Wake Forest Magazine - March 2009 by Wake Forest University - Issuu

Wake Forest Magazine - March 2009

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MARCH 2009

ODp e n i n g oors Undergraduate Financial Aid at Work


features

Editor Cherin C. Poovey (P ’08), poovey@wfu.edu Associate Editor Kerry M. King (’85), kingkm@wfu.edu Senior Writer David Fyten, fyten@wfu.edu Staff Writer Kim McGrath, mcgratka@wfu.edu Photographer Ken Bennett, bennettk@wfu.edu Classnotes Editor Janet Williamson (P ’00, ’03), williajm@wfu.edu Design / Art Direction Urena Design, durena@triad.rr.com Printing The Lane Press, Inc. Burlington, Vermont

Wake Forest Magazine (USPS 664-520 ISSN 0279-3946) is published four times a year in September, December, March, and June by the Office of Creative Services, Wake Forest University, Box 7205, Winston-Salem, NC 27109-7205.

14Opening Doors Scholarships and financial aid open Wake Forest’s doors to scores of deserving—and grateful—students.

It is sent to alumni, donors, and friends of the University. Periodicals postage paid at Winston-Salem, NC 27109, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Wake Forest Magazine Alumni Records P.O. Box 7227 Winston-Salem, NC 27109-7227.

Volume 56, Number 3 March 2009 Copyright 2009 WWW.WFU.EDU

2Around the Quad profile

32The Rights Stuff

By Kerry M. King (’85) A commitment to clients, colleagues, and community helped Ben Sutton (’80, JD ’83) build a successful college athletics multimedia company.


20Brought to Light

By David Fyten

Long-hidden letters enable two professors to unearth their own buried pasts and form a lasting bond over a shared tragedy.

24Major Progress

By Linda McKinnish Bridges (MBA ’04, P ’10)

Wake Forest’s growing Women’s and Gender Studies program is a pioneer in academic interdisciplinarity.

38Classnotes constant & true

42Making the Grade

By Jane Bianchi (’05) At Boston’s MATCH School, four alums help the farthest behind get further ahead.

64Looking Beyond a Paycheck

By Nathan O. Hatch


around

t h e q ua d

More stimulus packages may be ahead, Gergen says

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olitic al commentator and former presidential adv isor

D av id G ergen

brought his forty years of insider political knowledge to Wake Forest to offer an early critique of the Obama administration. Speaking before a large audience in Wait Chapel on February 10, the day the $800 billion economic stimulus package passed the U.S. Senate, Gergen said, “The big question is, is it going to work? I don’t know the answer to that.” As large as the stimulus package is, some economists still think that it might not be large enough to get the economy moving again, he noted. “We may have more stimulus packages in the future,” he said. Regardless of the immediate outcome of the stimulus package or other early moves by the Obama administration, the public needs to give him time to address the many problems facing the country, he said. “It is time for us to lighten up a bit. Americans should show some citizenship.” Gergen, who worked for Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, appeared on campus as part of

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the University’s Voices of Our Time speaker series. His speech was presented in conjunction with a series sponsored by the political science department, “Challenges Facing the New President.” Stephen Hess, an author of several books on presidential transitions and an advisor to presidential transition teams dating back to Ronald Reagan, also spoke on campus in February. The political science department’s series also included a panel of faculty experts in various areas offering “Advice to the New President on Policy Issues,” and a student panel discussion on young voters and their involvement in the political process.

David Gergen’s speech may be viewed at www.wfu.edu/voices


PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi is interviewed by CNBC news anchor Maria Bartiromo.

MBA school hosts Marketing Summit, PepsiCo CEO Nooyi

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tudents from some of the top MBA schools companies. Wake Forest MBA students Anup Dashputre in the country gathered at the Babcock School and Paul Nocida helped write both the MBA and underin February for the 19th annual MBA Marketing Summit. graduate cases with executives from two of PepsiCo’s The students had the opportunity to meet with one of businesses, Frito-Lay and Pepsi. the top business executives in the country—PepsiCo Wake Forest alumnae Katie Griesbeck (’00) and Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi—and to vie for a Kristen Stutz (’03) were on the winning MBA team $50,000 grand prize in the case competition, sponsored from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate by PepsiCo. School of Business Admini­stration. The University of Interest in the student-run Maryland team won the underMarketing Summit has swelled graduate case competition. over the years. About one hunNooyi spoke before a large dred schools applied to particicrowd in Wait Chapel. She pate in the case competition this and CNBC news anchor Maria year—the most ever—but only Bartiromo discussed PepsiCo’s fourteen were selected. global marketing strategies and Teams from eight MBA schools other current business issues. were selected—including Wake Wake Forest has a long Forest, Harvard, Berkeley, and history with PepsiCo. Steve Bartiromo visits Babcock students Brigid Rooney, Jim Gleitman, and James Goody during the case competition. Reinemund, who was named the University of Chicago—and six undergraduate teams were dean of business at Wake selected from schools including Wake Forest, Boston Forest last July, preceded Nooyi as PepsiCo’s chairCollege, and the University of Pennsylvania. man and CEO. The late Wayne Calloway (’59), was The students spent an intense thirty-six hours develchairman and CEO of PepsiCo from 1986–96; Wake oping strategic marketing plans to address specific Forest’s undergraduate business school was named business opportunities and then presented their in his honor in 1995. plans to executives from PepsiCo and other leading

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Fetrow appointed dean of the College

Fetrow: Wake Forest puts education of the student first.

eynolds professor

J acq u e ly n S. F e t r o w Dean of the C o l l e g e . Fetrow, who began serving is the new

as dean on January 1, replaced Paul Ribisl (P ’88, P ’91), the Charles E. Taylor Professor of Heath and Exercise Science, who had served as interim dean since last May. “Wake Forest puts education of the student first and foremost; to me this is the primary mission of higher education,” said Fetrow, who joined the faculty in 2003. “In a strong undergraduate college, all departments, all faculty and staff must feel valued by their leadership. When they do, Wake Forest can continue to be a great place to work and a place where both education and scholarship flourish.” Fetrow will remain Reynolds Professor of Computational Biophysics, a joint appointment in both the departments of physics and computer science. She also holds concurrent faculty appointments with the Wake Forest School of

Medicine and the University’s School of Biomedical Engineering and Science, a joint program between Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. Fetrow has built a reputation for teaching and research that crosses departmental lines. “Her research is prolific and excellent and her work is internationally recognized and respected,” said Provost Jill Tiefenthaler. “She epitomizes Wake Forest’s teacher-scholar ideal and is fully committed to our mission. She understands and appreciates the value of excellent teaching in a strong liberal arts undergraduate experience.” Prior to coming to Wake Forest, Fetrow served for five years as chief scientific officer and director of GeneFormatics, a biotechnology software company that she co-founded. Previously, she served on the faculties of the Scripps Research Institute in California and the University at Albany in New York. She earned a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1986.

The Great Emancipator? Escott book explores myths about Lincoln

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n the

20 0 t h

anniversary of

A b r a h a m L i n co ln ’s

b i r t h day,

a new book by Reynolds Professor of History Paul Escott is sure to draw attention for its provocative title, as well as his conclusions about what we thought we knew about the six­teenth president. In ‘What Shall We Do with the Negro?’: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America (University of Virginia Press), Escott argues that Lincoln was a much more complex politician of his time, with often conflicting attitudes and policies toward black Americans, rather than the enlightened Great Emancipator. “Lincoln has become an icon, used as a symbol of everything that is good and virtuous about the United States,” said Escott, a noted Southern historian who joined the faculty in 1988. “One of the things that I argue in this book is that this popular and long-standing myth does a disservice to our country’s history and how historical progress takes place. He (Lincoln) was progressive in his day on matters of race, but his policies show that he was more willing to be conciliatory to Southern whites to get them back into the Union, often at the expense of African Americans in the South.” The title for the book came from a question posed by the New York Times in 1862, a ques4 wake forest magazine

tion that many, including Lincoln, were struggling with at the time, Escott said. “Once slavery became a target of the Northern war effort, white Americans began asking, ‘what should we do with the freed slaves?’ Early in the war, Lincoln encouraged immigration out of the United States, not only for slaves but for freed black people as well. He felt that slavery was wrong and a blot on the national reputation, but he was an ambitious politician, and he often admitted that public opinion would not support any radical change in the social status of black Americans.” Lincoln was willing to support African Amer­ i­cans—to a point, Escott notes. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure, but limited its scope. He supported the 13th amendment but thought that Southern states should be allowed to vote on it even though it would have taken only ten Southern states to block its ratification. In the years after his death, Lincoln was hailed as the “savior of the Union,” Escott said. But over time, his image changed to the Great Emancipator. In reality, Escott says, a more accurate portrait of Lincoln shows a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than emancipation, who showed

Escott: Lincoln supported African Americans— to a point.

an enduring respect for states’ rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of blacks. Escott also edited another book about the Civil War that was published last fall. North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press) contains essays written by a number of prominent historians on how the war and its aftermath shaped the state’s political structure and the roles of women and blacks. — Kerry M. King (’85)


Letters To the editor:

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Kim-Shapiro: Pioneering research in sickle-cell anemia and other cardio­ vasular diseases.

Kim-Shapiro named to Harbert Distinguished Chair

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P h ysi c s members of the Wake Forest K i m -S h a p i r o Parents’ Council; their son,

ro fe sso r o f

Da n i e l

has been named the first Harbert Family Distinguished Chair of Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. The chair was established by Kathryn and Raymond Harbert of Birmingham, Alabama, to recognize an especially accomplished faculty member whose work is of international renown and who is an outstanding teacher. The Harberts are former

Raymond (’06), is a student in the Babcock Graduate School of Management. Kim-Shapiro earned his Ph.D. in biophysics from the Univers­ ity of California–Berkeley and joined the faculty in 1996. In 2007 he received a prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health—the first ever received by a member of the Reynolda Campus faculty

—in recognition of the promising nature of his research. His research focuses on nitric oxide, a signaling molecule that is important in maintaining adequate blood flow, regulating blood clotting, and other physiological functions. Nitric oxide dysfunction contributes to many diseases including sickle cell disease, pulmonary hypertension, malaria, and stroke.

African Studies minor explores history, culture

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ake Forest is beginning an A f r i c a n S t u d i e s m i n o r to pro-

mote a greater understanding of Africa’s history, politics, and culture. The minor will include an Introduction to African Studies course and a seminar in contemporary issues in African studies, along with courses in anthropology, economics, political science, and other disciplines that focus Durotoye: Do most people know Africa? on Africa. Students selecting the minor will also be required it the real Africa?” said Durotoye, a native of Nito travel to Africa for a summer-study or studygeria. “For most, Africa is a country, rather than a abroad experience. Wake Forest currently offers one program in Africa: Sylvain Boko, the Zachary continent, racked by AIDS and wars, but these T. Smith Associate Professor of Economics, leads images are incomplete and misleading. We will now have the opportunity to offer students a more a service trip to his native Benin in West Africa accurate picture. Given the large proportion of every summer. people of African descent in the U.S. population, Yomi Durotoye, a senior lecturer in political we need this minor to learn more about each othscience and international studies who is coordier and to be more prepared to engage one another nating the minor, says it will help students rein this globalized world.” think the impressions they may have about Af—Kim McGrath rica. “Most people think they know Africa, but is

ur alumni magazine is always a delight, but the December issue really stood out to me. I was greatly impressed with the article, “Greater than its parts,” and wholeheartedly agree with the concept of the collegiate university to grow the unique nature of Wake Forest. Then, in the “Il Professore” piece, Randy Childress expressed how his experience at the University helped to shape him as a man. But, then... the absolutely magnificent statue of The Deacon! (on page 62). The Deacon is, at least to me, not merely a symbol of Wake Forest athletics, but of the University as a whole. Until now, I had the impression that the look on his face was essentially angry, but as I thought about him representing all of Wake Forest, I realized it could not possibly be anger. O.K., maybe if Duke, UNC, or whomever beat us, but otherwise, no. I believe he is very determined. Why and what for? The answer, I think, is that he is not going to allow anyone or anything to get in the way of a burning quest to serve humanity. That is a purpose which can include athletics, but goes much, much farther. John Schaffer (’68) Camden, South Carolina

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around

the quad Students debate at Smithsonian event

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Applications at record high for undergraduate admission

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ore than 10,000 students have applied for places in next fall’s freshman class, a new record and the second large increase in as many years. Applications increased by about 14 percent. Last year, 9,050 applications were received, a 26 percent increase over the number of applications received in 2007. Applications have doubled since 2000. Students will be notified of the admissions decision in early April; 337 students who applied early decision have already been accepted. About 1,220 freshmen are expected to enroll in August. This was the first year that Wake Forest has not required students to submit standardized test scores to be considered for admission.

Floyd, Holmes win MLK Dream awards

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enior Trayonna Floyd and Harold Holmes (P ’97), associate vice president and dean of student services, received this year’s MLK Building the Dream Awards on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for their efforts to promote racial Floyd diversity and harmony. Floyd, who is from Gastonia, North Carolina, has been active in numerous campus and community projects and organizations, including the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice in Winston-Salem and The Children’s Law Center of Winston-Salem. Holmes, who has worked at Wake Forest since 1987, was recognized for his efforts to promote diversity and Holmes multiculturalism at the University. Every year, Wake Forest joins with WinstonSalem State University to co-sponsor an event on Martin Luther King Day and to present the MLK awards to one student and one professor or administrator on each campus. 6 wake forest magazine

Nath / Hobeika

eniors Odile Hobeika and Rohit Nath debated the most pressing issues facing the Obama administration at a Smithsonian Institution event the day before the presidential inauguration in January. Both are members of the Wake Forest debate team. They were among the top collegiate debaters from six universities chosen to participate in the first Inaugural Debate Series. Hobeika is a philosophy major from Merrimack, New Hampshire. Nath is an economics major from Phoenix, Arizona.

Men’s soccer brings home national awards

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wo players and two coaches from the men’s soccer team received outstanding national recognition at the conclusion of the 2008 season. Senior Marcus Tracy of Newtown, Connecticut, received the Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy, college soccer's version of the Heisman Trophy. He was one of just two players in college soccer to finish the year with doubledigit totals in goals and assists; he ranks among the top 10 leaders at Wake Forest in points, goals, and assists. Senior Sam Cronin from WinstonSalem was one of the three finalists for the award. Cronin picked up a prestigious award of his own: the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award for his work in the classroom, in the community, and on the soccer field. The Lowe’s award is the nation’s premier tribute to college student-athletes. Head Coach Jay Vidovich was named the men’s National Coach of the Year for the second consecutive year, and assistant coach Cronin Carson Porter was named the Glenn “Mooch” Myernick College Assistant Coach of the Year. Vidovich, in his fifteenth season, has developed Wake Forest into a soccer powerhouse. After winning the 2007 national title, Wake Forest was ranked No. 1 in the country for most of the 2008 season and advanced to the

Tracy College Cup for the third straight year. The Deacons lost to North Carolina, 1–0, in the national semifinals in December. Cronin, Tracy, and sophomore Cor­ ben Bone were named first-team AllAmericans. Cronin was drafted by Toronto FC with the second pick in the Major League Soccer Super­Draft in January. Tracy was drafted by Houston in the fourth round, but he had already signed a contract to play for a professional team in Denmark. Fellow seniors Michael Lahoud (9th pick, Chivas USA), Evan Brown (16th pick, Seattle Sounders FC), Lyle Adams (26th pick, D.C. United), and Jamie Franks (49th pick, Chivas USA) were also drafted. The six players drafted from Wake Forest is a record for most players selected from one college in the MLS SuperDraft.


Obama names professor to presidential panel

Faculty News

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resident Barack Obama has appointed divinity school professor Melissa Rogers to a panel to advise him on faith-based social-service programs. She will serve on the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Rogers, who is director of the Center for Religious and Public Affairs at the School of Divinity, is an expert on the separation of church and state and a co-author of Religious Freedom and the Supreme Court (Baylor University Press, 2008). “The government should not subsidize or promote religious activities,” she says, “but it should subsidize and promote programs that feed the hungry and help people move from welfare to work, for example.”

Morant

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chool of Law Dean Blake Morant has contributed an essay to a new book, Law Touched Our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education (Vanderbilt University Press). The book features essays from forty law professors, black and white, who wrote personal periences in school and in their communities in the early days of school integration following the Brown decision. Morant writes about growing up in Hampton, Virginia, in the mid-1960s. “I described my mother's decision to send me to a predominantly white junior high school, the relationships that occurred during that pivo­tal time, the zoning that prompted integration of the high schools, and the indelible impact the entire period had on my life,” said Morant, who became dean of the law school in July 2007. “The theme of my essay is the positives that come from the blending of cultures and experiences, and how the government can stimulate exchanges among different cultures.”

Thomas

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ebecca S. Thomas, associate professor and chair of the German and Russian department, takes a look at the dark side of Austria in a new book she edited, Crime and Madness in Modern Austria: Myth, Metaphor and Cultural Realities (Cambridge

Scholars Press). Experts in various fields contributed essays on the changing history, rhetoric, politics, and representation of crime and madness in modern Austria. “The myths, metaphors, and realities of crime and madness have unfolded in the shadow of larger cultural questions regarding cultural norms, gender, war, and national identity,” says Thomas, who specializes in Austrian and German literature and culture. The essays demonstrate that cultural responses to crime and madness are often steeped in mythmaking as much as objective policy and practice.”

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hemistry professors Mark Welker and Dilip Kondepudi have been elected Fellows of the American AssociaWelker tion for the Advancement of Science for their efforts to advance science. Welker, the William L. Poteat Professor of Chemistry and associate provost for faculty affairs, was selected for his contributions to the field of organometallic chemistry. Kondepudi, the Thurman D. Kitchin Professor of Chemistry, was chosen for his contributions to the field of non-equilibrium chemistry; he is co-author of the book Modern Thermodynamics. Both Kondepudi and Welker joined the faculty in 1987.

Kondepudi

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ssociate Professor of English Jefferson Holdridge has written a new book, The Poetry of Paul Muldoon (Liffey Press, 2008), which examines the works of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. “Because Muldoon is Irish but has lived in the States for many years, and I am American but have lived in Ireland for many years, I felt there might be a meeting ground between us,” said Holdridge. Holdrige is also director of the Wake Forest University Press, the major publisher of Irish poetry in North America. He lived in Dublin, Ireland, for fifteen years and earned his doctoral degree from and taught at University College Dublin before joining the Wake Forest faculty in 2002 to teach Irish literature. Muldoon, who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Moy Sand and Gravel, is now a professor at Princeton University and poetry editor of The New Yorker.

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olitical science professors David Coates and Peter Siavelis have edited a new book, Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know (Potomac Books, 2009), to follow up the conference on immigration which they organized at Wake Forest in 2007. The book includes essays on illegal immigration from Mexico by most of the conference participants. “The publication of this book is timely. We hope it will make a significant contribution to the re-emerging debate on immigration reform,” said Coates, the Worrell Professor of AngloAmerican Studies. Siavelis is the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science.

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Same frame John McConnell builds on combined strengths as the leader of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. By Robin Brantley (P ’07)

J

ohn

D. M c C onnell ,

m. d., the recently

appointed , first - in - its history chief e xecutive

of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, likes to tell a story about his grandmother back in Kansas when he was growing up there. “She was an amateur seamstress and people from the neighborhood would hire her to make dresses. She would listen to her customers very carefully, and she would make the dresses based on their feedback, but every dress she made was always made around the same frame.” McConnell thinks of that dress frame as a metaphor for the guiding principles of Wake Forest Baptist’s strategic vision. “Pending extensive faculty, staff, and board input,” he says, “the guiding frame of our new vision is firmly in place. One principle of that frame is what I call balanced excellence. The truly great academic medical centers in America have excellence in all three aspects of their classic mission to provide outstanding educational programs, world-class research, and unrivaled patient care. “Second is that our strategic focus, where we have to make the most of our investments, has to build upon existing areas of strength where there is a natural interplay between research and patient care. And third, those investments have to represent opportunity for us. Frankly, there are things in a perfect world that we might wish to do, but the economics do not support it.” McConnell believes strongly that the best academic medical centers have a unique responsibility not only to educate physicians but also to train the next gen­ eration of leaders in research and patient care. He would also add a fourth leg to the traditional tripartite mission. “My personal philosophy is that academic medical centers have a special obligation to give back to their communities. For Wake Forest Baptist, given officer

McConnell

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our existing strengths and the needs of the region, I think we have an opportunity to use our health disparities research, through the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity, to focus on the differential effects of disease on minority populations.” McConnell arrived in Winston-Salem last November, with his wife, Melinda, and college-age daughter, Cara, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he was executive vice president for health system affairs and professor of urology (holding the S.T. Harris Family Chair in Medical Science). His specific charge was to get the medical center to think and act as a single institution. As he explains it, “The two organizations have actually gotten along, but they have not acted as a single academic medical center, and merging those cultures, establishing unified goals, is really the major challenge.” The medical center was created in 1941 when the then two-year medical school moved from its campus in the town of Wake Forest to become a four-year school and to join with North Carolina Baptist Hospital. The medical school, part of Wake Forest University Health Sciences (a separate corporation under Wake Forest University), and the hospital remain separate legal entities. Health Sciences and North Carolina Baptist each have separate boards, and there is a separate, overarching medical-center board, to which McConnell reports. McConnell thinks that “the list of things that we can do, even though we’re not legally merged, is a lot longer than the list of things that we can’t do. All three boards are very supportive in our pushing the consolidated medical center vision as far as we possibly can, and I intend to do that.” Certainly McConnell’s success in achieving a similar goal at UT Southwestern would seem to give him a head start on his work here. After graduating from the University of Kansas and then the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, he served as a surgical intern and urology resident at UT Southwestern and its affiliated hospitals in Dallas. He quickly


rose to become chair of the Department of Urology, where he was known internationally as a researcher and clinician in prostate disease. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 (one of only four urologists) and has written over 110 peer-reviewed publications. In 1998 he took on an additional position as a senior administrator over the cancer and pediatric programs on the clinical side at UT Southwestern and, as he remarks, “got the bug” for administrative work. “What I learned about myself is that my ego did not require that my own personal success drive my own personal satisfaction, and that at that point I got just as much if not more enjoyment from recruiting and mentoring young faculty and residents and watching their careers develop as I did my own career.” McConnell’s interest in running an academic medical center was catalyzed in 2003–04 when he spent a year and a half turning around two hospitals affiliated with UT Southwestern which were experiencing substantial financial distress and management issues. He became chief executive officer over both hospitals, leading a major turnaround and creating an integrated health-care delivery system, which became legally part of UT Southwestern in 2007. When Wake Forest Baptist came calling in the summer of 2008, McConnell saw several things that attracted him to the medical center. “What some viewed as the challenging history of the organization I viewed as a great opportunity, because it’s pretty rare these days that you get to create a new structure for an academic medical center based on best-of-breed concepts, if you will. I got really energized meeting with some of the key faculty who convinced me that the job was doable, that they were prepared to do what was required to help get the medical center to the next level. And I thought the board leadership, specifically the co-chairs of the search committee, Don Flow (MBA ’83) and Steve Robertson, were visionary people who convinced me that the community not only wanted a topflight academic medical center but also would work with us to make that happen. “And about five minutes into my discussion with President Nathan Hatch I knew he would be a great partner. Obviously, the interface between the medical center and the University is very important, and it became apparent early in the conversation that we had the same vision and shared the same values. So it was, simply said, a matter of all the stars lining up.” Hatch calls McConnell’s work “distinguished in clinical medicine, in research, and in teaching—all

three at the heart of advancing Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. In addition, he brings great experience in integrating medical systems. Under his leadership, I am confident that we will, at the same time, improve clinical practice and the quality of our research enterprise.” Flow, chairman and CEO of Flow Companies, Inc., echoes Hatch’s sentiments when he says, “John has a deep appreciation of the interdependence of education, research, clinical practice, and administration and the required level of excellence that must be achieved for the medical center to take its place among the premier academic medical centers in the United States. His experience, his vision for excellence, and his integrity made him the right person to fill the role of CEO.”

