health. But lead is also found elsewhere: The toxin is in hair dye. On a trip to a drugstore, recalled Mielke, “My daughter picked up a package of Grecian Formula and put it into my hands, saying, ‘Dad, you need to use this.’ “I looked at the label and said, ‘Beverly, this contains lead acetate and isn’t safe.’ She retorted, ‘Oh Dad, everything you touch turns to lead!’ ” Since then Mielke has conducted tests on hair coloring products containing lead acetate—the active ingredient used to darken grey hair. In one study, he concluded that dye samples containing lead acetate displayed lead levels between 2,300 and 6,000 parts per million. Within the human body, lead functions as a pollutant affecting the nervous system. After absorption through the skin, lead acetate moves through the lymphatic system. The FDA approved the use of lead acetate in hair products in 1980, but other countries have banned it. Mielke has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund and Earthjustice to petition the Food and Drug Administration to ban lead acetate as an ingredient used in hair coloring products—and the FDA is now revisiting its 1980 decision.—Mary Cross
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PARENTING GRANT IN AFRICA Funded by a $4.8 million grant from the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, public health professor Anastasia Gage is leading a project to help families in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Accolades for Ward Jesmyn Ward, who joined the faculty of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts in 2014, is making a splash among national media this year for her latest novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. The New York Times featured the book in its “Books of the Times” series. Ward was praised for her ability to “reach for the sweep, force and sense of inevitability of the Greek myths, but as translated to the small, mostly poor, mostly black town in Mississippi where she grew up and where she still lives.” In October, Ward, an associate professor of English, was awarded a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship—also known as the genius grant—by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowship is awarded to people who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for selfdirection.” Recipients receive a $625,000 stipend paid in installments over a period of five years. “This is life changing. It affords you a certain amount of freedom and time,” said Ward of the award. “Those are the two most important gifts that you can give to an artist.” October was a plentiful month of good news for the award-winning writer and educator. Sing, Unburied, Sing was announced as one of five finalists in the fiction category for the 2017 National Book Award. A win would make Ward a two-time recipient of the award, which she received in 2011 for Salvage the Bones. Ward is already working on her next book. “It’s a novel unlike anything that I’ve written,” she said. “It is set in New Orleans at the height of the domestic slave trade. It’s different so I’m a little nervous and afraid, but I’m also aware of the fact that this novel will make me grow and evolve as a writer and a human being.”—Alicia Jasmin
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A Gifted Writer Jesmyn Ward, creative writing professor, is pulling in awards and praise for her work set in a fictional Mississippi town.
A new book by Karissa Haugeberg, assistant professor of history in the Tulane School of Liberal Arts, sheds light on women activists’ peaceful—and sometimes violent—work against abortion from the 1960s through the 1990s. Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2017) examines the motivations of the activists and how their beliefs shaped the national conversation and policies. Haugeberg used archival records and conducted interviews with women who initiated major changes in the anti-abortion movement. “Women created a vast network of crisis pregnancy centers, where they sought to persuade women not to have abortions,” said Haugeberg. “And women were more central to violent cells, both as architects of criminal conspiracies and as foot soldiers, carrying out destructive, potentially lethal campaigns.” The book landed on the cover of the New York Review of Books and earned reviews in The New Yorker and The Times Literary Supplement. Haugeberg serves as faculty adviser for Newcomb College Institute’s Students United for Reproductive Justice organization. —Aidan Smith
HISTORY OF A MOVEMENT Karissa Haugeberg, an assistant professor of history, has published a book about anti-abortion activities in the 1960s through 1990s. PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
BEOWULF SHEEHAN
Abortion Battle
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MAP COURTESY LOUISIANA RESEARCH COLLECTION, PHOTOGRAPHY BY OWEN MURPHY
Gallery Piece of Cotton History
Map of Cotton Press District, New Orleans, 1860
Two 150-year-old maps detailing the location of New Orleans cotton presses in 1860 have been given new life thanks to the fast thinking of Leon Miller, head of the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Miller believes that the maps are the only existing ones of the Cotton Press District at that time. In the cotton manufacturing process, raw cotton was ginned of its seeds, and then formed into uniform bales for shipping and marketing. In 2009, these maps were set to be discarded after they began to crumble as a result of the aging paper’s acidic breakdown. In fact, Miller said the maps were already in a trash can when he found them. But he could not stand to see the historic maps tossed out. “The maps were in hundreds of pieces,” said Miller. “But once I found one of the cartouches, I knew they would be something worth saving.”
A cartouche, Miller explained, is an inscription that provides an explanation of what’s shown on a map as well as its title, cartographer and date. Once Miller was able to use the cartouches to identify the maps, he contacted archives throughout Louisiana and searched online databases for copies to no avail. “While copies may exist in private hands, we believe these may be the only publicly available copies of maps documenting a crucial part of the South’s economy at the outbreak of the Civil War,” said Miller. It took several months for a conservator to de-acidify the maps and mix and match the pieces, but they now hang as a symbol of second chances in the Victor H. and Margaret G. Schiro Reading Room in Jones Hall.—ALICIA JASMIN
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Roundball Players
to departing on the trip. Although Tulane was eligible in 2016, men’s basketball head coach Mike Dunleavy decided to wait a year because of the influx of new players who would be joining the team a year later. Such trips come with a hefty price tag, but some of Tulane’s most loyal and supportive donors—Doug Hertz, Don Peters, Mark Tipton and Richard Yulman—stepped up to make the trip a reality. “My primary motivation was in knowing this would be a once-in-alifetime experience for the team members and something I could not have done when I was a student,” Peters said. He cited the team’s emphasis on academics—it finished last year with the second-highest GPA in program history—as a motivating factor in his willingness to support the trip. “I think that Tulane gives the students an opportunity to have a sound foundation from which they will be successful in whatever endeavors they choose to pursue,” Peters said. For now, those endeavors include recovering from last season’s 6-25 record and proving to the Green Wave Nation that this team, with its many new additions and a whole new mindset, is far better than those statistics suggest. The Spain trip afforded them a much-needed head start. Before jetting off to Europe, they were allowed to have 10 practices at home.
COURTESY TULANE ATHLETICS
From a bike tour past cathedrals and monuments to a catamaran ride on the Mediterranean Sea, Tulane basketball players Blake Paul and Cam Reynolds along with the rest of their teammates soaked up everything that Spain had to offer this summer. Their 10-day trip to Madrid and Barcelona included games against some of Spain’s most popular professional all-star teams, and one by one, the Green Wave beat them all. Indeed, this was a trip of a lifetime, one made even more meaningful by the bonds forged among players and coaches as they balanced the joy of experiencing a foreign culture with the business of playing ball. “It brought us closer as a team than we Experience could’ve ever imagined,” said Paul, a 6-foot-9 In Spain forward from New Orleans. “We took it as The Green Wave men’s fuel to get us through this year. We know basketball team players, each other way better, and we’re primed for coaches and trainers a great year.” take in the sights this Once every four years, the NCAA allows summer during a college basketball programs to compete abroad and hold 10 extra practices prior once-in-a-lifetime trip.
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YULMAN SCORES A steaming Angry Wave sculpture was installed as part of the
Yulman Stadium scoreboard in October. Designed by Kern Studios, the Angry Wave is as colorful and fun as a Mardi Gras float.
S P O R T S
The practices continued in Madrid and Barcelona, where they studied film of the competition and worked to sharpen their shooting and defending skills. “Coach (Dunleavy) wanted us to explore Spain, but to bear in mind that we were there for business,” said Reynolds, a 6-foot-8 guard from Pearland, Texas. “We complied and handled our business. That was our only expectation—to use this trip to help us turn things around.” Dunleavy was instrumental in choosing the destination and raising the money. Having visited Spain several times— including Barcelona to see the Dream Team compete in the 1992 Olympics—he was well aware of how formidable the competition would be. He also knew the guys would enjoy the Spanish culture. Among the benefactors for the trip was Tulane alumnus and Georgia banker Mark Tipton, who said it was an easy decision to support the trip. “This unique opportunity to expose our student-athletes to a different culture while competing with teams in the region is another example of what makes Tulane athletics so special,” he said.
Competition was the main focus of the trip, and Dunleavy said that the Green Wave’s perfect record proved to him “just how far ahead our guys are from where they were last year. Their work ethic was great, their chemistry was great.” The team toured a cathedral and the 1992 Olympic Stadium in Barcelona; and a park and Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Much to their sorrow, the experience included a terrorist attack on Aug. 17, the day before the team’s flight home from Barcelona. A van driver crashed into pedestrians, killing 16 people and injuring more than 130. At the time, players and coaches were enjoying various leisure activities, and within about 30 minutes everyone associated with Tulane was accounted for, including Dunleavy, who was just two blocks away from where the attack occurred. News of the tragedy gave everyone pause and put a sobering end to an otherwise glorious trip. “You hear about stuff like this on the news but you never expect to be so close to it,” Paul said. “It was disheartening and sad, and we prayed for everyone involved. It made us appreciate life—and our team—so much more.”—BARRI BRONSTON
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TULANE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE DOCTORS HAVE MADE MAJOR NATIONAL MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS—ADVOCATING FOR THE CREATION OF MEDICARE HEALTH INSURANCE, DISCOVERING THE LINK BETWEEN SMOKING AND LUNG CANCER, AND PIONEERING VASCULAR SURGERY— WHILE CONTRIBUTING TO THE HEALTH OF THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS, TO WHOSE FATE THE SCHOOL IS FOREVER TIED.
SALLY ASHER
FRANK L. AYMAMI III
By Katy Reckdahl
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Landmarks (Previous pages) Tulane medical students don their “doctor” coats at the traditional White Coat Ceremony; a bas-relief panel adorns Hutchinson Memorial Medical Building; (This page) In The New Orleans Bee, September 1834, young doctors announce their intention to found the medical school. An 1853 painting depicts the
HIPPOLYTE SEBRON/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
COURTESY JEFFERSON PARISH LIBRARY
busy New Orleans port.
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The seven young doctors—all under the age of 26—who created the medical school that would become Tulane University saw potential in New Orleans. From its start, nearly two centuries ago, the fate of Tulane University has been inexorably intertwined with the fate of the city it called home. That feeling of interconnectedness held true, even as Tulane University grew from a small medical school holding classes in professors’ homes to a full-fledged international university that’s now that city’s largest employer. “The Tulane University School of Medicine has been a prominent part of most of the history of New Orleans, contributing significantly to the health and economy of the region,” said Dr. L. Lee Hamm, dean of the School of Medicine, who has taught at the school since 1992. Today, on the eve of the city’s tricentennial, that school-city bond may be tighter than it’s ever been. While taking care of the people of New Orleans has always been one of Tulane’s missions, Hamm said, the medical school has stepped up its commitment to the city since Hurricane Katrina. As a result, Tulane helped set up a new network of community clinics after Katrina, and today Tulane students, residents and faculty volunteer widely to aid the underserved. At the time of the school’s founding, in 1834, New Orleans was the biggest city west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its population had tripled in the seven years after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and was still climbing rapidly, as more Americans poured into the city. The booming city was rife with dangers. Many seamen suffered grave injuries at its bustling international port. And a few years earlier, not far from the French Quarter, the workers digging the New Basin Canal were dying of cholera, malaria and yellow fever at startling rates—more than 8,000 would die by the time the waterway was completed. The group of young physicians saw the city’s frequent injuries and swampy pestilence as a perfect laboratory for surgeons and medical students that was superior to other cities. “(A)n awareness of the peculiar disease[s] which prevail in this part of the Union cannot be made in Cincinnati and Philadelphia,” the doctors wrote in a notice published on the front page of The New Orleans Bee newspaper in September 1834. Through this notice, the physicians announced their decision to found a new medical school, which they called the Medical College of Louisiana. There were a few other advantages to their chosen location, the doctors wrote, including low rent, with student lodging that came to roughly $25 a month, and ready access to thousands of patients at the city’s Charity Hospital. Because the oldest of the school’s founding physicians was only 26, their notice in the Bee struck a youthfully optimistic tone, predicting their work would spur a local renaissance. “It will cause population to increase, agriculture to yield additional profits, trade and commerce to advance rapidly among us. In short, its operation will … put New Orleans in a short time on an equal footing in medical knowledge with New York and Philadelphia,” they wrote. In some ways, their wildest dreams have materialized. The medical school’s first class was made up of 11 men. Today, the school’s number of yearly applicants has topped 11,000. INFECTIOUS DISEASE BREAKTHROUGHS In 1848, the school that would be named Tulane temporarily became the Medical Department of the University of Louisiana. That year, for a notice placed in the Daily Picayune, school administrators shifted their original focus, downplaying the disease angle and emphasizing the city’s affordability. “For the correction of false statements, it is proper to mention that the extremes of boarding in this city are much reduced (and that) the epidemic, yellow fever, never prevails after the first week in November,” the notice read.
