2006 Winter Edition by The University of Toledo Alumni Association

Toledo The University of

ALUMNI MAGAZINE

Liquid assets

WINTER 2006

fore words

THE UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS AND TRUSTEES PRESIDENT

Birdel F. Jackson ’68

FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Barbara Berebitsky ’91

SECOND VICE PRESIDENT James W. White Jr. ’76, ’79

SECRETARY

ere in the dead of winter, unless we’re into ice fishing, most of us aren’t thinking about Lake Erie. You might be surprised to know, though, how much of that kind of thinking — and acting — is going on here at UT. I’m talking about UT’s Lake Erie Research Center and the scientific “fishing expedition” that goes forward in every season. I’m no scientist, but I know that Toledo is living smack next door to the world’s largest single supply of fresh water, and I follow the news, so I know how important fresh water supplies are going to be in this century. It’s not overstating things to say that water is going to become a matter of survival for our global civilization. That’s why the research at the Lake Erie Center is so exciting, and why the center has already become a regional leader in research relating to water. The cover story in this issue highlights just a small sample of the research that’s attracting national and international attention, and putting UT on the scientific map. Maybe even more important, because students are so heavily involved in the research, the center is a big part of UT’s success in producing a new generation of scientists who clearly love what they do. So even if all you know about the Great Lakes is that millions of people depend on them for their drinking water — that they’re used to transport the goods we buy — that they affect our weather and the food we can grow — and that in the summer they’re a lot of fun — you’ll find a whole new way of looking at them when you read about what’s going on at UT’s Lake Erie Research Center. And I hope you’ll find our expanded magazine as exciting as everyone here has. I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait.

Dan Saevig ’84, ’89 Associate Vice President University of Toledo Alumni Association

Walter “Chip” Carstensen ’72, ’74

TREASURER

Constance D. Zouhary ’81

PAST PRESIDENT

Theodore T. Hahn ’65, ’67

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dan Saevig ’84, ’89

ONE-YEAR TRUSTEES

Jon R. Dvorak M.D. ’80 Marc D. Folk* ’98 Lynn Hutt ’95 Jay Pearson** ’91 Stacey Scharf* ’89, ’98 Robert J. Schlembach ’49 Janet Schroeder ’89 Suzanne Wambold PhD, RN, RDC* ’85, ’91, ’02

TWO-YEAR TRUSTEES

Bea Daniels* ’91, ’01 David D. Dobrzykowski ’95, ’99 Gary J. Corrigan PhD ’70, ’77 Dana Fitzsimmons** ’76 Susan Gilmore ’89, ’89, ’93 Donald L. Warner ’74, ’76

THREE-YEAR TRUSTEES

Janet Eppard ’83 Patrick J. Flynn ’93, ’98 George E. Robinson II ’02 Mark A. Urrutia ’88

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE

Meghan Fox (appointed by Student Alumni Association) *Appointed by the affiliate committee ** Chapter representative

contents EDITOR

Cynthia Nowak ’78, ’80

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Vicki Kroll ’88

Winter 2006 | Volume 53, Number 2

CONTRIBUTING WRITER Deanna Woolf ’05

DESIGNER

Meredith Thiede

PHOTOGRAPHERS Terry Fell Daniel Miller ’99

Toledo Alumni is published three times a year in Fall, Winter and Spring by The University of Toledo Office of Alumni Relations.

ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT/ PUBLISHER Dan Saevig ’84, ’89

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI PROGRAMMING Eric Slough ’95

ASSISTANT DIRECTORS Ansley Abrams ’92 Renee Elliott ’96

OUTREACH COORDINATOR

Brian Weinblatt ’02, ’04

Recent Awards CASE V Circle of Excellence: Bronze, Toledo Alumni Magazine MarCom Creative Awards: Two Gold Awards, for Magazine/ Educational Institution and for Writing/Feature Article SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS INFORMATION TO:

12 16 20

cover story

H2O dynamo

features Homecoming Vis-à-vis vintner Praise of Bolly

Toledo Alumni, Office of Alumni Relations, Driscoll Alumni Center, Mail Stop 301 The University of Toledo Toledo, OH 43606-3395

Telephone 419.530.ALUM (2586) or 800.235.6766 Fax 419.530.4994 The University of Toledo is committed to a policy of equal opportunity in education, employment, memberships and contracts, and no differentiation will be made based on race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status or the presence of a disability. The University will take affirmative action as required by federal or state law.

2 14 36 45

other traditional & un research

on the cover:

Water studies flow continuously from Lake Erie Research Center. Photo by Daniel Miller.

class notes book reviews

RECYCLED PAPER

Toledo: traditional & un

Bowling ’em over in Mobile

exploding

offense. A

tough

defense that held the opponents and scored, too. That’s how the

Toledo Rockets beat the University of TexasEl Paso Miners 45-13 in the GMAC Bowl Dec. 21. Quarterback Bruce Gradkowski was named the game’s most valuable player. The senior threw five touchdowns to five teammates and completed 18 of 32 passes for 298 yards. Running back Trinity Dawson carried the ball 24 times and racked up 124 yards. It was the seventh time this season the senior ran for more than 100 yards in a game. Inside linebacker David Thomas made an interception and ran it back 38 yards for a touchdown. The senior also made six tackles and broke up two passes against UTEP. “The seniors on this team are special,” said Head

Above, pre-game parade. Below, quarterback sacked! Facing page, quarterback Bruce Gradkowski holds up the hardware.

Coach Tom Amstutz. “They’re leaders. They are great young men on and off the field. I’m really proud of them. I thought they stood out and played their best game.” With the bowl win, Toledo finished the year 9-3.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Toledo: traditional & un

Slimming down student loans The UT Alumni Association/Nelnet team still offers student loan consolidation. Qualifying borrowers who choose to consolidate can lock in a very low rate for the entire life of the loan and dramatically reduce their monthly payments. Nelnet, a national leader in education finance, brings more than two decades of experience in funding education. For more information on

consolidating

student

loans,

call

1.866.4CONSOL(426.6765) or visit their Web site at www.alumniconsolidation.nelnet.net.

Colors of home. Halfway ’round the world in Tikrit, Iraq, 1st Lt. Timothy J. Tomes

(Bus ’02), left, and Sgt. Song Yun fly some UT spirit. Both belong to the 1-3 Brigade Troops Battalion, a signal company responsible for providing Internet and telephone communications for the Salah ad Din province of Iraq. Deployed in 2005, Tim is scheduled to return home in January.

When alums become roadies

tevens Worldwide Van Lines is proud to offer UT alumni added preferential treatment through Stevens’ University Move Center (UMC). What’s added? Stevens’ UMC offers UT alums single source contact throughout their move, with move coordinators who pay close attention to every step along the way, ensuring enhanced services at every point. Within a day of the initial contact, a move coordinator will be assigned and make contact. Personal attention

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

throughout the move is the rule while Stevens’ UMC move coordinator handles each phase of the relocation. From the pre-move survey to final delivery, every detail is covered, including advice and timely updates on the relocation process. Stevens ensures quality service at every turn. For more information or to schedule a free estimate, contact the University Move Center at 800.796.9988 or by e-mail at universitymoves@ stevensworldwide.com.

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Sun, shade, art An estimated fifteen thousand people filled Centennial Mall for Art on the Mall in July, splashing the always-vibrant event with more color, texture and motion.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Toledo: traditional & un

Engineers to sharpen business savvy

W The Bradys’ letter of intent was given to UT President Dan Johnson during a football game. In a rare moment of forgetfulness, Dr. Johnson didn’t have his eyeglasses, so Tom read the letter aloud to the delighted president.

hat will UT engineering students soon have in common with Benjamin Franklin, Anita Roddick and Bill Gates? Entrepreneurship, if the monetary gift of local entrepreneurs Tom and Betsy Brady brings the results they hope to see. They know UT results already. The Bradys may not be UT alumni, but as Dr. Tom Brady says, “Plastic Technologies Inc. has ninety people here, and thirty-two of them have either graduated from or are going to UT, most of them in engineering and science. We have a great legacy with UT.” The Bradys’ company is a classic entrepreneur’s success story, so Tom and Betsy were excited by College of Engineering Dean Dr. Nagi Naganathan’s plan for a freshman entrepreneurial experience. It had particular resonance for Tom, a former Owens-Illinois executive and Dartmouth graduate: “Dartmouth had such a program in

engineering. Part of the reason I’m doing what I do today was because I got a taste of it in that class.” He adds, “Betsy and I contribute to seven other universities with which we have personal connections, but UT probably has the most influence on the future of our company and of this region.” Naganathan says, “The Bradys’ gift will allow engineering freshmen to experience entrepreneurship. We’re also hoping to set up additional beacons along the way so they’ll stay energized.” Because the entrepreneurial experience is a collaborative effort with the College of Business Administration, notes college Dean Dr. Tom Gutteridge, many resources are already available at the University, including an established curriculum, several business institutes and UT’s plan for a technology corridor: “This gift funds a much broader thrust to enhance the entrepreneurial culture of northwest Ohio.”

Engineering's Nitschke Hall

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Cached Czechs deposit wealth of art

rom pincushions that seem to ask, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” to an evil of banality that outlives

Hitler’s Third Reich, the art of “Cultural Domestication,

Instinctual

Desire:

Exhibition of Contemporary Czech Art” offered both challenges and rewards during its twomonth run at UT’s Center for the Visual Arts. Examining identity on a personal and collective scale, the works explored the tension between the human desire for roots and the beguiling rootlessness of an increasingly global culture. Above, Pincushion (daily voodoo) by Jiri Cernicky stitches whimsy with pain to evoke the disturbing side of everyday life; Milena Dopitova’s Sixtysomething offers the artist and her twin sister enduring a personal

metamorphosis

toward

death

that nevertheless remains a dance of life; and Zdena Koleckova’s Old Recipe probes collective guilt by revealing extraordinary evil — the Nazi eagle and swastika — lurking beneath the hyper-ordinariness of tasks like donut-baking.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Toledo: traditional & un

Dance of life a student-run success

hat’s seventy-five by seventyfive pairs of feet, never stops moving and makes life better

for sick children? It’s Dance Marathon. One of the University’s largest philanthropic events, it benefits the Children’s Miracle Network and it’s run (and danced) by enthusiastic, committed UT students who in sixteen grueling and hilarious hours literally dance for life. Each year’s dance benefits “miracle children” from Mercy Children’s Hospital; if their health permits, they often visit the dance. That, says UT senior Courtney Welch, makes it singular: “I have a special place for those kids who are sick, because I have a sister with a terminal illness. Dance Marathon helps hospitals to help kids like her.” Last year, helped by sponsors and pledges, students raised $42,000, a sum they hope to top in March when the next marathon packs the Rec Center with moving feet and helping hands. Information about sponsorships and participation can be found at www.dancemarathon.utoledo.edu.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Harvard PhD built in Toledo

“I

had three loves: history, chemistry and business management.” That’s retired business executive Willard Bright (A/S ’36), recalling his student days at (then) Toledo University. Chemistry became his professional métier, management his vocation. With a chemistry degree from Toledo and a PhD from Harvard, Bright worked his way to officer and director for five Fortune 500 companies before founding Zoll Medical Corporation.

And history? Bright began college as a history major and still finds the subject fascinating. In fact, his memory of the University’s history is part of the reason behind his recent gift to the department of chemistry. A charitable remainder trust will result in $1 million to help fund a distinguished professorship or endowed chair.

Bright’s history includes inspiring professors. “As a student, I had very fine leadership in the persons of Nelson Hovey, Dr. [Harold] Oddy and the head of the chemistry department, Dr. [Henry] Kreider. And there was a British professor in physics. I enjoyed his courses so much that I ended up as a physical chemist.” He can cite a little-known piece of sports history as well: “Someone in Toledo University’s athletics department had a connection with one of Harvard’s coaches and managed to finagle an invitation to Cambridge to run in a crosscountry meet against Harvard. I was on that team, and it was a great visit. We went to a football game, had dinner at Adams House and saw Niagara Falls for the first time on the way back home. “How did we run? Poorly. I managed to pull a toenail off and limped along to sixth place or so. We trailed along, but we had a good time.” Bright himself ran on a faster track: Two years after receiving his Harvard degree, he was running part of a laboratory. Research management became general management, and Bright traded a lab coat for the suits of CEOs and presidents. His merging of past history and future vision, though, is anything but button-down: “With the help of the University, we all enjoyed our classes and enjoyed what we learned and went on with it. Today’s students enjoy the same thing, and future generations can as well. That’s what this trust is about.”