McConnell (with Dr. Raymond Roy, president of Wake Forest University Physicians): Assembling the pieces of a medical school and a hospital into a single vision for the medical center.

Coming up on McConnell’s agenda for the first six months of 2009 are simultaneous strategic and longrange major facilities plans as well as the continuation of a new branding strategy for the medical center. He says he feels a sense of urgency to get moving on his plans, so that rather than doing them sequentially he’s going to parallel track all three. And what would he term a measure of his success? “I think that would be someone visiting the medical center in five years,” he says, “who didn’t know the history and assuming it’s a single consolidated academic medical center.” Robin Brantley (P ’07) is a writer in the Office of Public Relations and Marketing at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

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around

the quad Fueling Passion

Karyn and Tom Dingledine endow art scholarship By Karilon Rogers

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andscape painter Karyn Gunther Dingledine knows exactly what it is like to dream about attending college but not have the means to make that dream come true. She also knows how just a little bit of support can transform a young person’s life. She’s lived it personally. And now, through the new Karyn Dingledine Scholarship in Art, she is sharing the investment once made in her with students at Wake Forest. Last December Karyn and her husband, Tom (MBA ’78), a member of the Board of Trustees, endowed the Karyn Dingledine Art Scholarship Fund for students planning to major or minor in studio art. Undergraduate financial aid is a major priority of Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch.

Bowers (left) and Dingledine: a shared dream.

The first recipient of the Dingledine scholarship is Amanda Bowers, a freshman from Maui, Hawaii. “I am so thankful you’ve created a scholarship that supports the arts,” she wrote in a letter to the Dingledines. “I am even more thankful that it was given to me, and I am honored to be the first recipient. I want you to see me grow in the arts, and I want you to know that it was because of you that I was able to do so.” Karyn Gunther Dingledine grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, the oldest girl among six children. Although her interests and abilities in art during high school landed her a scholarship to the Delaware Art Museum Studio Program, she never thought she would be able to go to college. “Then, my senior year, I received a small grant from a local service club—$350—for college, and that little bit got me started,” she explains. “It meant everything to me; it made the difference in me going to college or not going to college. After

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I got that grant, I pulled the rest of it together myself and put myself through school.” After graduating with a degree in art from Virginia Commonwealth University, she moved on to the University of Virginia for an advanced degree in special education. Once again, others helped: She was awarded a fellowship that covered her costs and included a living stipend. She spent most of her career as an elementary art teacher and a resource teacher for children with learning disabilities at schools in Virginia. In 1999, she left teaching to further develop her own art and now focuses on painting mountain, river, marshland, and seaside landscapes. “It is not a hobby,” she says. “It is so much a part of my life and me as a person. I show some, sell some. But that is not my primary motivation. I love to do it, love to be around other artists, love going to galleries. It is my passion.” The Dingledines, who reside in Charlottesville, Virginia, also have established the Thomas A. Dingledine Fund for Responsible Business at the Babcock Graduate School of Management to help faculty create learning opportunities to educate ethical and socially responsible leaders who will use their knowledge in service to others. They have also funded the Dingledine Scholarship for Positive Social Impact, a full-tuition award for MBA students who have worked for a not-for-profit organization or agency or who have demonstrated a commitment to the community through volunteer work or social outreach. As part of the Presidential Trust for Faculty Excellence, they have funded the Dingledine Faculty Fund for Support of International Activities for faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences for travel related to their work, with preference to those who have been recognized for their achievements in the fields of ethics and socially and environmentally responsible practices. The Dingledines have also provided funding for a center in Managua, Nicaragua, that supports collaborative research, teaching, and service focused on Central America. The center will provide space for academic programs, conferences, and other scholarly activities. “Casitas,” or cottages, also are planned for housing guests on the property. Though Amanda Bowers and future recipients of the Karyn Dingledine Scholarship in Art are by no means the only beneficiaries of the family’s deep investment in Wake Forest, this scholarship is a uniquely personal gift for Karyn Dingledine. “I hope the scholarship helps to fuel students’ passion and make their dreams come true for their college education,” she says. “I know how much it meant to me and how much it means to me to have fulfilled my dreams and be in a position to look back and help someone else along the way.” Karilon Rogers is a communications consultant who lives in Clemmons, North Carolina.


Beyond the Classroom Senior Britt Turner’s summer research opportunity leads to a new understanding of chemistry. By Kim McGrath

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h at ’ s i t l i k e b e i n g a n a n a ly t i c a l c h e m i s t ?

Senior Britt Turner spent last summer discovering just that with funds provided through the Wake Forest Research Fellowship Program. For several months, he collaborated with Associate Professor of Chemistry Christa Colyer, conducting innovative experiments to determine the selectivity of new dyes and whether one of them would prove more accurate at identifying proteins in a solution than commonly used dyes. “The dyes we used were totally new and were created in collaboration with a research team in Japan,” said Turner, who is from Old Fort, North Carolina, near Asheville. “Professor Colyer and I were the first lab to test them.” Turner conducted experiments and met with Colyer weekly to discuss the results. “Besides mixing solutions for testing, I read literature about other dyes that were used previously in research labs so that I could compare results. But, ultimately, we were in brand new territory with these dyes so there were no equal comparisons. When my results were surprising, Professor Colyer and I would work together to determine if the solution or the methodology or human error might have caused unexpected outcomes,” said Turner. Moving beyond the classroom to fulltime research was an exciting experience for Turner. “Conducting my own experiments and practicing lab procedures helped me gain a greater understanding of chemistry unlike anything I have experienced in a classroom. The work also gave me a chance to see what it is like to be a graduate student or work in a research lab. As for the opportunity to

Turner in the lab with his faculty mentor, Christa Colyer.

collaborate with a senior faculty member on a day-to-day basis, I doubt I could have that opportunity at many other institutions.” With the grant support, Turner was able to work in the lab five days a week without the additional pressures inherent during the academic year. Instead of spending time securing a summer job that may or may not have been related to his field of interest, he was able to do the kind of work he might have a chance to do after graduating. “Britt’s summer lab work was an opportunity for him to do research similar to that being done in graduate school,” Colyer said. “In undergraduate lab classes, professors know how the research should be conducted and what the results should be. In a lab where real experimentation takes place, the results

are unknown. Britt was conducting experiments with unpredictable results because the dyes were untested. We started from scratch.” Last fall, Turner traveled to Nashville to present his and Colyer’s findings at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society—a rare opportunity for students to learn what others in the chemistry field are doing and to network. And the results of the experiments? “The process we developed in the lab using these new dyes helps to more accurately identify chemicals where protein figures as a major component,” Colyer said. “In a clinical setting, in samples where protein might be expressed as a marker of disease, the new dye-labeling process could be helpful in early detection and treatment.”

www.wfu.edu /wowf

march 2009 11


around

the quad Short stories

fame, among others—a gimmick, or

John McNally’s newest book brings ‘dead Chicagoans’ to life

does it serve some larger thematic purpose?

read more Faculty Q&As at www.wfu.edu/wowf/faculty

faculty

Q&A

By David Fyten

McNally

WF Magazine

How did you develop

the theme for your latest book?

When I edit an anthology (a book compiled of other writers’ work), the theme comes first, because I’m trying to find a marketable idea —an idea that interests me—on which I can hang the entire book. But that’s not the case for my own short story collections, in which I’m the writer, not the editor. By the time I was writing Ghosts of Chicago, I knew the enormous difficulties of placing a short-story collection with a publisher, and so I was more conscious of needing a “hook” for the book, but it wasn’t until about seven years into the writing that I began making connections between the stories. And then I was given an assignment by Virginia Quarterly Review to write a short story about a dead writer. I chose Chicago writer Nelson Algren. That’s when I found my hook: every other story in my book would be about a dead Chicagoan; many of the other stories dealt with characters who seemed, for lack of a better word, haunted by their own pasts. McNally

WF Magazine

You’re a native of the

Chicago area, but beyond that, are there any aspects of Chicago’s his-

WF Magazine

tory and culture that you found par-

scribe your own belief in ghosts?

How would you de-

ticularly pertinent and compelling in exploring your theme? McNally I’m always telling my students that the way to achieve universality is through specificity. I found this to be particularly true when I began receiving e-mails from people who’d read my first novel, The Book of Ralph. It’s set in 1978–79 on Chicago’s southwest side, and I used real places, very idiosyncratic places in some cases, and what I found was that people in Kansas City or Poughkeepsie or Biloxi had their own idiosyncratic places that mirrored my own. When people come up to talk to me about that book, they almost always want to talk about place, even if they’re not from Chicago.

WF Magazine

McNally For me, ghosts are primarily memories. My mother has been dead for twenty years now, but I still feel her presence. When I’m about to do something foolish, I hear her voice warning me not to do it. The memory of my mother, with whom I was very close, is still with me, as are the memories of people who are still alive but, for one reason or another, no longer in my life. In this regard, each of us walks around with ghosts filling our heads, and the older we get, the more ghosts there are and the more they talk to us. As for actual metaphysical entities, I don’t believe in them, but I’m not opposed to ruling them out. As to whether or not I’m haunted…yes, very much so.

Is the inclusion of

dead Chicago celebrities—diverse personalities that include John Belushi, George Pullman, Walter Payton, Richard J. Daley, Gene Siskel, and Miss Betsy of “Romper Room”

For the complete Q & A with John McNally, see www.wfu.edu/wowf/faculty 12 wake forest magazine

McNally Once I decided to include the dead Chicago celebrities, I wanted them to serve a larger purpose in the book as a whole. Most of those stories are very short—three to five pages, on average—so I began to think of them the way a pointillist might think of a dot on a canvas. My hope is that, when the reader finishes reading the book, they come away with an impressionistic portrait of the city. I wanted the effect to be cumulative, with each historical story giving more and more weight to the book as a whole. I also wanted to play the stories about everyday people off the stories of historical characters, in subtle ways.

John McNally, the Ollen R. Nalley Associate Professor of English, has crafted a niche in the contemporary writing scene by concentrating on the short story. He is the author of two novels and fifty-two published short stories, He also has edited or co-edited six anthologies of short stories, essays, and multi-genre works. He recently published his fifth collection of short stories, Ghosts of Chicago.


read more about these stories at www.wfu.edu/magazine or by following the link in each story. For daily news, visit window on wake forest at www.wfu.edu/wowf.

around the

e -QUAD

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ake Forest released its new strategic plan for the Reynolda Campus last fall—the first comprehensive blueprint for the Reynolda Campus since the Plan for the Class of 2000 was adopted in 1996. A series of white papers at www.wfu.edu/strategicplan describes each of the main priorities: * Build exceptional student-faculty engagement; *E nsure access to a Wake Forest education through additional financial aid; *R einforce the connections between the liberal arts and the professions; and *E nrich programs for educating the whole person.

P

rofessor of History Anthony Parent delivered this year’s Convocation Address February 26 on the 175th anniversary of Wake Forest’s founding in 1834. In conjunction with the University’s strategic initiative “Diversity 2009,” Parent examined the history of African Americans at Wake Parent Forest. Also during Convocation, the University’s highest honor, the Medallion of Merit, was presented to Richard Dean, president emeritus of Wake Forest University Health Sciences, and Marvin Gentry (’57), a lifetime member of the Wake Forest Board of Trustees and a longtime member of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center board. Several annual teaching, research, and service awards were presented to faculty. Read more at www.wfu.edu/foundersday.

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he day of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, faculty and students gathered in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library to discuss “The Dream Realized? What Barack Obama’s Election Means to America.” Read or watch the comments from seniors Fred Parent, Jermyn Davis, and Matt Triplett; professors Rhon Manigault and James Bryant; and Lynn Sutton, director of the ZSR Library and Wanda K. Brown, associate director of the ZSR Library, at www.wfu.edu/wowf/faculty.

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hy don’t well-behaved women make scientific history? Associate Professor of Chemistry Rebecca Alexander and students in her first-year seminar course, “Well-behaved Women Rarely Make Scientific History,” are studying that question this semester. Read more at www.wfu.edu/wowf/faculty

Alexander

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Hatch

hy do you believe in Wake Forest? President Nathan O. Hatch offered his answer in his State of the University address last fall. “I believe Wake Forest offers something unique to students: what we describe as a collegiate university. I am convinced that Wake Forest can claim a very special, even extraordinary place in American higher education.”

Read Hatch’s full address and tell us why you believe in Wake Forest at www.wfu.edu/believe.

O

n March 18, 19, and 20, Wake Forest is hosting a national symposium on creativity as a core literacy in today’s global environment. Among the featured guests is David A. Edwards, a biomedical engineer and writer involved in the translation of ideas from the university via medical technology and the literary, performing, and visual arts. Edwards, who is also the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, offers some tantalizing thoughts about creativity in an interview at www.wfu.edu/magazine. For more on the creativity symposium, visit www.wfu.edu/creativity/symposium.htm.

www.wfu.edu /wowf

march 2009 13


ODp e n i n oors

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g P

+ To see videos of these remarks, or to learn more about making a gift to the Wake Forest Fund for Student Aid, go to www.wfu.edu/openingdoors + To see a list of Wake Forest undergrad­ uate scholarships, go to www.wfu.edu/ magazine

resident Nathan O. Hatch has said, “On a University campus, open doors and open minds are

honored as powerful forces for good.”

For generations, Wake Forest has been filled with bright and deserving students who make outstanding contributions to our campus and society. A point of pride for Wake Forest is that we are one of only twenty-eight need-blind admissions institutions in the country, which means we do not take a student’s finances into account when making the admissions decision. The soul of Wake Forest was built by North Carolinians of modest means. Wake Forest’s “historical constituency” for admissions has been those who were often the first in their family to attend college and/or were from rural areas. Because of generous scholarship support from alumni, parents, and friends of Wake Forest, students have been able to come to Wake Forest and be transformed by the education they receive. Kristina Hanley, Evan Raleigh, Ying Vang, and Carson Moseley are four students whose lives have been changed thanks to scholarship support. Here are their stories, presented in their own words at the annual Stewardship Brunch.

march 2009 15


Ying Va ng

(’09)

M

y parents were both born in Laos where they experienced first-hand the devasta-

tion of communism. Six of my father’s thirteen siblings and his father were casualties of this conflict. My mother also lost both her parents during this time and was forced at the age of twelve to take care of her three younger siblings. Both of my parents took refuge in Thailand where they met, got married, and had my older brother and oldest sister. Because of my father’s aid to the CIA during the Vietnam War, my family was able to move to the United States in 1984 and settle in California, where my two older sisters and I were born, which makes me the youngest of five kids. When my family came to the United States, they didn’t have anything except each other. It was hard for them learning a new language, when they were already fluent in three other languages: Hmong, Laotian, and Thai. Neither of my parents had any sort of a proper education and therefore could not pursue it when they came here, especially since they had to take care of their family first. Because of their lack of education, for the past twenty-four years they have worked hard doing various sorts of unskilled labor so that my siblings and I could achieve an education that they were denied. Their greatest hopes and dreams coming to the United States were to give their children a brighter and

K r istina H a nley

better life than what they had to go through. In recent years, my father’s deteriorating eyesight has made him legally disabled and my mother constantly suffers aches and sores due to the hard labor that she had to do while living in Asia. I didn’t have a lot growing up in a lower-income family, but my parents made sure that I always had enough. I hardly remember them buying anything new for themselves, and they would often go without things so that they could provide my brother, sisters, and me with things that we needed. Having their children achieve an education is more important to them than anything in this world. In 1994, my family moved to North Carolina in hopes of finding better jobs with the then-booming textile industry. The move was a big change because we settled in a small rural town unlike the city where I grew up. In grade school, I was able to excel because I had four older siblings to help me academically. While in high school, I was a member of many clubs and organizations, one of which was the Air Force JROTC. I mention this group specifically because it was through the AFJROTC that I was first introduced to Wake Forest University. Coming from “The Biggest Little Football Town in the World,” every year the program takes a field trip to one of Wake Forest’s home football games. On the way to the game, the bus would take a quick tour through campus to let the students get a glimpse of the college. It was during this short tour my freshman year of high school that I fell in love with this institution. I was captivated by the beauty of the campus, and it was then that I decided that Wake Forest was the right place for me.

M

y father passed away from cancer

when I was nine years old, leaving my mom to raise four children by herself. We scraped and (’08, M AEd ’09) saved, and there were many nights when my mom couldn’t be at home until late because she was working. I am not trying to give you a sob story, and I know I didn’t have it hard compared to so many other people. schol a rship Grover and Peggy However, the moment that Wake Forest caught Mims Athletic Endowment Fund my eye, I had to be serious with myself. My famben efactor Chip Mims (MD ’66) ily could not afford it. And that’s where all of you and Peggy Mims (MAEd ’94) donors come in—your support makes the impossible happen. I was blessed with athletic skills and was offered the Grover and Peggy Mims Athletic Endowment Fund. The look on my mom’s face was priceless. Not only could she rest at ease, but she would be able to come watch me play soccer!

16 wake forest magazine


I worked very hard throughout my high school career so that I could be accepted into Wake Forest because I knew that it was a very competitive school. When I was finally accepted, I was relieved but also troubled because I knew that with the little pay that my parents had and the costs of tuition, it was not going to be easy for me or my family to meet the demands. I prayed long and hard, and after receiving my financial letter letting me schol a rship K. Wayne Smith Scholarship, awarded to know that I was to be the recipient of needy students with preference to residents of Catawba, the K. Wayne Smith Scholarship, Burke, Caldwell, and Alexander counties, NC, and to children it felt like my prayers were finally of full-time employees of Online Computer Library Center. answered. It was by receiving this ben efactor K. Wayne Smith (’60) and Audrey Smith scholarship that my dream of entering schol a rship William L. Wyatt III Scholarship, awarded Wake Forest was finally fulfilled. to students with an interest and ability in biology. In the summer before I started colben efactor Mr. (’35) and Mrs. William L. Wyatt, Jr. lege, I was given the privilege to meet with Dr. Smith and his wife on his farm you will have had a hand in helping achieve dreams of simple just three miles from where I lived. When I first met Dr. and Mrs. people like my family and me. Without people like you in this Smith, I was in complete awe and simply had stars in my eyes. world, neither my siblings nor I would have made it into college. When I arrived here in the fall of 2005, I felt as though I had I am proud to report that all five kids in my family have either just arrived home. For the past three years, Wake Forest has completed college or are enrolled in college. been a home to me and the people here have been like family. I I want to sincerely thank you for your kind gifts that help to can honestly say that the faculty, staff, and students here are further the education of students like myself. I know that withsome of the most sincere and kindest people in the world. Being out you, most of us students here in this room would not be able here at Wake Forest has given me more opportunities than I to proudly call ourselves Demon Deacons. could have ever imagined. I wanted to tell you about my family and where I came from Ying Vang is a senior biology major from Newton, North Carolina. because with your help, your kindness, and your generosity,

My Wake Forest experience did not let me down one bit. It has literally become home to me. My professors have challenged me to give my best and more in every single paper and test. They have not settled for mediocrity. My coaches have helped me develop leadership and teamwork skills that will last me the rest of my life. The friends I have met here have shown me more friendship and support than I knew could exist. Over my four years I have had two knee surgeries, one torn muscle, and one broken bone, and have not been able to make it through one season. So many people have said “Give it up, kid” or “Maybe you should just move on!” But when my coach offered me the opportunity to come back for one more year, there was no way I could walk away from Wake Forest. It has been the experience of a lifetime. Needless to say, my scholarship from the Grover and Peggy Mims Athletic Endowment Fund has made multiple

dreams of mine come true. I was able to come to one of the best academic universities in the nation. I had the opportunity to play at some other colleges, but the academics at Wake Forest really made this school the obvious choice. I have been able to play the sport that makes my eyes light up and my heart jump. And, after completing my Masters in Education, I will be able to teach kids with such passion that they know they can come to college no matter what the circumstances. I don’t know if you know the movie, “Pay it Forward,” but I am in such debt to Mr. and Mrs. Mims, and I plan to pay that gift forward with all my heart for the rest of my life. Kristina Hanley, from Hickory, North Carolina, was a member of the women’s soccer team. She graduated in 2008 with a degree in psychology and is currently pursuing a master’s in social studies education.