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NEIL ALEXANDER
LEFT: THEODORE SYDNEY MOISE, COURTESY TULANE UNIVERSITY ART COLLECTIONS; INSET: COURTESY TULANE MATAS LIBRARY
It was a resolve to stanch yellow fever in New Orleans that created one of the school’s first medical-research superstars. To adhere to the school’s larger mission, Dr. John Riddell also served on the city’s sanitation committee. But Riddell’s main job was chairing the college’s chemistry department. In 1852, Riddell had developed the first binocular microscope that allowed viewing through a single lens, to test his theory that yellow fever was caused by a bloodborne pathogen. Using a microscope, he also conducted what is considered the earliest known study of cholera. In the wake of an 1853 yellow-fever epidemic that killed thousands of people, the city looked to the medical school for help. Dr. Edward H. Barton, a professor who had led the Medical College of Louisiana in its earlier years, was asked to study the situation. In 1855, urged on by Barton, the state of Louisiana established the nation’s first health department. Later, Tulane dean Stanford Chaillé became nationally known for his advocacy for better sanitation and was a key force behind the establishment of the National Board of Health. Barton, like many of his contemporaries, was focused on sanitation and quarantine measures, because it wasn’t yet known that mosquitoes carrying yellow fever caused the city’s annual epidemics. As it turned out, many of the procedures recommended in Barton’s report— building a sanitary sewer system, proper disposing of waste, draining stagnant ponds—did eliminate mosquito breeding grounds and helped to prevent further widespread epidemics. In 1884, the Louisiana Legislature passed an act formally shifting the public University of Louisiana and its medical department to a brand-new private institution called Tulane University, named for philanthropist Paul Tulane. Despite the transitions and name changes, the founders’ mission to solve disease remained. “Infectious disease research has become a mainstay,” said professor John Clements, who chairs the School of Medicine’s Department of
Microbiology and Immunology and specializes in developing vaccines for children in developing countries. Like the founders of Tulane, Clements is optimistic about the better world created by research. “How many lives did Alexander Fleming save with penicillin or Jonas Salk with the polio vaccine?” he asked. In his own department, among other achievements, teams have made strides in fighting AIDS, Ebola, Zika and Lassa virus. BRIGHT LIGHTS OF MEDICINE Every doctor looks at Tulane University School of Medicine and sees different bright lights and different key accomplishments. Among the accomplished Tulane doctors are surgeons interacting with city residents by saving their lives in local operating rooms, like that of Charity Hospital; family physicians addressing the healthcare needs of children and mothers; cardiologists taking care of heart patients; and urologists developing treatment for prostate cancer. Breakthroughs Prominent faculty members also impact (This page, left) Dr. New Orleans in another way, by “bringing John Riddell is credited fame to the city,” Hamm said. with developing the Those with the most renown are two Nobel world’s first binocular Prize winners associated with the university— microscope in 1852; Dr. Louis Ignarro and Dr. Andrew Schally. (right) Dr. Louis Ignarro, a pharmacologist, did much of his Ignarro, a Nobel Prize work on the discovery of the signaling properwinner, receives an ties of the molecule nitric oxide, “the atom of honorary degree at cardiovascular health,” at Tulane but won the Commencement 2001 Nobel in 1998 while a UCLA faculty member. with university marshal His discovery led to nutritional supplements Ed Morse doing the for heart health and athletic performance and hooding duties. pharmaceutical drugs, including Viagra.
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Schally, an endocrinologist whose research for the Tulane School of Medicine was conducted as part of a joint Tulane University–Veterans Administration team, received the Nobel in 1977 for his discovery of the way key hormones function in the hypothalamus, a section of the forebrain. His work led to the recognition that the hypothalamus regulates the function of the pituitary gland. Other doctors often mentioned because of their commitment both to medicine and to their patients in New Orleans include: Longtime medical school chair Dr. George Burch, well-known for his work in electrocardiography and research on heart disease and his work during the 1940s with Charity Hospital patients suffering from sicklecell anemia. Clinical nutritionist Dr. Grace Goldsmith, who found in the 1950s that the deadly disease pellagra, often seen in Charity’s wards, was caused by poor diets lacking in niacin. She also conducted nutritional surveys of Louisiana schoolchildren, clarified the dietary roles of folic acid and vitamin B12, and established at Tulane medical school the nation’s first nutrition training for medical students. Dr. Charles Bass, a former medical school dean, whose highly researched methods of toothbrushing and flossing are still taught in dental schools. Dr. William Mogabgab, who worked with overflowing medicine wards at Charity and then lobbied the U.S. Surgeon General to improve flu vaccines. Dr. Robert Heath, who developed theories of biologic psychiatry that transformed the field. Cardiovascular researcher Dr. Gerald Berenson, principal investigator of the long-term, 16,000-participant Bogalusa Heart Study, which looks at heart-disease risk factors that begin in childhood. Trailblazing trauma surgeon and “Father of EMS” Norman McSwain, who helped to set up emergency medical service (EMS) systems nationally and was a pioneer in emergency medicine. He was highly revered for his work saving gun-violence victims in New Orleans. SURGERY ON TOP In conversations with Tulane’s faculty, surgeons often rise to the top of the list. “If someone were asking me about strengths, I would say surgery. There’s no question that’s where it all began,” said Cynthia Hayes, who directs medical alumni relations and constituency programs, acting as a liaison between the medical school and its alumni. Back in 1834, surgery was one of the founding departments of the Medical College of Louisiana. Today, Tulane has one of the oldest surgical residency programs in the nation and a legacy of high-profile surgeons. “If I were to pick two people who were instrumental in building our school to what it is today, Rudolph Matas and Alton Ochsner stand out far above all others,” said Dr. Julius Levy. Levy, who graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences in 1954 and the School of Medicine in 1957, is a clinical professor of surgery and adjunct professor of cell and molecular biology. Called “the Father of Vascular Surgery,” Dr. Rudolph Matas was elected head of surgery at Tulane University Medical College in 1894, a post he would hold for more than three decades. His name is remembered today on the Tulane downtown campus because of the Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences. Dr. Mary Killackey, who chairs Tulane’s surgery department, follows the tradition of all surgery chairs who followed Matas and is the custodian of his brain, which is preserved in a jar and displayed in her office. Killackey notes that Matas brought prominence to Tulane because of the surgery department, before the broader university became widely known in its own right. She now leads a dedicated and young leadership team, most in their 40s. “I see innovation everywhere I turn,” she said, describing how her surgeons are leading the way through robotic and minimally invasive
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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
surgeries as well as other precise, cutting-edge surgical techniques, many of which allow complex surgeries to be accomplished through small incisions. Matas was well-known for his surgeries on the chest, abdomen and blood vessels and is credited with a long list of achievements. He’d first gained prominence for a momentous Charity Hospital event that’s sometimes referred to as “the birth of vascular surgery”—the day when Matas successfully performed a technique called endoaneurysmorrhaphy on a patient whose brachial artery had been hit by a machete in Louisiana’s sugarcane fields. The technique treats an aneurysm, a blood-filled bulge in a blood vessel, by opening its sac and collapsing, folding and suturing its walls. When Matas retired in 1927, Alton Ochsner, a heart surgeon who during his career operated on 20,000 patients, including Juan Peron, the president of Argentina; actor Gary Cooper; and pro golfer Ben Hogan, replaced him. Ochsner, who ended up leaving Tulane to start his own hospital, also is credited with linking smoking to lung cancer, an assertion that was first ridiculed, then confirmed by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1964. Ochsner’s student, pioneering cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, who died in 2008 at age 99, won special favor after Katrina when he helped to facilitate an arrangement with his post-Tulane home, Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, which took in all of Tulane’s medical students. DeBakey was still a student at Tulane when he invented “the DeBakey pump,” a roller pump for blood transfusions that became a key
piece of the heart-lung machines used during surgery and is crucial to open-heart surgeries. His more than 60,000 operations included a starstudded patient list dotted with world leaders, among them Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Jordan’s King Hussein bin Talal. Having treated patients who did not have money to pay for his services, DeBakey became an outspoken advocate for the creation of Medicare health insurance. In this effort, he had the ear of two influential patients, Kennedy, who introduced a Medicare plan, and Johnson, who Patient Care signed the legislation in 1965. (This page) Dr. Mary DeBakey said that his interest in Killackey joins the community well-being began during his lineage of impressive childhood in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and surgery department his training as a student at Tulane medical chairs. (Facing page, school. He recalled in a 1972 interview that top) Tulane doctors Ochsner refused to charge patients who were consult with a Charity ministers or schoolteachers, because they Hospital patient in were “working for humanity.” 1964; (bottom) Dr. Anjali DeBakey’s observations watching his menNiyogi oversees the tor, Ochsner, at Charity Hospital cemented Formerly Incarcerated convictions that the fate of Tulane and New Transitions Clinic at Orleans were as one, he said. “There’s no way the Ruth U. Fertel / for each one of us to be a hermit. We’ve got to Tulane Community live together.” Health Clinic.
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Builders, Heroes and a VOICE for GIRLS
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A quartet of Newcomb/Tulane women— strong-willed and experienced—founded Nola4Women two years ago in anticipation of the tricentennial of New Orleans. The women—emerita professor of history Sylvia Frey and former university administrators Florence Defroscia André (NC ’66, G ’74), Kathy Epstein Seligman (NC ’76) and Martha Hatten Sullivan (NC ’60, G ’70)—have the goal of educating people about the important role that women have played in the city from its beginnings. They also want action taken to ensure that women and girls have the opportunity to reach their full potential. They hope that Nola4Women will serve as a model that can be replicated in communities around the world.
NOL A4WOM E N SH I N E S A L IGH T ON WOM E N ’ S CON T R I BU T IONS TO T H E H ISTORY OF NEW ORLEA NS W HILE A DVOCATING FOR A BE T T E R S TAT U S I N T H E F U T U R E . By Leslie Cardé
EXCITEMENT WHEREVER THEY GO Sullivan, former associate dean for academic affairs at Newcomb College and later vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Tulane, said, “From every corner of the city, regardless of the age, race, education or socio-economic status of the participants, an air of excitement permeates any gathering where the project is described.” She added, “Members of the Tulane community have encouraged us every step of the way, offering assistance on many levels. … At every turn, we were met with excitement and enthusiasm. That delight helped to assure the continuation of this project. … “Above all, it is a resounding tribute to the role women have played in our society—all the while underscoring the inequalities that still exist.” PLACE IN HISTORY To bring awareness of women’s contributions to the city, a major educational component of Nola4Women is Women of New Orleans: Builders and Rebuilders, a series of more than 45 exhibits and/or performances that began in September 2015 and will continue to pop up through December 2018. “Women’s history, in general, is on a parallel path with mainstream history, but it’s not been fully integrated into it,” said Frey. “It’s one reason you don’t see the accomplishments of women in medicine, music, politics and so many other genres in today’s school textbooks.” Frey, author of several books including Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (University of North Carolina Press), is the namesake of the Sylvia R. Frey Lecture series presented by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane.