Streamin’ The message is high-tech, the music lowdown and home-grown on REBOOT: Pass the Message, the latest student project to come from the UT Africana Studies Program. The 19 CD tracks, created by students and alumni, combine the cultural style of hip hop with content that seeks to reclaim the revolutionary potential of information technology. According to Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, program director, it’s a natural match: “People have warned of a ‘digital divide’ based on economic status. At the same time in the inner city, a global digital culture was born in the form of rap.” Tracks that include “Internet Junkie,” “Technical Difficulties” and “PC Cillin” navigate the hard drive of the soul. The CD is one of several such projects being launched by the new organization, SHARP: Student Hip Hop Activists for Research and Performance, which is planning four more releases during the first campus Rock-It Concert in April. REBOOT is available from the Africana Studies Program (419.530.7252) or the UT Bookstore.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Toledo: traditional & un

UT/MUO merger will create NW Ohio powerhouse

Presidents Jacobs and Johnson sign joint agreement.

t may be the biggest story on campus since TU became UT. The merger between The University of Toledo and the Medical University of Ohio (MUO, formerly MCO, Medical College of Ohio) that hit the public radar in November has moved from random jottings to a projected July 1 implementation. Two of the chief architects — Dr. Dan Johnson and Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, the two universities’ presidents — anticipate a masterpiece in the making. As Johnson explains, “When Doctor Jacobs came to MCO/MUO as president, very early on in our discussions we began talking about the relationship between the two institutions and how we could position our institutions to be more visible, to be more effective and efficient, to create greater opportunities.”

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

For about two years, the presidents informally explored the prospect of joining forces. Last summer, they began assessing their options and MUO commissioned a study by Ryan Beck & Co. of New York City. “The report concluded that following extensive interviews with principals at both institutions and community leaders, regents and others that the proposed combination between MUO and UT would be beneficial for both institutions as well as the state of Ohio and for the community of Toledo,” Johnson says. The report’s conclusions were shared with state governing bodies, and the idea of a merger was approved (“in principle” in some cases) by both university boards of trustees, by the two faculty senates, and by the Ohio Board of Regents. The merger next goes as a bill to the state legislature. The planned July 1 implementation includes the installation of Jacobs as president (for five years) of the new educational entity, which would retain the names of both institutions, Jacobs said during an open forum with UT faculty and staff in December: “It will be The University of Toledo, with MUO possibly called the ‘Medical University of Ohio: The Health Campus of The University of Toledo.’” Noting that he would rely on Johnson for advice during the learning curve involved, Jacobs also emphasized the dynamics of the institutional relationship: “This is not a take-over; this is a merging of equals to combine our resources and strengths.” For students, Jacobs notes, the rewards of the merger will begin early and last a lifetime: ”Students of both institutions should view [the merger] as having great promise because we www.toledoalumni.org

believe benefits will include improved student recruitment, faculty recruitment and retention, and research funding, and result in better branding and public perception. It’s also worth pointing out most great universities have a medical school, and most great medical schools are part of a multifaceted university.” Johnson adds, “[Students] would be attending the third largest institution in the state in terms of budget and research funding. There would be seamlessness in taking courses or combining degrees or curriculum, and access to additional faculty and services. Even though we have joint programs now in public health, nursing and some

areas, this opens up a whole new level of opportunity for the combination of degrees in law and medicine or health and business.” Johnson cautions that the process is a lengthy one. “It could take a number of years for a complete transition. It will be challenging, but it will be enormously rewarding in the long term for us, for the medical campus, and all those we serve.” Estimated costs of the merger are approximately $20 million over three years, with some of the funding to come from the state and the Board of Regents. The most recent developments on the merger can be found on the UT News Web site: www.utnews.utoledo.edu.

MUO at a glance MUO was founded by the Ohio General Assembly in 1964, as the country’s hundredth medical school. Its four academic areas are encompassed by the College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, College of Graduate Studies and the College of Health Sciences. The 475-acre campus in south Toledo includes three hospitals: University Medical Center (acute care), the Coghlin Rehabilitation Center and the Kobacker Center. Partnership of equals, relationship of greatness • A total of 23,000 students are enrolled at the two institutions. • Combined research funding is more than $55 million. • UT and MUO are two of the largest employers in northwest Ohio, with more than 7,000 total full- and parttime employees. • The universities’ economic impact on the region is more than $700 million per year. • UT and MUO have been issued more than 125 patents. • More than 65 percent of Toledo Public Schools teachers are UT graduates; 80 percent of physicians practicing in the Toledo area are MUO graduates or have received MUO training.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Homecoming 2005

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Let the games begin With a gaming theme, the famous Blue and Gold spirit took to the streets, parking lots and the Glass Bowl field for Homecoming in October. Above, Grand Marshal and Rockets football legend Chuck Ealey handles autograph requests; at far left, Blue T winner Patricia Scharf (Ed ’56, Med ’62, Ed Spec ’75), Gold T winner John Neff (Bus ’55) and Outstanding Young Alum Robert Shindell (Ed ’95) (with wife, Christy) toe the line with Alumni Association President Birdel Jackson, Dr. Johnson and Associate Vice President Dan Saevig.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

UT research on the edge

Muscling in on atrophy Anyone who’s ever been forced into temporary immobility knows about muscle atrophy. Usually the loss of muscle weight and tone is no more than a temporary inconvenience, forgotten once the cast comes off. When age, chronic illness or a major injury enter the equation, though, muscle atrophy can become debilitating or even dangerous. Thus atrophy research in UT’s department of exercise physiology applies to far more than athletes. Using specially engineered mice, the research focuses on FoxO1, a protein with an apparent role in the metabolic breakdown of complex molecules within muscles. Certain genes get turned on and off by the protein, eventually leading to the shrinking of muscle mass. The research has implications for cancer treatment and to help reduce the effects of aging.

“Fire up the computer” no longer a mixed metaphor A flick of the wrist, and a forest goes up in flames. Sounds like a pyromaniac’s dream, but because both fire and forest exist in virtual reality, no one gets burned. However, the fire management computer program co-developed at UT is hot enough to have ignited the interest of the Joint Fire Science Program Project, which featured it in a recent newsletter. The research team integrated several simulations with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data from Wisconsin’s Chequamegon National Forest to create a computerized forest fire which can be instantly doused and restarted innumerable times. The program includes flexible parameters that allow users to examine how forest clearing or other fire management methods would play out in a live burn, predicting a fire’s movement and perhaps saving lives and property. The team is working to expand the program to include forests in seven more states.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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The songbirds remain the same Conifer groves have gotten a bad rap in northwest Ohio — but they’re home to some great music. Cone-bearing trees are non-native plants, which according to land management strategies makes them targets for removal. Because they’re aesthetically pleasing and provide a biologically diverse

Feeling waspish Size-wise, the antenna-waving wasp isn’t anything to write home about: measuring a half-inch from tip to waggling tip, it

environment that attracts bird species to the area, though, Toledo Metroparks have allowed the stands of trees to remain. Some of the groves have, however, been thinned, and UT researchers are studying the effects on avian residents. Early observations of breeding birds suggest that the red-

lives in sandy soil, avoids humans and is elderly at four weeks.

breasted nuthatch, the blue-headed vireo and the pine

Nevertheless, the regular feats of the rare species, found in a few

warbler — all desirable songbirds — have not been adversely

locations in the United States, should get it a shot on WWE’s

affected by the thinning. The jury is still out on the various

Friday Night SmackDown! To ensure future generations, a female

owls and hawks that also favor conifer groves. The surveys

wasp will tackle and paralyze a grasshopper three times its own weight, then drag the heavy insect — sometimes for hours

continue through 2006, using groves scheduled for winter thinning to provide a before-and-after comparison.

— to its burrow, all the while dodging other predators. If the female is lucky, she can place the grasshopper in her burrow, deposit a single egg on the meal, seal them up, then begin the entire process again. UT researchers in the department of earth, ecological and environmental sciences completed a two-year study of the wasp, whose only known Ohio range is confined to a few sites in the Oak Openings region. Data from the research will help determine reasons for the wasp’s scarcity, and perhaps point to remedies.

Sweeping with the fishes For all those who think that the Ottawa River, especially where it passes through the UT campus, is an ecological dead zone, 26 species of fish are here to say that you’re all wet. Faculty and student researchers have identified at least that many species, including some beloved of anglers: yellow perch, largemouth bass, bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish. The prize for unexpected fish bonanza, however, goes to that Great Lakes game fish par excellence, the northern pike, which was found two years in a row on the campus, making the Ottawa River a genuine habitat for the feisty Esox. And did we mention the species of clams that include the white heelsplitter and the giant floater? Identified by UT researchers as residents, they’re more proof of the Ottawa’s surprising diversity. Riverworld, anyone?

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

noble rot ∂ noun a grey mold cultivated on grapes in order to perfect certain wines

by Cynthia Nowak

intner Patrick Spangler (Bus ’89) doesn’t need to sample his wine cellar to become intoxicated; since he and his wife, Loree, became co-owners of Spangler Vineyards in Oregon’s Umpqua Valley, happiness with the new career has had him all but reeling. “While it’s an astonishing amount of work, it’s still a dream come true,” he says. Although Pat’s professional background as a trader with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange doesn’t seem like the most fertile ground for a winemaker, he’s the first to point out that “The best wine grapes don’t necessarily grow in the best soil. Some stress is good for the

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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No vine before its time: ripening in Spangler Vineyards

vines.” He still trades on the exchange — from home now, thanks to today’s technology — and like a vine, is thriving on the challenges of his chosen soil. Never in a million years, he says, would he have predicted his life today — certainly not during his early years on the family farm in Arlington, Ohio. He was a UT student when he made his first foray into fermentation: brewing beer in Dowd Hall. “It was just an experiment, one batch from a kit,” he says. “It was — drinkable. And it went fast. In a college dorm, the equivalent of four cases of beer doesn’t last long.” Luckily, the one-time flouting of school regulations didn’t adversely affect his grades; Pat graduated as valedictorian of his class. The brewing bug, though, followed him, and he continued his micro-micro-brew experiments when he moved to Chicago immediately after graduation. At that point, Pat couldn’t claim www.toledoalumni.org

much experience with wine. “In college, we drank very, very bad wines — Boone’s Farm, Reunite, the kinds that masquerade as pretending to be wine. A vacation trip to California’s Napa Valley opened his eyes to other possibilities. “Good wine was a new experience, and I was very intrigued,” he says. “About that time, I moved to a house and inherited two hundred fifty backyard vines, all of them producing. My reaction was, ‘Hey, let’s make wine!’ I used the county extension agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to learn about all the factors that can affect grapes while they’re growing.” Displaying a meteorologist’s passion for average mean temperatures and rainfall, he continues, “On the whole, summers in the Midwest aren’t long enough to get high-quality wine grapes right. The humidity is too high, and grapes are very susceptible to mold and mildew. Dry-farming, which I do Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Singular sun, muscular soil, Umpqua Valley

We take “members of our wine club... and let them sample [our cabernet franc].

”

They say, ‘Wow!’

in Oregon, creates some stress on vines, which produces smaller, more intensely flavored grapes with leathery skins. The flavor in red wines comes from skins, so you don’t want big water-bomb grapes.” Despite the drawbacks of the Midwest (and of neighborhood raccoons with a taste for grapes), he was soon producing semi-sweet wines in the basement of his home. A chemist friend performed regular mass spectrometer analyses on the batches, “which gives you an incredible amount of detail on what’s happening in the fermentation process,” Pat notes. By this time, he was in his second marriage, a baby was on the way and wine-making was fast outgrowing hobbydom. Clearly, two roads were diverging in a yellow vineyard. Pat and his wife, Loree, made their decision. Pat sold all his seats on the exchange and they moved to the West

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Coast to begin scouting winery properties in the three-state region. The process wasn’t quick or without stress — at one point, their daughter, Sydney, was in preschool, Loree was working part-time for two wineries to learn the ins and outs of the business, and Pat was trading and attending wine production classes at the University of California, Davis. The prep work paid off when they were able to buy an established winery. “It was wrapped up in an escrow quagmire and nobody wanted to touch it,” Pat says. He and Loree did. It took months of complications, but La Garza Cellars became Spangler Vineyards in 2004. “When it comes to the wine business,” Pat says, “you really need to know what you’re doing — and we did. I had very few qualms about the wine-making end of it, but running the business is another issue. The industry is exceptionally cutthroat and very, very competitive.” Owner-operated vineyards are popular with wine lovers, and visitors will usually find either Pat or Loree in the tasting room. “Sometimes I get tired of answering the same customer question for the five hundredth time,” Pat admits. “But being there allows us to keep a finger on the pulse of the wine-drinking community, and it’s fun for us, too, to get validation from other people. That never gets old. “We’ve got a cabernet franc back in barrels that I think is a spectacular wine; we’ll bottle it and have it for sale in the spring. We take members of our wine club back there and let them sample it. Completely unscripted, they say ‘Wow!’” Awards are a another kind of feedback, and Spangler Vineyards has been winning its share, Pat says. “We entered our 2001 reserve cabernet at the West Coast Wine Competition in Santa Rosa, California. Seventeen hundred wines were entered. Ours was picked as the number-one cab in the eighteento-thirty price point — in California! If that’s not a validation that you’re doing something right, I don’t know what is. And we’ve appeared in [the magazine] Wine Spectator, which is quite a big deal.”