march 2009 17


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make a contribution to health care such as he did—these were both big dreams for a boy growing up in small town Alabama. I don’t really When the time came for me to apply to college, I looked for a for two things—politics and science. know where my interest in politics came from, but I can rememplace where I could pursue these interests and perhaps achieve ber as a little boy getting up to watch the Sunday-morning some of these dreams. political shows with my dad before church. I would see on TV I fell in love with Wake Forest not only because of the beautithe views of the Capitol, and I dreamed of one day being able to ful campus, the great academics, and the interesting students I visit those historic halls where our nation’s decisions are made. had met here, but also because I got the sense that this was a place where if students worked hard they would have special opportunities—opportunities to serve and to learn that they wouldn’t get at other institutions. And so I set my heart on (’09) coming, here, to Wake Forest. However, when I got my acceptance letter I felt almost gloomy—because I knew that being able to attend Wake Forest was academically possible for me, but financially schol a rship Wake Forest Heritage impossible for my family. And so I waited intently on Scholarship, awarded to students who word from the scholarship office, and waited…and represent Wake Forest’s traditional waited…for what seemed like an eternity, until one day in constituency and show outstanding April I got word that I had received a Heritage Scholarship academic achievement or potential, that would allow me to come to Winston-Salem. I was so intellectual curiosity, and a sense of excited that I immediately rejected offers from other service and social responsibility. schools and decided to come to Wake Forest that very day. ben efactor Anonymous The sense that I got about this place on my first visit has proven to be even more true than I could ever have imagined. The summer after my freshman year I got to take that long-awaited trip to Washington, D.C., and to work in the Capitol building—the same place I had dreamed of working on My early interest in science stemmed from my relationship those Sunday mornings in Alabama. with my best friend—my younger brother Everett. When EverThis past summer I did research in Memphis, Tennessee, ett was two he was diagnosed with autism, and if that wasn’t in the lab of none other than the intellectual hero of my childdifficult enough we were told that he also had Type I diabetes hood, Dr. Peter Doherty. soon after his ninth birthday. The daily grind that he and my I tell you this because in this room I’m not the exception, but family go through to deal with these disorders lit a fire in me the rule. All of us here today have had opportunities which othearly on to learn more about science and medicine in the hopes erwise would have been unattainable, and it is your generosity that I could one day do something to make the lives of Everett that made this possible. and people like him a little bit easier. As a Heritage Scholar I didn’t get to sit this morning with But the rusty lab equipment and the less-than-adequate scimy scholarship donor because he or she has chosen to remain ence classes offered to my “huge” high school class of forty-nine anonymous. And so, in a way, I feel as if each of the donors here people didn’t provide real avenues for learning about these subthis morning has given me the opportunity to come to Wake jects, and so I began to learn on my own by reading about the Forest. And so to each of you today I would like to say thank great scientists of the past. you for letting me come here to learn, thank you for letting One such scientist whose work I came to admire was Dr. Peter those seemingly impossible dreams of my childhood become Doherty, an Australian researcher who won the Nobel Prize in a reality, and most importantly thank you for letting me be a medicine in 1996. I can remember sitting in my room and readDemon Deacon. ing about Dr. Doherty and thinking that one day, if I worked hard, I might be able to work alongside someone like him and Carson Moseley is a senior biology major from Greenville, Alabama. ver since I can remember, as I grew up in

Lower Alabama, I’ve always had a passion

Car son Moseley

18 wake forest magazine


Eva n R aleigh

visit had something positive to say about the University and looked and acted like they genuinely enjoyed being here. schol a rship Joseph G. Gordon Scholar­ After that visit, my mind was made up. I was ship, awarded to students showing exceptional going to be a Demon Deacon no matter what it promise and leadership potential. took! But when I came home and spoke with my ben efactor Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation parents about the prospect of coming to Wake Forest, I realized that we had some very tough decisions to make. My dad had been forced into early retirement, and college was also on the horizon for my younger brother who was just a year behind me. I lived a comfortable life growing up, and I never wanted for anything, but our financial situation simply wouldn’t allow me to attend a school like Wake Forest. But I remember saying to my mom “no worries, we’ll find a way.” Fortunately, help came, and it came in the form of the Joseph G. Gordon Scholarship. hen I began my search for colleges I I’m proud to say that I have made the most of my time at have to admit that Wake Forest wasn’t Wake Forest, and I’ve had the opportunity to do some incredexactly at the top of my list. I was born in a city ible things. I’ve studied abroad at the University of Cambridge. where people bleed one of two colors, Carolina blue or Blue I’ve conducted research on a Caribbean Island. I’ve explored Devil navy, and like so many of my high school classmates I five different countries and even learned to speak another lanwas determined to bleed one of those two colors myself one day. guage along the way. All of these experiences have taught me So when my senior year rolled around and it came time for me important life lessons and have prepared me well to pursue a to visit these schools, I hopped in the car with my mom and master’s degree in public policy next year. dad and took a short trip down Interstate 40. I truly appreciate how Wake Forest has cultivated my desire After visiting the campuses, I decided that the people were to dedicate my life to serving others, and I absolutely cannot friendly and that the campuses were nice enough, but it didn’t wait to spread the seeds of Wake Forest everywhere I go. But take much for me to realize that they were both missing that spenone of these things would ever have been possible had it not cial something; that something that makes you feel like you never been for the kindness and the generosity of people like those of left home. We got back in our car and headed for home, but as we you sitting in the room this morning. made our way back my mom suggested that we go to WinstonSo this morning I say thank you. Thank you for enabling Salem and have a look at Wake Forest on our next outing. future generations of students to have the experiences that I’ve Little did I know that trip the following weekend would had. Thank you for ensuring that this University will continue change the entire direction of my life. I came to campus and to be a diverse and dynamic place where people of all races and absolutely fell in love. When I stepped on the Quad for the very socio-economic backgrounds can succeed and feel welcomed. first time I imagine that it felt similar to the way my dad felt But most of all, thank you for making my dream of becomwhen he first met my mom. I had that feeling deep down inside ing at student at Wake Forest University come true. that says to you “this is it.” It wasn’t just the physical beauty of the campus that had me, though. It had much more to do with Evan Raleigh is a senior political science major from Greensboro, the fact that just about every single person I encountered on my North Carolina.

(’09)

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march 2009 19


Brought Long-hidden letters enable two Wake Forest professors to unearth their own buried pasts and bond over a shared tragedy. By David Fyten

20 wake forest magazine


to light ot long after Miki Felsenburg

(MBA ’78, JD ’91) joined the Wake Forest law faculty in 1994, she brought her elderly mother, Gertrud, from Denver to live with her in Greensboro. A month-and-a-half later, Gertrud was dead. It was quite a while before Felsenburg, who today is an associate professor of legal writing, could bring herself to go through her mother’s personal effects. When she finally did, what she discovered transformed her life by bringing a bittersweet but blessed measure of closure to her painful legacy. In the process, she discovered common ground with another faculty member—Helga Welsh of political science—whose own legacy intersected with Felsenburg’s in a very real and tragic sense. Together, they formed a bond of friendship from healing and hope. In a poignant program aired on Wake Forest’s public radio station, WFDD, in late fall, Felsenburg and Welsh discussed their remarkable story. Many of the quotes in this article are drawn from that program and used with permission. Felsenburg’s father and mother, Kurt and Gertrud Mendl von Felsenburg, were Viennese Jews who fled the Third Reich just before the borders were sealed in the early forties. They made their way to the United States, where they dropped “Mendl von” from their name, had their only child, Miriam Esther (Miki), and prospered professionally, she as a psychologist and he as the chief accountant and comptroller for the Colorado State Patrol.

march 2009 21


Gertrud Felsenburg was an accomplished woman. She earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Vienna (where she took a course from an elderly Sigmund Freud) at a time when Austrian universities marginalized women. She was a founding member of Colorado’s professional psychology association. Yet, as her daughter observed, she exuded a deep-seated sadness. And although she was known as an open-minded and tolerant woman with a special sense of compassion for minorities, she was extremely bitter toward Germans. Among Gertrud’s personal effects was a red wallet she was using at the time of her death. Tucked behind the flap where folded money could be hidden in billfolds of that vintage were three onionskin letters, disintegrating from age and repetitive unfolding and refolding. The ink of the handwriting had bled through both sides of the paper, rendering them virtually illegible. About all that Felsenburg could decipher was that they were in German and were all in different handwriting. Although her parents almost never talked about it, Felsenburg knew that her mother’s brother and other members of their extended family had perished in the Holocaust. She suspected the letters were from her grandparents but there was no way to be certain without a translation. A short while before discovering the letters that day in 1999, Felsenburg had met Welsh, an associate professor of political science, at a social gathering. “I knew from her accent that she was German, and since we were both members of the faculty, I thought I would ask her if she could help me with the letters,” Felsenburg recalls. Welsh, a native of Lenggries, a small town in the Bavarian Alps near Austria, says she always welcomes an opportunity to use her native language, adding: “I was excited to be helpful.” En route to their meeting, Felsenburg suddenly was struck by the possibility that Welsh’s family could have been involved in the war, or even have been Nazi Party members. “I told her that these letters were from my grandparents who had died in the Holocaust and to feel free to

22 wake forest magazine

decline [translating them] if she had any hesitation whatsoever,” Felsenburg recalls. “Helga was so warm and gracious. She said, ‘Miki, we both must face that this happened. It’s a long time ago now, so let’s see what these letters say.’” All three were written in late 1941, after Kurt and Gertrud had arrived in the United States. One was from Gertrud’s father, another was from her mother, and the third was from Kurt’s father. In his letter, her father rebuked Gertrud for not having done more to secure, while they were still obtainable, exit visas for her now-trapped family back in Austria, which Germany had annexed in 1938. Her mother’s missive tried to mitigate the severity of her husband’s letter. “He is simply bitter,” she wrote. “Beyond your own strength you cannot act. For me, the whole issue is past; I can live with it.” By contrast, the letter from Kurt’s father, a well-to-do lawyer who had financed his son and daughter-in-law’s flight to Holland, was filled with jokes and trivialities of the day. “Though we started the afternoon reading the letters as near strangers, we ended it as friends,” Felsenburg says. “While we read, both of us wept, not because they had died, but because of the humanity we all share. Here they were, facing death, and my grandmother takes time [in her letter] to show pride in her daughter by asking about the dress and hairstyle she would be wearing to a psychology conference she would be attending. “[After reading the letters] it is easier to understand why my mother was such a sad woman,” she continues. “In addition to the survivor guilt that I believe every Holocaust survivor had, she also had this very direct blaming from her father that said, ‘Why haven’t you done more for us,’ when she was desperate to do everything she could. Whatever she could do, she did, but it was simply not enough. When she finally obtained permission for her parents to come to the U.S. in 1944, they had already been dead for two years, though she did not know it until after the war was over.” The letters helped Felsenburg fill in the holes in her knowledge of her family. “My parents, like so many Holocaust


survivors, simply refused to speak about it,” she says. “What few details I learned emerged when my friends would ask her questions. My mother would be too polite to refuse to answer at all, so she would give a few grudging details. She was simply too sad to talk about it. My father was a completely different personality—a lively, optimistic, joke-telling kind of guy. If you asked him a question, he simply couldn’t remember. It was ancient history to him.” Back in Germany, families like Welsh’s also talked little about the Holocaust and the war years in general, but for different reasons. Her mother married in 1937 and soon had two children, but her husband served in the German army and never returned home. After the war she subsisted by doing laundry for the American occupation forces in her town before marrying her second husband, Josef Hundegger, in 1951. Welsh was born a year later. “In my family, and really across Europe, people didn’t talk about World War II and the Holocaust,” Welsh says. “Forgetting was almost a way of life.” Still, she knew that her father had been drafted into the German army and fought in the war. “The first time I noticed was when I was seven or eight,” she says. “We were swimming, and I saw his scars from having been severely injured on the Russian front.” For a long time, Welsh was reluctant to probe too deeply. “On the one hand, you want to know what your parents did during this period,” she notes. “But on the other, you’re afraid to know something you really don’t want to learn. They’re still your parents and you love them, but if they were Nazis, how do you live with this knowledge? “It took me a very long time to have the courage to ask my father if he had been a member of the Nazi Party,” Welsh adds. “I was sixteen or seventeen when I finally did. It was an enormous relief when he said no.” She and her father remained extremely close for the rest of his life. “He probably had the greatest influence on my life of anyone I’ve ever known,” she says. “He died in 1985, two months after I received my Ph.D. He was very proud of that.” Felsenburg was surprised to learn that a silence as suffocating as the one that had enveloped Jewish families also had smothered Christian families. “It had never occurred to me that there was an entire generation of German children who had suffered on account of the Holocaust [as a result of their] resentment of what their parents had done,” she says, “and who also had a past that could not be talked about.” Through other letters she eventually obtained, Felsenburg was able to piece together the fate of her grandparents. To care for her husband, who had been shell-shocked in World War I and was emotionally handicapped as a result, her grand-

mother willingly boarded the train that carried both of them to the death camp at Sobibor, even though circumstances were such that she could have eluded transport, at least temporarily. They were exterminated in early 1942, but it wasn’t until 1946 that Gertrud learned for certain of their deaths. Despite being only five feet tall, Felsenburg’s father, Kurt, was drafted into the U.S. Army and was sent to Europe, serving for a time in the region of Bavaria where Welsh grew up. He and Gertrud were divorced in the early sixties. His second marriage lasted for more than thirty years, up to his death in 2000, but Gertrud remained single for the rest of her life. Both Felsenburg and Welsh have reflected deeply on the profound outcomes and larger implications of their coming together. “It’s a story of hope—that one can reach out and reconcile differences,” Welsh says. “It doesn’t mean that one can forget; it means that generations can move on and come to grips with something that is very hard to understand.” Adds Felsenburg: “The gift Helga gave me is almost indescribable. It gave me a sense of my grandparents—and an understanding of my own parents—that I absolutely never had. A lovely irony that comes of all of this: here, today, we find ourselves close friends—the German daughter of a Naziera soldier, and the Jewish daughter of survivors of the Holocaust. How could we possibly not derive hope from that?”

Special thanks to WFDD News Director Kathryn Mobley, who produced the program, and Station Manager Denise Franklin for their gracious per­ mission for use of material. To hear the program visit www.wfu.edu/magazine.

Helga Welsh (left) and Miki Felsenburg: bonding through healing and hope.

march 2009 23


Major

Prog

24 wake forest magazine


gress Women’s and Gender Studies: A Pioneer in Interdisciplinarity By Linda McKinnish Bridges (MBA ’04, P ’10)

march 2009 25


K

nowledge is different these days. Something

is happening to the way we think about the way we think. Jane Thompson Klein, author of Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice, contends that a “subtle restructuring of knowledge” is occurring in academia with words like “collabo­ rative research,” “team teaching,” “permeability of boundaries,” and “blurring and mixing of genres.” While higher education wrestles with the social, intellectual, and political realities of this new way of thinking about thinking and faces the challenging demands of restructuring departments, hiring new faculty, and designing poli­ cies for faculty tenure and promotion, a quiet but potent exemplary model of interdisciplinary research and teaching has been occur­ ring in Wake Forest’s Women’s and Gender Studies program. Women’s and Gender Studies, along with International Studies, are the two oldest interdisciplinary programs in the College. Now one of twenty interdisciplinary minors, Women’s and Gender Studies, from its inception, has provided a model not only for collaborative research and teaching but also for the integration of theory and praxis, of aligning knowledge and action, now considered common standards for excellence in higher education. The curriculum provides rigorous academic courses that promote the study of gender in all fields of inquiry, taught by faculty from various disciplines across the University, enriched by internships, service-learning opportunities, and advocacy training helping stu­ dents translate learning into action. About thirty-five students have chosen a minor in the program this year. Thirty-six years ago, a group of sixty faculty, administrators, and librarians gathered in Reynolda Hall, in response to a memo from Dean of Women Lu Leake: “Compared to other areas of the country, the Wake Forest campus is extremely quiet regarding concerns of women.” Leake wrote in 1973. “I am curious why this is so! From time to time I get inquiries from people within the University as well as outsiders about the pro­ portion of women to men in the student body, percentage of faculty who are women, women’s studies, affirmative action programs, ERA, areas of discrimination. Some of these I can give information about; some I cannot.” In response to Leake’s call for help, a Women’s Study Committee was formed to discuss feminist pedagogy, scholarship, and advocacy for women across the University. The group, although new to the Wake Forest cam pus, was not unique in higher education at the time. In response to the wom en’s movement of the

26 wake forest magazine

early 1970s, women’s studies were rapidly entering higher education as a distinct academic discipline. San Diego State University was the first in 1970 to add women’s studies to their curriculum. Five years later, 150 programs in women’s studies were developed, and by 1985, 300 programs were recorded in colleges and universities across the country. Things were changing. Twenty women met monthly for two years, from 1973–1975, providing a supportive environment for one another, gathering information on affirmative action, and discussing campus inequities in salaries and faculty appointments. By 1975 a Committee on the Concerns of Wake Forest Women, directed by Rosemarie Anderson Petty in psychology, was in place to focus on job classification and salaries; women’s studies programs; and career development of Wake Forest women. By 1982 the committee, with the leadership of Professor of Music Susan Borwick, established the early beginnings of the women’s studies program at Wake Forest by proposing an interdisciplinary minor. The interdisciplinary minor was approved in the spring of 1983 and included a newly created, four-credit course, “Humanities 121: Introduction to Women’s Studies,” and other courses in the humani­ ties and social sciences. Faculty members representing many disci­ plines signed on, including Peggy Smith in art; Elizabeth Phillips, Nancy Cotton, Gillian Overing, and Andrew Ettin in English; Susan Borwick in music; Catherine Harris and Willie Pearson in sociology; Suzanne Reynolds (JD ’77) in the School of Law; and Marianne Schubert in the counseling center. Professor of English Mary DeShazer was hired as the first Women’s Studies coordinator in 1987 and served the program for ten years. “Because the challenging task of getting the minor accepted by the University’s Curriculum Committee had been accomplished by oth­ ers, I faced primarily the exciting task of recruiting new minors and developing the interdisciplinary curriculum,” DeShazer recalled. She created a program where rigorous academics were first priority and collaboration between faculty and students was standard. Professor of Education Linda Nielsen joined the program in 1991 and incorpo­ rated internships in to the program. The program attracted twelve to fifteen minors per year in the early 1990s. New faculty were added, including Anne Boyle in English; Ulrike Wiethaus and Steve Boyd in religion; Sally Barbour in Romance languages; and Simone Caron and Sarah Watts in history. Courses in feminist theory, international women’s movement, rela­ tionships between fathers and daughters, and gay and lesbian research were developed. DeShazer also reached out to the community, helping to establish the 1993 Commission on the Status of Women, leading efforts to increase the number of minority faculty and students.


Women,” “Race and Ethnic Diversity in America,” “Feminist Political Thought,” “Contemporary Families,” and “Gender in Society.” The faculty, drawn from the College and the schools of medicine, law, and divinity, are committed to researching, teaching, and writing about the connecting links between sociology, science, literature, religion, and the role of gender as well as translating that knowledge into action for the building of the community and the world. Shannon Michelle Philmon (’07), who served as Student Govern­ ment president in 2006–2007 and now directs the work of City Year— a non-profit organization that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service with special focus on the high school dropout crisis— attributes her success in her work to the Women’s and Gender Studies program. “I am able to more effectively identify the devastating barriers to success that young women face in this country, especially for young women from low-income backgrounds and of color. My education allows me to be proactive in addressing the challenges and serve as a voice to these young women who are disempowered. My activism is a direct result of the mentorship and encouragement I received from faculty and peers who taught me how to ask the right questions and gave me opportunities to volunteer and perform outreach to the Winston-Salem community.” As Wake Forest moves for­ he Women’s and Gender Studies ward with the new strategic Program at Wake Forest offers all plan, shaping avenues for the students rigorous academic courses production of knowledge that examine and question cultural, from interdisciplinary cen­ biological, political, and social constructions of femininity and masculinity. ters and institutes, Women’s The program is interdisciplinary and Gender Studies will pro­ in content and approach. Whether vide an interesting organiza­ you enroll in a course that explores tional model, a model of women’s history, women’s literature, teaching and learning that or women’s issues, or a class devoted requires collaborative dis­ to the sociology or politics of gender, masculinities studies, or gay and lescourse and practical expres­ bian studies, you will find yourself in sion, a program aligned in the company of teachers and learners both theory and praxis, a who encourage critical thinking and broad collection of knowl­ dialogue, and who validate complex edge that spreads through­ and diverse perspectives. out the disciplines of the Committed to active involvement in the community, we have developed college and the constellation a strong internship program that of professional schools allows students to translate their throughout the University.