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Raising Awareness Martha Sullivan, Kathy Seligman, Florence
“We’re so much more than Betsy Ross and Amelia Earhart,” said Seligman, former director of the Office of Newcomb Alumnae and Development. She is now a strategic consultant with a special interest in issues impacting women and girls globally. “Katherine Johnson, the African-American physicist and mathematician who made enormous contributions to NASA, was never heard of until 2016’s film Hidden Figures,” Seligman said. “She just celebrated her 99th birthday, yet we are first hearing about this woman who made an enormous contribution to the space program.” Forty different contributing institutions from libraries to large and small house museums are involved in the Builders and Rebuilders series. “Taken together, they showcase, in extraordinary fashion, the prominent role women have played in the city,” Frey said. “Each of our partner institutions searched their own collections, some hidden away in boxes and forgotten, to retrieve the histories of forgotten women. The Builders project represents a beginning to change that.” Builders exhibits are on display or will be soon and throughout the 2018 tricentennial at venues including The National WWII Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art and the Old U.S. Mint. Go to www.nola4women.org for a complete list of exhibits. ADVOCATES FOR CHANGE An important part of Nola4Women is Hear My Voice. This program encourages adolescent girls to use their own voices to advocate for change on issues that they deem important. Nola4Women partnered with Bright Moments, a community outreach organization, to recruit a group of high school students from private and public schools and with Lift Louisiana, an advocacy group for improving health outcomes for women and children. “It’s important that teenage girls learn to speak up about issues that concern them and their future,” said André, counselor to women at Newcomb College in the 1970s.
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RYAN RIVET
André and Sylvia Frey are founders of Nola4Women. (Facing page) Sci High students express thanks to Anne Levy. A Tulane University Digital Library exhibit features (clockwise) alumni director Bea Field, artist Angela Gregory, educator Barbara Guillory Thompson and cheerleader Rosa Hart.
The high school students came up with a list of priorities, which included information about reproductive rights, rape and sexual violence, and socio-economic issues like the wage gap. Nola4Women asked facilitators to address these vital issues with the students, so they could hear from experts. “We want to stress women helping women,” André said. “But research proves it’s important that boys understand this, too, so they become men who understand and appreciate the challenges women face and become advocates for change as well.” Plans are for boys to be included in future Hear My Voice sessions. FACE-TO-FACE WITH HEROES Another facet of Nola4Women is Heroes, a project that involves bringing New Orleans leaders, many of them known internationally, face-to-face with students in classrooms. Local schools have participated in a research and writing pilot program as part of their World History and Language Arts curriculum. Ruby Bridges, who became a national symbol of the civil rights movement as the first student to integrate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in 1960, is one of the Heroes. Bridges came to Sci High to speak to students. “Watching those students in the classroom was inspiring,” Sullivan said. “They were completely engaged and eagerly sitting on the edge of their seats.” In addition to Bridges, the list of New Orleans Heroes runs the gamut from Anne Levy, a Holocaust survivor who fought against the candidacy of former Klansman David Duke as governor of Louisiana in 1991, to Keiana Cavé, who as a 15-year-old Lusher High School student in New Orleans researched toxins present in the BP oil spill in 2010. (Cavé continued her research in the lab of Sunshine Van Bael, Tulane assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.) Other Heroes are the late Ruth Rogan Benerito, a 1935 Newcomb College graduate and an inventor, who discovered a method to make
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STATUS OF WOMEN The statistics for women in Louisiana and New Orleans are troubling. One in four women in Louisiana is uninsured, the state ranks 50th in publicly funded women’s health services, and one out of 10 New Orleans women working full-time, working year-round, earns less than $15,000 a year. “In the ’70s, we were trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed, and today we’re still illuminating the same inequities,” André said. (Women today make 80 percent of what men earn in the United States, according to the American Association of University Women.) “And, teen pregnancy is an issue in every part of the world,” Seligman said. “We may not all discuss domestic violence,” she added, “but it crosses all class boundaries. Whether it’s physical or verbal, it’s happening everywhere.” GLOBAL SUMMIT PLANNED The Nola4Women programs will culminate in a Global Summit on Women and Girls in the second half of 2018. Open to the public, the summit will look at successful initiatives around the world and will concentrate on action plans for women and girls in New Orleans. “We need to change the dialogue—not only about the inspiring women in New Orleans—but nationwide,” Seligman said. “We need to create an agenda for change. Anything we can do toward awareness raising is important. One’s questioning of the norm usually comes with hindsight. If we can look to others, outside our own immediate frame of reference, it gives us perspective.”
TULANE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
COURTESY OF MELANIE BOULET
cotton wrinkle-resistant, and Mahalia Jackson, the New Orleans native who became the world’s gospel queen. A group of students had the opportunity to meet Hero chef Leah Chase up-close and personal when Nola4Women took them to Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, a meeting place for civil rights activists in the 1960s.
To that end, Nola4Women’s plan is to bring together people working in the areas of women’s rights and justice from around the world to discover how critical problems have been dealt with in the most successful ways. “The problems women of New Orleans face are universal,” said Frey. “We have a great deal to learn from countries like Sweden, which have the most advanced national policy for women and girls, but also from developing countries like Haiti and Liberia, with whom we have historic connections.” The roster of speakers for the summit is not finalized, but the summit promises to be a landmark occasion with an exchange of ideas from around the globe that will flow well beyond 2018. “New Orleans post-Katrina has taken on the mantle of victim,” said Seligman. “But we want New Orleans to be seen as an innovator. Changing mindsets can be slow, but we have to keep chipping away at it. Rome wasn’t built in a day.” The other Nola4Women founders have their own high hopes for the summit. “I have always been an advocate for social justice,” said Frey. “Let’s look back at where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and where we need to go, through historical introspection.” The city of New Orleans is particularly important, said Sullivan. “It is a model of resilience and rebirth, and that’s one of the reasons why we charge forward, sometimes in spite of the fact that we felt overwhelmed by the legwork to be done. But, there’s a positive undertone that always rallies us together.” “We are now at the point where we need even more volunteers, and need to consider the possibility of an eventual center or entity that would encourage programs that support women and help ensure that the city of New Orleans does indeed adopt an agenda for women and girls,” said André. “If you don’t think big, you may never get to your goal.”
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COMMUNITY
ARTIST YAACOV AGAM, PHOTOGRAPH BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
& Connections
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J E W S I N N E W O R L E A N S H AV E S H A P E D T H E C O M M E R C E , C U LT U R E A N D P H I L A N T H R O P Y O F T H E C I T Y D U R I N G N E A R LY T H E E N T I R E T Y O F I T S 3 0 0 Y E A R S O F E X I S T E N C E . By Fran Simon
This year, New Orleans’ 299th, was a banner year for Cathy Cahn Kahn Cahn. Born Cathy Cahn and married for many years to the late Fred Kahn, at age 87, she married an old friend, 92-year-old Charlie Cahn (E ’45) and finished her work on the archives of the Jewish community of Greater New Orleans. The archives for Congregation Gates of Prayer, Temple Sinai, Touro Synagogue, Chevra Thilim, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Federation, Federation of Jewish Sisterhoods, National Council of Jewish Women and more are housed in the Louisiana Research Collection of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. The records are a treasure trove of stories about Jewish lives that have contributed and continue to enrich the culture of New Orleans. Since the mid-1700s, Jews have fundamentally shaped New Orleans. The city wouldn’t be the same without its Jewish community, says Cahn, who co-wrote Images of America: The Jewish Community of New Orleans. “We have assimilated into the general New Orleans community. We live on any block in the city. We are part and parcel of New Orleans.” To Cahn, one word that boils down the Jewish community—like a restorative bowl of matzo ball soup—is connections. A hallmark of the Jewish community’s impact on the city has always been its philanthropy, with Jewish individuals and collective groups funding the arts (notably the New Orleans Museum of Art), health care (the likes of Touro Infirmary), education (from preschools and primary schools to Delgado Community College and Tulane University), and religious institutions (such as Touro Synagogue). “What makes our funds available is that from the beginning we were excluded from pouring out hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on Visual Prayer Carnival and debutante debuts,” Cahn The New Orleans says. Her father used to call the coterie Holocaust Memorial is of well-to-do and liberal-minded women located in Woldenberg who got things done in the city “Pinks in Park on the banks of minks.” Now, the Carnival groups Krewe the Mississippi River. du Jieux and Krewe of Meshuganah goodA kinetic sculpture of heartedly satirize the traditional krewes. nine panels by artist Only in New Orleans would you find Jews Yaacov Agam, the who celebrate both Mardi Gras and Purim memorial was installed with gusto. in 2003.
TIES THAT DON’T WRINKLE Jews formed the bedrock of the business community of New Orleans and are among the leading Crescent City entrepreneurs of today. Among the hoards of archives that Cahn organized were 35 linear feet of records from the Jewish Children’s Home (1855–1981), which was founded after a series of yellow fever epidemics demonstrated the need to support destitute women and children. Sidney Pulitzer’s father and uncles grew up in the Children’s Home and later founded the Wembley Tie Co. in New Orleans. The family struggled through the Depression and was in “the most difficult business you could ever imagine” because of ever-changing fashion, Pulitzer says. “Uncle Morris used to say, ‘We were so poor, we didn’t know the difference.’” Pulitzer’s father owned an Australian mohair suit, and from this garment he got the idea for an exclusive, wrinkle-free tie fabric. “It became the tie to wear because it didn’t wrinkle. In five years, sales went from $350,000 to $4.2 million,” says Pulitzer, who was president, CEO and chair of the Wembley board from the 1970s until 1997. In its heyday, Wembley (later renamed Wemco) had 22 percent market share, and the company sold for $63 million. This coming spring, Pulitzer will teach his course on entrepreneurism for the 22nd year at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane. Pulitzer wrote the textbook for the course Big Money 101: Management and Investment Success. The main message he drives home to students is the value of free enterprise and the entrepreneurial spirit, which he fears is dying out. Pulitzer relates a story his father loved to tell about a luncheon meeting of a dozen or so local business leaders that was convened by Edith Rosenwald Stern, the Sears heiress who moved to the Crescent City after marrying New Orleans native Edgar Stern Sr. (A&S ’06). Trying to raise money for the Jewish Children’s Home, she personally pledged a large sum, perhaps $250,000, then Stern went around the table asking each business leader for a pledge. “Dad didn’t know why he was invited, but when it was his turn, he pledged $15,000. He nervously told Uncle Manuel what he had done, but Manuel was laid back. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Sam, we’ll figure it out,’ and they did.” When the largest ready-to-wear store in Atlanta got wind of the story, the establishment signed on to do business with the Pulitzer family. Edith Stern’s father, Julius Rosenwald, established a paradigm of American philanthropy, says retired New Orleans businessman Bill Hess, her grandson. Rosenwald gave away a third of his wealth.
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“We live on any block in the city. We are part and parcel of New Orleans.” —Cathy Cahn Kahn Cahn
Fabric of the City From the Jewish Children’s Home to Edith Stern, a founder of Newcomb Nursery School associated with Tulane, to Sidney Pulitzer, a professor of entrepreneurism at the business school, and Eden Saltzman, working for a startup, Jews have made their
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Edith Stern continued the tradition, founding Newcomb Nursery School with other determined mothers, and also Country Day School, as well as contributing to many other causes. “My grandmother was willful, and she came from a willful group,” says Hess of Stern, whom he describes as “very smart, committed to civil rights and social justice, and progressive.” She invited her grandchildren, once they were 18, to sit on the board of the Stern Family Fund to learn how to distribute funds for the “wellbeing of mankind,” as her father intended. Edgar Stern, like the Pulitzers and so many other Jews, was in the family business. Lehman, Stern and Co. were cotton merchants (1880–1940). The cotton trade was instrumental to the burgeoning New Orleans economy and to building the Jewish community, says Michael Cohen, associate professor and chair of the Tulane Jewish Studies Department. New York University Press published Cohen’s book, Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era, in December. In the 19th century, cotton was the foremost commodity in the United States, and the port city of New Orleans was pivotal. “The South was the most important cotton land in the world,” Cohen explains. “Until the mid-19th century, cotton came down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and then out to the world. Jews played an important role in financing and marketing the cotton industry. In a period when business is predicated on trust, ethnicity or Jewishness becomes key.” The significance of this extensive network of Jewish enterprise has been underappreciated, Cohen contends. Likewise, a comprehensive history of New Orleans Jewry has not been explored since the late 1960s. Cohen is working to develop a three-day colloquium that the Jewish Studies Department will host with “the best historians who can contextualize the Jewish experience
Newcomb Nursery School
Edith Rosenwald Stern Jewish Children’s Home
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in new ways” and will culminate with an edited volume documenting the contributions of Jews in the region. CIVIC-MINDED Besides the contributions to the commerce of the city, Jews also played, and continue to play, a pivotal role in the civic life of New Orleans. David Goldstein, rabbi emeritus of Touro Synagogue, has taught Jewish studies at Tulane since he arrived in New Orleans in 1978. He is particularly proud of the New Orleans Jewish community for its long history of social justice and human rights work, as well as interfaith activities and strong collaborations with the African-American community. Goldstein and his wife, Shannie, led an advocacy effort in the 1980s on behalf of Soviet Jews who were oppressed and seeking asylum. “In the 40 years that I’ve been here in New Orleans, what have I seen?” Goldstein asks. “A nucleus of civic-minded Jews in every quarter—City Council, judges, leaders of civic organizations, philanthropists ... Jews here are disproportionate in terms of the deeds we do and our philosophy. The Jews have never seen themselves as the center of activity, but rather as part of the larger community, and that’s what distinguishes them.”