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Spangler, left, laboring in his fields

New venues for the vineyards’ finest have him particularly excited. Two ultratoney West Coast resorts — Black Butte Ranch and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort — carry the wines on their restaurant menus. But the work of becoming known goes on, he says. “In a good wine shop, there are thousands of wines on the shelves. How do you stand out? You have to get your name out. If your wine is good enough, people will try it and buy it. If it’s not good enough, nothing you do will matter.” The efforts make for work that Pat calls “incessant — twelve hours a day, seven days a week.” Ask if he’s seen Sideways and he’ll tell you, “I haven’t seen a movie since 2002!” Despite the demands, the bloom isn’t off the grapes; the romance of wine still makes a heady bouquet. “From a very early age, I determined that I wasn’t going to be satisfied with grinding out my life trying to eke out a living — not with so many intriguing things in the world,” Pat says. “We love the life we’re living. When there’s something in life that you love doing, the career picks you.”

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Like a well-tended pinot noir grape, Patrick Spangler was picked ripe. “When it’s the middle of October and I’m spending eighteen hours at the winery making wine, I’m getting good at it.” Visit online at www.spanglervineyards.com/

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

faculty essay

by Dr. Nandini Bhattacharya, associate professor and chair of women’s and gender studies

BOLLYWOOD:

The century of magical filmmaking in India

et me begin with a legendary Bollywood gag. The softhearted thug asks the bouncy village belle in the midst of her unstoppable chatter: “What is your name, Basanti?” The garrulous beauty is flummoxed because the rough Romeo obviously knows her name — Basanti (Spring Maiden) — which she has indeed tossed out earlier, captivating the thuggish heart in the process. Bollywood audiences still laugh at this joke. What is your name, Alice? This scene (from the 1975 blockbuster Sholay [Embers]) captures the formal

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

essence of Bollywood: a known quantity captivating the hearts of millions of informed viewers worldwide. Bollywood, like ancient Greek theatre, has always been about formulaic cultural consensus. The stories, often retold and deeply loved, capture archetypes and universals as the distilled essence of the human dilemma. Also loved and even deified are the actors and actresses. When Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan had a severe on-set accident and nearly died, the prime minister of India and her son rushed to the hospital and the country ground to a standstill.

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It all started in the early nineteenhundreds with mythologicals, a genre that captures the deepest preoccupation of Indian cultural and political life: religion. Religion has been the axis of both coherence and chaos in India for hundreds of years; since 1946, the country has erupted in several major episodes of anti-minority violence. In the midtwentieth century, the Bollywood film industry reflected a nation patriotically suffused with memories of independence and aspirations for future development. Mother India (1957) came out of that hope. In it, the beautiful Muslim actress Nargis played India’s arch-iconic Hindu peasant mother struggling to give her children a fair chance in life. Striving slowly turned into strife as the disaffection and disillusionment of the ’seventies and ’eighties gave rise to the Angry Young Man, which led to films like Sholay. Bollywood asks, moreover, “What does the nation want of its women?” Women have always helped define Bollywood’s representational logic. An example would be Nargis, the aforesaid Muslim actress playing a Hindu peasant mother who shoots to death her rebel son so that the community can survive. Though her son was protesting the lawlessness of feudal oppression, the film suggests that Mother India cannot allow national identity to fall victim to a wild justice. The plough resting on her

The stories capture the distilled

”

essence of the human dilemma.

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Courtesy of Miramax Films

“

shoulder is the precursor to Indian’s neoindustrial era of socialized development. Thus the woman bears the labor and responsibility of national regeneration. Bollywood makes a thousand films a year. Fourteen million Indians see a movie a day. Bollywood’s chief significance, though, lies in its timelessness deftly masking its always-contemporary forging of the Indian identity. “What is a South Asian? Someone who watches Hindi [Bollywood] movies,” writes Suketu Mehta in Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. Yesterday it was the mother as warrior of socialized development; today it is the globetrotter funded by transnational and sometimes illicit capital. (Much of film financing now comes from a global Indian crime underworld.) In Mehta’s words, “An India cinema hall is never the chamber of mass unconsciousness it is in the West. For one thing, you can never tell anyone to shut up... If a god appears onscreen, people might throw coins or prostrate themselves in the aisles. Babies growl; during a song, a quarter of the audience might get up and procure refreshment in the lobby... The Indian public thinks with its heart. This passion can topple governments, empires... Underworld and dreamworld — in Bombay they are reflections of each other.” Even making Bollywood films underscores the meaning of the cinema: an impossible consensus.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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life aquatic The

By Cynthia Nowak, Vicki L. Kroll & Deanna Woolf

On our planet, water is life. Thus, life is the mission of the Lake Erie Research Center (at left), which in nine years has become an international nexus for water studies. Immerse yourself in the excitement of some of the topnotch UT faculty and students who are collaborating on research affecting every person, animal and plant that calls

Photo by Daniel Miller

our thirsty world home.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Keeping perch and other fish prolific Dr. Rex Strange, research associate, Lake Erie Center

Brian Elkington, graduate student

Boomerang kids: adult children who return home after striking out on their own. It appears that Homo sapiens have some company with this trend — nine out of ten walleyes that spawn in Maumee Bay return to mate. Strange is examining genetic patterns of fish. When it comes to genetic diversity, walleyes are ideal, he says, as they live from Alabama to Alaska in different temperatures and environments. Their genetic differences allow the researchers to compare where walleyes originate to where they spawn. The Maumee Bay region is the largest walleye spawning run in the country, according to Strange, and the fish seem to home in on this area when they reproduce. It’s important that walleye genetic populations stay intact, with minimal interbreeding, he says. “If fish are genetically homogeneous, something may happen — like a temperature change, a parasite or disease — that would wipe all of them out.”

He’s investigating how yellow perch — those anglers’ delights in stripes — are affected by the lake’s turbidity: the amount of sediment or phytoplankton in the water. “It’s been shown that yellow perch growing to fishable size depends a lot on the first month or two of life. So I’m looking at how well they’re able to feed on zooplankton at this life stage,” he says. “Back in April and May, you looked out at the lake and it was brown. So that made us wonder: Are the yellow perch able to see their prey in there?” Using tanks with different turbidity levels — from clear to murky water — he is testing yellow perch at the larval stage, just after they hatch, and at thirty and fifty millimeters, by starving them overnight and giving them one hour to feed. The subjects are sacrificed for a gut analysis to determine how much they ate. “If we can figure out what’s killing them and keeping them alive, we can have a better idea of how to increase the population,” he says.

Osvaldo Jhonatan Sepulveda Villet, PhD candidate

any research I might do is right across the street. — Brian Elkington

”

Right, new riff on an old song: Birds gotta swim, fish gotta play a critical role in the watery food chain.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Photo by Daniel Miller

“

The Lake Erie Center is a beautiful facility. And

Conservation of the yellow perch is at the center of his project. “The goal is to establish a database for fishery management and agencies that would discern diversity among population,” he says, explaining that high diversity indicates a healthy breeding population. Taking a section of the perch’s fin no bigger than a match head (after which the fish are returned to the water), he employs mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA analyses to read the perch’s DNA “blueprint.” The process makes it possible to discern actual lineages in the perch population. Armed with such specifics, fisheries are better able to identify conservation successes and address concerns.

E-rasing E. coli and other nasties Dr. Cyndee Gruden, assistant professor of civil engineering The term is environmental microbiology. Specifically, Gruden is studying methods for reducing the chemical contaminants (in this case, PCBs) in the sediment of lakes and other waterways. “There’s no way you’re going to remove every bit of contaminated sediments, but we can encourage native anaerobic bacteria to help degrade contaminants,” she says. Focusing on part of Toledo’s Ottawa River near landfills, she and her students use lactic acid to “feed” helpful bacteria already in the sediments, encouraging them to break down the PCBs. She’s also working on the problems created by E. coli bacteria in the lake. “Do the E. coli concentrate in the sediments, then get resuspended via recreational boat traffic? If they’re settling into the sediment, it’s not what we’d expected, and it becomes harder for predators to eliminate them,” she explains. “Studies show that the vast majority of E. coli in the Maumee River at Lake Erie is re-suspended. It’s a very active channel, with shallow water and lots of boat traffic.”

Photo by Jim Nowak

Left, besides acting as filters, wetlands and marshes provide habitats for waterfowl, shore birds and water birds.

Dr. Hans Gottgens, associate professor of earth, ecological & environmental sciences Water pollution? Build wetlands! That’s what Gottgens is doing, with the help of colleagues and Maumee Bay State Park (MBSP) officials. The frequent beach closures at the park because of E. coli contamination spurred local and regional groups — including the Maumee Bay Bacterial Task Force — to examine cleanup methods. “My idea was to use wetlands as a natural treatment system for filtering pathogens and suspended solids before they reach Lake Erie,” Gottgens says. “The task force identified Wolf Creek/Berger Ditch — a small waterway that drains a substantial area of Oregon — as a main source for pathogens. The idea is to divert the water from the ditch into a series of wetlands cells, using a lowlying piece of land at the park entrance. We’ll try different designs and see which is the most effective at reducing E. coli. Once we know which works best, we’ll turn the area into a wetland using that design.” The groundbreaking project packs a double benefit, Gottgens says: “Not only do you have the reduction of pathogens, but you restore to its original state an area which used to be a wetland. We’re using the environmental service of a wetlands ecosystem, free of charge.”

Overleaf, Kelleys Island, the largest of more than a dozen American and Canadian Lake Erie islands. All depend on clean water for their residential, commercial, educational and recreational investments. Photo by Jim Nowak.

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

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Bivalve bad boys: zebra and quagga mussels Dr. Carol Stepien, professor of earth, ecological & environmental sciences; director of Lake Erie Center

Dr. Carol Stepien: tipping the scales

“

This is the place where all the issues of the

Great Lakes converge. There’s the lake and there’s the Maumee River, the single largest source of nutrients to the Great Lakes. It’s a fishery, too; all walleye come to spawn at western side of Lake Erie. Plus, we get all the environmental problems: algae blooms, turbid water, agriculture and industry. The area is a huge laboratory for the Great Lakes.

”

— Christine Mayer

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

She’s studying invasive species, in particular those headline-grabbing zebra and quagga mussels, as well as the round goby, an invasive fish species. Strategies for dealing with these unwelcome guests must begin with knowing the enemy. “We’re developing genetic identification,” she explains. “It’s important because an invasive species may be misclassified.” It’s especially important in the Great Lakes, where genetic diversity is vast and where invasives — often hitching rides on international ships — are entering the ecosystem at multiple locations. “We can’t hope to eradicate the invasives until we know what we have and what they match up with ecologically in their native habitat,” says Stepien, who spent part of the past fall collecting samples in Russia and Ajerbaijan. Gobies are a crucial part of the story, she says, because they prey on the zebra mussels. They’re also likely to become an alarming success story. “Unlike zebra mussels, invasive gobies are tolerant of salt water, so I predict they’ll spread along the East Coast.” Their dinner there? Native mussels.

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Dr. Christine Mayer, assistant professor of earth, ecological & environmental sciences Establishing the invaders’ genetic calling card is one critical step; identifying their modus operandi is another. “We know zebra mussels change lakes. How are they doing it? That’s what we’re studying,” Mayer says. “In the western basin of Lake Erie, the most visible impact of the mussels is the increase in water clarity. When the water gets clear, it’s like cutting down the trees in a forest; suddenly, sunlight reaches the bottom. The ecosystem changes.” Complicating the equation is the timing; mussels are entering at the same time that nutrients (which reduce lake water clarity) are declining. “Up to the early 1970s, people poured their phosphorus-based soaps and detergents into the lakes,” Mayer notes. “Lake Erie, though, still gets a lot of nutrients from agricultural runoff.” She studies long-term data from different lakes to determine which situation — mussels or nutrients — is causing water clarity. “Another way is to answer the question is experimentally, by creating an indoor ecosystem and manipulating the light and nutrient levels, with and without zebra mussels,” she says.

Kristen DeVanna, second-year graduate student You might say she’s getting sedimental about her research. Zebra and quagga mussels have wiped out unionid clams and are threatening unionid mussels, she explains. However, their effects on burrowing mayflies haven’t been studied in depth, so DeVanna is digging into the bottom of the lake for some answers. She’s filled tubs in the Lake Erie Center’s pond with lake sediment and various combinations of mussels and mayflies. Twenty cylinders in the lake have the same setup. DeVanna is monitoring changes in sediment water content, organic matter content and sediment grain size, and looking at microbial and macro-invertebrate community changes. “I spend most of my time in waders sampling all these tubs — it tends to be a muddy job,” she says. It’s an important one, too. Mayflies and unionid mussels are bio-turbators — they mix up the lake bottom, influencing the balance of water, oxygen, nutrients and organic matter. “This affects the invertebrate community that lives in the sediment, which also affects the food available to many sport fishes in the lake.”