T

mission Statement

The following decade was not as fruitful, with the program facing funding and leadership challenges. Borwick returned to lead the program in 1997; followed by Cheryl Leggon in sociology; Linda McKinnish Bridges (MBA ’04), associate dean of the College; and Anne Boyle in English. A renewed commitment emerged, affirming that inter­disciplinary work is not easy, that bringing together dispa­ rate faculty with differing methodologies is a challenge, and that the struggle to create academic discourse, which is both collaborative, intellectually rigorous, and connected to practical and political ends, is absolutely essential for a vibrant collegiate community. In the spring of 2003, with the leadership of Boyle, Women’s Stud­ ies became Women’s and Gender Studies, reflecting the more inclu­ sive scope of the courses and the growing interest of participating faculty. “In the past five years,” DeShazer notes, “WGS has conducted a highly successful program review, appointed six rotating faculty, formalized its governing structure and curricular offerings, and con­ tinued to attract many of Wake Forest’s most talented students of diverse majors, including Rhodes and Truman scholarships recipients.” The program continues to benefit from the significant financial contributions of its two most ardent supporters: Professor Emerita of English Elizabeth Phillips, who died last June; and feminist activist Sylva Billue, who was killed in a tragic accident in 2007. Following a national search for program director in 2007, Wanda Balzano was appointed as the first full-time director of Women’s and Gender Studies. Originally from Pompeii, Italy, Balzano brings an international focus and broad research competencies to the program. She received both a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Anglo-Irish Litera­ ture and Drama from University College Dublin, Ireland, focusing on Irish women writers and religion. She taught both in Ireland (in the Anglo-Irish Department at University College Dublin), and in Italy (in the Dipartimento di Anglistica at the Istituto Universitario Orien­ tale of Naples). She came to Wake Forest with seasoned experience in feminist discourse. In Ireland she worked with professors who were both fem­ inist and activists, and she remains committed to the original mission of the program—“to provide an interdisciplinary program that brings together disparate faculty who use different methodologies; that struggles to be collaborative, rather than hierarchical; that is con­ stantly challenged by demands that are not specifically academic, but personal and political, and that aspires to educate not just the mind, but to nurture the body and spirit.” Balzano and a core teaching faculty of six members who rotate every three years offer over twenty courses per semester, including “Introduction to Women and Gender Studies,” “Women Poets,” “Sexuality and the Law,” “Gender in Society,” “History of Chinese

knowledge into practice.

www.wfu.edu/wgs

march 2009 27


such as human psychology and social conditioning important for the determination of economic outcomes? And, what aspects of standard economic theory need modification in the presence of such phenomena as gendered roles in the workplace and the house­ hold, “winner-take-all” wage setting, and possibly non-rational behavior on the part of economic agents, including both consumers and firms (and their very human managers and employees)? Answers to questions such as these should not be seen as simple ones. One major focus of my work with students on such questions has been to reveal the underlying theoretical complexities involved. A second—and equally important—focus has been empirical. My students are always asked to confront their opinions about how the world works with self-gathered and self-analyzed empirical data. Perry Patterson Over the years, they have asked: whether firms that hire more women, or that approach gender parity in terms of membership on the board of directors, do better or worse than those that remain dominated by men only; whether states, regions, or nations that are more racially diverse or that have more gay and lesbian citizens do in the midst of a financial crisis better than those with more homogeneous populations; and even whether universities that seem to practice more affirmative action ere it not for the ongoing financial in admissions rise more in the rankings than those that do not. meltdown, Americans might remember For the record, the outcomes of such investigations, whether con­ the recent Presidential election as one ducted by my students or by Ph.D.-holding researchers, have been fairly dominated by issues of race and gender. surprisingly mixed. Thus, in addition to more “mainstream” eco­ In particular, much ink was spilled over the Hillary Clinton and nomic approaches to understanding the origins of the present Sarah Palin candidacies, raising questions about how these women financial crisis, we are right to ask—as feminist authors have— “should” speak in public, or how they “should” combine public roles whether the treatment of women or other non-traditional players with private family lives. Less was said on these fronts regarding the in the major financial institutions has been a relevant factor in the male candidates, reflecting some generally tacit assumptions that outcomes we currently observe. men “naturally” play a large public role, and one with relatively lim­ The process of conducting such investigations and raising such ited family commitments. feminist-inspired questions also plays an important function in the Attention has now shifted away from gender issues to the financial classroom. Such questions challenge economics students to interro­ meltdowns centered in New York and London (from where I wrote gate the assumptions of standard theoretical models and to explore these comments). But perhaps that change of focus has been overdone, more deeply the implications of statistical results. as feminist approaches have much to say about the economic theory At the same time, students from a traditional Women’s and Gen­ underlying much of modern capitalism as we know it, and offer impor­ der Studies perspective experience an introduction to the methods tant insights on items ranging from the bonuses paid to the CEOs of of social science that they might otherwise miss. My hope is that all failed banks to the day-to-day issues faced by women working in the students in such mixed-background and mixed-gender settings the financial markets to the strength of market versus social forces come away with a greater sense of the possibilities for interdisciplin­ in determining wages, access to jobs, and overall social inequality. ary work, and with a greater appreciation of each other’s perspec­ For the last seven years or so, I have taught a course entitled tives and abilities. In an era of crisis where one financial leader has “Economics for a Multicultural Future,” and last semester taught called for “all hands on deck,” I hope this is an approach that can a version of that course in the UK at Wake Forest’s Worrell House help prepare a generation of truly thoughtful and open-minded program in London. Many diversity- and gender-related questions leadership in the world of finance and beyond. are raised in that course, including: Under what conditions are mar­ kets likely to produce outcomes free from discrimination in wages, Perry Patterson is professor of economics and lecturer in Russian. hiring, and promotion? Under what conditions are non-market forces

Gender and social sciences

W

28 wake forest magazine


Gender is

Velvet Bryant (’09)

not synonymous for women

W

omen’s and gender issues have been intricately woven into the fabric of

our society. Such issues can be viewed from a macro level that focuses on social institutions in the public domain as well as from a micro level that focuses on individual case studies. The Women’s and Gender Studies program has strategically created an interdisciplinary curriculum that allows students to assess social issues from a feminist, sociological, literary, psychological, religious, and multicultural perspective. As a WGS minor, I have learned the depth to which social issues are interrelated. Furthermore I have learned that effectively addressing the root of an issue, rather than a branch, can only be done through a collective effort. One of the things that compelled me to become involved in the WGS program is that faculty members spend quality time getting to know their students and offering suggestions on how to achieve their academic and personal goals. Director Wanda Balzano and professor Mary DeShazer have both contributed to my academic success. As the student representative on the research committee, I have learned about the contributions WGS professors are making in their respective fields of interests. The faculty have made a valu­ able investment in my academic and personal growth, and I am compelled to maintain a mutual exchange by doing the same. The program has been my avenue to learning more about social issues that interest me and to become more involved in the com­ munity. As a member of the Women’s Fund of Winston-Salem, I have met influential women in the community and participated in the voting process that awards grants to programs that work to improve the lives of women and girls. Patricia Willis, a WGS visiting professor, encouraged me to attend the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. This was a formative expe­ rience that connected me to other social activists and gave me a greater understanding of the social issues that plague communities in the United States, as well as what is being done to combat these distresses. Too often we are reminded of issues that separate us in the United States, and it was impressive to see so many people from different backgrounds and communities come together for the common edification of humanity. Participating in the “From Campus to Congress Conference: Women of Color Creating Change,” also contributed to my under­ standing of the needs of women and related to my passion to see women empowered. I was also given the opportunity to share my experiences with members of the WGS department at a facultystudent colloquium. Traveling to South Africa through the Mission

of Good Hope Service Trip gave me the privilege to teach computer skills to women in Khayamandi and learn about initiatives that seek to empower women and their children. I believe women’s and gender issues have risen to the forefront of social consciousness. The term “women’s and gender issues” does not refer solely to the struggles and injustices individuals have encoun­ tered. It also refers to the triumphs and advancements that have been made to improve our social well-being. We as a society have seen a greater prevalence of women in positions that yield upward social and economic mobility.

Today’s society is confronted with the need to reassess and redefine gender as it undeniably shapes our social identities and interactions in multiple social institutions. Gender is not synonymous for women, but includes men and nontraditional gender identities. Women’s and gen­ der issues are linked to race and ethnic relations, socioeconomic status, public health, body image, and sexuality. The reality is that women’s and gender issues have a direct and indirect impact on all individuals. Therefore it would be inadequate to discuss such issues only in relation to women. The most productive conversations I have had have been with a diverse group of individuals; each offers valuable contributions to our discussion. As we further our understanding of the cultural environment in which we live, I believe we will see women’s and gender issues evolve as our society continues to progress towards social equality for all. Velvet Bryant, from Stokesdale, North Carolina, is a senior psychology major, with a minor in women’s and gender studies. She receives financial support from the following scholarships: Cotman-Proctor, Ralph Judson Sykes, William Louis Poteat, and Merit Supplemental.

march 2009 29


Mary Foskett

Women’s and gender Studies relevance outside the academy

O

ne only need take a brief glance at the headlines that dominated the political

news of 2008 to see the relevance of Women’s and Gender Studies to life outside the academy. Whether it was consideration of the 18 million cracks that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign left in the proverbial glass ceiling, the debate leading up to and following California’s Proposition 8, assumptions about motherhood and women’s work that swirled around Sarah Palin, or the racism and sexism that surfaced during the Presidential campaigns and the varied responses to it, much of the year’s national news addressed issues that go to the heart of how we understand gender, men’s and women’s roles in society, marriage, family and the intersections of race, class, and gender. The Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Wake Forest is an exciting and vibrant interdisciplinary minor. It provides our students a means of engaging many of the key issues and conditions that have shaped human history and continue to drive the world today. It also gives students a way to examine the big issues that the day’s headlines capture, as well as the every­ day social constructions that give rise to our assumptions and inform our daily lives. In short, students in Women’s and Gen­ der Studies delve into a host of questions and study matters that impact all of us. They may examine, for instance, not only the

30 wake forest magazine

ways in which the lives of men and women are similar or differ­ ent, but how it is that societies understand, define, promote, and challenge precisely what it is to be a woman or a man in the first place. Alternatively, students may study the ways in which popu­ lar culture and various media construct beauty, the body, and sexuality, or they may query how social and political discourse promotes particular notions of gender. In these and many more areas, students critically and carefully probe matters that shape their lives. Women’s and Gender Studies plays a vital role in a liberal arts education that is pro humanitate as the program facilitates important connections between the classroom and communi­ ties both across and beyond the Wake Forest campus. It not only offers cross-disciplinary courses that place students in every corner of the University, it also promotes attendance at campus and community events, supports internships, fosters original student research, nurtures student leadership, and encourages service learning. Women’s and Gender Studies both challenges students and enables them to recognize how the study of gender and women’s lives, histories, social conditions, cultural, religious and political contexts affects the world. To engage in Women’s and Gender Studies is not only to be concerned about the lives of women and the construction and function of gender, but also to take on a path of learning that allows men and women alike to achieve an interdisciplinary understanding of various cultural constructs and participate in the world that cares about and benefits all of humanity. Mary Foskett is associate professor of religion.


Matt Triplett (’09)

Gender equality:

We’re not there yet

I

t’s a fairly common occurrence . I’m bustling down the Quad, breath short, book bag swaying back and forth, try­ ing to make it to class in time, and I see someone I know. We exchange obligatory greetings, and then the question always comes, “Where are you headed?” I get the chance every time this question is posed to reveal some­ thing about myself, about my politics and beliefs, and about my opinions of how our culture is structured and divided. I have this opportunity because, unlike responding that I’m headed to eco­ nomics or biology, saying that I’m on my way to my Women’s and Gender Studies class is a response that comes loaded with connota­ tions and meaning. Sometimes, in a society like ours, the study of something as seemingly fundamental as gender can become uncomfortable. “Why is it,” people always ask me, “do we need to study women and gender? After all, haven’t we already achieved equality? Women can vote; they can own cars and houses, and they can go to work outside the home.” Most importantly, people wonder, why I, a guy, am so personally vested in such study. I love this scenario because it gives me the chance to impart some of the knowledge that I’ve gained as a WGS minor. To begin, there’s the obvious: we still do not have gender or sexual equality in the United States. Every day across this country, women earn 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. That means that every female Wake Forest graduate can expect to make only about 77 percent of what I will over the course of our lifetimes. Besides that, one in four women in the United States will fall vic­ tim to some form of sexual violence before they die. One in four of my girl friends here will be violated by men in some way, sexually, at some time in their life. These numbers don’t tell the whole story, though. We need to study women and gender, not just because we remain an unequal and sexually violent society, but because our culture is so heavily laden with artificial gender divides. So much of what we do every day is informed by the ways in which we have been socialized to behave as men or women, as mas­ culine or feminine. Even in the hallowed halls of academia, our society is structured along a rigid, gendered grid which dictates how, and what, we see, what we wear, what we study, and how we conceptualize our very identity and sexuality. As such a fundamen­ tal factor in how we as human beings behave, I think the question should be, “Why don’t we study women and gender?” The Women’s and Gender Studies program is a fantastic avenue for undergraduates to try to grapple with these important and

difficult questions. With the program’s interdisciplinary focus, stu­ dents are able to examine gender, sexuality, and women’s studies from a variety of perspectives. In my own experience, I have looked at the way in which gender is constructed in biblical contexts, in the contexts of South Asia and Latin America, and from the perspective of women political philosophers, both historical and modern. More than that, the program is a good one because it focuses on both women and gender studies. While I thoroughly enjoy learning about women and femininity in our culture, I am equally intrigued by the study of men and masculinity. In reality, one has to incorpo­ rate the study of multiple genders in order to gain a full and nuanced appreciation for any one, particular gender. Further, many of the faculty in the program are interested in taking such study even further, exploring the roles that race and class also play when they intersect and interlock with gender. The program is full of caring faculty who are interested in allowing stu­ dents to explore their interests in a range of creative contexts, and I would recommend this field of study for any person who has a serious curiosity about the role that gender plays in our global and national society.

Matt Triplett, from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, is a senior political science major with double minors in religion and women’s and gender studies. He receives support from the William Louis Poteat Scholarship, the Zachary T. Smith Leadership Scholarship, and the John W. Boatwright Scholarship.

march 2009 31


profile

The

Rights

Stuff By Kerry M. King (’85)

32 wake forest magazine


W

hen he was eightyears-old, Ben Sutton received a

Christmas gift that foretold his life’s work. “Christmas 1966, San-

A commitment to clients, colleagues, and community has helped Ben Sutton (’80, JD ’83) build a successful college athletics multimedia company.

ta Claus brought me a world-band radio. It was the first radio on which we could listen to a Wake Forest sports broadcast. I would sit outside on our porch on cold winter evenings—you could only hear the games at night—and listen to the Demon Deacons on the radio,” recalls Sutton (’80, JD ’83), who grew up in Murfreesboro, in eastern North Carolina. “I could pick up the Red Sox on WBZ in Boston, too, and I became a Red Sox fan. But I became even more passionate about Wake Forest.” It’s hard to imagine a time when a young boy could be so excited about listening to games from somewhere as far away as Boston—or Winston-Salem for that matter, praying that the signal would hold out until Gene Overby’s final “bottoms!” call as a Demon Deacon swished another jumper. Sutton didn’t grow up wanting to be Overby—he wanted to be the player making the shots. While a career playing sports wasn’t in his future, today he calls the shots at ISP Sports, the largest and fastestgrowing college athletics multi­media company in the country. Sutton has come a long way since leaving Wake Forest’s sports marketing office in 1992 and starting what was then called International Sports Properties. It was a rather audacious name, he admits, for a

march 2009 33


profile 34 wake forest magazine


company that had exactly one property— Wake Forest—and operated out of a second floor office above the Village Soda Shop in Reynolda Village in what had once been a dairy barn on the R.J. Reynolds’ estate. “I’m here because of Wake Forest,” says Sutton, chairman of the board and CEO of ISP, headquartered in downtown WinstonSalem. “I’ll never forget that or break that bond. But for Wake Forest’s confidence and trust and belief in me, there isn’t an ISP.” The concept behind ISP was simple, even though no one else was doing it at the time. Universities such as Wake Forest sold their commercial sports marketing rights—radio play-by-play broadcasts, coaches’ television shows, game day publications, signage, and promotions—piecemeal to various sponsors and promoters. Sutton’s bold idea: what if one company bought all of a university’s sports marketing rights and packaged them together to sell to sponsors? Initially, he took on clients in and out of college sports, including the Vantage PGA Championship in Tanglewood Park in nearby Clemmons, to pay the bills. In 1994, ISP landed its second collegiate property, future ACC member Virginia Tech, and several years later signed up Marshall, Alabama, and Georgia Tech. The company quickly outgrew the Reynolda Village office space and moved to offices on Knollwood Street and then Country Club Road before moving to its current location on North Trade Street in 2007. “At the seven-or eight-year mark, it was clear that my passion and our team’s passion was really college sports,” Sutton said of the decision to focus entirely on collegiate athletics. “You can look around and see the horror stories in the NFL and the NBA, and here’s the difference with college

sports: 99.9 percent of the kids play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back. So many of those kids, were it not for the investment of alumni, fans who buy tickets, and companies that buy sponsorships, many of them would never have a college experience. I’ve known thousands of student-athletes; the majority come to get a great education and further their life opportunities. You can’t create that environment or feeling in professional sports.” The company’s name was shortened to ISP in 2000 (the longer name was a mouthful on the radio, Sutton explains) and the

company began billing itself as “America’s Home for College Sports.” It’s hard to argue with that: ISP has partnerships with more than fifty colleges (including seven of the twelve ACC schools); five conferences (including the ACC and the Big East); three bowl games (Fed Ex Orange, Meineke Care Care, and Motor City); and two arenas (Winston-Salem’s Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the Greensboro Coliseum Complex). Wake Forest fans, of course, know ISP from its radio broadcasts of Deacon football, basketball, and baseball games. But fans of Auburn and Notre Dame and UNLV hear the familiar “live from ISP’s studios in Winston-Salem” during their

team’s games, too, on the ISP Sports Network, which includes more than 1,000 radio affiliates in forty-nine of the nation’s top fifty media markets. ISP also produces television programming, game promotions and programs, and stadium and arena signage for its collegiate partners. Sutton has built his line-up of clients the old-fashioned way: by building relationships with ISP’s colleges and universities, advertisers, and sponsors. “If you really believe that relationships are the key, then you have to surround yourself with people who share that belief,” he says. “In the seventeen years we’ve been in business, we’ve never had an institution terminate its relationship with us. That’s unparalleled in this business.” Sutton and his family live in Winston-Salem. He travels two to three days a week, but he remains firmly committed to the community. (He went to 25 football games, including bowl games, last fall.) He encourages his employees to be ac­tive in the community, too, whether it’s supporting the United Way or helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity. “It is important, to the point of being vital, for our team to be involved in the community,” says Sutton, who serves on Wake Forest’s Board of Trustees and on the board of the Winston-Salem Alliance, an economic development group. “We have so many talented, bright people, and as a company that has proudly created over three hundred jobs ‘from scratch,’ with over seventy-five of those jobs being right here in Winston-Salem, it is important that we seek leadership and volunteer opportunities for them. This place (Winston-Salem) has been nurturing and important to our growth and development and we have a responsibility to build and invest social capital back into our community.”

march 2009 35


profile

In 2007, ISP made a major commitment to Winston-Salem—and downtown revitalization—by developing a five-story, 125,000 square-foot mixed-used office, retail, and condominium building on North Trade Street for the company’s headquarters. Inside the front doors is a half-size basketball court, modeled after the Milan High School gym in the movie Hoosiers. A scoreboard permanently displays “Home 82” “Guest 80,” a tribute to Wake Forest’s victory over North Carolina in the 1995 ACC Championship game. Display cases hold football helmets from ISP’s collegiate partners. An electronic message board scrolls through the logos of all those schools in alphabetical order, from the University of Akron to Washington State; you have to stand there for a good while before Wake Forest’s familiar WF athletics logo finally flashes by. Sutton grew up in a Wake Forest family. His father, Ben Sr., mother, Minnie, and his mother’s father, Douglas Branch, all attended Wake Forest. (Branch (’37), a Baptist minister, served as chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees.) Ben Sutton Sr. (’56) worked as chief financial officer at three colleges, most recently Greens­boro College, before going to work with his son. He oversaw the construction of ISP’s headquarters and still works there several days a week. Sutton recently established a Wake Forest scholarship in his father’s name for students from North Carolina. Sutton played basketball and baseball in high school but pursued other interests at Wake Forest. He was the “mike man,” who led the cheers at Wake Forest’s home football games in 1978 and 1979—the Tangerine Bowl year and the last year before the costumed Deacon first appeared. He also worked in Wake Forest’s alumni office and then in the athletic department. After graduating from law school, he went to work in the athletic department full-time,

36 wake forest magazine

working with then-athletics director Gene Hooks (’50) on television agreements for football and basketball games, and later moving into marketing and fund-raising work as an assistant athletic director. The genesis for ISP came in the years that he worked in sports marketing at Wake Forest. “We went through a succession of radio and TV rights holders who struggled financially and/or operationally, so we began to move those rights in-house,” he recalled. “We slowly began to have some reasonable modicum of success selling and producing programming, but it was still a struggle having just one university client. So then I started thinking about outsourcing. It seemed to me that if you could aggregate the rights for several schools in one region, you could really improve the financial opportunities for that group of schools by reaching a new group of regional advertisers. And ultimately, if you built your network expansively, you could even access a national advertising network pool—what we are able to do today.” Sutton credits a number of people at Wake Forest with supporting his decision to start ISP, including Hooks; the late President Emeritus Thomas K. Hearn Jr.; now retired vice presidents Leon Corbett (’59, JD ’61, P ’96) and John Anderson (MAEd ’00); and Associate Professor of Management Bern Beatty (P ’88). When he made the short move from Wake Forest—one of his first offices was in the old ticket office vault in Reynolds Gym— down Reynolda Road to Reynolda Village, he brought Mac McDonald, at the time Voice of the Demon Deacons, and Bill Merrifield (’91), then in the sports marketing department, with him. Merrifield, like most of Sutton’s first hires, is still with him. ISP now has more than three hundred full-time and one hundred part-time employees in sixty-five offices in thirty-five states; many of those offices are on the campuses of ISP’s collegiate partners.

Sutton stresses extensive training for new and continuing employees and even personal and life enrichment programming. “If you believe people are your number one asset, and I do, then one of the most important investments our company can make is building and developing our team,” he says. One of his highest-ranking employees is “Chief People Officer” and director of the ISP Sports Academy, a professional development and personal enrichment initiative for employees. Training magazine recently recognized ISP as one of the top 125 companies in the country for professional development. ISP has expanded rapidly since 2005, adding more than thirty schools and expanding its footprint from the east coast and central states to the west coast by adding UCLA, Washington, Washington State, and Cal to its roster. On a busy basketball night or a football Saturday, ISP can air as many as fifty games at the same time from its Trade Street broadcasting studios. Sutton expects ISP to continue to grow by remaining true to what’s gotten the company this far. “It is important that we stay true to the core values of integrity, excellence, family, and passion that brought us to this place. Our mantra, ‘to do the right thing, the right way, at the right time’ must never change.”