Fran Simon is a graduate student in the Master of Liberal Arts program in the Tulane School of Professional Advancement.
Sidney Pulitzer
SPENCER FRANKSTON
CHERYL GERBER
THE YOUNG AND THE JEWISH The Jewish Studies Department, Chabad and Hillel help nourish the next generation of Jewish leaders. According to the first-ever college guide touted by The Forward, a monthly magazine published for a Jewish American audience, Tulane University ranked in the top 10 best colleges for Jewish students in the country (No. 6) this year. Tulane Hillel engages nearly 92 percent of Jewish undergraduates in a typical year and, remarkably, about 35 percent of all non-Jewish students at Tulane. Tulane Jewish Leaders, a group of about 350 undergraduates, is mentored by the Hillel professional team. This past year,
the leadership group developed 112 programs that engaged over 4,600 students and community members. Liza Sherman, chief programs and operating officer at Hillel, says, “This hands-on approach to Jewish community-building has redefined Jewish life at Tulane.” From her first year at Tulane, Eden Saltzman was active in Hillel. Connections are important to her, she says, and Hillel gave her a sense of home and “Jewish geography.” At a Jewish Leaders dine-around, Saltzman met Ben Swig (PHTM ’09, MBA ’16), co-founder of Ready Responders, a company that won the Big Idea competition during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week this year. Ready Responders will utilize a mobile app and GPS technology to rapidly deploy members of a network of part-time EMTs, paramedics and healthcare professionals to respond to the city’s 911 calls. It will utilize telehealth technology to reduce costly ambulance transfers to emergency departments when possible. Saltzman graduated with a bachelor’s degree in public health and international development in May 2017 and now has landed a job with Ready Responders. “I’m pumped,” she says. “This is public health, entrepreneurship, creativity ... I’ve found a job that I’m passionate about.” Saltzman exemplifies the type of student that Tulane, one of the country’s best schools for Jews, attracts. She is part of a new generation that is building upon the foundation laid by the city’s older generations of Jews who found a home among the rich gumbo of ethnicities crowding this crescent slice of land in the heart of the American South. Like her forebearers she is falling in love. A Cleveland native, Saltzman always wears a small silver fleur-de-lis ring, a symbol of the city’s culture and community that she cherishes. She calls herself “a New Orleanian in progress.”
Eden Saltzman
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New Orleans Literature I N C E L E B R AT I O N O F T H E T R I C E N T E N N I A L OF N E W OR L E A N S , AU T HOR , PROF E S S OR O F C R E AT I V E W R I T I N G A N D N E W YO R K E R AND
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U N D E R S TA N D T H E C O N T E M P O R A RY C I T Y. By Thomas Beller You can never step into the same river twice, as Heraclitus wrote, and the same may be true of a book. Except in the famous aphorism it’s the river that’s always changing, whereas with books, it’s the reader. I have a highly subjective list of books set in New Orleans that are important to me. Some I tried to read before I got here, but I never was able to until I arrived. The city was the key to opening the book. And there’s a book I read before I got here—when I read it the second time around from within the landscape in which it is set, I realized, the book was the key to the city, or at least one particular neighborhood. WADING TOWARDS HOME Michael Lewis In the months before I moved to New Orleans in fall 2008, I reached out to people in the world of publishing to ask for reading recommendations to help me get the lay of the land. An editor at the Sunday New York Times Magazine referred me to an article by Michael Lewis, “Wading Towards Home,” which had appeared three years earlier in October 2005. The piece is about Lewis’ visit to his hometown in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. Yet, despite the topical nature of the subject, it is his thoughts on the nature of time in New Orleans that have stayed with me. “There’s a fine line between stability and stagnation, and by the time I was born, New Orleans had already crossed it,” is the faintly Tolstoyan lead. That tension between what’s good about continuity and what is not good about continuity has been a useful, and inevitable, lens through which to see the city ever since. On revisiting the article I see that the next lines of the piece have also stayed with me: “The difference between growing up in New Orleans, starting in 1960, and growing up most other places in America was how easy it was to believe, in New Orleans, that nothing meaningful occurred outside it. No one of importance ever seemed to move in, just as no one of importance ever moved away.” An interesting observation coming from someone who moved away.
THINKSTOCK
THE MOVIEGOER Walker Percy Walker Percy is one of the most well-known and accomplished novelists who lived for many years in New Orleans and Covington, Louisiana. In
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addition, he is responsible for shepherding to publication perhaps the most well-known New Orleans novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, whose author, John Kennedy Toole, [a Tulane College of Arts & Sciences 1958 graduate] had killed himself by the time Percy was presented with the manuscript by Toole’s mother. Percy’s The Moviegoer won the National Book Award in 1962. I was told he is essential reading for someone interested in New Orleans. If you are a writer, let alone a professor of creative writing at Tulane, The Moviegoer is a must read. I haven’t read it. I tried a couple of times, but put it down after a few pages in each instance. This says more about the reader than the book. I see that among the other books on the long list for the 1962 National Book Award are Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Heller’s Catch-22, and Yates’ Revolutionary Road. I’ll let the Salinger slide on the grounds of its general weirdness and the way Zooey gets a bit wobbly. But Catch-22 and Revolutionary Road are among my favorite books. There is no way The Moviegoer is going to be better than either of those books. No way it is close. I don’t really think like this; I’m just trying to psych myself up so that I give it another try. Then I made friends with a nun who teaches literature at St. Joseph Seminary in Covington. I paid a visit to Sister Jean one day when I’d driven my daughter across the lake to ride her horse. Sister Jean took us to lunch and showed us the grounds. At the end, Sister Jean asked if I had read Percy. When I confessed to her my sin of not having read The Moviegoer, she didn’t chastise me but expressed a brief moment of pity followed by an effusion about the book. Upon hearing her recomendation, her pity for me at having not yet read it, and her anticipation that I soon would, I recommitted to reading the book. It sounds ridiculous to hyperventilate so much in anticipation of reading a book, I know, when all one has to do is pick it up and open it. (Also, find it, but that is another matter.) A HALL OF MIRRORS Robert Stone When I first picked up A Hall of Mirrors— Robert Stone’s first book, set in New Orleans during the 1960s civil rights era—I read its first pages about a young, rather lost-sounding man named Rhinehardt on a Greyhound bus on the Gulf Coast heading toward New Orleans. It’s night and Rhinehardt is sharing a bottle of whiskey with his seatmate. Then the bus arrives in New Orleans and … down went the book. Who knows why I stopped reading that first time? One stops reading books for all kinds of reasons, only some of them literary. I gave A Hall of Mirrors several other tries and never got much further than the opening scene. Then I moved to New Orleans. When I next tried, the book opened up to me. There is so much insight into the structure and mood of New Orleans, both its street life and also the less visible architecture of the decision-making that informs those streets. There are passages set in the French Quarter, and in one of the city’s housing projects; there are do-gooders, drifters, locals of good repute and bad. There is a passing reference to chicory coffee. I don’t recall much description of foliage, but the lush, enveloped nature of the city, once I had seen it myself, felt implicit in the prose. It’s tempting to laud the book for the prophetic orgy of race-based violence that is its culmination. It occurs at a New Orleans stadium (perhaps based on the old Tulane football stadium?) and lasts over a hundred pages. But the book’s pleasure is found not in snapshot of a society on the cusp of violence but in its insight into character and the enveloping nature of the place. THE FISH THAT ATE THE WHALE Rich Cohen I kept Rich Cohen’s work at arm’s length because I was so annoyed with his first book, Tough Jews, for reasons that were wonderfully spelled out by the Italian-American critic Albert Mobilio in his Village Voice review. Short version: Being ethnically associated with mobsters is a nightmare. But then I read Cohen’s magnificent book, Sweet and Low, in which
“The act of reading a book is only partly about picking it up. The larger task is not putting it down.” —Thomas Beller Cohen [a 1990 graduate of Tulane’s College of Arts & Sciences] tells the story about the genesis of the famous artificial sweetener, which is also the story of sugar in America, the story about the corruption of money (and of mobsters and Brooklyn, and Jews in America)—and most of all, the story of Cohen’s own family. The Fish That Ate the Whale is a drama about a man named Samuel Zemurray, who built a fortune selling bannanas—and became a major benefactor to Tulane University. Much of the action is set in New Orleans, along with the Central American countries that were once called banana republics. One of Cohen’s great talents is to imbue a journalistic story with a sense of nearly breathless intimacy and immediacy. Zemurray is, in a way, a stand-in for Cohen’s Brooklyn grandfather, another self-invented figure. They seem to be fighting for survival even when they have made millions. This sense of desperation animates Cohen’s prose with results that are often beautiful. Somehow, reading Cohen, you feel like life is fleeting and you have to gulp oxygen to stay alive. IN THE LAND OF DREAMY DREAMS Ellen Gilchrist I read Ellen Gilchrist’s first book, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams (published in 1981), straight through on my first encounter. This was years before I moved to New Orleans. The Southern city in which the stories were set was a kind of character in the book, but I imbibed its atmosphere without context. Then one day, in my first weeks in New Orleans when I was spending a lot of time just driving around aimlessly looking at the houses and the people and everything else, I passed the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Association. I came up Laurel Street, which leads more or less right into its front gate, and made a left on Jefferson Avenue. I drove for about 2 seconds and then stopped. What had I just passed? Why was it so familiar? I backed the car up and stared at the entrance for a while. It all came back to me in a rush, a work of fiction I had read years earlier whose setting was suddenly presented to me in real life. The book’s title story, and the reason for my abrupt stop on Jefferson Avenue, begins with a young woman on the Huey P. Long Bridge, throwing “two Davis racquets and a gut strung PDP tournament racquet into the Mississippi River.” After that come the tennis balls. She is giving up tennis, her life passion, in a fit of disgust at herself. I re-read the story with my newfound sense of landscape and context. If I had to recommend one book both for pleasure and for insight into postwar New Orleans, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams would be at the top of the list. Thomas Beller is an associate professor of English at Tulane. He is the author of Seduction Theory, a collection of stories; The Sleep-Over Artist, a novel that was a New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000; How To Be a Man: Scenes From a Protracted Boyhood, an essay collection; and J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, a biography that won the New York City Book Award for Biography/Memoir. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker’s Culture Desk, The New York Times and Travel + Leisure magazine.
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REVERSE OF A CURSE A contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Rich Cohen (A&S ’90) delves into the history of the Chicago Cubs—spanning from the team’s earliest days to the 2016 season when they finally became World Series champions— in his new book, The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse.
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DAVID NEFF
Dinner With 12 Tulanians Dishes Tulane Fun
Culture and Ethics At 8 years old, Chia-Chee Chiu (NC ’96) knew that she wanted to become an educator. “I’m a product of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and I gained a sense that it was what I wanted to do in third grade,” she said. Today, Chiu dedicates her career to fostering the growth of students as a middle school principal at Ethical Culture Fieldston School and to cultivating Asian-American writers as a board member for the nonprofit organization Kundiman. While attending Tulane, Chiu double-majored in English and ecology, evolution and organismal biology. “Being a double major at Tulane helped me to develop a sense of what it means to have different perspectives. The liberal arts education that I had opened me up to seeing through different lenses, which ties into where I am now in my career at Fieldston,” she said. Fieldston is an independent school in New York City. The school’s mission has always been to help kids develop a sense of social justice. For the past two years, Chiu has also served on the board of trustees for Kundiman. “I think this organization is vitally important,” said Chiu. “The hallmark of the nonprofit has been creating space to connect AsianAmerican writers across the country.” The organization was founded by Filipino poets Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi in the early 2000s. Gambito and Legaspi envisioned a mentorship program that could address common challenges facing Asian-American writers, like access to resources and lack of visibility. While Kundiman regularly offers readings and residential workshops, the organization has also hosted an annual retreat at Fordham University in Bronx, New York, for 200 fellows since its founding. “As an educator, supporting Kundiman aligns with my beliefs of supporting my community,” said Chiu.—Mary Cross
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Principal Beliefs Chia-Chee Chiu says her Tulane education influenced her academic career as well as her nonprofit activity.