Joshua Brown, PhD candidate Brown is excited about being part of the research on invasive species. “Whatever I do after graduation, I’m going to continue to study invasives,” he says. “It’s been my interest since I was an undergrad.” Currently he’s examining the population genetics of the two invasive mussels and the round goby. “We’re looking at how they’ve adapted to changing lake conditions and how levels of genetic diversity contribute to success of each species,” he explains. “So far we’ve confirmed at least two instances of genetic change from populations of a decade ago. It’s too early to say what might have caused the change, but we can make an educated guess: Zebra mussels are being replaced by quagga mussels in Lake Erie.”

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Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Dr. Daryl Dwyer with turf warriors

Using green to clean Dr. Daryl Dwyer, associate professor of earth, ecological & environmental sciences Most people hope to live far from chemical and metal contaminants, but Dwyer is right at home in the landfills and tainted waterways of the Maumee Bay area. His research centers on phytoremediation, whereby plants become super-cleansers. The idea, he explains, is to plant native perennials at brownfields and landfill sites: “Each year, the tops of the plants [where the chemicals are concentrated] would be harvested and burned, creating a small amount of ash to be disposed of.” The plant roots also would suck up the water

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

in the contaminated soil, preventing runoff from entering the groundwater system. His experiments have shown that the blue lupine — food for the endangered Karner blue butterfly — takes up arsenic from the soil. He also has found species of poplars, dogwoods and crabgrass thriving in the poor soil of Sylvania’s King Road landfill. “While you can never make a park out of some of these areas, the public could come and see the natural plants and wildlife there” if they were replanted, he says.

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Jumping in the gene pool Matthew Neilson, PhD candidate There are more than two thousand species of gobies. Luckily, Neilson only has to construct family trees for two of them: the round and tubenose gobies, both lake invasives. Still, it’s a complicated pedigree. “They’re from a closely related group of gobies from the Azov, Black and Caspian seas,” he says. “There are about twenty-five species in this group, but their inter-relationships — how all these species are put together, who’s related to who, and the patterns of relatedness — aren’t very well-known.” Morphology (form and structure) and DNA sequences help him through the maze. By untangling the relationships and reconstructing the evolutionary “fishtory” of the invasive species, he’s shedding light on how the gobies’ genetic diversity helps them adapt to their new environment in Lake Erie.

Amanda Haponski, first-year graduate student Wading in on the greenside darter, Haponski is trying to determine if the small fish found in Ohio streams has evolved into two species. “I’m looking at the genetics of it and I’m also doing a morphological study to determine if two or more known subspecies have become species,” she says. “At the subspecies level, the fish can still technically mate with each other. So I’m trying to determine if they aren’t able to mate anymore and have become two separate species.” She’s been counting scales and extracting DNA from greenside darters all over the state: “If the greenside darter became two new species, then there would be one more species to add to the natural diversity of streams and rivers.”

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Genetic coda: Lake Erie residents span species.

Still to come: A future wetland (the Wynn Road Ecosystem Project) that promises to bring more ecologic benefits to the region and — with plans for a bike/ walking trail — open more windows onto this unique natural resource. Science, service and a stimulus to the region — the Lake Erie Center’s roles will continue to expand as water issues get more complex. One thing is certain: At the rambling building on the bay, challenges are always welcomed.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Ealey: Record, legend still standing by Vicki L. Kroll

‘Hall of Fame, add a name!’ Chuck Ealey for the College Football Hall of Fame! Local group Rockets Anonymous is campaigning to make it happen. A letter-writing campaign is linked at www.toledorocketfans.com, with more to come.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

few college quarterbacks have come close to tying Chuck Ealey’s 35-0 record. There was Miami’s Ken Dorsey who couldn’t quite match it in 2003. And this year, USC’s Matt Leinart had a shot at equaling that amazing mark, but missed it. Funny thing is, these players have four years to try to do what No. 16 did playing at The University of Toledo from 1969 to 1971. “I didn’t play 40 games. We couldn’t play as freshmen at that point,” Ealey says. “We won every game we could win. What else could we do? You can’t get better than 35-0. You could get more, but you’re still 100 percent of the games you win. I think they should keep both records, but if that’s not the way they want to count it, it doesn’t bother me.” A lot of things don’t bother Ealey. Consider this: He racked up 5,903 yards in total offense and 54 touchdowns while leading the Rockets to final Associated Press rankings of No. 20 in 1969, No. 12 in 1970 and No. 14 in 1971, finishing eighth in the Heisman Trophy voting his senior year. Yet the NFL didn’t draft him. The Washington Post reported a wrestler and a discus thrower were among the 442 selected in 1972. Rumors about negotiating a contract

in the Canadian Football League surfaced right before the draft. “I didn’t know anything about Canadian football. I had gone up to Hamilton [Ontario] with the agent and had a discussion, but it wasn’t to negotiate a contract. A story came across the wire saying I signed with Hamilton at the draft supposedly,” Ealey says. “Some [NFL] teams had asked me would I consider playing wide receiver, defensive back, and I sent a message to them that if I was going to be drafted, I wanted to be drafted as a quarterback and let that be what it was. Well, obviously that didn’t happen. “Between those two things, I tell people I can’t say that every team in the NFL didn’t draft me because I was black or whatever political reasons. Some teams needed quarterbacks, some teams didn’t. I think the mindset of the time is that they didn’t have black quarterbacks. I was one of the first that could’ve been that didn’t, so I just took my bags and went to Canada and played there.” And played well. As a rookie, Ealey led the Hamilton Ti-Cats to the Grey Cup Championship in 1972 and was named MVP of the game. “That was satisfying. It was like I can still do that, and I was happy to have that conversation with the www.toledoalumni.org

Executive decisions off the field Chuck Ealey knows a thing or two about challenging situations from his football days.

So when he started working for John Deere in Canada after seven years in the CFL …

“A black person selling equipment to

farmers in Mennonite country — that’s not

something you normally see,” he says with a laugh. “It was a great experience.”

After eight years, he joined Investors

Group Financial Services Inc. in Mississauga, Ontario, where he is a regional director. “I’m in charge of about 60 people in my office,” Ealey says. “I hire and train people to do the tax

and estate planning, investment planning, insurance planning.”

Unstoppable Ealey and Rockets

His gridiron career helped him make

the transition to the business world. That’s because he used the power of visualization to prepare for games.

media,” he says. “As an athlete and a ball player, I still think I could have played in the NFL.” Even though he didn’t get a chance in the NFL, Ealey did lead the way for black quarterbacks in the CFL. “I kind of opened up the door for a number of black quarterbacks — Conridge Holloway, Warren Moon, Jim Jones. It created a whole opportunity for that to happen there, not that it wouldn’t have happened there naturally,” says the native of Portsmouth, Ohio. “There were no holdbacks there. They wanted the best athlete to be able to do the job and that was all that mattered, and it’s still fairly like that now, even though the NFL has gone full circle to where they’d like to have a dozen Michael Vicks.” Vicks’ throwing and running abilities are reminiscent of Ealey’s electrifying style. A Blade sports writer dubbed Ealey “the Wizard of Oohs and Aahs” for his incredible play-making magic and knack for leading Toledo to come-from-behind victories. His teammates called him “Mr. Cool.” “You get nervous before the game. I think nervous is not a bad thing because it keeps you focused. Nervous and being scared are two different things,” Ealey www.toledoalumni.org

says. “When the ball goes on the field, all of the nervousness goes away.” In rocky days of social upheaval, sports helped level the playing field. “When I came to The University of Toledo in 1969 and 1970, Kennedy had been killed, Martin Luther King was killed, there was the Black Power movement, the NAACP movement, Gloria Steinem, the war in Vietnam, the Kent State killings. There was every social issue you could possibly deal with,” Ealey recalls. “We had kids coming to play football from Cleveland, Detroit, Watts, Archbold, Montpelier — people who probably hadn’t seen black people outside of a game or two and people who hadn’t really dealt with white people. “You had to win over a number of issues internally that people don’t talk about but that you knew where there. Football and sport does a great deal to kind of knock some of the edges off those things, but at that time it was pretty nasty,” Ealey says. “Everybody had their little corners and you had to break those walls down to sort of say it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you play. And the rest is history.”

“When I coach and teach people, I

tell them you have to prepare mentally for everything you do. It’s not just walking in to a meeting and doing something; it’s thinking about what you need to do and how you can

best add support to people’s lives,” Ealey says.

These days he shares his thoughts

through public speaking. “I talk about the

inward self, the outward relationship with business or team and how that works

combined with the upward relationship, which is the a-ha or the spiritual side,” Ealey

says. “I try to make sure people believe in themselves so they can offer value to others.”

The 56-year-old lives in Brampton, Ontario,

with his wife, Sherry.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Sixteen candles — times sixteen-plus

“When I was married

in 1925, I didn't know a

”

weed from a flower.

Florence and Ira on their wedding day

lorence Hetrick (A/S ’27) looks grand for 100 — just don’t ask her how she’s feeling. “Everybody asks that question!” she exclaims. “It just makes me feel terrible!” Within a very few minutes, though, she’s pulling vivid recollections of the University — back in the day when bootlegging meant moonshine, not music — out of her still-sharp mind. “The school was spread out all over Toledo then,” she says. As a student, she worked in the University library, then housed in a large downtown building. The biggest drawback was the location in the city’s ”red light” district, described by a contemporary faculty member as “a crater of social vice and hideousness and boldness.” Leaving the library, Florence says, meant at least a moment

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

of unease: “It closed up at nine o’clock at night, and there I would be at 11th and Illinois.” Other experiences were more pleasurable. Simultaneously studying at Toledo’s Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Arts, she snagged the starring role of Viola in Twelfth Night, the University’s first Shakespearean comedy. She also met the man — Ira Hetrick — who became one of her regular suitors. “We met at a dance at the school,” she recalls. “I told him, ‘Nice little car you’re driving. Is it yours?’ What an opinion he must have had of me after that!” Evidently, Ira wasn’t put off — when he died in 1990, they had been married for sixty-five years. The longtime Toledo teacher takes pleasure in the present as well as in the past. Up until two

years ago, she was still acting as a judge in local flower shows; she had been a judge for more than fifty years. “When I was married in 1925, I didn’t know a weed from a flower. But I learned. I studied for sixteen years, went to summer school and even to Nassau in the Bahamas to learn about flowers.” She tended the church flowers at Augsburg Lutheran for forty-five years, and along with her niece and sometime caregiver, Liz Milbrodt (who attended UT in the 1950s), Florence is a regular at a local garden club. In spite of occasional protests of “Oh, I’m all dried up,” Florence clearly finds life at the century mark worth living. When she was in her nineties, medical problems forced her to make a choice, her niece says: “It was either amputate her leg or not be around much longer.” Florence’s reply to her doctors remains her credo: “I still have a lot of living to do.” Sadly, some three months after this interview, Florence died on Nov. 2. She had also been a member of Kappa Pi Epsilon (Chi Omega).

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class notes

’30s

Joseph H. (Ed ’38) and Ruth (Lamson) Carter (A/S ’38), Annandale, Va., celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in September, and reported good health in their entire family.

’40s

Cyrus L. Goodwin (Bus ’43), Brookings, Ore., wrote in to answer our “What in the world are you doing?” query: “At age 82, what else can I do except a little fishing and keeping count on the great-grandkids?”

Centerville, Ohio, is a contractor in construction management and industrial engineering. Larry E. Smith (UTCTC ’62), retired senior lab technician and test driver for General Motors, was inducted into the Sandusky Speedway Hall of Fame as a fivetime track champion. Dee Talmage (MEd ’65), whose service with the American Red Cross spans four decades, was named chairwoman of the Greater Toledo Area chapter of the American Red Cross volunteer board of directors.

Dr. Herman J. Dunseith (Ed ’48), Exeter, N.H., wrote in to say hello.

Julia (Farkas) Lewandowski (Ed ’55) and her husband, Richard, Toledo, celebrated their 50th anniversary in August. Both retired, they have five children and 14 grandchildren. Louis G. Galambos (Ed ’57), Oregon, who founded Caton Connector Corp., was named to the Birmingham Hall of Fame, representing business in the historic Toledo neighborhood’s annual induction.

’60s

Richard B. Calaway (Bus ’62), www.toledoalumni.org

George V. Oravecz (Eng ’70), Maumee, a consulting engineer who practiced for 30 years, was named to the Birmingham Hall of Fame at the Toledo neighborhood’s annual banquet in October. Harold Hoffman (Eng ’71), a 32-year veteran of the construction industry and former owner of Novus Building Group, joined The Douglas Co., Holland, Ohio, as a senior project manager.

former high school teacher, was honored as Distinguished Citizen during the Birmingham Hall of Fame ceremony in the fall.