Ben Sutton Sr. (left) and his son, Ben Jr., at ISP headquarters.

march 2009 37


class

notes

wake forest alumni association President’s Column

classnotes

Dear Wake Foresters: What a great time to be a Deacon! Not only for the joys of watching our studentathletes compete so successfully, but also to be a part of the Wake Forest family at such an exciting time in the University’s growth. With a new strategic plan in place and strong University leaders to guide us through challenging times, it is truly a great time to be a Deacon. As alumni, we have so much to be proud of, both looking back to where we have been as well as looking forward to where we will go. Your Alumni Council will be putting together its own strategic plan to dovetail with the University’s, but I can sum it up in a nutshell—we need you. Every one of you. Wake Forest University needs your involvement and support. Wake Forest provided each of us with many gifts—belief in ourselves, cherished friendships and fantastic memories. The University can benefit from your gifts, talents and time at all levels. Please join fellow Wake Foresters in supporting The Wake Forest Fund and at local events and on campus for lectures, classes and at Homecoming. We also need your guidance with the identification of potential Alumni Council members, regional and reunion volunteers, and alumni who should be honored for their accomplishments since graduation. There are numerous ways to be involved with varying time commitments. I encourage you to go to www.wfu.edu/alumni and tell us where your interests lie. I greatly appreciate your ongoing support of our alma mater. Go Deacs! Kim Shirley (’85) Alumni Association President

38 wake forest magazine


1940s Jack F. Canady (’47, JD ’49) retired in 2001 from Canady Thornton Burge Brown & Laws in Winston-Salem, NC, after practicing law for 51 years. He was president of the Forsyth County Bar Association and served six years on the N.C. State Bar Council.

1950s Dale G. Hooper (’51) published an autobiography, “The Way it Was...As I Recall it Now” (iUniverse Publishers), which includes his years on the Old Campus and his 29 years as a missionary in Kenya. Wiley F. Mitchell Jr. (’53, JD ’54) is with Willcox & Savage in Norfolk, VA. He received the Oak Leaf Award from the Nature Conservancy for his effective pro bono representation of the wildlife and conservation interests in Virginia’s first wind-energy case. Hunter James (’54) was an editorialist for the Atlanta Constitution and has authored nine books. Two of his books, “Smile Pretty and Say Jesus, The Last Great Days of PTL” and “They Didn’t Put That on the Huntley-Brinkley: A Vagabond Reporter Encounters the New South,” have been reissued in paper-back. He and his wife, Mary Ellen, and their three children live in Winston-Salem, NC, and operate a horse farm near Madison Park. Martin N. Erwin (’59) is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Greensboro, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in employment law.

Submission Guidelines Mitchell (’53, JD ’54)

Erwin (’59)

1960s Allen J. Casey (’64, MA ’65) is vice chair of the North Carolina Commission for the Blind. John C. Martin (’65, JD ’67, P ’93, P ’09) ran unopposed in the November election and was elected chief judge of the N.C. Court of Appeals in Raleigh. William K. Davis (JD ’66) is with Bell Davis & Pitt PA in Winston-Salem, NC. He is a member of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite Hall of Fame. Allan Head (’66, JD ’69, P ’92, P ’98) enjoyed Homecoming 2008 and the reunion relay race with three other members of the 1962-1966 track team: quarter miler Rick Hartley (’65), pole vaulter Julian Rainwater (’66, P ’97) and broad jumper Lee Yancey (’66). Allan was a hurdler. They want to say thanks to Mike Bennett, Wake Forest volunteer assistant coach, for being the official starter and timekeeper. They made a commitment to gracefully age another year, to come to Homecoming 2009 and to improve their personal running times. Aldridge D. Wilder Jr. (’68) has been named assistant dean for admissions and student affairs at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry. He has been a faculty member at UNC since 1976.

Wilder (’68)

Smith (’72, JD ’75)

Charles R. Young Sr. (JD ’68, P ’91, P ’91, P ’96) is senior partner of Young Morphis Bach & Taylor LLP in Hickory, NC. He has been named a Law & Politics’ Super Lawyer in business and corporate law. He and his wife, Elaine, have three children and seven grandchildren. William C. Findt (’69) is president of Bladen Community College in Dublin, NC. He and his wife, Jo-Anne Tart Findt (’69), have three daughters and three grandsons. Joseph C. Inman Jr. (’69, P ’99, P ’05, P ’09) is men’s head golf coach at Georgia State University.

1970s Walter W. Pitt Jr. (JD ’71) is with Bell Davis & Pitt PA in Winston-Salem, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in bankruptcy law. D. Clark Smith (’72, JD ’75) is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Greensboro, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in litigation. J. Carlton Deaton (’74) is with Northwestern Mutual Financial Network in WinstonSalem, NC. He received Northwestern’s Forum Award for an outstanding year.

Wake Forest Magazine welcomes CLASSNOTES submissions for its print and online editions. There are three ways to submit information: • Standard mail: CLASSNOTES editor, Wake Forest Magazine, P.O. Box 7205, Winston-Salem, NC 27109-7205 • E-mail: classnotes@wfu.edu • Online: www.wfu.edu/magazine/ classnotes Submissions guidelines: • The Classnote must be about, and submitted by, the alumnus/a who is the subject of the item. • The person submitting the item is responsible for its accuracy. Wake Forest is not responsible for content nor does posting of the information constitute an endorsement. • E-mail and Web site addresses submitted in Classnotes will be printed. Since any information submitted to Wake Forest Magazine is available to the public, the University is not responsible for how this information may be used. Wake Forest does not publish phone numbers. • Please include your class year(s) and degree(s) with each submission. • Please include a telephone number and e-mail address so that we may verify the information. • Classnotes regarding events will be published in the next issue following the date of the event. • Submissions may be edited for length and clarity. • Because of space considerations we are able to accept digital individual head shots only. Photos must be at least 2x3 inches at 300 pixels per inch (600 x 900 pixels).

Thomas W. Bunn (’75) retired as vice chairman of KeyCorp. He and his wife, Gail, live in Kiawah Island, SC.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

march 2009 39


class

notes Peter A. Donelan (’75) is a dermatologist in Tampa, FL. He was named Clinical Faculty Member of the Year at the University of South Florida College of Medicine. He is a black belt in To Shin Do. Phil Thrailkill (’75) is pastor of Saint Luke United Methodist Church in Hartsville, SC. Brian Toomey (’75) has completed his fourth year as CEO of Piedmont Health Services, a center in central North Carolina providing services to needy people in the state. Marshall Bickett (JD ’78) ran unopposed in the November election and was elected district court judge in Rowan County, NC. Suzanne Ward Dusch (’78) has been named to the National Marketing Advisory Group of PSCU Financial Services. She lives in Longwood, FL. Susanna Knutson Gibbons (’78, JD ’81) is a partner with Poyner Spruill LLP in Raleigh, NC. She has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite. John D. Graham (’78) is dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. He received the 2008 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Risk Analysis. Kay Hagan (JD ’78) was elected a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. John Anderson Nelms (’78) has been with State Farm in Winston-Salem, NC, since graduation. John Rainey Teel (’78) retired from American Airlines after nearly 21 years. He completed graduate school at Campbell University in 2008 and received his teaching 40 wake forest magazine

certification. He is putting his Wake Forest history major to work teaching social studies at West Johnston High School in Benson, NC. John Frank (MBA ’79) is director of the health care division of The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust in Winston-Salem, NC. He received the 2008 Meritorious Service Award from the N.C. Hospital Association. Jeffery Paul Hogg (’79) is professor of radiology at West Virginia University School of Medicine. He served as moderator for the 2008 Radiological Society of North America Neuroradiology Case of the Day series in Chicago.

1980s Carole W. Bruce (JD ’80) is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Greensboro, NC. She has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in tax and estate law. Kevin A. Nelson (’80) is a managing partner in the Charleston, WV, office of Huddleston Bolen LLP. He has been named one of The Best Lawyers in America in labor and employment law. He coaches the Charleston Catholic Girls’ High School soccer team and was named the 2008 Kanawha Valley Girls’ Coach of the Year. Mary Nash Kelly Rusher (’80, P ’12) is a managing partner for the Raleigh, NC, office of Hunton & Williams LLP. Sam Leonard Beck (’81, MA ’89) is director of student professional development at Wake Forest’s Calloway School of Business and Accountancy. She received the Roy N. Anderson Award from the N.C. Career Development Association.

Bruce (JD ’80)

Jones (’83)

S. Katherine Kelly Burnette (’81, JD ’84) is an assistant U.S. attorney in the financial litigation unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. She received one of the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney Director’s Awards for excellence in law enforcement. Mark Meyer (’81) is president of the Southeastern Society of Pediatric Dentistry. He is retired from his dental practice. In 2008 he qualified for a short course and long course national triathlon. Robert D. Thompson Jr. (’81) is senior vice president for development with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF headquartered in New York City. He is leading the national fundraising activities for worldwide child survival programs. John Howarth Bennett (’82, JD ’85) is an assistant U.S. attorney and a captain in the U.S. Navy JAG Corps as a reserve judge of the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals. Kenneth Russell Braswell (MBA ’82) is general manager of Prestage Foods in Fayetteville, NC. He has been recognized by the Robeson County Industrial Development Commission as Industrialist of the Year. Bill Marsh (’82) is territory manager for H&E Equipment Services. He and his wife, Sarah, and son, Alex (12), live in Charlotte, NC.

Totten (JD ’86)

Ryan (’88)

Bill Belk (JD ’83) was elected a judge in Mecklenburg County (NC). John W. Graham (’83) is deputy director of Guilford Child Development, a nonprofit in Greensboro, NC. Neal R. Jones (’83) is a minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Columbia, SC. He has been invited to serve on the National Advisory Council of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Bradley Knox Walker (’83) is senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Topeka, KS. Victoria Roemer (JD ’85) was re-elected a district court judge in Forsyth County (NC). She has been a judge since 1996. Bonnie Leigh Owens Smith (’85) is assistant dean of human resources at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry. William R. Bird Jr. (JD ’86) is with Lowndes Drosdick Doster Kantor & Reed PA in Orlando, FL. He has been selected one of The Best Lawyers in America in real estate law. D. Beth Langley (’86, JD ’92) is a partner with Hagan Davis Mangum Barrett Langley & Hale PLLC in Winston-Salem, NC. She has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite.


Joas Miller (MBA ’86) has been appointed to the board of directors of Meritas Financial, the investment manager for Meritas Mutual Funds based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Allyson Currin Stokes (’86) had her new play, “Unleashed! The Secret Lives of White House Pets,” commissioned by the Kennedy Center and the White House Historical Association. The premiere was at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the play is now on a national tour. John W. Totten II (JD ’86) was elected a district court judge in Mecklenburg County (NC). He and his wife, Debra, live in Charlotte, NC. Bill Leffingwell (’87) has been appointed co-head of the Washington, D.C., office of Fiduciary Investment Management International. F. Brian Chase (’88) is assistant general counsel for AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. Warren K. Lail (JD ’88) received his PhD from the University of Oklahoma. He is a professor of anthropology at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. He and his wife, Linda Golin-Lail, live in Santa Fe, NM. C. Douglas Maynard Jr. (JD ’88), of Maynard & Harris PLLC in Winston-Salem, NC, has been elected chair of the litigation section of the N.C. Bar Association. His practice focuses on personal injury, insurance claims and coverage disputes, and workers’ compensation. He has been appointed to the legislative and legal affairs committees of N.C. Advocates for Justice for the 10th consecutive year.

Christopher R. Ryan (’88) has been named Outstanding In-House Counsel for 2008 by the Washington Metropolitan Area Corporate Counsel Association. Amy K. Smith (JD ’88) is with Bell Davis & Pitt PA in Winston-Salem, NC. She has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in tax and estate law. Arnold O. Jones II (JD ’89) has been elected senior resident superior court judge for District 8B in North Carolina for an eight-year term.

1990 Liv Lundin Brown completed her MBA at Pfeiffer University. She is a regional sales manager with Adams Outdoor Advertising in Charlotte, NC. Kevin C. Hicks is branch manager of RBC Bank in Wilmington, NC. He was selected one of four North Carolina winners of the 2009 Marshall Memorial Fellowships by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He spent 23 days in Europe learning about economic, political and social issues. Allyn G. Turner (JD) is with Spilman Thomas & Battle PLLC in Charleston, WV. He has been named one of the 2009 Best Lawyers in America.

1991 Jeffrey D. Anderson (MBA) is a supply chain manager for 3G Mermet, a division of Hunter Douglas. Julie Bell (JD) has been named a partner with Lewis & Daggett PA in Winston-Salem, NC. She has been handling automobile accident and serious personal injury cases with the firm since 1999.

Mary Sue Brookshire is the associate minister at the United Church of Christ of La Mesa, CA.

1992 Katy McDonald is director of traveling exhibitions and international partnerships at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Marlene Perrine is an international student advisor in the Office of Internationalization at the University of Denver.

1993 Paul Lancaster Adams (JD) is associate general counsel for labor and employment litigation with Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA. William E. Burton III (JD) is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Greensboro, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in bankruptcy and environmental law. Naomi Speer Hall is benefits manager for PSC, part of Icahn Enterprises. She teaches in the Certified Financial Planner Program at Rice University’s Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. Zane Leiden (JD) practices bankruptcy and consumer law with Leiden & Leiden in Augusta, GA. He has been named one of Georgia Trend’s Legal Elite in bankruptcy law. Edward Pollard (JD) is general counsel with the engineering firm of McKim & Creed PA in Raleigh, NC.

Burton (JD ’93)

1994 Daniel G. Cahill (JD) is with Poyner Spruill LLP in Raleigh, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in litigation. Jason G. Grimes received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design accredited professional designation from the U.S. Green Building Council. He is on the U.S. General Services Administration’s LEED certification team. Donny C. Lambeth (MBA) has been named president of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC. Amy Stewart is an associate attorney at Cox Smith Matthews in Dallas. Joseph E. Zeszotarski (JD) is with Poyner Spruill LLP in Raleigh, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in criminal law.

1995 Benjamin Randall David (JD) is district attorney for New Hanover and Pender counties. He and his wife, Stephanie, and their three children live in Wilmington, NC. Kyung Soo Hong graduated from the Ross University School of Medicine.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

march 2009 41


Making the Four alums help

Amanda Warco (’07) interacts with sixth-graders at the MATCH middle school. 42 wake forest magazine


Grade the farthest behind get ahead.

Story by Jane Bianchi (’05) Photos by Justin Ide

A tuition-free charter public t match middle school, a

school in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Amanda Warco (’07) has discovered the secret to making perfect bathroom passes. “Use a paper cutter, not scissors, for the straightest lines,” she advises. But properly slicing laminated construction paper is only a small part of Warco’s job. After leaving her four-bedroom apartment—which she shares with seven other female colleagues—at 6 a.m. every weekday morning, she spends most of her days tutoring disadvantaged inner-city kids. That’s because she and more than seventy recent graduates of top colleges across the country make up the MATCH Corps. These full-time employees work at one of the two MATCH schools: either the new middle school, which ushered in its first group of sixth-graders this past fall, or the high school, which was created in 2000 and is located in nearby Boston. Similar to the well-known Teach for America program, the Corps is a fellowship that lures high-achievers into helping children who need the most academic assistance. Beyond tutoring various subjects for up to six periods a day, most Corps members also act as teaching assistants. TA duties include planning out-of-school activities, coaching sports teams, and running clubs. In return for their commitment, Corps members get free housing, a $600 monthly stipend, and, as of this year, the option of taking a free teacher certification course on weekends. Administrators at MATCH (the acronym originally stood for “Media and Technology Charter High”) developed the Corps in 2004 to support their mission of preparing all of their students for success in college and beyond. It’s an ambitious goal, considering that most kids enter MATCH at achievement levels far below average. Students are chosen by lottery: ninety to 95 percent of them are African American or Hispanic, and 70 to 75

www.wfu.edu/alumni

march 2009 43


percent live at or below the poverty line. Warco, who spent a year at the high school and returned to MATCH this year to help launch the middle school, remembers working with a teen who couldn’t tell time. Cultural obstacles, she says, are also common. “When I was going over a reading comprehension essay about camping, the student understood the questions, but didn’t know what camping was. So I had to explain the context before we could analyze the passage,” says Warco. Despite these setbacks, MATCH has an impressive record of accomplishment. The percentage of students who graduate from MATCH increased from 35 to 50 percent between 2007 and 2008, and of those who earn diplomas, 99 percent are accepted to four-year universities. In 2006, MATCH was one of eight American charter high schools cited for “outstanding results” out of over 400 reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education. In 2007 U.S. News and World Report magazine ranked MATCH 99th out of 18,000 public schools in the nation. One major part of the school’s recipe for success is a “no excuses” philosophy that’s firm enough to make a Marine’s knees shake. To graduate, upperclassmen must take at least two advanced placement classes and two courses at neighboring Boston University. Plus, any student who receives two Ds or more on a final report card has to repeat not just those particular subjects, but the entire grade. Kids are encouraged to stay enrolled as long as necessary. “We hold the standard and vary the time it takes to get there,” explains Alan Safran, the executive director of MATCH. The school’s dress code and reward/punishment system (“points” for good behavior and “demerits” for breaking the rules) are also strict. But most student improvement can be chalked up to one key factor: lots of individual attention. All kids receive at least two hours of one-on-one tutoring

44 wake forest magazine

from a Corps member daily. If they need extra, Corps members often provide additional personal instruction after school and on weekends. “It’s like tutoring on steroids,” says Safran. Plus, Corps members go out of their way to make students feel comfortable. Those who work at the middle school spent last summer studying every student’s name and photo, so they could greet the kids appropriately on the first day of school.

Zachary Taylor (’08), above, and Samantha Spaeth (’08) tutor students.

Being a Corps member, a job that entails at least sixty hours of work a week, can be exhausting (Warco and her roomies can barely keep their eyes open past 10 p.m.). “And living on the stipend was tough, but I found lots of free things to do in Boston,” says Huey-Tyng Sun (’04), a member of the first-ever Corps group and currently a coordinator at a company that provides educational programs for students in Washington, D.C. Not taking things too personally is also difficult, as many Corps members measure their success by how their students do. Sun can attest to that. Jamal, a high school student of hers who had to count on his fingers to add and subtract, was struggling to pass his math class. “Sometimes, I felt hopeless,” says Sun. But then she noticed that he made small improvements when she did speed drills with him called Mad Minutes—worksheets that encouraged him to solve as many problems as possible within sixty seconds. “I’ll never forget the day he finally got a ‘C’ on a math exam” says Sun. “I burst into tears because I was so proud of how far he’d come.” Jamal went on to win a school award for “most improved student” in math.


Making a large impact on a young person’s life in a short amount of time is perhaps the most enticing part of the job. Unlike classroom teachers who have to divide their attention among twenty to thirty students for roughly forty minutes at a time, MATCH tutors can provide more in-depth, customized instruction for longer intervals. “I feel like I’m doing something more rewarding than most of my friends who have salaries,” says Samantha Spaeth (’08), a Corps member who works at the high school with Zachary Trout (’08). A short commute is another draw for the high-school Corps members who live on the third floor of the school in a dormstyle setting, complete with a shared kitchen, TV and pool table. So what inspired these alums to apply to the service program? Most cite Wake Forest’s “Pro Humanitate” focus as a huge influence. “The sorority I was in, Kappa Delta, was constantly involved in philanthropy,” says Spaeth. “And through my Women’s and Gender Studies minor, I participated in an eye-opening internship at The Children’s Home, an organization that takes care of needy kids in Winston-Salem. It showed me what social injustice looked like first hand, and made me want to give back.” Warco had a similar epiphany while jobhunting during her senior year of college. “I kept thinking about all the doors my Wake Forest education had opened up for me,” she says. “I wanted to help children whose circumstances denied them the same opportunities I was given.” Corps members who are passionate about the program often find ways to extend their stays at MATCH, but the fellowship only requires a one-year commitment, so the position appeals to college students with a variety of future plans. For example, Warco hopes to get her Ph.D. in English and teach at a university someday, while Trout might go to law school. “This job may not be exactly in line with what I want to do professionally, but it’s definitely in line with the kind of person I’d like to become,” he says.

Past Corps members have gone on to work in medicine, journalism, business, politics, and many other fields. In fact, a service stint at MATCH often provides college grads with an edge when applying for jobs in the future. “When tutors leave our program, their experience here often becomes the strongest part of their resumes,” says Lisa Hwang, the middle school principal. Though a college student with any major is welcome to apply on a rolling basis at matchschool.org, landing a spot is difficult. Last year 650 applicants battled for fiftysix openings. Still, all four alums agree: The unique fellowship is certainly worth considering. After all, it’s not just the kids who benefit. While teaching, Corps members have to learn how to relate to younger people who have backgrounds that are usually dramatically different from their own and figure out how to motivate them. “It’s an enlightening experience on both ends,” says Hwang, who was a member of the inaugural Corps group before joining the MATCH administration. “If a tutor asks a student to do something and the kid just says ‘no,’ then the tutor has no choice but to get creative.” However resistant students might be, most appreciate the extra guidance—even the sixth-graders. When asked how Ms. Warco helped him learn fractions, 12-yearold Brandon Gaynor responded simply and earnestly: “She just makes me get it.” That sounds like an A+ for Warco.

Jane Bianchi (’05) is the associate health editor at Family Circle magazine in New York City.

The MATCH school has a ‘no excuses’ policy.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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notes Garrick P. Updegraph is a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley in Irvine, CA. He has earned the Certified Financial Planner designation. Michael W. Vaughn is the multiplex and drug discovery specialist for the Gulf States region for Millipore Corp. He was chosen the 2008 Specialist of the Year by his managers and colleagues.

1996 Jon W. Boyer is a vice president with Bank of America’s consumer risk division in Charlotte, NC. Colin Creel (MA ’00) wants everyone to know that over 40 members of Chi Rho produced an a capella album, “The Christmas Album.” (www.chirho.com) Jason B. James has been elected a partner with Poyner Spruill LLP in Charlotte, NC. He practices commercial and business tort litigation, construction litigation, commercial landlord and tenant litigation. G. William Joyner III (JD/ MBA) is a partner with Kilpatrick Stockton in Winston-Salem, NC. Jonathan Gann Odom (JD) is head of the Government Ethics Department with the judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy. He is a lieutenant commander stationed at the Pentagon.

1997 Kristen Michelle Gadd received her MA in teaching from Mercer University and teaches kindergarten in Gwinnett County.

46 wake forest magazine

Michael V. Lee (JD) is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Wilmington, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite in real estate law.