TABLE FOR 12 Alumni and students come together during the “Dinner with 12 Tulanians” events.
“Homework. Laundry. Dinner party.” Tulane students’ to-do lists have become slightly more distinctive in recent years, thanks to the “Dinner with 12 Tulanians” program organized by the Office of Alumni Relations. In this program, New Orleans-area Tulane alumni host current students at their homes for dinner parties, bringing together current and future alumni for conversation, good food and camaraderie. Introduced in spring 2013 by vice president of alumni relations James Stofan, the dinners have become a popular tradition for both students and hosts; students are quick to sign up, and many alumni are repeat hosts. Alumna and host Meredith Beers (NC ’07, PHTM ’11, ’16), said it’s “a great way to meet current students and to hear about all the things going on at Tulane.” Hosts can also be creative with their dinner locations, choosing to open their homes or explore local restaurants with their guests (past locations include Dat Dog and Galatoire’s). The number of attendees for each event is flexible and not limited to 12 students. Hosts can pair up with fellow alumni to share costs and duties. Program manager Madison Hurwitz said her favorite aspect of the program is how it engages Tulanians of all ages. “One of my favorite events was co-hosted by a group of young alumni that served Popeyes and king cake. The students loved it, and it was a great example of how every dinner is unique.” Alumni who are interested in hosting dinners should contact Madison Hurwitz at mhurwit1@tulane.edu.—Marianna Barry
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Dispatch Hanna Gamble W H E R E
Y ’ A T !
1960s WILLIAM L. MIMELES (B ’62) was selected as a recipient of the 60th New Orleans Center for Community and Justice Weiss Award. Mimeles is currently chairman of the board of trustees of Bridge House Grace House, which provides services for clients dealing with drug and alcohol addiction. He is also chairman of the board of trustees of LCMC Health, which operates a fivehospital system as well as urgent care clinics throughout Greater New Orleans. BOB TESSLER (B ’62) was elected as treasurer for the board of directors of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Foundation, the charitable and educational arm of the world’s only Jewish college social fraternity. Tessler was elected earlier this year at the fraternity’s 104th annual convention in Las Vegas. Tessler is president of B. T. Investments as well as executive and director at L & T Corp. He resides in Foster City and Napa, California, with his wife, Carol. They have two sons, Harris and Jason. On April 28, 2017, RAUL VALDES-FAULI (A&S ’65) was elected as mayor of the city of Coral Gables, Florida. He is also a partner at Fox Rothschild LLP.
1970s SCOTT KELLERMANN (M ’71, PHTM ’78) was presented with the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine Outstanding Alumni Award. Kellermann also received a Fulbright Scholarship to teach for approximately 10 months at the Uganda Nursing School, which he founded. When he returns to the U.S., Kellermann will assume the position of adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. He says that this quote resonates with him: “The problem with retirement is that you never have a day off.” On Aug. 31, 2017, PATRICIA A. HURLEY (NC ’72) retired as associate dean of liberal arts at Texas A&M University. Artist JANINE COLLINS (NC ’74) painted portraits of five former presidents of the University of Louisiana–Lafayette, including Edwin L. Stephens, Lether E. Frazar, Joel L. Fletcher, Clyde L. Rougeou and Ray P. Authement. The University of Louisiana–Lafayette Foundation commissioned the project. A Lafayette resident raised in New Orleans, Collins began painting portraits after attending an unveiling of a portrait featuring her father, Jason Collins, at the Tulane University School of Medicine. REX M. HOLMLIN (E ’74, B ’75) received a doctorate of engineering in engineering management from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
CHARLES T. WORKMAN (G ’68) published two books within the last year, God Alive in the Living Wonders of Time and Humanity and The Past Alive in the Living Wonders of Poetic Vision.
GREEN ACRES Hanna Gamble (B ’12) had barely graduated from the A. B. Freeman School of Business when she took over full-time management of Jack R. Gamble Jr. LLC, her family-owned company that manages St. Lucia Plantation, a pine-tree farm in Logansport, Louisiana. She was already a company employee and interested in a forestry career, even though Tulane did not have a forestry program. But her education served her well, she says. Within five years, the third-generation landowner would be recognized as Louisiana’s 2017 Tree Farmer of the Year by the Louisiana Forestry Association. “It’s such an honor,” Gamble said. “I love the forestry industry. I love pine trees— they’re a renewable resource,” noting that her late father, for whom the company is named and who originally planted the trees, would have enjoyed having more interaction with the farm, but for his workload as an attorney. St. Lucia Plantation contains more than 1,800 acres of mostly loblolly pine, which Gamble sells to be milled into packaging, toilet paper, plywood and other products. The trees are grown within the guidelines of the American Tree Farm System and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which promote responsible forestry. “Technology and planting practices change throughout the years, and pine-tree farming is a long-term type of farming. We have a lot of different stands that have different techniques that were utilized,” though the goal is always to grow a dense, tall, hardy tree. Gamble already seems to be a forestry star, having attracted the attention of some Baton Rouge–area urban-forestry students, who were eager to have a woman as a professional role model. “Some women said that I had inspired them. I’m thrilled to hear that I’m inspiring the next generation even though I guess I’m still considered part of the ‘next’ generation.” Her work honors previous generations as well. “I come from a long line of farming, and to my knowledge, my ancestors homesteaded in Logansport. So it was out of necessity that you treat the land with respect, and it provides.”—FAITH DAWSON
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Dispatch Carolyn Day ROBERT S. TOALE (A&S ’75) was re-elected to the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He was also appointed as vice chair of the public defense committee and as a member of the budget committee. He will continue his active participation on the death penalty committee. BRUCE LANDY (M ’80) and LARRY SHORE (A&S ’76, M ’80) went to Ontario, Oregon, to see the total eclipse of the sun on Aug. 21, 2017. RICHARD MONTALTO (G ’78) retired as professor emeritus at Mississippi University for Women (MUW). Montalto joined the MUW faculty in 1988. Following a vote by community lawyers, PAUL ORSHAN (A&S ’78) was named the 2017 Legal Luminary by the Dade County Bar Association in Florida in the area of bankruptcy and restructuring. COURTESY OF CAROLYN DAY
ANNE SEGREST MCCULLOCH (NC ’79, L ’84) is president and CEO of Housing Partnership Equity Trust, a Washington, D.C.–based national real estate investment trust that was established by major nonprofit affordable housing developers to acquire, preserve and own affordable rental housing.
DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS Scholar Carolyn Day (SLA ’10) knows that some British fashion trends sported during the late 18th and early 19th centuries were to die for. While researching her PhD dissertation at Tulane, Day delved into the tuberculosis epidemic that ravaged Europe during this period and how the British romanticized the disease from 1780 to 1850. Day’s first book, Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease, chronicles the disease’s curious connections to women’s fashion, complete with fullcolor fashion plates, medical images and garment photographs. It was released on Oct. 5 by Bloomsbury Academic. Day, currently an associate professor at Furman University in South Carolina, where she teaches courses in British history and the history of medicine, initially came across the inspiration for her work while studying for her master’s degree at Cambridge University. “While I was at Cambridge, I was reading a lot of background information on the history of medicine. I kept stumbling across references to tuberculosis as being an ‘easy and beautiful way to die,’ which struck me as odd,” she said. Intrigued, she investigated the infectious disease’s peculiar impact on perceptions of beauty during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Tuberculosis, particularly difficult to diagnose pre-germ theory, attacks victims’ lungs while damaging other organs. “Back then, beauty was actually seen as a marker of hereditary predisposition for the disease,” said Day, noting that this was due to consumption-enhancing qualities that were already established as attractive in women: emaciated frames, sparkling eyes, pale skin marbled by veins and rosy cheeks. “It also made your clavicles quite prominent. They believed it would make your shoulder blades pop up—giving the appearance of a bird about to take flight,” she said. The period’s neoclassical women’s fashion also began to highlight or in some cases emulate symptoms of the disease. “Dresses began to drop very low in the back to show off that winged appearance,” said Day. By the 1840s, dresses were being constructed in a manner that physically forced heathy women’s bodies into consumptive body positioning. Makeup practices were also influenced by the tubercular look, as ladies recreated pale faces, rosy cheeks and even painted-on veins to appear more delicate.—MARY CROSS
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LARRY MURRAY (B ’79, L ’83) is joining The Picard Group (TPG) as senior director of state legislative and regulatory affairs. Murray, who will be based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, brings 35 years of experience in and around the state capitol. He will join TPG’s state legislative and regulatory practice group. Murray previously served on Tulane University’s Alumni Board of Directors, the Provost’s Council, was president of the Tulane Associates Board of Directors and the school’s Annual Fund campaign. His children, LOGAN MURRAY (SSE ’12) and LARA MURRAY (SLA ’14, SCS ’18), are involved in health care in Louisiana.
1980s TIM FULTON (A&S ’80, B ’81) published his second book, Small Business Matters & All That Jazz, this year. The book is a collection of short essays on small business and entrepreneurship. Fulton is a managing partner at Small Business Matters in Atlanta. He also publishes an awardwinning newsletter for small business owners. A professor emeritus of Spanish literature, LINO GARCIA JR. (G ’81) is the coordinator of the Spanish Texas Studies Project at the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley. Garcia published the book Colonial Spanish Texas and Other Essays. His biography, Interviews With Lino Garcia Jr.: A Life Story, written by Rolando Avila, is now available via Amazon. At age 83, Garcia continues to teach part-time and research Golden Age Spanish literature and Tejano history. FRANKLIN BAER (PHTM ’82) was honored as the 2017 Christian International Health Champion
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Dispatch Louis Baugier W H E R E
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at the Christian Connections for International Health Annual Conference at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on July 15, 2017. Speech-language pathologist LISETTE M. BETANCOURT (NC ’83) is a board-certified specialist in fluency with over 30 years of experience. She was awarded Clinician of the Year by the Florida Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists in recognition of outstanding clinical contributions for communicatively impaired patients and their families. During Better Speech and Hearing Month, she also presented a lecture on stuttering for parents and professionals at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.
Secrets to Buying or Selling a Business, a new book by SAL ACOSTA (B ’86), is now available on Amazon. Acosta has over 30 years of financial experience as a small business entrepreneur and as a corporate executive for global corporations. Acosta’s book provides answers to common questions, including: “Why do 75 percent of small businesses never sell?” and “What are the benefits of buying an existing business?” JOE LACEFIELD (A&S ’87) will reign as Thoth LXXI during Mardi Gras 2018. King Joe has been a member of the Krewe of Thoth for many years. Thoth is known for its uptown New Orleans route designed to pass in front of 14 institutions that care for people with disabilities and illnesses, who would not otherwise be able to enjoy a Carnival parade. Come raise a toast to King Joe when the super krewe rolls on Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018, and wear Tulane gear to receive his majesty’s special throws. DREW PATTY II (A&S ’87) is a team leader of McGlinchey Stafford’s intellectual property group and has been recognized by Managing Intellectual Property as both a Patent Star and a Trademark Star. MATTHEW J. SPARK (E ’87, L ’93), a partner with Zuber Lawler & Del Duca LLP in Los Angeles, became chair of the State Bar of California’s Intellectual Property (IP) Law Section on Sept. 7, 2017. Spark was also the planning chair for the IP Law Section’s 42nd annual IP Institute held in Newport Beach, California, in November 2017.
DAVID NEFF
JOSE R. COT (A&S ’85, L ’88) spoke on “Doing Business in Cuba” at the 38th annual Tulane Business Forum, sponsored by the Tulane Business Alumni Association and the A. B. Freeman School of Business. The forum attracted over 750 business professionals representing over 200 companies. Cot also spoke to new citizens and their families at a naturalization ceremony held at Loyola University. The event was presided over by District Judge Mary Ann Lemmon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans. Cot discussed the correlative rights and duties of citizenship and the importance of standing up to intolerance, discrimination and racism.