George W. Green (Bus ’50, MBA ’51), Dearborn, Mich., Talmage ’65

James W. Millon (A/S ’72, Law ’76) merged his private

Bob Galbreath (MBA ’66),

Maumee law firm with that of Eastman & Smith Ltd. He will practice in the Toledo office. John Obermyer (Eng ’72), Bowling Green, was promoted to executive vice president, Engineering Systems Division, with Matrix Technologies Inc., a national engineering and factory automation firm headquartered in Maumee.

Kingwood, Texas, retired in 2003. When he’s not traveling, he does volunteer work with the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE).

John Baraona (UTCTC ’67) celebrated the 25th anniversary of his company, The Fussy Cleaners, northeast Ohio’s largest independent dry cleaning chain.

Randy R. Lockard (UTCTC ’69), Coppell, Texas, is senior vice president for Fossil Inc., the fashion watch and accessory company. He and his wife, Kathy, have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Bishop ’73, ’79 Don Krompak (UTCTC ’74, Univ Coll ’80, MBA ’88) was promoted to vice president, project management, with Matrix Technologies, with whom he has worked since 1980.

Krompak ’74, ’80, ’88 Sue Sgro (A/S ’74), Toledo, a nationally accredited music teacher who has provided private lessons on the piano, violin and viola for 27 years, was honored as the Ohio Music Teachers Association’s Teacher of the Year for independent teaching.

Deirdre I. (Goldsmith) Arnowitz (Univ Coll ’73),

Pauline “PJ” Milligan (Ed ’69), vice president of business development at ACI Construction Co. in Alvada, Ohio, was selected as Dana Chair Executive-inResidence for the 2005-06 academic year by the University of

one of the founders of Matrix Technologies Inc., which celebrated its 25th year in the fall, was promoted to president.

’70s

Yolanda Danyi Szuch (A/S ’71), Perrysburg, writer and

’50s

wrote an article, “Grab Those Graphics,” which appeared in Authorship, a quarterly publication for writers. He also wrote “The Last Days of Packard” for The Packard Cormorant. R.J. Molter (Pharm ’54) has served for 33 years on the board of trustees for Owens Community College, which marked its 40th anniversary in September.

Findlay. The chair was established through the Dana Corp. to strengthen ties between area businesses and academia.

Obermyer ’72 David Bishop (UTCTC ’73, Eng ’79), Bowling Green,

director of social work services for the Beth Sholom Lifecare Community in Richmond, Va., was the first recipient of an award for outstanding contributions to social work education, given by the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, where she has been an adjunct

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

class notes

faculty member for 20 years. A senior teacher at Congregation Or Atid in Richmond, she and her husband, Stuart, have two daughters, Jennifer and Rebecca. Doug Ebright (Ed ’75), a teacher and coach at Riverdale High School in Mt. Blanchard, Ohio, was named to the North Baltimore Athletic Hall of Fame in September, honored for baseball and basketball.

Robert Reifert (Bus ’75, MBA ’77) is working in what he calls “my dream job,” as business manager of surgery for the Mease Hospitals in Safety Harbor and Dunedin, Fla. Roger P. Sugarman (Law ’75), a director with the Columbus firm of Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter Co. LPA, was elected to the board of directors of the State Auto Mutual Insurance Co.

Becki (Braatz) Bair (UTCTC ’77), Sylvania, secretary at UT’s Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Greek Life, received the University’s Beverly Hatcher Outstanding Greek Adviser Award. The namesake of the award, Beverly Hatcher, who attended UT from 1970 to 1973, was named Outstanding Greek Life Adviser of the Year by UT and Bowling Green State University. Beverly, a longtime Greek adviser who volunteers with the Alpha Psi chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi, also received the Muriel T. McKinney Award, a national award honoring an adviser for outstanding service to a collegiate chapter. Both women were active together in Alpha Omicron Pi during their student days, when Beverly was Becki’s “Big Sister.”

with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Amy J. Barton (A/S ’84),

Bair ’77, Hatcher John H. Koehler (Law ’79) is leading the Findlay office of Eastman & Smith Ltd., which he joined in the fall after a private practice in the city since 1983.

Michael E. Springer (UTCTC ’79, Eng ’83). Walbridge, Ohio, joined INEX Spacer Inc., a thermoplastic manufacturer and insulating glass distributor, as sales and marketing manager for the United States and Mexico.

’80s

David C. Frazer (Bus ’80) was promoted to banking center officer with Fifth Third Bank, working at their Bryan, Ohio, location. Dale H. Long (A/S ’80) was promoted to director of news services in the Office of Public Relations at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a private college in Terre Haute, Ind.

Brion E. Deitsch (Ed ’81, Ed Spec ’97) started his new job as superintendent of the Fairview Park, Ohio, school district in August, which will include overseeing a $25 million school facilities construction project. Lou Levy (MPA ’81), a teacher for 32 years, is the new special education teacher at Upper Sandusky (Ohio) High School.

Ghassan Khaled (Eng ’83, Eng ’85, MEng ’86), Philadelphia, and his wife, Mai Sidawi, spent a vacation visiting family in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Ghassan is a systems coordinator

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center School of Nursing, was among 20 healthcare professionals nationwide to be selected for a 2005 Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellowship.

Chuck Biggert (Ed ’84, MEd ’97), Genoa, Ohio, was named superintendent of the Williams County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. Melanie Komon (Bus ’84), Sylvania, was named a partner at Tucker, Kissling & Associates Inc., a Toledo CPA firm.

Themi Anagnos (Eng ’85) accepted a position as the chief intellectual property counsel for Ygomi LLC, a wireless communications design and development firm in San Jose, Calif.

Richard S. Chapman M.D. (Bus ’85), family practitioner, joined a medical practice in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

Mary Jane Erard (UTCTC ’85, Univ Coll ’90), executive director of UT-AAUP (American Association of University Professors) and a landscape artist working in pastels, was accepted to exhibit in the View Point 2005 national juried art exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Club in November, made up of selected works of 70 national artists. She was also represented in the Marziart Internationale Galerie in Hamburg, Germany, in December. Locally, she won a first award at the 2005 Crosby Festival of the Arts in Toledo. Dr. Scott Peller (A/S ’85), St. Clair Shores, Mich., received his doctorate in American literature from Wayne State University, Detroit.

Richard A. Schmidt (Law ’85), a Bowling Green attorney, was appointed to the Bowling Green Parks and Recreation Foundation Board. Pat L. Schultz (MEd ’85) retired in August from her position as assistant superintendent of Penta Career Center in Perrysburg. She spent more than 30 years in education. Gary Bishop (Law ’86) took the position of assistant criminal prosecutor with the Richland County Prosecutor’s Office in Mansfield, Ohio.

Joann (Urbaniak) Golembiewski (Univ Coll ’86) joined The University of Toledo in June as a secretary in the CapacityBuilding in Construction Program of University College. She also teaches religious education classes at her church.

Chris Rizzo (Univ Coll ’86, MPA ’90) accepted the position of director of ancillary services at Mercy Hospital of Tiffin, Ohio.

Tami K. (Tuskas) Tam (Bus ’86) was promoted to executive recruiter with Fristoe & Carleton Executive Search and Recruiting in Hudson, Ohio. She and her husband, Paul (Eng ’86), have two daughters.

Tam ’86 Mark Kowalski (Ed ’87) is country director for Cambodia with World Education, founded in 1951 as a voluntary organization serving the educationally disadvantaged on four continents.

www.toledoalumni.org

Where the deer and the dromedaries played

f you’ve visited his family Christmas tree farm in Whitehouse, Ohio, you’ve most likely met Ron Disher. You’ve probably also met some members of his extended family: donkeys, three camels and a reindeer herd of thirty-three. Although the retired teacher and part-time farmer has no lack of human children and grandchildren, the ruminants have been a part of his life since his daughter and wife “thought that it would be a good idea to add a reindeer to the Christmas tree display,” he says. “Well, I guess I went overboard.” With a little help from the regional chapter of the Reindeer Owners and Breeders Association, two baby reindeer and two adults made the trip to northwest Ohio. “Reindeer do fly,” he smiles. “The babies traveled by air freight.” More reindeer were boarded at the family farm through an arrangement with a Texas animal

With Jingle www.toledoalumni.org

broker. In time, the Dishers purchased all the boarders, adding donkeys and camels along the way. Now easily topping eight feet, Fred and Barney, single-humped dromedaries, recently became a trio with the purchase of young Dino, who during this interview playfully joined the ongoing reindeer games of his antlered mates. From their pen, Fred and Barney looked on with amused tolerance — or is that anthropomorphism? “Fred and Barney have excellent dispositions and wonderful personalities,” Ron says. “Other camel owners have offered to buy them on the spot.” Ron and his longtime assistant, Ken Leininger, learned from experts how to train their charges, working toward having them carry saddles and riders. It doesn’t always go smoothly, Ron says, because in spite of Fred and Barney’s overall geniality, “Camels don’t like to leave the homes to which they’ve become accustomed, and travel can be a chore. One time it took four hours and four full-grown men tugging at his legs to get Barney into his livestock trailer. It was December 24th, and we ended up trying to find a vet who could administer him a mild sedative.” Nevertheless, the camels have learned to respond to commands via halter and chain, and to cush — go down on their front legs, then their hind legs. The camels will stay on the farm, but new demands have made it necessary to sell the donkeys. “The

With Dino reindeer herd is spoken for,” Ron says, looking sadly at his favorite, Jingle, who at his call ambles over to get her ears scratched. “Some are going to the Colorado mountains near Aspen. They’ll love the snow there. The past summer was hard on them, even with the fans we had running twenty-four hours a day. I’ll especially miss Jingle and Holly, but they’ll be doing what they were trained to do — pull a sleigh.” Because of the upcoming separation, he hasn’t given names to the youngest reindeer, all born on the farm. They continue to break into a run when egged on by family dog Buckeye, who gets a hard thump from their front legs when they catch him. “They don’t know how to play like a dog plays, but Buckeye’s adept at dodging,” Ron observes. “If they get him too hard, he’ll quit.” He’s well aware of how reindeer —

basically semi-domesticated caribou — can take special handling. “They’ve come up on me from behind and nudged me hard in the back, something my bad knee doesn’t like.” He’s taken falls and has a scar on his lip from a close encounter with an antler.

“Raindeer do fly ... by air frieght. ” But Disher, who holds a master’s degree in education from Bowling Green State University and one (“all but dissertation”) in vocational education from UT, has no regrets about their time as family. “They have sweet dispositions, they’re much smarter than horses,” he says. “And they’re my babies.” Toledo Toledo Alumni Alumni Magazine Magazine || Winter Winter 2006 2006

class notes

Carol A. Wedding (Eng ’87), president of Imaging Systems Technology, a Toledo-based electrical engineering firm, accepted the 2005 Research & Development 100 Award on behalf of the company, honored for its innovative work in flexible Plasma-sphere™ displays. The awards, given by R&D Magazine, recognize the 100 most technologically significant products of the year. Scott Knapp (Ed ’88) wrote in to say that he’s pursuing a master of science degree in Christian counseling at Philadelphia Biblical University in Langhorne, Pa., and planning to become an ordained minister. He and his wife, Shari Lynn, have two sons, David and Matthew. Rita Mansour (Bus ’88), managing director and regional manager of McDonald Financial Group, Toledo, was named one of the nation’s leading female financial advisors in The Winner’s Circle, a book by financial services industry expert R.J. Shook.

Mansour ’88 Dr. Kumar Vaidyanathan (MEng ’88, PhD ’98), Sylvania, was named vice president of engineering and product development for the KS Bearings Division of Kolbenschmidt Pierburg, a global engine component supplier with four North American units.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

Valerie (Davis) Collins (Bus ’92) and her husband, Paul, of Zionsville, Ind., announce the birth of their second child, Alexander, in April.

Greg Edinger (UTCTC ’92)

Vaidyanathan ’88, ’98 Stephen M. Kanagaratnam (Bus ’89) was promoted to banking center officer at the Arrowhead Park Banking Center, Maumee, of Fifth Third Bank.

Jack B. Konrad Jr. (Eng ’89) joined the staff of engineering and architectural firm R.E. Warner, Westlake, Ohio, as senior electrical engineer.

’90s

Maria D. (Metzger) Baumgartner (Univ Coll ’90) was promoted to director of Sam Swope Exchange City, a new Junior Achievement program/ learning lab where fifth-grade students design and run their own city for a day. She and her husband, Chris (Bus ’92), live in Louisville, Ky., with their daughter, Madeline. Jeannie Mansfield (Ed ’90), Cloverdale, Ohio, joined Defiance High School as a librarian. Thomas Oakley (Ed ’91), assistant professor of studio art at Jackson Community College in Jackson, Mich., was honored by the Michigan Art Education Association as the Michigan Higher Education Art Educator of the Year. Active in the arts community for years, he has been at Jackson since 2000.