1998 Abdulaziz Al-Bosaily (LLM) has a private practice in association with DLA Piper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Kristin Celello is assistant professor of history at Queens College-City University of New York. She recently published a book, “Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States” (University of North Carolina Press). Deborah Tyson Crowder (JD ’01) is a partner with Poyner Spruill LLP in Charlotte, NC. She practices bankruptcy, banking, commercial law, creditor’s rights and commercial litigation. Francesco Ferrini (LLM) has joined Studio Legale IURAPlus, a private practice firm in Milan, Italy. Gregory D. Habeeb (JD ’01) is with Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore in Virginia. He has been named one of Virginia Business Magazine’s Legal Elite. McHenry Kane is vice president and attorney for SunTrust Banks in Atlanta. Andrew O. Mathews graduated from the University of Richmond Law School. He is an associate in the litigation department of Williams Mullen in Richmond, VA. He and his wife, Whitney Montague Mathews (’99), have one son, Beauford, and are expecting a baby.

Joyner (JD/MBA ’96)

Lee (JD ’97)

Kevin G. Williams (JD) is with Bell Davis & Pitt PA in Winston-Salem, NC. He has been named one of Business North Carolina’s Young Guns. Bob Yakos (PA) was declared the “last fan sitting” after spending three days braving the elements at BB&T Field during a contest sponsored by the Wake Forest athletic department. He won football seat rights and season tickets for 15 years.

1999 Tracy Jarrell Carroll attended the 2008 Institute for Nursing Excellence. She received the 2008 Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina Award. She is an assistant nurse manager for a cardiology step-down unit at UNC Healthcare. She and her husband, Ben, and son, Matthew, live in Raleigh, NC. Batsukh Enkhbat (LLM) is vice president of commercial and government affairs for Eznis Airways in Mongolia. R. Trent Lind is chief operating officer of Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, CO. He and his wife, Lainey, live in the Denver area. Jeffrey J. Trapani is an associate with Robinson Donovan PC in Springfield, MA. He has been named a Massachusetts Rising Star by Law & Politics and Boston Magazine.

Habeeb (’98, JD ’01)

Gladd (JD ’02)

Megan Lulich Zerega (JD) has been named a partner at Burns White & Hickton LLC in Pittsburgh. She focuses on occupational illness litigation and toxic torts in the transportation field.

2000 Lidwine Graciet (MBA) is in shopper marketing at Procter & Gamble France. Trent Jernigan (JD) is a partner with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC in Winston-Salem, NC. He practices acquisition, financing, leasing, and development and sale of retail, office and industrial properties. Thomas Gray King is pursuing an MBA at Boston College. Ricky Paugh ran the 250km Sahara Desert Ultra-Marathon Race. He finished 33rd overall with a third-place finish in Stage 6, despite his shoes and equipment being lost on the way to Egypt. Ryan Alvin Wilson (MSA ’01) is chief strategy officer at Chaptex International in Lakeland, FL.

2001 Jonathan Chesley Allen (MSA) is a financial advisor with Allen Wealth Management in Boone, NC. Stephanie Parichuk is a psychologist with the Caldwell County (NC) schools.


Ryan Fries graduated from the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine.

Keener (JD ’02)

Raspet (JD ’02)

J. Eric Crupi (JD) is an associate in the corporate practice group of Hunton & Williams LLP in Washington, D.C. Ashleigh Duncan EllsworthKeller received her master’s of sustainable communities from Northern Arizona University. She is the Camp DREAM director for the DREAM Program, a nonprofit mentoring program in Burlington, VT. Brian Jeffrey Ferguson (MS) is assistant professor of biology at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, IL. Lindsay Hayler received her PA from the University of Texas. Ross Inman is senior manager of staff recruitment and hiring for New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit that recruits leaders for and supports the performance of urban public schools. Candace M. Marriott received her PhD in economics from Fordham University. She is an economist with Ernst & Young in New York.

2002 Kyle Cutts is a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Los Angeles. Noelle Shanahan Cutts is an associate attorney at Hurrell Cantrall in Los Angeles. Jim Dykes (MBA) is director of alumni relations for the business schools at Wake Forest.

Nicholas W. Gladd (JD) has been elected a shareholder of Turner Padget Graham & Laney PA. He practices civil defense litigation in Columbia, SC. Michael Hendee received his JD from Widener University School of Law. He is a member of the New Jersey and Delaware Bar and works at the Delaware Attorney General’s Office in Wilmington. Rachel Keener (JD) has published a novel, “The Killing Tree” (Center Street, Hachette Book Group, March 2009). She is working on her second novel, “The Memory Thief.” She and her husband and two sons live in Lewisville, NC. Lindsay Yount King is a resident in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Jill Raspet (JD) has been certified by the N.C. State Bar as a specialist in estate planning and probate law. She is with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Wilmington, NC. Elizabeth Thornton Trosch (JD) was previously an assistant public defender. She was elected a district court judge in Mecklenburg County (NC). She and her husband, Eric C. Trosch (JD ’02), live in Charlotte, NC.

2003 Kristina Groce (MA) is completing her internship as a pre-doctoral resident in psychology with the Virginia Beach City public schools. She is pursuing a PhD in psychology with a concentration in school psychology at N.C. State University. She is engaged to be married.

Monica R. Guy (JD) is with Bell Davis & Pitt PA in Winston-Salem, NC. The Board of Legal Specialization of the N.C. Bar has certified her as a family law specialist. Jamie Kidd Hill is an associate with Webb & Eley PC in Montgomery, AL, practicing labor, employment and health care law. She has been named to the governing council of EMERGE Montgomery, a leadership organization for young professionals. Brooke Christie Jacobs was captain of the 2008 USA Saddle Seat World Cup Equestrian Team, which won a silver medal against South Africa and Canada in Tulbagh, South Africa. She was the highest scoring rider and the first four-time member of the team. She won the 2008 U.S. Equestrian Federation Saddle Seat Adult Amateur Medal Final and was the first twotime winner. She was the 2008 Adult Pleasure Equitation Olympics Gold Medalist. Cher Jacques received her MBA from the Yale University School of Management. She is program manager for FINCA International, a microfinance organization, and is living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nicole Ashley Murphey is an associate practicing international corporate law with Byrne Davis & Hicks PC in Charlotte, NC. Tomoko Nakajima (LLM) is a partner practicing trademark, patent and design patent law with Cermak Kenealy Vaidya & Nakajima LLP in Alexandria, VA. Hyuk Ryu (LLM) has joined the Ujeongbu District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Korea.

2004 Young-Soo Chang (LLM) is pursuing an LLM in securities and financial regulations at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is an intern in the corporate financial department of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington. Jin Seak Doh (LLM) has opened SM&A Law Office in Seoul, Korea, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and litigation. Andrea Ellis (MAEd) is associate director of professional development in the provost’s office at Wake Forest. Nicholas Gray directs international marketing for Flight Display Systems, an in-flight entertainment manufacturer. He travels the world in search of private jets with broken DVD players and lives in New York City. (www. flightdisplay.com) J.T. Herber III (JD) is a partner with Williamson Friedberg & Jones LLC in Pottsville, PA. He is licensed for North Carolina and Pennsylvania and focuses his practice on litigation, real estate and wills/estates/ trusts. Matthew E. Meany is in his second year at Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law. He received the 2008 Rick Edmundson Memorial Award for best overall individual competitor at the Intramural Moot Court Competition. He and his wife, Kelly Mahan Meany (’04), live in Rocky Mount, NC. Sean Moree (LLM) is with McKinney Bancroft & Hughes in Nassau, Bahamas.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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Pet Project Playwright Allyson Currin’s (’86) new work mirrors (coincidentally) life in the Obama White House. By Scott Holter

A

s Malia and Sasha Obama pondered what type of dog to adopt for their new home—after their father promised them a dog if he won the presidency—a children’s production opened on a stage just miles from the White House about a first daughter and her cherished Chihuahua. Coincidence? That the play revolves around new occupants in the presidential quarters, yes. But Allyson Currin (’86), despite her award-winning resume as a playwright and actress, had no inside knowledge of that father-to-daughters' pledge when she devised “Unleashed! The Secret Lives of White House Pets” on commission for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “The topic was assigned to me: White House pets,” Currin recalled of the summer 2007 phone call she received while vacationing on a North Carolina beach. “I instantly had this horrible vision of actors in animal costumes. It was to be for young audiences, for which I had only written one other play.” The premise turned out to be far more promising. When the new president’s daughter arrives at the White House under suggestions that a Collie or Labrador would put on a better public face than her pint-size canine, she turns to the friendly chief usher, who takes her back through presidential history to learn the stories of previous White House pets. Currin, who lives in Washington, D.C., worked with the White House Historical Association to choose real pets from more than two centuries of presidential lore. “They pretty much made it idiot-proof for me,” she says. “They handed over a bunch of documents that allowed me to go back in time and pick the pets that I thought today’s kids would most like to watch.” Currin has daughters of her own, twins, who are 11. Her husband, Chris Stokes, died in 2005. Currin’s feel for the pulse of her audiences goes back more than 15 years to her first crack as a playwright. That initial play, a one-act comedy “Dancing With Ourselves,” was loosely based on her years at Wake Forest.

48 wake forest magazine

Currin: “I knew Wake Forest had a great theatre scene.”

“I was moping about a break-up and transformed it into a couple who meet in college and become involved in a push me/pull you relationship. The characters took on their own voices and it was a transforming experience for me. It was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.’” Writing had been an interest for Currin since she was six, a couple of years before she wrote what she refers to as “my first horrible novel.” Growing up in Winston-Salem, she also caught the acting bug early. It took her father, Bill (’60), director of career services at Wake Forest, to suggest that she marry her interests in writing and acting. “I knew Wake Forest had a great theater scene,” she says, “so I went there to become an actress.” Starring in on-campus performances such as “Harvey,” “Macbeth” and “Guys and Dolls,” Currin made a name for herself, running in a tight-knit group of fellow actors and garnering the support and training from theatre department faculty such as Donald Wolfe and Harold Tedford. “They challenged you, but walked you through what you needed to know,” she remembers. “Looking back, it’s amazing how well-crafted, diverse and advanced the training was. “James Dodding directed some of my roles, and he changed the way I thought about theatre. He taught me the most important tool that I ever learned: ‘Make people care, and they’ll walk on coals for you.’ We would have killed ourselves for that man.”


Armed with those experiences and a graduate degree, Currin pursued her professional acting career, playing roles such as “the dumb starlet” in the fast and funny satire “Four Dogs and a Bone,” and “a sardonic Dorothy Parker, mannish-type role” in Phillip Barry’s “Hotel Universe.” She taught drama at the American School in Switzerland where she wrote the first in what is now a dozen produced works. Several have been recognized with honors, such as the Helen Hayes Awards (for professional theatre in Washington, D.C.) and the Mary Goldwater Award (for overall level of excellence). Currently Currin is balancing her acting and writing with a faculty position she’s held for a decade at George Washington University. Teaching theatre analysis and history, she can often be found at script meetings, auditions or grading papers in her campus office. “Every project I have is seemingly in a different place,” she says. “It’s like rearing children of all different ages at the same time. There’s no time for boredom, that’s for sure.” Her solid reputation in and around the District of Columbia’s theatre scene allows Currin to sift through several offers to write plays each year. She estimates that 30 percent of her playwright options are commissioned, while the other 70 percent are her own ideas that she shops around. Her next undertaking is a musical, which should be out later this year. “As I get older, I become more and more charmed by the process of writing, and that’s the focus of my efforts at this point,” she says. “Of course, I will always say ‘yes’ to a good part, should it come available. But I plan to write plays as long as I can type.” Scott Holter is a writer based in Seattle.

Rust (JD ’06)

Mitchell (JD ’07)

Samuel H. Porter III received his JD from Capital University Law School and passed the Ohio Bar. He is with the Franklin County (OH) prosecutor’s office. Ryan S. Tallent is pursuing an MBA at Columbia Business School in New York.

2005 Daniel Millares (LLM) is legal manager of the Organization of American States’ Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia.

2006 John Bellissimo (MBA) is a commander in the U.S. Navy. He received the Bronze Star while assigned to the MultiNational Force in Iraq. Anna Ball Hodge is a real estate agent with Leonard Ryden Burr Real Estate in Winston-Salem, NC. She is chair of the Susan G. Komen N.C. Triad Race for the Cure. Ayca Konuralp (LLM) is an attorney with Carlsberg & Turk Tuborg Brewing and Malting Inc. in Izmir, Turkey. Yousef Nasrallah (LLM) is a rule-of-law contractor for the U.S. Institute of Peace and a consultant for the social and economic group of The World Bank. Stuart Punger (JD) practices personal injury law with Lewis & Daggett PA in WinstonSalem, NC. He has been named chairman of the education sub-committee for the Young Lawyer’s Division of the N.C. Advocates for Justice.

Kevin A. Rust (JD) is an associate with Carruthers & Roth PA in Greensboro, NC. He is a member of the litigation practice group and concentrates on the representation of medical professionals, insurance defense, commercial disputes and other civil litigation.

2007 Clara R. Cottrell (JD) passed the patent bar exam. She practices business and intellectual property law with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP in Greensboro, NC. Ryan Eller (MDiv) served in the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps, worked at Camp Lejeune with the U.S. Marines and managed Democratic political campaigns for the 5th congressional district seat and the N.C. House. He is lead organizer of Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment (CHANGE) in Winston-Salem, NC. John W. Mitchell (JD) is an associate with Parker Hudson Rainer & Dobbs LLP in Atlanta.

2008 Lyle Adams was selected by D.C. United in the second round with the 26th overall pick in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft. Tetyana Budyakova (LLM) is an associate with CMS Cameron McKenna LLC in Kyiv, Ukraine. Xiaochun “Sharron” Chen (LLM) is an analyst in the China practice group of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC in Winston-Salem, NC. Kuo-Hung (LLM) is in the legal department of ASUSTek Computer in Taipei, Taiwan.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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Hildebran (JD ’08) Sam Cronin was the number two selection in the first round in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft by Toronto FC. Jamie Franks was selected by Chivas USA in the fourth round with the 49th overall pick in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft. Jodi D. Hildebran (JD) has joined the business and civil litigation practice group of Allman Spry Leggett & Crumpler PA in WinstonSalem, NC. Michael Lahoud was the number nine selection in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft. He is going to Club Deportivo Chivas USA, based outside Los Angeles. Chien-Chih Liu (LLM) is pursuing a LLM in international law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Keon McGuire is a Wake Forest Fellow in the Division of Student Life. He was awarded second place in the CASE Study Competition at the annual conference of the Southern Association for College Student Affairs. Ziyi Mu (LLM) is pursuing a JSD at City University of Hong Kong. Natalie Mullikin is pursuing a master’s degree at Wake Forest. She was named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association All-East Region team. She is the third Demon Deacon to earn this distinction and the second player in Wake 50 wake forest magazine

Forest history to earn first team All-ACC honors twice.

Sarah Johnston (’98) and Mark Defren. 12/27/08

Xiaoting “Sophie” Pan (LLM) is a paralegal in the Law Offices of Michael I. Brooks in Los Angeles.

Suzanne Moffatt (’99) and Robert Occhialini. 9/13/08 in Atlanta. The wedding party included Alison Guiney (’99).

Yoshihiro Sakamoto (LLM) interned at Schiff Harden LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittmann LLP in New York.

Kevin E. Felder (’00) and Tisha M. Fowler (’01). 10/4/08 in Greenville, SC. They live in Columbia, SC. The wedding party included Akua A. Asare (’01), Chrystal D. Cox (’01, MAEd ’02), Luke Fedlam (’01), LaKicia Andrews Fuller (’01), Timothy Fuller (’00), Erika V. Harrison (’01, JD ’04), Marcus Ingram (’99, MDiv ’06), Melanie Johnson (’01, MD ’07), Brooke Reid Reynolds (’01), Janelle Jenkins Taylor (’01), Kala Blackwell Taylor (’01) and Shenika N. Watlington (’01).

Marcus Tracy signed with Aalborg of the Danish soccer league. He was drafted by the Houston Dynamo in the fourth round with the 56th overall pick in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft, but had already decided to play in Denmark. Mengfei Yu (LLM) is a paralegal working in torts and immigration law with Fengling Liu Attorney at Law in New York.

Marriages Jean Budd Serber (’65) and Robert Lane Goudie. 5/24/08 John Howarth Bennett (’82, JD ’85) and Jessica Gammell. 6/14/08 Brian Chase (’88) and Douglas Martin Champion. 10/25/08 in San Francisco. They live in Los Angeles. Paula Anita Johnson (’95) and Dustin Swindle. 10/18/08 in Winston-Salem, NC. Jill Nichols Knight (’95) was the pianist. The wedding party included Emily Greenwood Bailey (’97), Julie Davis Coston (’95), Jamie Johnson (’92) and Elizabeth Stanton (’95). James Stewart Morrison (’95) and Christine Patterson Williams. 10/12/08 in East Hampton, NY. They live in Boston. Kelly Mason (’97) and Sebastien Jossart. 9/27/08 in Bristol, RI. They live in New York.

Rebecca Elizabeth Jones (’00) and Reese Patrick McKnight. 11/8/08 in Austin, TX, where they live. The wedding party included Jennifer Cianelli Cooper (’00).

Kenneth Ryan Adkins (’01) and Cheylin Adele Schrock. 8/23/08 in Lexington, KY, where they live. Jonathan Chesley Allen (MSA ’01) and Stephanie Lynne Parichuk (’01). 6/28/08 in Wait Chapel. They live in Boone, NC. The wedding party included Karen Fort Bordas (’00, MSA ’01), Susan Van Sciver Brunenavs (’00) and Lindsay Hoppe (’00, MSA ’01). Ashleigh Duncan Ellsworth (’01) and David Andrew Keller. 7/26/08 in Swannanoa, NC. They live in Shelburne, VT. Jeanne Matthews Sommer (’83) officiated. The wedding party included Emily Dryas Kite (’01). Michael John Hogge (’01) and Allison Lynne Costa (’02). 5/10/08 in Santorini, Greece. A reception was held in Raleigh, NC. The wedding party included Neha Patel Anderson (’01) and Cori Coats (’01).

Gray King (’00) and Lindsay Yount (’02). 8/9/08 in Augusta, GA. They live in Boston. The bride’s father is Peter Shuford Yount (MD ’73). The wedding party included Andrew Allen (’00), Brian Branson (’00, MSA ’01), Sudi Griffin Langford (’02), Evan Medley (’00), Katherine Pace (’02), Bear Paul (’00), Katherine Kjellstrom Ryan (’02), Sarah Dixon Wendell (’02), Marc Whittaker (’01), Margaret Williams (’02) and Matthew Wrynn (’00).

Luke Campbell Iglehart (’01) and Jaime Lynn Francis (’01). 11/1/08 in Doylestown, PA. They live in Vienna, VA. The wedding party included Lisa Biedrzycki (’01), Nina Gapusan (’01), Sarah Jane Iglehart (’04) and William Teague (’01).

Chris Mixter (’00) and Bronwyn Davis. 12/6/08 in Alexandria, VA. The wedding party included Judson Graves (’00), Kyle Hughes (’99) and Brandon Rozelle (’00).

Virginia Addison Blabey (’02) and Matthew Philip Goldhirsh. 11/22/08 in Voorheesville, NY. They live in New York City. The wedding party included Sarah Egner (’02), Lisa Glebatis (’02) and Kaycee Shoemaker (’02, MSA ’03).

Danielle Whren (’00) and Paul Johnson. 10/18/08 in Amelia Island, FL. They live in Baltimore.

Robert Pfeiffer (’01) and Echo Brucklier. 11/8/08 in Savannah, GA. The wedding party included Nick Farrell (’01), Paul Jessup (’01), Matt Mitchell (’02) and Greg Tietjen (’02).


Michael Charles Bounds (’02) and Kathryn Estelle Gill (’04). 7/26/08 in Stowe, VT. They live in Winston-Salem, NC. The wedding party included Reid Harris (’02), John Manning (’02), Matthew Reger (’02, MBA ’06), Maya Sanford (’04), Justan Treadway (’02) and Noreen Walsh Treadway (’03).

Carl Weiss Dohn III (’02) and Alison Luanne Donoho. 2/23/08 in Tampa, FL. They live in Asheville, NC. The wedding party included Allen Forrester Hobbs (’02), James Parker Lumpkin III (’02), David Chase McKenzie (’02), Matthew Reed Porterfield (’02) and Earl Bryson Powell (’02).

Virginia “Ginny” Ruth Buchanan (’02) and Benjamin Arthur Marks. 10/18/08 in Durham, NC. They live in Chapel Hill, NC. The bride’s father is Robert Augustus Buchanan Jr. (MD ’69). Charles Allan Poole (’76, P ’11) officiated. The wedding party included Elizabeth Brooke Buchanan (MAEd ’96), Kathryn Jackson Maltarich (’02), Ann Elizabeth Skillman (’02), Kathryn Pool Trayes (’01) and Benjamin Reed Walden (’02).

Andrew King Whitacre (’02) and Lindsay Margaret Skay. 10/3/08 in Rockville Centre, NY. They live in Cambridge, MA. The wedding party included Alan Levicki (’02). Amber Wiley (’02) and Ryan W. Capps. 7/12/08 in Norfolk, VA. They live in Philadelphia. Andy Glassick (’03) and Pattie Gabbert (’06). 9/27/08 in Lexington, KY. They live in Chapel Hill, NC. The wedding party included Carolyn Gabbert (’06) and Annie Ward (’06).

Mary Elizabeth Hall (’03) and Christopher Michael Wenzel. 11/15/08 in Pineland, FL. They live in Punta Gorda, FL. The wedding party included Erin Campion Dutton (’04), Beth Holland (’02) and Christie Venable Miller (’03, MD ’07). Nicole Ashley Murphey (’03) and Dannitte Mays Dickey. 11/1/08 in Cornelius, NC. They live in Charlotte, NC. The wedding party included Cyndi Szejner Gross (’03). Julia Dean Taylor (’03) and Jerry Philip Cleaveland III. 11/22/08 in LaGrange, GA. They live in Atlanta. The wedding party included Susan Patricia Edwards (’03), Katherine Collins Neal (’03) and Helen King Stockstill (’03).

Emily Anderson (’04) and Timothy Payne. 5/31/08 in Raleigh, NC. The wedding party included Caroline Anderson (’07), Pam Bardong (’04), Meghan Claffey Cline (’04), Jess Keim (’04), Jenny Pinkard (’04) and Shelby Strayer Roberts (’04). Tommy Haytmanek (’04) and Larisa Freeberg (’04). 9/27/08 in La Jolla, CA. They live in Durham, NC. The wedding party included Cathleen Crews (’04), Anthony Donato (’02), Chris Firlit (’04) and Warren Thomas (’04). Elodie Sutton (’04) and Jacques Domenge. 7/5/08 in Cognac, France. They live in Washington, D.C. The wedding party included Leah Dedmon (’04).