REAL ESTATE IN REAL TIME Louis Baugier (B ’13) had a 360-degree view of the dizzying, fast-paced business of New York real estate. By day, he was part of J.P. Morgan’s global real estate group, where he worked on big Manhattan development projects. Outside of work, he was a renter who dreaded the process of finding a new place to live. Somewhere between the two halves of Baugier’s life as a New Yorker, the industry’s inefficiencies came together for him. Out of his experiences an app was born— Surecave, which under one platform allows a landlord or property owner to manage everything from finding tenants to managing multiple properties. “For a [New York City] landlord today, he or she is paying several services to manage one building,” said Baugier. “They’ll pay for one service to potentially screen tenants; they’ll pay for another service to process rent; they’ll pay another service to fulfill maintenance requests,” and so on. “We’re bringing all those things together and making it free for landlords.” Although the current version targets landlords, tenants will benefit too. “From a renter’s perspective, these are issues that I lived every time I moved in New York City. Even today, I send my paper check to pay rent.” Surecave will officially launch in late 2017, though it’s already operating in “beta” model with big-name partners such as TransUnion and Remax. The company includes another Tulane alumnus, former private equity professional Stephen Denis (B ’12), and also attracted the attention of early investor Josh Schuster (TC ’06). “As a New York City developer who is constantly looking for new ways to streamline and simplify the asset management process, I was immediately interested in investing in Surecave after becoming familiar with the platform and being thoroughly impressed with Louis’ vision and goals,” said Schuster, managing principal of Silverback Development. “It’s an extremely valuable tool.” Baugier said he wanted Surecave to capture the entire lifecycle of the rental process. “When you’re running a startup, regardless the end goal, you need to fall in love with the problem and be intimately familiar with the different ins and outs that drive that pain-point,” he said. “We’re committed to streamlining this problem for the entire industry.”—FAITH DAWSON
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A SURGEON’S STORY Martha Boone (R ’87, ’91) is an Atlanta-based private practice urologist who obtained her surgical training at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. The Big Free is her first published work of fiction. In Boone’s novel, New Orleans’ Charity Hospital provides the setting for the horror and humor that transform one woman from a naïve Southern girl into a competent surgeon.
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STEPHANIE DITTMAN TEICHNER (NC ’88), entrepreneur and owner of Sprong Children’s Shoes in Atlanta, was recognized by Footwear Magazine. Sprong Children’s Shoes was noted as one of seven standout independent retail boutiques nationwide. THOMAS M. FLANAGAN (L ’89) and SEAN P. BRADY (L ’06) of Flanagan Partners LLP have been named to the 2018 edition of Best Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession. Thomas Flanagan was recognized for his work in appellate law, in commercial litigation and in “bet-thecompany” litigation. He was also recognized as the 2018 New Orleans Appellate Practice “Lawyer of the Year.” Brady was honored for his work in commercial litigation for the third consecutive year. DEBORAH WING (M ’89) joined Korn Ferry International, the world’s leading executive search firm, after more than two decades in academia. She completed a healthcare EMBA in 2015 while she was a professor at the University of California–Irvine. This new role allows Wing to apply her deep understanding of health care and passion for advancing diversity in medicine. As a member of Korn Ferry’s Academic Health Center Practice team, she will indirectly shape clinical care and biomedical research by working with leaders across the country.
1990s ALLISON LEVY (NC ’90) has been named digital scholarship editor at Brown University. This spring, she also had her fourth book, Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games, published by Medieval Institute Publications. MARGARET FENTON (NC ’92, SW ’93) drew upon her decade of experience in social work when completing her latest work, Little Girl Gone. The novel follows social worker Claire Conover as she’s swept up in a case involving the custody of 13-year-old girl found sleeping behind a grocery store.
JOSEPH HARRIS (TC ’99) wrote the book Achieving Access: Professional Movements and the Politics of Health Universalism, which documents efforts to institutionalize universal health care and expand access to lifesaving medicines in three major industrializing countries. Harris believes that the text could be useful to policymakers in developing countries and officials working on health policy in the U.S.
2000s DEREK BARDELL (G ’01, ’02), a professor of business administration and teaching and learning at Delgado Community College, has been named to the Court Appointed Special Advocates Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, board of directors. In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America by KELLY M. KENNINGTON (NC ’02) draws on case files of over 300 enslaved individuals who sued for freedom in St. Louis. An assistant professor of history at Auburn University, Kennington also surveyed over 800 state supreme court freedom suits while compiling the work. MARISSA HERSHON (NC ’03) co-authored the book Masterworks: Glass From the Chrysler Museum of Art. Hershon’s catalog entries present new scholarship on European and American glass from the museum’s encyclopedic glass collection. ADRIAN PATTERSON (L ’04), a partner at the law firm Andrews Kurth Kenyon LLP, was nominated by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner for reappointment to a three-year term on the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System board of trustees. Patterson’s practice focuses on public finance and public law. DANIELLE B. GATTO (NC ’06), an associate of the Uniondale, New York–based law firm of Forchelli, Curto, Deegan, Schwartz, Mineo & Terrana LLP, was selected by her peers as a 2017 New York Rising Star Super Lawyer.
The Louisiana Restaurant Association (LRA) and its chair, Greg Reggio, co-owner of Taste Buds Management in New Orleans, announced that PAUL (UC ’93), SCOTT (UC ’95) and STEVEN (UC ’93) BALLARD of Ballard Brands are the LRA Associate Members of the Year. The honorees were recognized at the LRA Awards reception at Arnaud’s Restaurant in New Orleans.
ADAM ADKIN (SLA ’07) joined Tonkon Torp LLP as an associate in its business department. His practice is focused on working with business owners on the full breadth of business transactions with an emphasis on purchase and sale transactions. Adkin previously worked at Karnopp Petersen in Bend, Oregon, where he practiced for four years.
HUGO V. ALVAREZ (L ’98), a shareholder in the Becker & Poliakoff Business Litigation group, has been named a winner of the Dade County Bar Association’s 2017 Legal Luminaries Award in the insurance category. More than 71,000 nominations were cast for the annual award, which was presented at a gala in Key Biscayne, Florida. Alvarez concentrates his practice on complex business litigation with a focus on business disputes, real estate and insurance-related claims.
JESSIKA JOHNSON (L ’07) was named a partner at Dannis Woliver Kelley. Johnson’s practice focuses on a wide range of construction, property and environmental law for California public school districts and community college districts. Johnson is based out of the firm’s San Francisco office.
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AMANDA TORRES (NC ’07, SSE ’09), author of The Curious Coconut blog, showcases family
traditions and healthy dishes in her new cookbook, Latin American Paleo Cooking. Torres collaborated with her mother-in-law, Milagros Torres, to create the book, which provides over 80 Latin American comfort food recipes—ranging from yucca fries to tres leches cake—which are also completely gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free.
2010s The National WWII Museum named GEMMA BIRNBAUM (SLA ’12) as the first director of the WWII Media and Education Center. Birnbaum was formerly the museum’s assistant director of education for curriculum. ANNA YOUNG SCHNEIDER (B ’12) got married on Feb. 4, 2017. ANNA BURHOP (PHTM ’13) joined Bracewell LLP at its nationally recognized Policy Resolution Group in Washington, D.C. Burhop will provide federal legislative and regulatory advice to the firm’s clients on a broad range of environmental and energy policy matters. Tired of wasting hours searching for movies to watch, places to eat and books to read, TOM STERN (B ’14) and BRENAN KELLER (B ’14) cofounded The Spoke, a search engine focused on friends and tastemakers. Featured on Product Hunt, The Spoke allows users to book, stream or buy recommendations through services like Netflix, Yelp and Goodreads. JUNBO ZHU (B ’16, ’17) and JIAYI CHEN (B ’16) collaborated with professor and entrepreneur Iris Mack to co-author the book U.S. Debt. Zhu specializes in risk management and asset management. Chen is a securities lending operations analyst at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.
KEY TO SCHOOLS SLA (School of Liberal Arts) SSE (School of Science and Engineering) A (School of Architecture) B (A. B. Freeman School of Business) L (Law School) M (School of Medicine) SW (School of Social Work) PHTM (School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine) SCS (School of Continuing Studies) A&S ( College of Arts and Sciences, the men’s liberal arts and sciences college that existed until 1994) TC ( Tulane College, the men’s liberal arts and sciences college that existed from 1994 until 2006) NC ( Newcomb College, the women’s liberal arts and sciences college that existed until 2006) E (School of Engineering) G (Graduate School) UC ( University College, the school for part-time adult learners. The college’s name was changed to the School of Continuing Studies in 2006.)
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Honorary Alumni 2017 F A R E W E L L Morris Schapiro (M ’41) of Boca Raton, Florida, on Dec. 21, 2015. Mary Mehaffy Black (NC ’42) of Buffalo, Wyoming, on Sept. 23, 2017. Fleurette Lurie Koltun (NC ’42) of New Orleans on July 31, 2017. Muriel Selber Phillips (NC ’42) of Willis, Texas, on May 5, 2016. Harold J. Zeringer Jr. (A&S ’42, L ’48) of Metairie, Louisiana, on Aug. 8, 2017. Arthur W. Foss Jr. (E ’44) of Lafayette, Louisiana, on July 25, 2017.
William G. Jones (B ’45) of Marshall, Texas, on Sept. 11, 2017. Martha Mitchell Schull (NC ’45) of Nashville, Tennessee, on Sept. 5, 2017. C.O. Johnson (A&S ’46, L ’49) of Alexandria, Louisiana, on Aug. 11, 2017. Katharine Laird Livaudais (NC ’46) of New Orleans on Aug. 8, 2017. Merlin J. Auzine (E ’47, B ’49) of New Orleans on Sept. 2, 2017. Frances Tumminello Nelson (B ’47) of New Orleans on July 21, 2017. Donald B. Schell (E ’47) of New Orleans on Sept. 20, 2017. Shirley Koltun Schiffman (NC ’47) of New Orleans on Sept. 13, 2017. Dorothea Casso Guillot (NC ’49) of New Orleans on Sept. 22, 2016. David R. Rodrigue (A&S ’49) of Destrehan, Louisiana, on Sept. 10, 2017. Daniel H. Vliet (E ’49) of Covington, Louisiana, on Aug. 11, 2017. L.W. Willis Jr. (A&S ’49) of Bainbridge, Georgia, on Dec. 24, 2014. Tom D. Chin (PHTM ’50) of Overland Park, Kansas, on July 11, 2017. William F. Yoder Jr. (B ’50) of Paso Robles, California, on July 14, 2014. Homer R. Dedeaux (A&S ’51) of Gulfport, Mississippi, on July 23, 2017. James M. Dudenhefer Jr. (E ’51) of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 26, 2017. Michael M. Salvatore (E ’51) of Metairie, Louisiana, on July 8, 2017. Hugo C. Wedemeyer (A&S ’51) of Metairie, Louisiana, on Aug. 16, 2017. Jesse Q. Sewell III (M ’52) of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, on Feb. 27, 2016.
RYAN RIVET
Evelyn Duckworth Blum (B ’45) of Littleton, Colorado, on Sept. 1, 2017.