Sonya Yenser-Hammon (Ed ’91) was hired to teach junior English at Vantage Career Center in Van Wert, Ohio.

was promoted to academic director and principal of EHOVE Career Center, which serves students in Erie, Huron and Ottawa Counties, Ohio.

Dave Richards (Bus ’92) accepted the position of vice president, finance/CFO for Allen Medical Center in Oberlin, Ohio.

Scott Scharf (Ed ’92, MEd ’98) started his new job as principal of Washington Local Schools’ Shoreland Elementary in August. Previously he spent 13 years with Toledo Public Schools.

Beach ’93, ’97 Brian D. Foster (Bus ’93) was promoted to assistant vice president in the Retail Division of Fifth Third Bank. He continues to manage a banking center in Lambertville, Mich.

Robert W. Schoonmaker (Bus ’92) joined Fifth Third Bank as senior vice president and manager of the Investment Advisor Division. Mark A. Shaw (Law ’92) joined the industrial and employment section of Eastman & Smith Ltd., and will be leading their new Columbus office.

Dr. Jessica Spelman (A/S ’92) joined the practice of Drs. Rumbalski, Schissel and MacDowell, and the medical staff of Grady Memorial Hospital, both in Delaware, Ohio. Jim Wyse (MEd ’92), Stryker, Ohio, took over the principal’s job at Brickell Elementary School in August.

Jeffery Beach (UTCTC ’93, Eng ’97), Norton, Ohio, was named senior market manager, automotive, for the Thermoplastic Elastomer Division of Teknor Apex Co., a global manufacturer of plastic, rubber and chemical products.

Foster ’93 Deb Piotrowski (Ed ’93, MEd ’00) is the new superintendent of Millcreek-West Unity (Ohio) Schools. Jennifer Borsos (Ed ’94) joined Four County Career Center, Archbold, Ohio, as a daycare staffer.

Dr. Blaire Cooke (Pharm ’94, PharmD ’96) is a senior manager of early development at Amgen, an international biotechnology company, working in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Tanya K. (Welker) Heinemann (A/S ’94, MBA ’95) and her husband, Eric, of Orlando, Fla., announce the birth of their son, Nathaniel Austin, in March.

Nicole K. (Vancena) Hite (Ed ’94, MEd ’97), Lambertville, Mich., was named the Michigan Outstanding Teacher of the Year www.toledoalumni.org

for Community Service, presented to a teacher who serves as a model of leadership.

Charles Jaco (Ed ’94, MEd ’98) is the new assistant supervisor in the Office of Student Affairs at Penta Career Center in Perrysburg.

Janice M. (Gerweck) Nelson (A/S ’94) and her husband, David, announce the births of their two sons: Joseph Christopher in January 2004 and Zackery Thomas in August. Janice is a manager at Ford Motor Co. in Memphis, Tenn. Joe Verkennes (A/S ’95) joined Michigan’s Monroe County Community College as marketing director.

child, Sara-Kate Mabel, in March. She joins big brother, Aiden, and the family in the Boston area, where Lincoln was promoted to director of business development with Heritage Marketing & Incentives. Richard T. Bell (Law ’97), Fairport, N.Y., a partner in the Rochester law firm of Gates & Adams PC, was appointed to the State University of New York Brockport College Council by Gov. George Pataki for a sevenyear term.

Andre T. Swinerton (Ed ’98), Dublin, Ohio, was promoted to the rank of sergeant with the Ohio State Highway Patrol. He joined the force in 1999. Justin Syroka (Ed ’98) joined Perrysburg Schools as a fifth-grade teacher at Fort Meigs Elementary. Craig L. Teamer (Bus ’98) was promoted to officer in Fifth Third Bank’s Business Banking Group, working out of their downtown Toledo office.

Dr. Anthony Lucchi (Pharm ’97, PharmD ’99) is a clinical

Tony Borton (MEd ’96) is the new principal at Napoleon (Ohio) Middle School.

Dr. Eric Bizjak (Pharm ’96, PharmD ’98) works in Phoenix as scientific affairs regional manager at Scios Inc., a biopharmaceutical member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Joel Dollarhide (Bus ’96), Oregon, was named a partner at the Toledo CPA firm of Tucker, Kissling & Associates Inc. Brent Mussery (Bus ’96) was promoted to senior manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers, working in the accounting/consulting firm’s Toledo office. Lincoln (A/S ’96) and Shannon

H. (Hale) Smith (A/S ’97) announce the birth of their second

www.toledoalumni.org

Dr. Kevin D. Hopkins (A/S ’98) completed his family practice residency at Dayton’s Miami Valley Hospital in July. He accepted an appointment to the medical staff of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and began seeing patients at the Solon Family Health Center. He and his wife, Connie, live in Broadview Heights, Ohio.

Teamer ’98 Brandi (Streeter) Carson (Bus ’99) was promoted to manager with PricewaterhouseCooper. She works at the accounting and consulting firm’s Toledo office.

Dr. Matthew P. Horn (A/S ’99) and his wife, Shannon, announce the birth of their daughter, Marah, in July. Another kind of birth: Matthew opened North Coast Family Chiropractic in Port Clinton, Ohio.

Jennifer L. Okorowski (Ed ’99, MEd ’03) married Ryan Mason in July. They live in Gillette, Wyo., where Jennifer teaches seventh-grade English at Sage Valley Junior High School.

Stephen D. Marlowe (Law ’99) was hired as an English instructor at Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.

’00s Hopkins ’98

was hired as the new fiscal officer for the Continental (Ohio) School District.

Lawrence Nester Jr. (A/S ’00) joined Toledo’s Central Catholic High School as a social studies teacher. Peter Perna (Bus ’00), LaSalle, Mich., was promoted to assistant vice president, commercial loan officer with Monroe Bank & Trust.

September. She earned a doctor of pharmacy degree from Ohio Northern University and is a staff pharmacist for Discount Drug Mart in Willard, Ohio.

Dr. Kevin C. Smith (Pharm ’97, PharmD ’00) is director of

Verkennes ’95

Brad Deleruyelle (Bus ’00)

Dr. Tina A. Shook (A/S ’00) married Ryan Ruffing in

pharmacist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Phoenix.

pharmacy for Arrowhead Hospital in Glendale, Ariz. Wendy Warrington (A/S ’97), Toledo, was promoted to assistant vice president, training manager human resources with Monroe Bank & Trust, a Michigan-based community bank.

overseeing the small commercial business loan department for Monroe Bank & Trust of southeast Michigan.

Sami Boraby (Bus ’00, MBA ’05), Toledo, was promoted to small business loans manager,

Tracee Swank (Univ Coll ’00) accepted the position of director of political education with the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, working to increase political savvy and organizational involvement among state farmers and rural residents.

Christian Cagle (MEd ’01) joined Penta Career Center in Perrysburg as coordinator of job placement.

Dustin A. Chase M.D. (A/S ’01) received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in May. In June, he began a three-year residency in internal medicine at University Hospital, Cincinnati.

Tully M. Esterline (Eng ’01) was promoted to director of engineering at Brewco Motorsports, a NASCAR Busch Series race team based in Central City, Ky. As team engineer, Tully, along with driver David Green, won the Salute to the Troops 250 in July at Pikes Peak International Raceway. On the home front, he and his wife, Wendy, welcomed Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

class notes

the birth of their first child, Tobey Maxwell, in December.

Robert Falkenstein (MEd ’01) took the position of executive director for the Perrysburg Digital Academy, an online school in its third year.

Lisa Goodin (Pharm ’01) works as a pharmacist at Walgreens in El Mirage, Ariz.

Sarah A. (Levine) Rahman (Ed ’01), who completed her master’s degree in education, is teaching for Sylvania Public Schools. She and her husband, Kenneth, have two daughters and live in Toledo.

Stacie Schnitkey (Bus ’01) was promoted to region business manager, Southeast, for Playtex Products Inc., for whom she has worked since 2001. She will relocate to the Charlotte, N.C., area to take responsibility for Playtex ’s product relations with some 2,500 stores.

Rick Turner (Ed ’01) joined Apollo Career Center Adult Workforce Education in Lima, Ohio, as director of adult programs.

Heidi R. Burkhart (Bus ’02), New York City, an associate broker for Eastern Consolidated Properties Inc., received the New Broker of the Year Achievement Award through the Real Estate Board of New York.

Charlene Hansen-Morlock (Univ Coll ’03), graduate coordinator in the UT department of chemistry, was installed as the 2005-06 president of the Glass City chapter of the International Association of Administrative Professionals. She’s a 20-year member of the association, whose local chapter is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Maryann Holderman (MEd ’03) is the new elementary and junior high school computer

teacher and technology representative for the Riverdale school district in Mount Blanchard, Ohio.

Elizabeth N. Kennedy (Law ’03) joined Fifth Third Bank as an investment advisor associate, based out of the bank’s MonroeWhiteford Banking Center. Sanaa (A/S ’03) and Said Orra (Law ’03) announce the birth of their first child, Michael Said, in August. Said is an attorney and sole practitioner in Toledo.

Sarah E. Pawlicki (Law ’03) joined Eastman & Smith Ltd. as an associate.

Timothy A. Armstrong (A/S ’04) completed 12 weeks of basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., and is now a Marine. Jason Baas (Law ’04) joined the Ann Arbor, Mich., office of law firm Garan Lucow Miller PC as an associate.

Joel A. Babka (Ed ’04) graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Recruit Training Center in Cape May, N.J. Melanie Batt (Ed ’04), Defiance, Ohio, is a new special education teacher at Claude W. Henkle Middle School.

Dr. Bruce Douglas (PhD ’04) accepted the presidency of Sterling College, a liberal arts Christian college in Sterling, Kan.

Carla Perrotta (Law ’04) joined the Detroit law firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone PLC, practicing in the areas of information technology and intellectual property. Jason M. Windom (Bus ’04), an ensign in the U.S. Navy, received his commission after completing Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Fla.

Glenn Zebrowski (Eng ’04) joined the Holland, Ohio, contracting firm, The Douglas Co.,

What in the world are you doing? Your UT Alumni Association is interested in what you’ve been up to since graduation. Information about births, marriages, new jobs and recent promotions, and educational or professional accomplishments is published in Toledo Alumni. (Professional news reported directly to your college is automatically forwarded to Toledo Alumni.) Please complete the information below and attach a brief description of your news. Mail to: The University of Toledo Alumni Association, Driscoll Alumni Center, Toledo, OH 43606-3395.

NAME: Last

First

Address:

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City

E-mail address: Year of UT Graduation:

Middle State Phone: (

Degree:

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) College:

Alums can now update, search and network in a flash. Check out the Alumni Online Directory at www.toledoalumni.org.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

www.toledoalumni.org

Grow, lovely rose in Ecuador

er business card may read “sales manager/ office manager,” but in more colorful parlance, Jennifer Spackey-Pino (Bus ’00) is a petal pusher, a bud buyer, an auctioneer in attar. In other words, she’s a rose broker — living and working in Quito, Ecuador. Not that her job is confined to roses. “Ecuador is one of the world’s top fresh-cut flower exporters,” she says. “It’s the way the sun hits this region. We get bigger fruits and bigger flowers.” Between a mother born in Ecuador and a parental retirement home there, Jennifer was already a frequent visitor to the South American nation, but it was a remark by Dr. Don Beeman, professor of global business strategy and director of the International Business Institute, that led to her current job, she says. “He told us about the flower industry in South America. It sounded interesting, and I’ve always been adventurous,

www.toledoalumni.org

so after graduation, I came here. I was going to stay four months and learn Spanish as a second language. My Spanish got better, and pretty soon I had a job in the industry, then I went to better jobs, then eventually I met an American, Liza Roeser, who owns Farm Exports.” The wholesale company purchases blooms from farms worldwide, though most are in Ecuador and Colombia.

“I'm bored easily,

and here every day is

”

something different.

“When I started in the flower business, I didn’t know anything,” Spackey-Pino admits. “I started out coordinating shipments with cargo agencies. Little by little I got more familiar with the flower varieties, and my bosses wanted me to go into sales because of my English.” She learned the reputations and business practices of regional flower suppliers — and about the dangerous conditions under which Ecuadorian floral workers (eighty percent of whom are women) labor. Low pay and constant exposure to pesticides and herbicides, often without protective gear, are common. She wishes it weren’t so, she says. “[The situation] is a personal concern of mine.

Because Ecuador is a developing country, it’s sometimes hard to get people to follow the business standards we Americans are used to. When I first started working with a flower farm, my monthly salary was four hundred dollars a month. We are a developing country here, but the cost of living is rising all the time, and that four hundred had to stretch. But for most people, it’s a lot of money. The people working in the harvest and post-harvest make between a hundred-twenty and a hundred-fifty a month. They have no education and few skills. It is a tragedy and I don’t like it, but it is a different country.” Farm Exports tries to make the best choices, she says. “We try to work with the most serious, responsible farms. Those farms usually treat their workers well because here, you get what you pay for.”