The 17th Annual Alumni Admissions Forum F R I D AY, J U N E 2 6 , 2 0 0 9 If your child is a high school sophomore or junior, mark your calendar to attend the Alumni Admissions Forum on June 26. Director of Admissions Martha B. Allman (’82, MBA ’92) and her staff will offer key insight and insider tips for conducting a college search and beginning the admissions process. The day will begin with an optional session specific to Wake Forest admissions and requirements, followed by the main portion of the event covering topics relevant to any college search, including: • Beginning the College Search Process • Choosing the “Right” College for You • Transitioning Between High School and College: Panel discussion with faculty and students • Financing a College Education (session for parents) • Writing Winning Essays: What Admissions Counselors Look For (session for students) • Campus Tour Cost: $85 per family of 3; $10 each additional family member (includes lunch and Wake Forest Undergraduate Bulletin). For more information, please contact Kristi Marshall in the Office of Alumni Relations at marshakl@wfu.edu or 336.758.4522, or visit the Alumni Admissions Forum Web site at: www.wfu.edu/alumni/events/alumadmission.php

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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notes Lea Ternes (’04) and Rob McFall. 10/18/08 in Providence Forge, VA. They live in Norfolk, VA. The wedding party included Lauren Yanusas (’04). Samuel Chacon (LLM ’05) and Ines. 9/6/08 in Mexico City, Mexico. Jeffrey T. Holm (JD ’05) and Margaret Shannon Mash. 11/8/08 in Atlanta where they live. Michael Francis Piscetelli (’05) and Jacqlyn Diana Muscente (’05, MSA ’06). 10/12/08 in Andover, NJ. They live in Winston-Salem, NC. The wedding party included Michael Eskind (’03). Ayca Konuralp (LLM ’06) and Onur Acikel. 11/29/08 in Izmir, Turkey. Christopher Vellano (’06) and Kimberly Haustein (’06). 10/4/08 in Atlanta. The wedding party included Chas Andreae (’06), Dave Desiderio (’06), Erin Dreyer (’06), Jessica Henkel (’06), Naequan Jones (’06), Jay McCarthy (’06) and Mark McCarthy (’06). PJ Williams (’06) and Jessica Whicker (’08). 6/7/08 in Charlotte, NC. They live in Troutman, NC. The wedding party included John Felton (’06), Adam Hocutt (’06), Peter Koppenheffer (’06) and Melissa Yarbrough (’08).

Births/Adoptions

Thomas Fletcher Jackson (’88, MBA ’01) and Jackie Lynn Jackson (MBA ’01), Lewisville, NC: a son, Lincoln Thomas. 6/4/07. He joins his brothers, John Henry (11), Fletcher (8) and Cooper (3). His aunt is Susan Jackson Cooke (’86) and his grandfather is Lloyd F. Jackson Jr. (’57). Mary Sue Brookshire (’91) and Mark LeMay, San Diego: twins, Hannah Grace and Isaac David. 4/18/08. Allison Young Zabransky (’91) and Doug Zabransky, Bethesda, MD: a daughter, Ava Rose. 11/30/08 Jim Coston (’92, MA ’95) and Julie Davis Coston (’95), Trenton, NJ: twin daughters, Chloe Sonia and Samantha Oksana. 3/21/08. Adopted 3/25/08. They join their brother, Justin Wells (6). Stacia Partin Hanscom (’92) and Brad Hanscom, Albany, NY: a daughter, Elinor. 9/5/07. She joins her brother, Nathaniel (4). Heather Loftin Holding (’92) and James Holding, Wake Forest, NC: a daughter, Rachel Cleo. 8/27/08. She joins her sister, Lauren Maria (4). Julia Marie Deeter Saddington (’92, PA ’99) and Brett Saddington, Providence Forge, VA: a son, Gage Matthew. 10/28/08. He joins his sister, McKenzie (3).

Steven P. Yova (JD ’83) and Frederique Yova, Durham, NC: a daughter, Justine Anne. 11/3/08

Elliot Stanton Berke (’93) and Lindsey Jensen Berke, Arlington, VA: a son, Collin Winston. 4/18/08

David D. Hallock Jr. (’85) and Cynthia Hallock, Lakeland, FL: a daughter, Hope Adele. 1/23/08. She joins her sister, Claire (10), and brother, David (8).

Albert Cedric Calhoun (’93) and Amanda Kate WennerCalhoun, Silver Spring, MD: a daughter, Vivian Kate. 9/25/08. She joins her brother, Gavin (2 1/2).

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Debran Beavers McClean (’93) and Scott McClean, Arlington, VA: a son, Lucas Arthur. 7/25/08

Brett Banks (’94) and Duren Cowan Banks (’94), Potomac, MD: a son, John Mason. 10/2/08. He joins his sister, Caitlin James (2). Susan Ellen Morris Gottlieb (’94) and Michael Gottlieb (JD ’97), North Potomac, MD: a son, Austin Bryant. 8/22/08. He joins his sister, Allie (3). Stuart Jackson (’94) and Andrea Jackson, Dallas: a son, Alexander James. 5/21/08. He joins his brothers, Roe (5) and Blake (2), and his sister, Olivia (4). Angel Smith Jones (’94, PA ’96) and William Jones, Madison, NC: a daughter, Selah Reid. 8/1/08 Nancy LeCroy Mohler (’94) and Peter John Mohler (’95), Iowa City, IA: a son, John Thomas. 10/17/08. He joins his sisters, Ella (4) and Caroline (2). Benjamin Randall David (JD ’95) and Stephanie David, Wilmington, NC: a son, Benjamin Fitzgerald. 11/11/08. He joins his sisters, Maddie (4) and Sophie (2). Scott George Kedersha (’95) and Kristen Kedersha, Richardson, TX: a son, Lincoln Sawyer. 10/27/08. He joins his brothers Duncan (4), Drew (4) and Carson (2). Eric Patrick Orbock (JD/ MBA ’95) and Jessica Kahn Orbock (JD ’97), Athens, GA: a daughter, Margaret Emily. 6/27/08. She joins her sisters, Eva (5) and Caroline (2). Jill Thorpe Ross (’95) and Xavier Ross, Bay Shore, NY: a son, Luke Paul. 11/7/08. He joins his sister, Daisy Grace (1 1/2). Steve Smith (’95) and Julia Smith, Atlanta: a daughter, Julia Palmer. 7/26/08. She joins her brother, Duncan (3).

Garrick P. Updegraph (’95) and Elina Rodina, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA: a daughter, Daniella. 4/1/08 Crystal Bowie Baker (’96, JD ’02) and Brian Baker (’97, JD ’00), Haw River, NC: a son, Tyler Merrick. 8/29/08. He joins his brother, Jackson (3). Chad Bredernitz (’96, MSA ’97) and Cynthia Bredernitz, White Lake, MI: a son, Jack Burns. 7/7/08. He joins his brother, Tyler (2), and sister, Anna (4). Carl J. Daniels (’96) and Lindsay Daniels, Franklin Lakes, NJ: a daughter, Elliott Rose. 4/14/08. She joins her brother, Will (2). Patrick Fleming (’96) and Mary Elizabeth Strum Fleming (’96), Falls Church, VA: a son, Connor Strum. 8/29/08. He joins his brother, Wills (2). His grandparents are Williamson Strum (’61) and Faye Young Strum (’62). His uncle is Allen Strum (’95). Virginia Galloway Gentles (’96) and Peter Gentles, Falls Church, VA: a daughter, Elizabeth Bethea. 7/27/08 Sharon Setzer Hutchinson (’96) and John Hutchinson, Rockingham, NC: a son, John Patrick Jr. 8/4/08 Chris Savinsky (’96, MBA ’01) and Beverly Huffstetler Savinsky (’97, MAEd ’02), Austin, TX: a son, Carter Aaron. 1/14/09 Mary Leigh Cherry (’97) and Tony de los Reyes, Los Angeles: a daughter, Aurora Cherry. 10/18/08 Kristie Heins Fox (’97) and Doug Fox, Chicago: a daughter, Tatum Brooke Bergin, and a son, Rowan Douglas Lewis. 10/28/08


Call to Service Tom (’70) and Shelley (’70) Jennings find their calling in providing opportunities for others By Linda McKinnish Bridges (MBA ’97, P ’10)

T

homas Parks Jennings (’70) grew up in poverty in eastern North Carolina. Shelley Abernathy Jennings (’70) lived in Turkey as a child and traveled the world with her military family. Dissimilar backgrounds, to say the least. But as college students in the late sixties, both resonated with Wake Forest’s own distinctive manifestation of the idealism of the times as expressed in its motto, Pro Humanitate—“for the benefit of humanity.” In it, they discovered the common values that would form the basis for their relationship. And although their careers differ (Tom is a lawyer; Shelley works in corporate finance), their calling is the same: service to the poor of Africa. The Jenningses, who live in Washington, D.C., are active in Opportunity International (OI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the working poor in 28 developing countries. Established in 1994, OI provides small loans and training in basic business practices to fledgling entrepreneurs struggling to escape their impoverishment. In the OI model, loan officers go into small communities and help organize their entrepreneurs into groups of six to 20 members. Group members, of whom nearly 85 percent are women, develop solidarity, cooperation, trust and a spirit of mutual assistance. In some rural villages, they’ll even develop their own dance. The loan, which averages about $450, is given to the group, which then allocates it among its members. If a group member can’t pay back her share (typically around $16), the others will assume responsibility for the loan, which has helped ensure an overall payback rate of nearly 98 percent. Tom first heard of Opportunity International from a lawyer friend and began his involvement by donating money. Then in 2007, the family visited Ghana, one of the first nations in Africa to adopt the microfinance approach. Shelley tells the story of a Ghanan woman named Comfort Mensah, who supported her family by selling pastries from a box perched on her head on street corners. She needed more money, however, because of medical bills accumulating for the care of her physically disabled child. She joined a trust group, and with an OI

loan, she built a five-by-five-foot kiosk outside her house, adding canned goods and small sundry items to her inventory. During the past eight years, she has been able to expand her merchandise and income, pay back the loan, begin a savings plan, and prepare for the medical bills that will accrue from the surgery her child needs. She even has plans to build her own home in a few years, which she will name Opportunity House. Ghana was not the first African country the Jenningses visited. When their daughter was in middle school, the family traveled to Kenya and the home village of her daughter’s teacher. While in the country, they visited several schools for nomadic tribal children. After they returned to the United States, Tom and Shelley helped form a nonprofit organization to support education for the nomadic children of Kenya and donated money to build a new school and dormitories. Tom, who spent 25 years as the general counsel for Bank Holding Company—BB&T—and now provides legal advice to 12 Federal Home Loan banks, grew up in a household with six children and no running water or toilets and could not have afforded Wake Forest without the financial aid he received, thanks to gifts to the institution. “I always thought the motto Pro Humanitate was a good one,” he says. “Truly, the education that Wake Forest offers is for the betterment of humanity. So we owe a lot.” Shelley, who serves as treasurer of Washington Gas Light Holdings Inc., and Washington Gas Light Company, says that, for her, Pro Humanitate “implies that we are using our personal gifts to enrich the lives of others. Sometimes it is in small ways, like being a good citizen of the neighborhood, quietly living your values and ethical standards. It is the small gestures that have the largest impact on the lives of others. And that impact can be carried forward through the years.”

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notes Todd Holleman (JD ’97) and Alex Holleman, Charlotte, NC: a daughter, Evelyn Wallis. 11/14/08 Graham Honaker (’97) and Sarah Honaker, Louisville, KY: a daughter, Katherine Ella. 11/21/08 Edward “Gus” Kearney (’97) and Allison Costa Kearney (’97), Leesburg, VA: a son, Gavin Ryan. 3/3/08. He joins his brother, Austin (3). David Lardieri (’97) and Erica Lardieri, Raritan, NJ: a daughter, Alison Claire. 10/25/08. She joins her sister, Juliet (6), and brother, Matthew (3).

Douglas Peacock (’97) and Becky Daigneau Peacock (’97), Brookfield, WI: a daughter, Gretchen Charlotte. 10/8/08. She joins her sister, Grace (6), and brother, Davis (4). Brook Seaford (’97) and Kristan Graham Seaford (MAEd ’01), Matthews, NC: twin daughters, Mary Louise and Lauren Elizabeth. 7/22/08. They join their brother, Benjamin Michael (5), and sister, Carolina Grace (2). Elisabeth Thompson Baker (’98) and Dylan S. Baker (’99), Raleigh, NC: a son, Ladd Stephenson. 8/6/08. He joins his sister, Hollis (3).

Christopher Kevin Behm (JD ’98) and Kristin Behm, Wilmington, NC: a daughter, Emery Amelia. 1/14/09. She joins her sister, Josie (2 1/2).

Angela McElreath Ojibway (’98) and Brady Ojibway, Marietta, GA: a daughter, Sydney Ashlyn. 3/24/08

John Wesley Brooker (’98) and Melissa Brooker, Harker Heights, TX: a son, Matthew John. 8/21/07. He joins his sisters, Anna Katherine (6) and Leah Beth (3).

Douglas W. Thiessen (JD ’98) and Sarah Thiessen, West River, MD: a daughter, Clara Noelle. 11/5/08. She joins her sisters, Hannah (11), Heidi (5) and Charlotte (2), and brother, Taylor (9).

Rachel Childs Durant (’98, MAEd ’99) and Hale Durant, Etowah, NC: a daughter, Elena Hale. 10/30/08

Alison Snodgrass Chiock (’99) and Michael Chiock, Atlanta: a son, Dylan Michael. 8/14/08

McHenry Kane (’98) and Meredith Kane, Atlanta: a son, Brendan Michael. 10/29/08

Greg Hausner (’99) and Jennifer Hausner, Baltimore: a daughter, Lila Grace. 7/23/08

The Wake Forest Fund when you give back, we move forward

Wake Forest has long been a beacon of opportunity to allow young people – many of whom come from families of modest means – to fulfill their ambitions. However, tuition and the endowment only cover a portion of what the University needs to sustain and enhance Wake Forest’s finest tradition – a face-to-face community, grounded in the liberal arts , passionate about professional education, and committed to challenging students to live an examined and purposeful life. Gifts to our unrestricted funds ensure Wake Forest’s tradition of excellence and support its bold endeavors as the nation’s premier collegiate university. To make your gift to The Wake Forest Fund today, please visit www.wfu.edu/giving or call 800.752.8568. The Wake Forest Fund The Wake Forest Fund for the C ollege The Wake Forest Fund for the Graduate S cho ol The Wake Forest Fund for the C all oway S cho ol The Wake Forest Fund for the Bab c o ck Graduate S cho ol of M anagement The Wake Forest Fund for the S cho ol of D ivinit y The Wake Forest Fund for the S cho ol of L aw The Wake Forest Fund for the S cho ol of Medicine The Wake Forest Fund for the ZSR L ibrary The Wake Forest Fund for Student Aid

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Margaux Lucas Karagosian (’99, MSA ’00) and Adam Horn Karagosian, Charlotte, NC: a son, Lucas Anthony. 9/16/08

Shannon (Missy) Sumerell Spainhour (JD ’01) and John Spainhour, Charlotte, NC: a daughter, Anna Poston. 9/16/08

Emily Sanders Miller (’99) and Kevin Miller, Rock Hill, SC: a daughter, Mason DeCamp. 12/30/08. She joins her brother, Blaine (2 ½).

Lewis Chitwood (’02, MSA ’03) and Lindsey Evans Chitwood (’02), Birmingham, AL: a daughter, Margot Ann. 11/3/08

Michael William Simons (’99, MBA ’04) and Reid Simons, Charlotte, NC: a son, Lucas William. 11/14/08

Craig Micah Dawson (’02) and Nakesha Merritt Dawson (’02), Winston-Salem, NC: a daughter, Erin Nicole. 10/15/08

Lee D. Wedekind III (’99) and Suzanne Wedekind, Jacksonville, FL: a daughter, Mary Bullock. 10/22/08 Frederic Joly (LLM ’00) and Justine Joly, Paris, France: a son, Gabriel. 11/22/08 David Kawesi-Mukooza (’00) and Beth Lucarelli (’00), Fredericksburg, VA: a daughter, Petra Suraiya. 10/18/08. She joins her sister, Navi Amira (17 mos). C. Brock Matthews (’00) and Lisa Mathews, Yadkinville, NC: twins, Luca Solomon and Ella Caroline. 9/28/08 Amy Elizabeth Ligler Schoenhard (’00) and Paul Schoenhard, Washington, D.C.: a daughter, Elizabeth Grace. 8/11/08

Kristen Norris Rogers (’02, MSA ’03) and Jonathan Rogers, Charlotte, NC: a son, Zackary Jonathan. 9/21/08 Jaclyn Elledge Slagle (’02) and Wesley Slagle, Atlanta: a son, Henry Davis. 9/4/08. He joins his brother, Tucker (1). Amy Elmore Strachan (MD ’02) and Gary Strachan, Santa Ana, CA: a son, Buck Ellis. 1/4/09 John Colavincenzo (’03) and Bethany Colavincenzo, Cambridge, MA: a daughter, Emma Charlotte. 8/9/08 Dino P. Massoglia (PhD ’03, MD ’05) and Lola Massoglia, Catonsville, MD: a daughter, Luciana Campbell. 10/08. She joins her brother, Cosmo (3).

David P. White (’00) and Stephanie Reddy White (’00), Haw River, NC: a daughter, Margaret Claire. 11/26/08. She joins her brother, James (1).

Brian Grimberg (PhD ’04) and Kerry O’Connor Grimberg (PhD ’04), Cleveland Heights, OH: a daughter, Colleen Rose. 9/28/08. She joins her sister, Caileigh Shea (2).

Stephen Arndt (’01) and Jamie Lemke Arndt (’01), Jacksonville, FL: a son, William Robert. 10/15/08. He joins his brother, Thomas (20 mos).

Christopher D. Marston (MBA ’04) and Claire Anderson Marston (MBA ’04), Charlotte, NC: a daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth. 9/4/08

Stephen D. Eldridge (JD ’01) and Emily Eldridge, Richmond, VA: a daughter, Abigail Marie. 11/6/08

Cristina Kazleman Reintjes (’05) and Christopher Reintjes, Jacksonville, NC: a son, David Elexis. 8/31/08

Mikio Nishioka (LLM ’07) and Miho Nishioka, Fukuoka, Japan: a son, Kanshou. 9/22/08 Randy Brockway (MBA ’08) and Carrie Brockway, Charlotte, NC: a son, William Clayton. 6/1/08

Deaths Irwin Hughes Davis (’35), Oct. 17, 2008, Washington, NC. He built Liberty Ships at the Wilmington Shipyard during World War II and retired after 31 years of service with the U.S. Postal Service in 1989. He was engaged in farming and livestock production most of his life. He was a charter member and a retired fireman with the Bentonville Volunteer Fire Department. Charles Maitland Howell Jr. (’35, MD ’35), Nov. 8, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He was chairman of the dermatology department at the Wake Forest School of Medicine for 27 years. In 1983 he opened a private practice and continued to practice medicine into his 90s. He was a past member of the Wake Forest Alumni Council. A native of Thomasville, NC, he attended Wake Forest’s thentwo year medical school before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his medical degree. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a flight surgeon, attaining the rank of major. After the war, he was a physician at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and a ship’s doctor with the MooreMcCormack Cruise Line, before returning to the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in the pathology department. He later completed his medical residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He is survived by his wife, Betty; two daughters, Pamela Howell (MBA ’82) and Beth Fulk; and two grand-children. He was preceded in death by his twin brother, Julius Ammons Howell (JD ’35, ’40, MD ’41).

Rowell Lane (’37, MA ’48), Dec. 7, 2008, Greensboro, NC. He received his divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. He was a Baptist minister and served in a variety of secondary education posts in North Carolina. John Henry Moore (’37), Nov. 29, 2008, Laurinburg, NC. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was editor and publisher of The Laurinburg Exchange and was named Tar Heel of the Week by the Raleigh News and Observer. Robert Riddick Gatling (’38, MD ’39), Dec. 8, 2008, Clinton, MS. He served as a medical officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II on the USS Corry and the USS Topeka, obtaining the rank of lieutenant commander. He retired in 1992 from the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center as chief pathologist and director of lab services. Since 1960 he served as an associate professor of pathology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Billy Lester Mauney (’38), Dec. 14, 2008, Taylorsville, NC. He opened men’s clothing stores in Statesville and Newton, NC. After serving in World War II, he opened City Cleaners in Taylorsville which operated for 54 years until closing in 2003. He served on the Alexander County School Board and was a director and chairman of the Taylorsville Savings and Loan Association.

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notes William Jack Hunt (’39, MD ’41), Nov. 26, 2008, High Point, NC. He received an MD from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1943. After an internship at University Hospital in Baltimore, he served in the U.S. Navy as a flight surgeon assigned to the Marine Corps. He was a resident in internal medicine at Baltimore City Hospital and had a residency at N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. He had a private internal medicine practice in High Point from 1948 until his retirement in 1983. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Sara Forrest; two daughters, Patricia Lovelace (’69) and Beth Finch; and two grandchildren.

years before establishing a solo practice in Wake Forest. His father, George W. Paschal Sr., taught Greek and Latin on the Old Campus of Wake Forest. He was preceded in death by his brothers: George Jr. (’27, ’28, MD ’29, P ’73), Robert (’28, JD ’31), Richard (’30), Paul (’40) and Joel (’35, JD ’38); and his sisters: Laura (’31, MA ’32), Catherine (’31, JD ’42), Ruth Lupton (’34) and Mary (’43). He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Bishop, and a son, Richard (’87). Memorials may be made to Wake Forest University, the Wake Forest University School of Law, the Wake Forest College Birthplace Society, or the Wake Forest Baptist Church in Wake Forest, NC.

Edwin Cornelius Womble (’40, MD ’40), Nov. 29, 2008, Laurinburg, NC. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He had a private medical practice in Wagram, NC. Until his retirement in 1985, he served 29 years as a physician for the Department of Corrections and 20 years as a county medical examiner. He was involved in community and civic activities.