Tulane Alumni Association presented faculty members Kenneth W. Harl, Scott Bernhard, Nicholas J. Altiero, James MacLaren and John P. Klingman with honorary alumni status on Oct. 12, 2017. NICHOLAS J. ALTIERO Nicholas J. Altiero, who served as dean of the School of Science and Engineering from 2006–2017 and also served as Tulane’s interim provost, received a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Altiero has published extensively on computational mechanics, fracture mechanics, geomechanics and biomechanics; served on numerous boards; and held multiple visiting faculty positions. SCOTT BERNHARD Scott Bernhard is the Jean and Saul A. Mintz Associate Professor at the Tulane School of Architecture. Bernhard was director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design from 2007–2012. He is the recipient of many teaching awards including the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching. He is an American Institute of Architects Honor Award–winning architect and principal of a small research and design practice focused on building in the context of New Orleans. KENNETH W. HARL Kenneth W. Harl is a professor of classical and Byzantine history, teaching courses in Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Crusader history. He earned his BA from Trinity College and his MA and PhD from Yale University. Harl has received numerous teaching awards at Tulane, including the coveted Sheldon H. Hackney Award. He has earned Tulane’s annual Student Body Award for Excellence in Teaching nine times and is the recipient of Baylor University’s nationwide Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teachers. Harl has also published numerous articles and books, including his current work on coins unearthed in an excavation of Gordion, Turkey, and a new book on Rome. JOHN P. KLINGMAN John P. Klingman holds a Favrot Professorship in Architecture at Tulane University, where he has been a faculty member since 1983. He has long been interested in issues of infrastructure in relation to architecture. In 2001 he received the President’s Award for Outstanding Teaching, Tulane’s highest teaching honor; he has received the Tulane School of Architecture Outstanding Teaching Award multiple times. Klingman’s current upper-level design studio focus relates architectural design to issues of water engagement in New Orleans. JAMES MACLAREN James MacLaren has served as dean of Newcomb-Tulane College since 2006. He is a graduate of Cambridge University, earning his PhD in condensed matter physics from Imperial College, London. His research interests are in the electronic structure of materials. MacLaren joined the Tulane faculty in 1990 and has served in several administrative posts including chair of the Department of Physics, associate provost, and acting dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
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FRENCH LITERATURE LUMINARY Hope H. Glidden, a professor of French and Francophone studies, died in Syracuse, New York, on Sept. 17, 2017. Before joining the faculty at Syracuse University, she devoted the largest part of her career—spanning from 1981 to 2010—to the Tulane Department of French and Italian. A specialist in French Renaissance literature, Glidden frequently shared her passion for French culture and history with her students.
F A R E W E L L Edmund J. Tunstall (A&S ’52) of Destrehan, Louisiana, on Nov. 27, 2015.
Ralph W. Clampitt (A ’60) of Hickory, North Carolina, on Aug. 12, 2017.
Bobby S. Byrd (SW ’65) of Milledgeville, Georgia, on Aug. 1, 2017.
Paul E. Campbell (UC ’53) of Covington, Louisiana, on Sept. 5, 2017.
James L. Dobie (G ’60, ’66) of Auburn, Alabama, on June 29, 2017.
James W. Reynolds (G ’65) of Yardley, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 23, 2017.
James W. Childress (A&S ’54) of San Marcos, Texas, on June 27, 2017.
Charles F. Huff (UC ’60) of New Orleans on July 1, 2017.
Frederick L. Riedl (B ’65) of Mary Esther, Florida, on May 2, 2017.
Victor J. Cieutat (A&S ’54) of McLean, Virginia, on July 24, 2017.
John M. McCuskey Jr. (M ’60) of San Francisco on Sept. 15, 2017.
Allen J. St. Angelo (G ’65, ’68) of Metairie, Louisiana, on Aug. 19, 2017.
Robert L. Connolly (B ’54) of Arlington, Virginia, on June 21, 2017.
John M. Weintraub (B ’60) of Sugar Land, Texas, on Sept. 12, 2017.
Eugene A. Domel (SW ’66) of Georgetown, Texas, on Aug. 16, 2017.
Harvey M. Jacobs (A&S ’54) of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 22, 2017.
John M. Awad (SW ’61) of Tallahassee, Florida, on Aug. 31, 2017.
Gary A. Schneider (A&S ’66) of New Orleans on Aug. 20, 2017.
Wiley H. Jenkins (A&S ’54, M ’57) of Killington, Vermont, on Sept. 4, 2017.
William E. Borah (A&S ’61, L ’65) of New Orleans on Sept. 25, 2017.
Donald M. Waits (L ’66) of Gulfport, Mississippi, on Sept. 10, 2017.
Millard T. Nelsen (L ’54) of Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 25, 2015.
Louis V. de la Vergne (UC ’61, L ’64) of Covington, Louisiana, on Sept. 15, 2017.
Richard D. Garlick (B ’67) of Winona, Minnesota, on Feb. 21, 2017.
Hesden H. Dick (A&S ’55) of Lacombe, Louisiana, on July 18, 2017.
Sadaye Okubo Parham (B ’61) of Metairie, Louisiana, on Aug. 13, 2017.
Richard J. Hesse (M ’68) of Metairie, Louisiana, on June 24, 2017.
William R. Phillips (L ’55) of Clinton, Mississippi, on Sept. 12, 2017.
Anne Davis Percy (NC ’61) of Oxford, Mississippi, on Aug. 21, 2017.
Fred W. Lentjes (E ’68) of Houston on July 15, 2017.
John E. Coles (E ’56) of Omaha, Nebraska, on July 9, 2017.
Robert J. Presbie (G ’61, ’64) of New Paltz, New York, on July 21, 2017.
Harry L. Shannon III (M ’68) of Sarasota, Florida, on April 2, 2017.
Louie K. Harris Sr. (A&S ’56) of Metairie, Louisiana, on June 23, 2017.
Emmanuel P. Rivas III (M ’61) of New Orleans on June 30, 2017.
James J. Butler III (L ’69) of Palm City, Florida, on Aug. 20, 2017.
James N. Jackson Jr. (A&S ’56) of Covington, Louisiana, on Dec. 11, 2016.
Fred C. Sexton Jr. (A&S ’61, L ’62) of Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 9, 2017.
Josephine Carveth-Fill (NC ’70) of Alexandria, Virginia, on July 28, 2017.
Charles E. Guidroz (B ’57) of Hutto, Texas, on July 15, 2017.
John J. Cassel (A&S ’62) of Austin, Texas, on June 25, 2017.
Jerald A. Finlinson (PHTM ’70) of Ammon, Idaho, on Aug. 20, 2017.
Ellen Merrill (NC ’57, G ’65) of New Orleans on July 30, 2017.
Irene Donovan Reimer (SW ’62) of Canton, Georgia, on Aug. 5, 2017.
Carolyn Muller Hecker (UC ’70) of Metairie, Louisiana, on July 10, 2017.
John W. Moore (M ’57) of Haines City, Florida, on Aug. 4, 2017.
Esly M. Barreras Jr. (M ’63) of Oakland, California, on Dec. 4, 2015.
Stewart R. Barnett III (A&S ’71) of Alexandria, Virginia, on July 24, 2017.
William R. Shaw Jr. (E ’57) of Savannah, Georgia, on July 6, 2017.
Alfred C. Berot (UC ’63) of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, on Aug. 7, 2017.
W.P. Bishop (G ’71) of Houston on July 9, 2017.
Lewis Barnum III (B ’58) of San Diego on Aug. 18, 2017.
Louis C. Doody Jr. (UC ’63) of Covington, Louisiana, on July 24, 2017.
Barry J. Chung (L ’58) of Honolulu on June 21, 2017.
John A. Gereighty Jr. (UC ’63) of Covington, Louisiana, on Sept. 22, 2017.
Francis D. Lamia (UC ’58) of Metairie, Louisiana, on Aug. 4, 2017.
Mary Lucas Golladay (NC ’63) of Katy, Texas, on Sept. 14, 2017.
C.N. Owensby (M ’58) of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Feb. 7, 2015.
Keith A. Hatcher (G ’63) of New Milford, Connecticut, on July 2, 2017.
Philip A. Vazzana (A ’58) of Greenville, Mississippi, on Aug. 16, 2017.
Mary Sue Ivens (G ’63) of Maryville, Tennessee, on Aug. 30, 2017.
Arnold J. Loyd (E ’59) of Glen, Mississippi, on June 30, 2017.
Joseph D. Villard Jr. (M ’63) of Boyce, Louisiana, on Aug. 20, 2017.
Frances Neidle McSherry (NC ’59) of New York on July 13, 2017.
Cecille Menkus Friedler (NC ’64, G ’80) of New Orleans on Sept. 25, 2017.
John E. Peltier Jr. (A&S ’59, L ’62) of Alpharetta, Georgia, on July 22, 2017.
Barney F. Kogen (B ’64) of Houston on Sept. 8, 2017.
Bernard E. Burk (L ’60) of Plantation, Florida, on June 30, 2017.
Harry T. Mathews (G ’64) of Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 18, 2017.
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Joseph D. Edwards Jr. (SW ’71) of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 7, 2017. Barbara Humphries (SW ’71) of New Orleans on March 26, 2017. Carol Murphy (SW ’71) of Boston on June 29, 2017. M. G. Dunn (G ’72) of Salem, Virginia, on Aug. 18, 2017. Richard D. Eubanks (PHTM ’72) of Monrovia, Maryland, on Aug. 25, 2017. Phyllis Potterfield (NC ’72, L ’75) of Charleston, West Virginia, on Aug. 13, 2017. Roy T. Cochrane (B ’73) of Greer, South Carolina, on Aug. 16, 2017. Ann Griffin (SW ’73) of Wilton Manors, Florida, on July 18, 2017. Richard L. Griffin (A&S ’74, L ’77) of Fenton, Michigan, on June 25, 2017.
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Tribute Marian Mayer Berkett E.S. Lanier Jr. (E ’74) of New Orleans on Sept. 21, 2017. Amelie Le Blanc (G ’74) of New Orleans on June 24, 2017. Mary Jane Brady McBrier (NC ’74) of Salt Lake City on Aug. 13, 2014. William N. Ott (B ’74) of Archbold, Ohio, on July 4, 2017. Thomas K. Brocato (A&S ’75, L ’79) of Alexandria, Louisiana, on July 24, 2017. Lisa Novick Millhauser (NC ’78) of Miami on Aug. 30, 2017. Harold M. Henderson (A&S ’79) of Pearl, Mississippi, on July 5, 2017. Lenora Chandler Zimmerman (G ’79) of New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2017.
MICHAEL C. HEBERT
Jeffrey M. Reilly Sr. (UC ’82) of New Orleans on March 16, 2017. Arlington C. Kirby (UC ’84) of New Orleans on Sept. 3, 2017. Michael H. Pelias (A&S ’83) of New Orleans on June 25, 2017. John J. Francis (B ’85) of Natick, Massachusetts, on April 8, 2017. Amy Hayner Kates (NC ’87) of New Orleans on July 9, 2017. Gustavo J. Yusem (E ’91, G ’95) of Portland, Oregon, on Aug. 29, 2017. Virginia Dockry Smith (UC ’92) of Mandeville, Louisiana, on Aug. 29, 2015. Walter E. Deacon III (A&S ’93) of Erie, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 5, 2017. Andrew W. Donaldson (A ’94) of Jersey City, New Jersey, on July 27, 2017. Gayle Giebel Boone (UC ’95, ’97, ’98) of Covington, Louisiana, on Aug. 20, 2017. Malcolm R. Petal (L ’98) of New Orleans on June 29, 2017. Larry G. Douglas (B ’00) of Sunset, Louisiana, on Aug. 6, 2017. William J. Lyon (PHTM ’01) of Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 17, 2015. Michael H. Lacoste (UC ’03, ’06, SCS ’17) of Kenner, Louisiana, on July 1, 2017. Gregory P. Friedman (B ’12) of Santa Monica, California, on Aug. 4, 2017. Avery D. Mitchell (SSE ’12) of Newton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 14, 2017. Marlin E. Sills (B ’12) of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on April 28, 2017. Zachary L. Maier (SLA ’14) of New Orleans on Sept. 22, 2017.