Her emotions about Ecuador remain mixed. “I fell in love with this country,” she says, sharing the news of her recent marriage to an Ecuadorian, architect Isidro Pino. “People here are warm and loving, and in two hours I can visit snow-capped mountains, beaches or the Amazon jungle — but life’s difficult here. There are no safety nets for the poor. Kids juggle oranges at stop lights for a few pennies because they have no education.” On the other hand, she notes, the indigenous culture is admirable and “it’s everywhere once you leave the cities.” Are the roots she’s put down permanent? She hedges, then says with a small laugh, “I’m bored easily, and here every day is something different.”

Toledo Toledo Alumni Alumni Magazine Magazine || Winter Winter 2006 2006

class notes

as a project coordinator.

Laura M. Albert (Bus ’05) joined Savage & Associates as a financial representative. She had previously worked with the Toledo-based insurance and investments firm as an intern.

Under 40, above in service Always well represented at the 20 Under 40 Leadership Awards, UT alumni did themselves proud at the Toledo area institution’s tenth anniversary, accounting for nearly half the honorees. Alumni who received the coveted community service recognition award in October are: •Susan Payden (Bus ’87, MBA ’94), corporate director, treasury, ProMedica Health System; • Jody (French) Alexander (Ed ’91), executive director of Fort Meigs YMCA; • Vallie Bowman-English (A/S ’92), clerk of court, Toledo Municipal Court;

Albert ’05

• Robert Schoonmaker (Bus ’92), senior vice president, Fifth Third Bank;

Ben Pack (Ed ’05) was hired as

• Christopher Kozak (A/S ’93), communications and community relations manager, Columbia Gas Co. of Ohio;

director of instrumental music for North Baltimore (Ohio) Schools. He’s also in charge of three bands: marching, jazz and pep. Heidi Potts (A/S ’05) married Bradly Bohland in July. They live in Payne, Ohio.

Sean Renock (Pharm ’05) joined Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati as a laboratory professional. Aaron Tobe (Ed ’05) joined North Baltimore (Ohio) Schools as director of choral music for K-12.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

• Wendy Gramza (Bus ’95), executive vice president, Toledo Area Chamber of Commerce; • James Nusbaum (Law ’95), attorney, Wittenberg, Phillips, Levy & Nusbaum; • Scott Newsom (Law ’96), attorney, Eastman & Smith Ltd; and • Michael Miller (A/S ’96), editor in chief, Toledo Free Press.

twenty

UNDER forty www.toledoalumni.org

biblio-files

A. Night in Beverly Hills (Five Star) Andrew J. Fenady (Bus ’50)

s detective stories go about a tough but terribly witty private eye who desires to quit the racket and be a mystery writer, Alexander Night’s exploits are first-rate. There are shootouts with the bad guys, great looking dames that work across the hall, a cop named Myron, mothers who scold sons about not being married and about getting shot at during working hours, a robbery, a murder — and for a hero, a wise-cracking detective who is on a first-name basis with Robert Mitchum and Ernie Borgnine, likes to imagine he is Nick Charles, and who always manages to keep his perspective on life but is not able to write a book about it. In other words, all the ingredients necessary for a great read are in place. The reverence that Fenady has for old movies, movie stars, Hollywood history and Southern California locations is evident, and he passes it on to his readers with great enthusiasm. — Gregg Bartley, FAA P.I. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weight Loss Tracker (Alpha Books/Penguin Group) Shirley A. Mathews (A/S ’79)

fter a year and a half of no sugar, bread, pasta or potatoes, I have lost close to 60 pounds. Thanks to this book, I was able to not only lose the last 10 stubborn pounds but also successfully kept off all the weight I lost. The book is formatted like all the Complete Idiot’s Guide books: easy to read, with charts and tables for quick reference. It begins with taking a health inventory, which includes visiting your primary care physician. Once you’re ready to lose weight, the book walks you through shopping for healthy foods, what to do when you reach a plateau in your weight loss and how to conquer eating binges and cravings. There is also a nice section on exercise. Although I really didn’t use the food journal, I found the food table very helpful in identifying the nutritional values and carbohydrate content in basically any food. Overall, the book didn’t unveil any diet secrets that I didn’t already know, but the tools and appendices included in the book can be used by anyone wanting to lose weight.

Ghostly Embers: Visions of Toledo (BookSurge LLC) Larry Rochelle (Ed ’62, Ed Spec ’80) colors, sounds, tastes and scents of Toledo Theemerge in this book of poems by a Toledo

native. Here live the Peach Section, the Blue Streak edition and the Purple Gang. More than just a listing of familiar city trademarks, the poems give the reader a sensory jolt, dredging up memories of a past long submerged. On one level, for instance, food becomes a sensory language; in an instant it is 1958 and I am back in my mother’s kitchen, smelling the open-door cooking of grilled tomatoes, creamed tuna on toast and homemade soups. For Rochelle, food “leaves the taste of memory in your bowl.” Similarly, he draws on the sounds of a Midwest industrial town in the postwar years: the drone of lawnmowers, the warbling of late-summer cicadas, lunchtime factory whistles and the squeak of porch swings. To those of that generation, the images snag the past like a fisherman casting a line and reeling it back to the surface. While poems about Iraq, oil and Bill Clinton would have been better placed in a different collection, overall the book is a good read for anyone from Toledo and for anyone old enough to have lived in quieter times. — Marian Fisher (A/S ’74, MA ’85), part-time UT English instructor Note: Ghostly Embers is a finalist in the 2006 EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection) competition.

— Renee Elliott (A/S ’96), assistant director, UT Office of Alumni Relations www.toledoalumni.org

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

in memoriam

’30s

Carroll “C.K.” Alexander, Las Cruces, N.M., att. 1930-1935, died July 20 at age 93. He lettered in 1931 and was on the track, wrestling and tennis teams. *Thomas J. Hunter, Lehigh Acres, Fla., att. 1933-1938, died May 12 at age 90. **John Dowd (A/S ’34), Boca Raton, Fla., died July 25 at age 93. While a student, he played on the University baseball team, lettering in 1932, 1933 and 1934, and following graduation he became one of the original members of the Alumni Association. A member of the Presidents Club, he was also a major donor in the development of Wolfe Hall.

**Betty J. (Algeo) (Rutschow) Hensley (A/S ’34), Yalaha, Fla., died July 14 at age 91.

**Virginia Ruggles-Kreider (Ed ’34), St. Petersburg, Fla., died Sept. 3 at age 92.

Winifred C. (Lee) Hendricks, Toledo, att. 1935-1938, died Oct. 10 at age 88. **Lois Morgan (Ed ’35), Celina, Ohio, died Sept. 30 at age 92.

Ruth Crane MacKenzie (Ed ’38), Bruce Mines, Ontario, died June 18 at age 89. Psi Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta member. Lowell W. Skilliter, Sylvania, att. 1938-1942, died Aug. 19 at age 98. A Presidents Club member, he and his wife established the Roger M. Skilliter Memorial Scholarship Fund in the College of Business. Nathan Greenberg (A/S ’39, Law ’42), Toledo, died July 27 at age 87.

**Lucius J. “Jack”; Sears (Bus ’39), Toledo, died Sept. 22 at age 89.

Vernon R. Smith (Eng ’39), Toledo, died Sept. 28 at age 90.

’40s

Verna “Curley” (Geoffrion) Brighton (Ed ’40), Lambertville, Mich., died Aug. 5 at age 86. Pi Lambda Pheta member.

*William G. Henry M.D. (A/S ’42), Hartland, Mich., died Sept.

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

20 at age 84. Chi Beta Chi member. A charter member of the Tower Club, he also served as a team physician at UT. *Lawrence D. Kahn (Eng ’43), Toledo, died July 12 at age 84.

Robert W. Gear (Bus ’49),

Schoonmaker, Toledo, att. 1956-

Sandusky, died Aug. 26 at age 82. Alpha Phi Omega member.

**Robert L. Schroeder (Bus ’43), Toledo, died Aug. 29 at age

1957 and 1969-1970, died Sept. 6 at age 68. Delta Delta Delta member. Norman J. Klatt (Eng ’57), Perrysburg, died Sept. 28 at age 74. Alpha Sigma Phi member.

*Armand Hocker (Eng ’49, Law ’56), Toledo, died July 9 at

84. Alpha Phi Omega member. Richard K. Cooper, Columbus, att. 1946-1949, died Aug. 4 at age 77.

Virginia (Hannaford) Eyster (A/S ’46, MEd ’80), Toledo, died Oct. 1 at age 81. Delta Delta Delta member.

*Katherine I. (Black) Jex (A/S ’46), Toledo, died July 17 at age 80.

*Dr. Kemper Merriam (Bus ’46, MBA ’50), Clearwater, Fla., professor emeritus and retired assistant dean of business administration at the University of South Florida, died Feb. 28, 2004 at age 83. **Jack A. Trumbull, Vero Beach, Fla., att. 1946-1948, died Oct. 24 at age 78.

**Marthalou (Seubert) DeShetler (Ed ’47), Naples, Fla., died Aug. 20 at age 80. Delta Delta Delta member, named Homecoming and May Queen. Frank M. Szpila, Ottawa Lake, Mich., att. 1947-1949, died July 28 at age 77. *James E. Hirssig (A/S ’48), Manitowoc, Wis., died Oct. 20 at age 79. **Carl Thaller (Eng ’48), Toledo, died July 25 at age 83.

*Bruce C. Williams (Bus ’48), Ottawa Hills, died Oct. 7 at age 88. President of the UT Alumni Association in 1971-72, he also supervised the UT Alumni Telethon for seven years. He received the Blue T service award in 1967.

Martha L. (Crans) Chapman (A/S ’49), Swanton, died Sept. 8 at age 78. Delta Delta Delta member.

Rev. James B. Foster (Bus ’49), Lebanon, Ohio, died Aug. 26 at age 80.

Justin E. Hoffman (Ed ’49, MEd ’55), Toledo, died Aug. 5 at age 84.

age 82.

’50s

Robert G. Barnes (A/S ’50),

*Edward A. VanGunten (Eng ’58, Law ’62), Toledo, died Aug. 19 at age 67.

John H. Dutcher, Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., att. 1959-1963, died July 16 at age 64.

Cape Coral, Fla., died March 14 at age 78. Phi Delta Theta member.

Michael B. James M.D. (A/S ’59), Plymouth, Mass., died Sept 4

Judge George L. Carpenter (Law ’50), Pawleys Island, S.C.,

at age 68.

died July 17 at age 85.

**George A. Haffelder Jr. (A/S ’50), Toledo, died Oct. 4 at age 81. Member of Phi Kappa Psi and Rocket Club. He and his late wife, Phyllis (Ed ’50), were the first married couple to graduate together from the University.

Mary S. (Spieker) Smith (A/S ’50, MEd ’60), Maumee, died Aug. 24 at age 77.

Steve G. Contos (Ed ’51, MEd ’59), Toledo, died July 15 at age 77. He played on the Rockets football team.

Eugene Goldberg (Bus ’51), Toledo, died Sept. 26 at age 81.

Hubert B. “Plez” Pleasant Jr. (Pharm ’51, UTCTC ’77), Toledo, died Oct. 16 at age 79. Kappa Alpha Psi member.

Stuart “Bud” Riebe (Bus ’52), Colorado Springs, Colo., died June 25 at age 76. He played on the Rockets basketball team.

Kathryn B. (Frank) Clark (Ed ’53), Toledo, died Aug. 3 at age 99.

Michael Vassiliou (Bus ’59, MA ’89), Pefka Retziki, Greece, died Aug. 11 at age 74.

’60s

John A. Young, Toledo, att. 1960s, died July 28 at age 70.

*Robert F. Kobee (Law ’62), Worthington, Ohio, died Aug. 29 at age 77. He taught political science and history at UT from 1951 to 1957. Delta Theta Phi member, former Master of the Rolls.

**Thomas J. McCarthy (Bus ’62), Toledo, died Aug. 23 at age 81.

Wilbur A. Trombley Jr., Perrysburg, att. 1962-1967, died Oct. 14 at age 62. Richard B. Braun (Ed ’63), Plymouth, Mich., died July 30 at age 64.

Dorothy E. (Slusser) Beck (Ed ’66), Toledo, died July 25 at age 87.

Charles W. Flickinger (Bus ’66), Perrysburg, died Oct. 10 at age 67.

Marvelyn R. Genuit (Law ’56),

George V. Kalisik Jr., Kauai,

Napoleon, died Oct. 18 at age 81. John J. “Jack” Hornack Jr., Sylvania, att. 1956-1959, died Sept. 2 at age 72.

Roy E. Hodge Sr. (Ed ’67, MEd ’70), Dallas, died Oct. 21 at

Hawaii, att. 1966-1968, died Sept. 5 at age 56.

**Donald A. Schlatter (Eng ’56, Law ’56), Sylvania, died

age 69. He lettered in UT football in 1955, 1956 and 1957.