I’d heard tales about the extraordinary Marian Mayer Berkett long before I met her. My husband, Tulane’s law dean, David Meyer, left his first meeting with Marian quite smitten: She was nearing 100, she’d built a storied career at the Deutsch Kerrigan law firm in New Orleans, and she still had an office there. She was, he’d said, absolutely delightful and sharp, quizzing him about the merits of the latest suretyship legislation in Baton Rouge. He later received a LinkedIn request from her. I was, therefore, intimidated the first time I visited her. How does one interact with a 100-year-old law legend? But Marian excused my stammering and was gracious, warm, brilliant, elegantly chatty—and as sharp as one of those knives that slice through paper on late-night television. Marian died June 4, 2017, in New Orleans, at age 104. She was, quite clearly, a perfect role model for anyone aspiring to be a top-notch lawyer—and for anyone who teaches those with such aspirations. Tulane Law School didn’t get Marian straight out of undergrad. She started her law studies at LSU but was effectively run out of Baton Rouge because of her outspoken opposition to the Huey Long regime. LSU’s loss was Tulane’s gain. Marian graduated first in her class and was the first woman to be hired by a Louisiana law firm. Two years later, while still practicing law, she joined with other soon-to-be luminaries from the class of 1937, including future U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, to form the People’s League. They campaigned fearlessly for clean government in Louisiana. About 75 years later, Marian, the last surviving member of the class of 1937, would give the graduation address to the Tulane Law School class of 2013. She told graduates facing a tough job market to be brave and determined and to make their own paths no matter the roadblocks. This from a woman who had graduated from law school during the Great Depression, at a time when no woman had yet been hired by a Louisiana law firm. Many students suggested that it was the best graduation speech they’d ever heard. I so want to fawn here. To tell you that Marian paved the way for women like me to become lawyers. To reiterate that she had the vision, the work ethic and the determination to make a law career when it was all but impossible, given the economy and the attitudes of the day. That she remains a legend among lawyers and law students—and that I, like many, remain intimidated by her story. But Marian did not like fawning. So I’ll simply say that I am proud to hold the Class of 1937 Professorship at Tulane Law School—and humbled to think that I walk in her footsteps.—AMY GAJDA
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ANNIVERSARY GIFTS The Cowen Institute at Tulane University has received gifts celebrating its 10-year anniversary, including a $1 million pledge from Sherry (L ’77) and Alan Leventhal to name the institute’s executive directorship and a $1 million pledge from the Priddy Family Foundation to support the Robert L. and Kikie Priddy Endowed Fund for New Ideas.
W A V E M A K E R S
Growing up in New Orleans, Evan F. Trestman (L ’77) always knew there was something special about Tulane University. Following in the footsteps of his father, Israel (A&S ’41), Trestman began his law school career determined to make an impact on New Orleans and its legal community. Now a nationally recognized trial attorney with decades of experience, he’s generously giving back to the school that had such a tremendous influence on him. Trestman has created a substantial endowment for Tulane University Law School’s Moot Court Program, ensuring that Tulane’s law students are given the opportunity to learn the art of argument, an invaluable skill that Trestman has employed to great success throughout his career. For Trestman, the chance to create the endowment is a tribute to his Tulane Law School education. “I built my law practice from the ground up, which would not have been possible without a law degree and Tulane.” David Meyer, dean of Tulane Law School, said, “Evan has always recognized the raw talent of our students, and had a vision for what increased resources could do to deliver professional training and opportunities to compete with other top-notch programs, both nationally and internationally. We can hardly wait to see the results of his generous investment in this program and our students.”—Hannah Topping
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Setting Sail Goes Varsity Elizabeth “Libby” Connolly Alexander (NC ’84) and her husband, Robert, have provided a generous endowment that will elevate the university’s sailing club to a varsity sport. “Sailing has been pretty special to us and important to our lives together,” says Alexander, a member of the Board of Tulane. Libby and Robert met at a sailing regatta while she was a Tulane senior and he was an All-American at Boston University. They have been married for 27 years and have four children. Tulane sailing will also have a new home at the Community Sailing Center, which will be built at the Municipal Yacht Harbor on Lake Pontchartrain. In addition to their generous endowment for sailing, the Alexanders have invested in the construction of new facilities in partnership with Community Sailing New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that strives to make sailing accessible to the local community. “This is all due to the extraordinary vision and generosity of Libby and Robert Alexander,” said Tulane President Mike Fitts during a news conference announcing the gift. “Transformational opportunities do not come along every day. We quickly saw that this would be great for Tulane sailing, New Orleans and the sailing community,” said Libby Alexander. She hopes to create a groundswell of support for Tulane sailing and has made her extraordinary lead gift contingent on securing an additional $1 million. Tulane’s advancement staff is currently working to raise the additional funds in support of the sailing program. Tulane has a storied sailing history. In 1974, Tulane earned a national championship and has had several alumni compete as Olympic sailors, including 1992 silver medalist in Barcelona, Steve Bourdow (A&S ’89), and John Dane III (E ’72, G ’75), who set sail during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
Courting Success
RISING TIDE
Above: At a press conference, Newcomb College alumna Libby Alexander (at podium) announces the gift that establishes sailing as a varsity sport at Tulane.
Art of Argument Far left: Law alumnus Evan Trestman has created an endowment for Tulane Law School’s Moot Court Program so that students may gain valuable skills such as arguing cases.
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SUMMER STUDY Twenty-one Tulane undergraduates were awarded summer research grants through the Newcomb-Tulane Honors Program to conduct studies alongside faculty members. These opportunities were made possible by philanthropic support by Tulane donors, including Grace and F. Chapman Taylor (A&S ’82), Tulane parent Harold E. Glass, and Chris Austin (A&S ’80).
W A V E M A K E R S
School of Medicine Receives
Record $25 Million Gift For seven decades, internal medicine physician John Winton Deming (M ’44) and his family have been making a profound impact on Tulane University and Tulane School of Medicine. Now, his family’s tremendous generosity is reaching new heights with a $25 million gift that will transform and strengthen the Department of Medicine’s research enterprise. Bertie Deming Smith, John Deming’s wife of 50 years, chose to honor her husband in a way truly befitting the doctor and scholar that he was. “By making this gift, I wanted to pay tribute to John’s deep love for Tulane and his belief in the importance of education,” Deming Smith said. The gift, naming the John W. Deming Department of Medicine, honors an extraordinary physician and civic leader who believed strongly in education and in giving back to his community and to Tulane. John Deming passed away in 1996 at age 76. “Tulane and the School of Medicine would not be where it is today without the exceptional commitment and remarkable foresight of the Deming family. No family has been as significant to the success of the school over the years,” said Tulane President Mike Fitts. “This is a gift that will build our research enterprise and encourage breakthroughs that we can only imagine today. This is a gift with an importance that will radiate well beyond our current boundaries.” The gift will support research within the Department of Medicine, the largest translational research department in the School of
something
is coming
Medicine, said Dr. Lee Hamm, dean and senior vice president of the School of Medicine. The gift will provide critical support to launch the careers of junior investigators while also rewarding established faculty members, Hamm said.
“This gift will build our research enterprise and encourage breakthroughs that we can only imagine today.” —President Mike Fitts John Deming enjoyed a deep connection to Tulane throughout his life. He became a member of the Tulane board of administrators, an
associate professor of clinical medicine, a charter member of the medical center’s board of governors and a recipient of the university’s distinguished alumnus award. He and Bertie had four children, including daughter Catherine Deming Pierson (G ’78, SW ’89), an emeritus member of the Board of Tulane, and son Claiborne P. Deming (A&S ’76, L ’79). —Mike Strecker
Legacy of Learning Bertie Deming Smith honored her late husband, John, with a gift to the Tulane School of Medicine that establishes the John W. Deming Department of Medicine.
OUR MOST AMBITIOUS CAMPAIGN IS MAKING A GR AND ENTR ANCE IN TRUE TUL ANE FASHION
December 8, 2017 CHECK TULANE.EDU ON DECEMBER 8 FOR A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT
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ANGUS LIND A 1966 graduate of Tulane, Angus Lind spent more than three decades as a columnist for The Times-Picayune.
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Tricentennial Guides
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Call them the ambassadors for New Orleans—the city’s walking tour guides, who face the daunting task of condensing 300 years of complicated and confusing history into two hours. Imagine having to explain to people from all over the world what a dumb idea it was to build a city on a swamp, why in less than a century it went from being founded and ruled by the French to Spanish rule for 40 years then back to the French who in the blink of an eye sold it to the United States in the famous Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the size of this country. Or how we’ve survived wars, fires, floods, hurricanes, pestilence, politicians and con artists. That alone makes them valuable assets for the city’s tricentennial celebration in 2018. Thirty-one people this spring completed the highly intense Friends of the Cabildo (FOC) Walking Tour Guide course, offered only once a year. “I called it tour guide boot camp,” said attorney Brian Begue, a 1973 Tulane Law School graduate. Every time he saw one of the two principal instructors, he’d say, “Good morning, drill sergeant!” The course is advertised as a class that meets three days a week for four weeks, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with outstanding speakers, experts all in different fields: architecture, immigrants and their cultural influences, slavery, free persons of color, literary history, the Battle of New Orleans, music, LGBT, port authority and more. Robby Cangelosi, who taught New Orleans architecture at Tulane for more than two decades, leads the architecture tour. Students are trained to create their personalized walking tours of the French Quarter and, without notes, complete a two-hour, one-on-one tour with an evaluator, a tour with a group and a veteran guide, and pass a city tour guide exam. But in reality it’s a stressful six-day-a-week proposition because in between classes there are assignments, reading, studying, speaking in front of classmates and tag-along tours with guides. Factual accuracy is stressed, and part of the commitment is that each graduate must volunteer to give tours for two years. So Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield this is not. This year’s tour guide class attracted a diverse crowd. Ruben Tapia, who received his master’s degree from the Tulane School of Public Health in 1976, came to this country by himself from Cuba in 1961 after the revolution. As a child, he lived in Cuban refugee camps in Florida and foster homes and was assisted by Catholic Charities and “a lot of loving, caring people.” His parents joined him in 1967, and he wound up in New Orleans. Recently retired from the Louisiana State Health Department, Tapia enrolled in the Cabildo tour guide course because after being involved with the community as immunization director, he “saw the opportunity to give back to Louisiana, to the community I love.” Like the others, he found the course demanding, but he said that he “submerged myself into it. It demands total dedication. We were exposed to people with vast amounts of knowledge.” He believes he and his fellow guides will “have a big role” in the tricentennial celebration. Sheila Ferran (NC ’73, A ’81) was inspired to take the FOC course in 2015 after taking the Delgado Community College tour guide course taught by Bill Norris, who instructed hundreds of students through the years.
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WALKING TOURS
Guides who complete the Friends of the Cabildo course can improvise but they must have their facts straight.
Ferran said Norris emphasized accuracy but also stressed that tour guides must teach history with stories. In his book, Down in New Orleans, Norris explains: “This is not a history book; it is a storybook. History is documentation of events, places or people. Stories are accounts of events, places or people told with an entertainment element in mind.” Begue’s name ironically is based on the French verb bégayer, which means to stammer or stutter, which luckily he does not. But he does incorporate a story about that name because he is part of the family of Hypolite Begue who, along with his wife, Madame Begue, began the tradition of a second breakfast, or brunch, at their restaurant for the butchers who worked all night in the French Market in the 19th century. Barbara Miller and her husband, Michael, moved to New Orleans from Michigan after he was hired by Tulane to be assistant director of building services. Even though they honeymooned in New Orleans in 2007, when they arrived permanently she said she felt like “being dropped on Mars.” She knew nobody, nothing about the city. So to get involved and meet people, she took the FOC course in 2010. “When you get done with that class, you know you can portray this city in its best light. The stories and history of this city you can’t make up.” The course inspired her to go to Tulane, concentrating on courses that delved into Louisiana history. She graduated from the School of Continuing Studies in May 2017. “It sparked my interest in the Creoles, African history and the gifts of the enslaved people, which we still enjoy today.” The recently retired longtime WWL-TV newsman Bill Capo said he shadowed a tour before taking this year’s class and saw the tour guide was having fun, which was appealing. “It’s a continuance of what I did my whole life—talking to people of New Orleans about the issues of the day. Now the subject has changed, and I’m talking to the whole world. “We all love New Orleans,” he said. “And a New Orleanian loves nothing more than to talk about New Orleans.”
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Make a Bequest. Make a Difference. PLAN YOUR LEGACY AT TULANE UNIVERSITY
E STAT E PL ANNING C R E AT ES LIFE- CHANGING O P P O RT UNIT I ES FOR STU D E NTS “When I toured colleges in high school, Tulane just seemed like a perfect fit. I love the city of New Orleans and the research focus of the school, but I would not have been able to come to a school like Tulane and taken advantage of the opportunities I have without receiving a scholarship.” Erin is the recipient of the Everett L. Drewes, MD Scholarship Fund. Dr. Drewes included Tulane in his estate plans to honor five important women in his life. Today, Erin is continuing Dr. Everett’s legacy at Tulane.
I NT E R E STED IN BEGIN N IN G YOU R CHARI TABLE L EG AC Y AT TUL A N E? Contact the Office of Gift Planning today. P H O N E 8 0 0 .9 9 9. 018 1
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ERIN STAFFORD Class of 2018 Math and Computer Science Recipient of the Everett L. Drewes, MD Scholarship Fund
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10/31/17 1:34 PM
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Wish you were here. On the banks of the Mississippi.
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