July 30 at age 75. He served the UT Center for Family Business in several capacities, including president.

age 74.

Carol M. (Cain) (Scharf)

*Suzanne M. (Weaver) Loos (Ed ’68), Toledo, died Oct. 6 at Marsha M. (Azbart) Finch (UTCTC ’69), Petersburg, Mich., www.toledoalumni.org

died July 22 at age 55. David J. Long, Petersburg, Mich., att. 1969-1973, died Aug. 27 at age 56. He was on the Rockets football and wrestling teams. Harley R. Peatee, Sylvania, att. 1969-1974, died Sept. 17 at age 54.

George R. Gurzynski (Ed ’75, Bus ’79), Waterville, died Oct. 11

Laurie E. Faison-Dorsey (Ed ’88), Smithfield, Va., died Oct. 15

at age 53.

at age 52.

*Dale J. Powell (Univ Coll ’75), Monroe, Mich., died Aug. 14

Yvonne M. (Mahoney) Keefe,

Andrew F. “Putsy” Toth (Ed ’69), Toledo, died Aug. 31 at age

Lancaster, Texas, died Oct. 13 at age 55.

59. He played on the Rockets football team and lettered in baseball in 1968 and 1969.

’70s

Marjorie A. Charpie (A/S ’70), Toledo, died July 20 at age 56.

Mary Ellen (Kamann) Fischer (Ed ’70), Rossford, died Sept. 28 at age 71.

*James W. Kramer (UTCTC ’70), Maumee, died Oct. 15 at age 55.

George A. MacRitchie (Eng ’70), Toledo, died Aug. 18 at age 57. Sigma Phi Epsilon, Phi Theta Kappa member.

Helen E. (Jordan) Spruce (UTCTC ’70, Ed ’73, MEd ’86), Toledo, died July 28 at age 77. In 2001, the longtime educator was honored as an outstanding alumna by the UT Minority Alumni Affiliate.

Dr. James E. Draheim (A/S ’71), Toledo, died Aug. 15 at age 55.

Ray E. Thompson Jr. (A/S ’71), Waterville, died July 9 at age 58. Pi Kappa Alpha member.

Linda M. (Gaither) Arnold (A/S ’72), Novi, Mich., died Aug. 14 at age 55. Member of Alpha Chi Omega, Alpha Phi Gamma, Theta Sigma Phi and Peppers honor society. She served as news editor for The Collegian and with Blockhouse.

Treva A. “Pete” Bowman (Ed ’74, MEd ’00), Toledo, died Aug. 9 at age 54.

**Judith (Nejman) Bender (UTCTC ’75, A/S ’78), Toledo, died Aug. 18 at age 53. Alpha Chi Omega member and part of UT Rockettes. She also was a member of the UT Community Chorus.

www.toledoalumni.org

at age 57.

David L. Hitchcock (Law ’76), Peter V. Maxymiv (Pharm ’76), Cleveland, died Sept. 19

Toledo, att. 1988-1994, died Sept. 15 at age 38.

’90s

William Scott Biggs (UTCTC ’90), Sylvania Twp., died Sept. 2 at age 38.

at age 55. Served as UT student preceptor in College of Pharmacy. Walton H. Donnell (Law ’77), Gibsonburg, Ohio, died Oct. 3 at age 80.

Dimmie M. (Delffs) Roemelen (UTCTC ’91),

Douglas Lewton (A/S ’78, Pharm ’78), Fremont, Ohio, died in July at age 54.

at age 76. Downtown Coaches Association and Rocket Club member.

James R. Atkinson (Law ’79),

David M. Larabee (MEd ’93),

Perrysburg, died Aug. 29 at age 62. Starrie D. Lincoln (Ed ’79), Columbus, died Oct. 19 at age 50.

Monclova, Ohio, died Sept. 2 at age 41. David Cortez (MEd ’94), Toledo, died July 26 at age 55.

Diane M. (Hayes) Smith (Ed ’79), Eureka, Mo., died Sept. 27 at age 48. Delta Delta Delta, Kappa Delta Gamma member.

’80s

Emmy (Filetti) Morrissey (MBA ’80), Leawood, Kan., died July 25 at age 55.

Patrick Krieger (Bus ’81), Toledo, died Aug. 2 at age 60.

Susan J. Reynolds (Law ’81), Toledo, died July 15 at age 51.

Sharon A. (Fralick) Bower (A/S ’82), Toledo, died Oct. 11 at age 47.

Dr. Denise M. Arehart (A/S ’84, MS ’87), Firestone, Colo., died Oct. 18 at age 43.

Theodore I. Hill (UTCTC ’85, Univ Coll ’89), Toledo, died Sept. 15 at age 49.

Carol (Ruse) Sims (UTCTC ’85), Hillsdale, Mich., died Aug. 29 at age 61.

Betty K. (Wahl) Bloom (MEd ’86), Atlanta, died Oct. 6 at age 78. Sigma Theta Tau member.

Mary C. (Cleghorn) Menden (Ed ’86), Toledo, died Sept. 8 at age 70.

Toledo, died Aug. 12 at age 56.

*Virgil Dixon (Univ Coll ’93, MLS ’98), Toledo, died Sept. 8

Norma T. (Zagoric) Beauregard, Toledo, att. 1996 to 2005, died July 19 at age 48.

Bruce Lighten (Univ Coll ’96), Columbus, died Aug. 4 at age 41.

Faculty, Staff & Friends

Virginia Baillet Altschuller, Pompano, Fla., died July 17 at age 90. She and her late husband, Joseph (A/S ’36), set up a scholarship fund at UT bearing their names. Today the fund provides more than 20 students each year with $2,500 to attend the University.

Dr. Carolyn M. Duncan (MA ’91, PhD ’98), a lecturer in the Honors Program since 1998, died Aug. 17 at age 62. Jerry Gray, Toledo, a student affairs training coordinator in 1981, died Sept. 6 at age 58. Marie R. Hodge, Sylvania Twp., died May 2 at age 88. She established the Dean Edwin R. Hodge Jr. Memorial Fund for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business in memory of her husband, a former dean of the college.

Kara L. Holman, Ottawa Lake, Mich., a UT custodian since 1994, died Aug. 1 at age 52.

Bettye Jayne (Franklin) Houston, Sandusky, a secretary in the College of Engineering from 1963 to 1966, died Aug. 17 at age 84. Ralph E. Laney, Toledo, who worked at UT from 1982 to 1988, retiring as a sheet metal worker, died Aug. 16 at age 79. Dr. William H. Leckie, Winter Springs, Fla., died Sept. 16 at age 89. A celebrated American historian with books that included The Military Conquest of the Southern Plains and The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West, he came to UT in 1963 as a professor of history and assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1965 he became assistant to UT President William Carlson, acting as chief liaison between the University’s graduate programs and the Ohio Board of Regents. From 1966 to 1968, he was dean of the graduate school, and following a year’s leave, he returned in 1969 as vice president for academic affairs, a newly created position he held until 1979. He played major roles in the creation of University College and in developing services for non-traditional students. He taught several classes in military history, and a year before his retirement in 1980 he received the Outstanding Civilian Service Award, one of the highest acknowledgements given by the U.S. Army to a civilian, for his service to ROTC. Dr. Kenneth ”Doc” Pawlicki, Clayton, Mich., died Sept. 18 at age 65. He was an instructor with the University’s Community and Technical College in the late 1990s, teaching biology and earth science.

Dr. John D. Polus (Eng ’65, MEng ’71), McKinney, Texas, who was an instructor in the electrical engineering department from 1967 to 1972, died Aug. 6 at age 70. While at UT, he served as faculty adviser to the student Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006 47

in memoriam

branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. At his retirement, he was professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Purdue University.

*Henry S. Pucilowski (Ed ’67, MEd ’74), Toledo, died Aug. 13 at age 85. He was an instructor of vocational education at UT from 1969 to 1977, and served as director of the University’s Education Professions Development Act program. Iota Lambda Sigma member.

Dr. John (Jack) W. Pulleyn Jr., Charleston, S.C., a 17-year

veteran of UT’s faculty, died June 7 at age 83. He was hired as associate professor of French and chairman of UT’s foreign language department in 1966. Promoted to professor in 1973, he chaired the department until the following year, retiring as professor emeritus in 1983. His service included the Faculty Senate and various University committees.

**Helen G. (Hineline) Schmakel, who was married to

Edward (right) for 58 years, died Dec. 23 at age 90. She was co-donor on their gifts to the Tower Club and the Rocket Club, and was a UT employee in the College of Law from 1973 to 1986, retiring as a secretary.

**Harold C. Shaffer (A/S ’50, MS ’51), Toledo, whose UT teaching career in anatomy, physiology and microbiology spanned more than 45 years, died Oct. 16 at age 91. He joined the faculty as an instructor in 1951, attaining the rank of professor in 1975 and retiring as professor emeritus in 1985; he continued to teach for 11 years afterward. A recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award in 1966, he also served as director of the University’s nursing education program, as special assistant to University President Asa Knowles and as coordinator of the National Science Foundation, which made possible UT’s summer institute for biology teachers. He served

Toledo Alumni Magazine | Winter 2006

a term as president of Phi Kappa Phi, whose UT chapter he helped found in 1952. In 2004, he and his wife established the Harold C. and Charlotte L. Shaffer Chair in Biological Sciences.

Remembering ‘Mr. Alumnus’

Dr. Sybil (Korff) Small (Ed ’72, MA ’73, PhD ’77), Perrysburg, died Aug. 20 at age 72. She was a part-time teacher in UT’s department of English for more than 25 years, starting in the late 1970s. Patricia Zaski, Sylvania, who worked in 1987 as a secretary in the Office of Alumni and Development, died Sept. 10 at age 67. * Member of the UT Alumni Association ** Lifetime member

**Edward C. Schmakel (Ed ’39, MEd ’68), director of alumni relations at UT from 1963 to 1983, died Sept. 28 at age 87. He was known as “Mr. Alumnus” for his work in building the UT Alumni Association. “Ed was a legend at UT. His name ranks with the likes of Scott, Doermann, Parks, Carlson and Gillham says Dan Saevig, associate vice president for alumni relations, who also notes that in his own early years with the Alumni Office, “The most frequently asked question was ‘Are you the new Ed Schmakel?’” When Ed Schmakel joined the University, there were about 1,100 Alumni Association members; when he retired, there were nearly 6,000. Schmakel also helped the Foundation’s Tower Club increase its members from 85 to more than 1,000. This benefited UT students who received scholarships. His fund-raising efforts with the Phonathon, the Hole-in-One Golf Tournament and other programs were widely known. In 1955, he became the first recipient of the Alumni Association’s Blue T Award, given annually to a graduate for outstanding service to the University. Ten years later, the Blockhouse, UT’s yearbook, was dedicated to him for his service to students. The Toledo native was a member of the Tower Club and Rocket Club. After retiring from the University, he worked part time as assistant director of development and special projects until 1987. In 1993, the Alumni Association named its reception room in the Driscoll Alumni Center in his honor. “With Ed, it was always about the people,” says Saevig. “He understood, better than anyone I’ve ever met, the importance of building relationships. “He left a legacy and fond memories for us all. Like those memories, the question our alumni and friends still ask always brings a smile. And that answer never changes: There will never be another Ed Schmakel.” www.toledoalumni.org

Lens, life, lyric Blue Echoes Water falls from level to level, a wealth of blue echoes. Light feeds on cascades until descent isn’t about being pulled downward. Reflected trees and clouds look rooted in skittish sky also floating. What is fictive, and what isn’t? Throw a penny or a textbook into the fountain and ripples soon offer liquid geodes. In folk tales, mirrors are always broken to usher in darkest days. Rain only makes the fountain shinier: axe and stone, ideas and questions. I return to the day’s demands and headlands, but I always pause a few moments first: water, noisy air and slowed light.

— Dr. Glenn Sheldon (PhD ’98), assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies

Photo by Daniel Miller

MEN Men vs. Eastern Michigan

Jan. 26 7 PM

Men vs. Central Michigan

Feb. 4 at 7 PM

Men vs. Kent State

Feb. 7 at 8 PM

Men vs. Bowling Green

Feb. 11 at 7 PM

Men vs. Ball State

Feb. 26 at 2 PM

Men vs. Western Michigan

Mar. 1 at 7 PM

WOMEN Women vs. Miami

Jan. 28 at 7 PM

Women vs. Bowling Green

Feb. 5 at 4 PM

Women vs. Akron

Feb. 8 at 7 PM

Women vs. Eastern Michigan Feb. 18 at 7 PM Women vs. Northern Illinois Feb. 22 at 7 PM

SEE YOU AT THE GAME! Driscoll Alumni Center 2801 W. Bancroft St. Toledo, Ohio 43606-3395

Game tickets call 419.530.GOLD or www.utrockets.com for more information!