William Agee Cook Jr. (’43), Dec. 28, 2008, Lynchburg, VA. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and received his MD from the Medical College of Virginia. He practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Lynchburg until his retirement in 1992. He served on the Wake Forest Alumni Council. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Jean; a daughter, Ruth; four sons, Bill (’78), John, Robert and George (’89); and 15 grandchildren.

George Thaddeus Perkins Jr. (’41), Dec. 5, 2008, Brevard, NC. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and received a Purple Heart. He helped his parents in their commercial laundry business and was owner/ operator of Perkins Oil Co. He was instrumental in building Franklin Park, served on the board of directors for First Citizens’ Bank and was a founding member of the Glen Cannon Country Club. Harry Edward Paschal (’42, JD ’48), Dec. 12, 2008, Wake Forest, NC. He served in the 4th Infantry Division during World War II and received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He practiced law in Raleigh and Louisburg for several 56 wake forest magazine

Sol Browdy (MD ’46), Nov. 22, 2008, Park City, UT. He practiced pediatrics in Trenton, NJ, for 35 years and moved to Utah in 1998 after the death of his wife. He is survived by two children and four grandchildren. William Eugene “Bill” Johnson Jr. (’47), Dec. 1, 2008, Harrells, NC. He was a retired farmer and chemist. He was preceded in death by a son, Gene. He is survived by his wife, Lyle; three daughters, Linda J. Gibson (’70), Lauralyle Weaver and Jennifer Robards; a son, Jonathan; and four grandchildren, including Catherine Gibson (’04).

Horace Robinson Kornegay Sr. (’47, JD ’49), Jan. 21, 2009, Greensboro, NC. He served on the Wake Forest Law Board of Visitors for 17 years. He was in the U.S. Army 100th Infantry Division during World War II and received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. He began his law career as a prosecuting attorney. He served in the U.S. Congress representing NC’s Congressional District from 1961 to 1969. He was president and chairman of the Tobacco Institute. He was retired of counsel with Adams Kleemeier Hagan Hannah & Fouts PLLC in Greensboro, NC. He received the Wake Forest Distinguished Alumni Award in 1972 and the B’nai B’rith, Washington, D.C., Anti-Defamation League’s 1985 Man of the Year Award. He was honored with the establishment of a Justice Fund by the N.C. Bar Association for his outstanding service to the legal profession. He was preceded in death by his wife of 54 years, Annie Ben Beale. He is survived by a son, Horace Robinson Jr. (’74); two daughters, Kathy Cozort (’76) and Martha Howard; and eight grandchildren, including Jackson Cozort Jr. (’08). Memorials may be made to the West Market Street United Methodist Church, 302 W. Market St., Greensboro, NC 27401, or to the Wake Forest University Horace Robinson Kornegay Scholarship Fund, PO Box 7227, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. Frank Lamar Creel (MD ’48), Oct. 25, 2008, Pensacola, FL. He was a flight surgeon during the Korean War. He was a psychiatrist and the director of psychiatry at the West Florida Regional Medical Center and director emeritus at Lakeview Center. He was the founder and first director of The Pavilion at West Florida, a regional psychiatric hospital.

Reda Urma Umstead Ennis (’48), Oct. 23, 2008, Red Oak, NC. She taught middle and high school in the Nash-Rocky Mount public schools for 30 years. She was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, W.B. “Bill” Ennis Jr. (’47). She is survived by four sons and four grandchildren. Ralph Woodrow Knight Sr. (’48), Dec. 26, 2008, Raleigh, NC. He received his MDiv from the Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. He pastored several churches in North Carolina before retiring and serving as director of missions for the Chowan Baptist Association. He is survived by his wife, Mavis; two daughters, Judith Baker (’57) and Sylvia Poole; two sons, Ralph Woodrow “Woody” Jr. (’61) and Stephen Haywood; 13 grandchildren; and 29 greatgrandchildren. Campbell White McMillan (’48, MD ’52), Oct. 13, 2008, Chapel Hill, NC. He practiced medicine in Laurinburg, NC, and was a pediatric hematology/ oncology faculty member at the University of North Carolina. A U.S. Navy veteran, he interned at Boston City Hospital and completed his residency at Children’s Hospital in Boston. While completing a fellowship in pediatric hematology/ oncology at Harvard Medical School, he was an instructor of pediatrics and an assistant physician at Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He and his wife, Florence, once traveled to Shiraz, Iran, where he started the local hospital’s pediatric department. He was the son of the late Henry Hudson McMillan (1908), brother of the late John Johnson McMillan (’43) and Archibald Memory McMillan (’38), and nephew of the late Jasper Livingston Memory (’21). He is survived by his wife, Florence; six children; five grandchildren; and an uncle, Robert Leroy McMillan Jr. (’43, P ’73, P ’74, P ’77, P ’85).


obit ua ry Professor Emeritus of Business Delmer P. Hylton

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elmer P. Hylton, the tough professor who started Wake Forest’s accounting program in the 1950s, died on December 2, 2008, in Winston-Salem. He was 88. Hylton was known as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense professor who emphasized hard work and integrity as he prepared thousands of students for successful careers in business. “Unquestionably many of them thought I was too demanding,” Hylton said in a 1991 interview. “But those who got through it, years later, at least a few of them, came back and said they were glad they went through the fire.” During his four decades on the faculty, from 1949 until 1991, he laid the foundation for what is today one of the top accounting programs in the country. “He set very high standards for the accounting program and our students and faculty,” said Professor Emeritus Thomas Taylor, who succeeded Hylton as dean in 1980. “Through the years he was chairman, he was careful to bring in people who bought into his high standards to ensure that we would become a leader in accounting education. “He also had very high standards for the accounting profession as a whole,” Taylor said. “He could be very critical of the profession if he didn’t think it measured up.” Hylton was the first professor hired by Dean Gaines Rogers in 1949 for Wake Forest’s newly established School of Business Administration. “He was working for the IRS in Indianapolis and teaching part-time at Butler University, and he told my mother that he might want to teach awhile,” recalled his son, Rev. Jim Hylton (’75, MDiv ’06). “They drove down for his interview, and he didn’t even tell her he had been offered the job until they got back to Indianapolis. ‘Awhile’ turned out to be 43 years at Wake Forest.” After the School of Business was reorganized as the Department of Business and Accountancy in 1970, Hylton served as chair of the department until 1980 when the department was reorganized again as the School of Business and Accountancy. His toughness and gruffness in the classroom were legendary, but so was the success of his students. “The hard-boiled Hylton has flunked many an accounting student in years past and pushed others to their limits over mind-numbing accounting problems,” read a newspaper story in 1981 that noted that accounting students under Hylton consistently scored in the upper 5 percent of those taking the CPA exam. But Hylton

declined to take any credit: “All I can say is we’ve tried to see that the student understands what he’s doing.” In 1983, former students established an endowed chair in the Calloway School in his honor. “I wouldn’t win any popularity contests while the students are here,” Hylton said at the time. “But they appreciate me after they have gone.” Later, a scholarship fund and a lecture series in the Calloway School were also named in his honor. Jim Hylton said he knew enough about his father’s reputation to stay away from his classes when he came to Wake Forest—he majored in business instead of accounting and had a long business career before attending Wake Forest’s divinity school and changing careers. He recalled that one of his father’s nicknames on the Old Campus was simply “death.” His father didn’t mind, he said. “He was extremely hard. If you weren’t prepared, you were probably better off not going to class, because he would know it. Those who got through it did pretty well later on.” Among Hylton’s students who did pretty well was the late Wayne Calloway (’59), who went on to become CEO of Pepsico; the school of business and accountancy was named in his honor in 1995. Calloway paid tribute to Hylton at his retirement dinner in 1991: “Professor Hylton could be just down right inflexible—when it came to such matters as commitment and hard work,” Calloway said. “For more than 40 years, the secret of success as a businessman has been getting a seat in Professor Hylton’s advanced accounting class. Emerge from that class intact…then you have the start you need.” A native of Indianapolis, Indiana, Hylton received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and worked for several years in Indianapolis with an accounting firm and the IRS before he joined the Wake Forest faculty on the Old Campus in 1949. When Wake Forest moved to Winston-Salem in 1956, he built one of the first houses on Faculty Drive. In addition to his son, Hylton is also survived by two daughters, Deborah Anne Slingluff and Paula Spevak, and four grandchildren. Memorials may be made to the Hylton Scholarship Fund at Wake Forest.

—Kerry M. King (’85)

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notes Baxter J. Smith (’48), Sept. 21, 2008, Salisbury, NC. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and received the Bronze Star. He was an optometrist for 31 years. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Alma; two sons, Baxter Jr. (’67) and Barry (’70); and a grandson, Adam Jay. William Layman Castellow (’49), Dec. 4, 2008, Windsor, NC. He was a graduate of the Georgia Military Academy. After a year in college he served during World War II in the U.S. Marine Corps and then returned to Wake Forest to graduate. Henry Blair Huff (’49, JD ’49), Oct. 25, 2008, Mars Hill, NC. He practiced law from 1954 to 1991. He was preceded in death by his brother, Joseph Bascom Huff Jr. (’42). Edward Parker Best (’50), Nov. 4, 2008, Durham, NC. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and for 28 years in the N.C. National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve. He retired as senior director of sales with N.C. Blue Cross Blue Shield after 26 years. He is survived by his wife, Betty; three sons; a daughter; 10 grandchildren, including Kristen Best Farrell (’05); and a great-grandson. Glenn Ray Flack (’50), Oct. 25, 2008, Greenwood, SC. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was a retired manager of TransSouth Corp. He was preceded in death by his brother, Louis Everett Flack (’52). He is survived by his wife, Evelyn; a son; three daughters; four grandchildren; and a brother, Talmage Dewitt Flack Jr. (’51). Deleon Timothy “Pat” Murphy Jr. (’50), Jan. 8, 2009, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. After graduating from Wake Forest he went to Yale Divinity School and received a 58 wake forest magazine

Fulbright Scholarship to attend Heidelberg University in Germany, where he completed studies in existential philosophy. He taught philosophy at Wake Forest (1957-1962) and New York City College. He was philosophy department chair at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, where he established the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship for African American students. He moved to Canada in 1973 and became owner/publisher of Axiom Magazine and founded the South Shore Penny-Saver. John Terrell Rosser (’50), Nov. 26, 2008, Fayetteville, NC. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Leta Hamilton Rosser (’46); three children, Ann Lowery, John Rosser III and Laura Laycock; eight grandchildren, including Carly M. Rosser (’09); and three great-grandchildren. James Norwood Settle (’50), Nov. 14, 2008, Greenville, SC. He worked for the American Council of Learned Societies and was the retired dean of humanities and the arts at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is survived by his wife, Eveyln; a son; a granddaughter; and a brother, William Kemp Settle (’51). James Russell Burleson (’51), Nov. 27, 2008, White Rock, SC. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was a combat infantry sergeant in the Battle of the Bulge. He taught high school science in Goldsboro, NC. He moved to Aiken, SC, in 1950 and was a laboratory supervisor at the Savannah River Plant for the Atomic Energy Commission until his retirement in 1981. Harry Paul Clause Jr. (’51), July 31, 2008, Charlottesville, VA. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve and was a

retired thoracic cardiovascular surgeon in Troy, VA. C. Wayne Mabry Sr. (JD ’51), Dec. 12, 2008, Albemarle, NC. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a radio/ radar operator. He was a public relations, property and governmental relations manager for 37 years with the North Carolina operations of the Aluminum Co. of American-Badin Works. He was honored in 2001 by the N.C. Bar for 50 years of service. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Betty; two daughters, Ellen Sheppard and Beth Smith; and a son, Clegg Wayne Jr. (’80, JD ’83). Cecyle Arnold O’Bryant (’51), Jan. 6, 2009, Garner, NC. While at Wake Forest, she was on the debate team and was inducted into the Pi Kappa Delta national honor society. She taught English for 30 years. She was preceded in death by her father, Hubert Leon Arnold (’27). She is survived by her sons, Charles Lewis, Hubert Arnold and Patrick Cullom; four grandchildren; and a sister, Helen Arnold Walton (’51). Memorials may be made to The Wake Forest Fund, Wake Forest University, PO Box 7227, Winston-Salem, NC 27109 or First Baptist Church of Garner, 601 St. Mary’s Street, Garner, NC 27529. Louis Everett Flack (’52), Oct. 15, 2008, Duedin, FL. He was preceded in death by a brother, Glenn Ray Flack (’50). He is survived by a brother, Talmage Dewitt Flack Jr. (’51). Douglas Roland Hall (’52), Jan. 20, 2009, Columbia, SC. He loved the violin and was a piano accompanist for the Wake Forest “traveling choir” in 1952. He received his MA and PhD from the University of Maryland and was a French professor at the University of South Carolina.

Calvin Coolidge Perry (’52), Dec. 24, 2008, Selma, NC. He served on the USS Iowa in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He taught in the public schools in Selma, Micro and Clayton, NC, for 53 years. He played baseball and football with the Campbell College Camels, a semi-professional team, and coached men’s basketball, baseball and football in Selma, Micro and Clayton. Nathaniel Thomas Brummitt (’53), Jan. 4, 2009, Youngsville, NC. He pastored churches in North Carolina and Virginia for 30 years. John Samuel Groves (’53, JD ’60), Oct. 26, 2008, WinstonSalem, NC. He served in the U.S. Army and was retired from the Office of Veterans’ Affairs, where he last served as assistant district counsel. He was preceded in death by his parents, Moody and Robert Burwell Groves (’21), and a brother, Robert B. Groves Jr. (’48, MD ’53). He is survived by his wife, Judy; and three daughters, Julie (’89, MALS ’03), Leigh Anne (’91) and Leslie. Homer George Sutton Jr. (MD ’53), Dec. 29, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and practiced medicine in the Oldtown area from 1956 until 1993. He is survived by two sons, Steven George (’79) and William Roger; a daughter, Suzanne Haley; a stepson, Robert Cady; and eight grandchildren. James Emery Tribble (’55), Oct. 27, 2008, Tallahassee, FL. His uncle, Harold Wayland Tribble Sr., was the tenth president of Wake Forest. While in college he met and later married Byrd Barnette, a descendent of Samuel Wait, Wake Forest’s first president. He received his JD from Stetson University


Law School, worked for two years in the Judge Advocate General Corps, and was a research aide for Supreme Court justices. He organized the appellate division of Blackwell Walker & Gray in Miami. He is survived by his wife, Byrd Barnette (’54); two daughters, Evelyn (’80) and Mary (’82); a son, Lewis (’88); two grandchildren, Emelia and Kate; and two sisters, Nancy Benda and Carmean Johnson (’60). Memorials may be made to Big Bend Hospice, 1723 Mahan Center Blvd., Tallahassee, FL 32308-5438, or the Wake Forest College Birthplace Society, PO Box 494, Wake Forest, NC 27588. Charles Harry Rock (’56), Dec. 13, 2008, Warsaw, VA. He served in the U.S. Army before becoming a civil servant with the U.S. Army Material Command. He retired in 1993 after nearly 40 years. Lloyd Thomas Wood Jr. (’56), Nov. 23, 2008, Rutherfordton, NC. He served in the U.S. Army and was a CPA at A.M. Pullen & Co. in Charlotte, NC. In 1961 he moved to Rutherfordton, NC, and was chief financial officer for the Tanner Companies for 35 years. He served on the board of trustees of Rutherford Hospital and was on the founding board of the Rutherford Hospital Foundation. He is survived by his wife, Merrill; a daughter, Robin; a son, Lloyd; ten grandchildren; two sisters, Celia and Carolyn; and a brother, Claude Byron Wood (’59). Joe Isaacs Marshall (’57), Oct. 15, 2008, WinstonSalem, NC. He was a life-long banker. His career included State Planters Bank in Walnut Cove, NC, and Security Bank and Trust Co. in Monroe, NC. He was president and CEO of Peoples Bank of Madison which later merged with First Citizens Bank. He retired from First Citizens in 1996.

He served in the U.S. Coast Guard from 1951 to 1954. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Anne Bynum Marshall (’57); a daughter, Jane; two sons, Jim and Bynum (’85); eight grandchildren; and a brother, William Flynt Marshall Jr. (JD ’60). Lloyd Thomas Preslar (’57), Dec. 28, Washington, D.C. He was an artillery officer in the U.S. Army and a journalist for the WinstonSalem Journal and Sentinel and later for the Baltimore Sun. He was editor of the Old Gold & Black during the first year in Winston-Salem. He was a special assistant for international affairs in the transportation secretary’s office in Washington and was vice president from 1969 to 1992 of DGA International. He later became a partner in the Bridge Group, a consulting firm representing the French defense ministry and industrial firms. In 1996 he founded Space Technology Development which developed a remote-sensing satellite with the U.S. Navy. Noble Lee Ball (’58), Nov. 9, 2008, Gastonia, NC. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. He was a hairdresser, founder of Noble’s College of Hair Design and owner of several beauty salons. He also owned Classic Core Co. Jackson Virgil McCraw (’59), Jan. 24, 2009, Charlotte, NC. He was retired from National Gypsum and was in the Trailblazers retirement club. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; two sons, David Jackson and John Lamar; two daughters, Martha M. David (BA ’84, BS ’85) and Sally Ann (’91, MSA ’97); and five grandchildren. Sherrill L. Morris (’59), Jan. 8, 2009, Thomasville, NC.

Edmond Victor Smith (’61), April 29, 2008, Wrightsville Beach, NC. Roger Dean “Rickey” Stratton (’61), Dec. 20, 2008, Greensboro, NC. He served in the U.S. National Guard and ran the family business, Stratton Flooring. James H. Knight (’62), Dec. 8, 2008, Rural Hall, NC. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He pastored Unity Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC, for 14 years and was co-owner of Knight’s Antiques in Rural Hall. Gary James Hinebaugh Sr. (’63), Oct. 16, 2008, The Villages, FL, and Charlotte, NC. He was a sales representative for Proctor & Gamble in York, PA, and a sales manager for 23 years for the Carter Products Division of CarterWallace. He is survived by his wife, Sharon, three children and three grandchildren. Memorials may be made to The Andrew Milne Scholarship Fund, c/o Cameron Meador, Director of Gift Stewardship, Wake Forest University, PO Box 7227, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. Alex Chalmers Hope Jr. (’64), Jan. 6, 2009, Charlotte, NC. He attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA, and Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston. Virginia Logan Sams (MA ’65), Oct. 13, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. She worked in the personnel department of the FBI and taught in the WinstonSalem/Forsyth County schools. In 1974 she received a Reynolds Scholarship to study abroad and attended the Univeristy of London. While teaching at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, she was inducted into Delta Kappa Gamma, an international honor society of women educators. She is survived by three children, Jeannie, Charles Jr. (’90) and Janice,

five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Memorials may be made to Wake Forest Baptist Church, PO Box 7326, Winston-Salem, NC 27109 or to The Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance Project, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, AL 36104. Hattie Ward Angel (’66), Oct. 27, 2008, Kernersville, NC. She was a retired CPA with the Internal Revenue Service. Carolyn Peacock Lowery (’66), Jan. 2, 2009, Greensboro, NC. She served various organizations: Guilford College Women’s Club, Parents for the Advancement of Gifted Education, University Women’s Club, Parent Teacher Associations, Community Swim Association, United Day Care Services, N.C. Division of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Greensboro Sheltered Workshop. She was a substitute teacher in the public schools and co-owner of The Wedding Pages and Piedmont Playbill. She is survived by her husband, Clifford Benjamin Lowery (’65); two daughters, Kathryn Johnston and Kameren Dalton; a son, Kevin; and four grandchildren. Charlie Smith McIntyre Jr. (’67, JD ’71), Dec. 17, 2008, Lumberton, NC. He was an attorney in Lumberton and served as treasurer of the Robeson County Bar Association. He served in the N.C. National Guard. He is survived by his wife, Jill Prevatte McIntyre (’72). William Kermit Link Jr. (’68), Dec. 26, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He worked for IBM in the Research Triangle Park and founded Boy Scout Troop 207, Uwharrie Council. He is survived by his wife, Laurel Hill Link (’70); a daughter and son-in-law, Beth and Robert Taylor; and a grandson, Benjamin William. www.wfu.edu/alumni

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honor

roll Randall Roy Poe (’69), Nov. 30, 2008, Roseburg, OR. He graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry and was a dentist in the U.S. Navy. He had a private dental practice in Douglas County and operated a sheep ranch in Glide, OR. He trained in over 30 triathlons and finished the Iron Man Triathlon in Kona, HI, in 1986. He served in the mission field and was involved with Champions for Life Prison Ministry. George J. Pucak (MS ’71), Aug. 24, 2008, Beeville, TX. He was a retired veterinarian. Helen Robinson Zakour (’74), Jan. 21, 2009, Derwood, MD. She received her MS and PhD from Rice University and did postdoctoral research at the University of Washington School of Fisheries. She served in her church, was a consultant and a volunteer. Her daughter, Amelia, is a sophomore at Wake Forest. Michael Robert Cline (JD ’75), Dec. 26, 2008, Charleston, WV. He was managing principal of Michael R. Cline Law Offices in Charleston, practicing litigation and commercial law. Neal Gray Sloan (’75), Dec. 14, 2008, North Wilkesboro, NC. He was the Wilkes County reference librarian, county librarian and interim director for the Appalachian Regional Library. James W. White (MA ’77), Jan. 21, 2009, Morganton, NC. He received his MDiv from Duke Divinity School and PhD from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He was a missionary with OMS International in Ecuador from 1978 until 1982 and was a deacon and elder in the Western United Methodist Church. He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a granddaughter. 60 wake forest magazine

Carl Michael Beavers (MD ’78), Nov. 20, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He practiced family medicine at Mountain View Medical and was medical director of Stokes County EMS in King, NC. He was preceded in death by his mother and father, Wilba and George M. Beavers Jr. (’33), and grandfather, George Monroe Beavers (1898). He is survived by his wife, Leigh; four children, Caroline Numbers (’02), Michael, Samuel and Matthews; and a granddaughter. Jane Louise Goforth (’78), Nov. 13, 2008, Glenside, PA. She was a CPA and former member of the Wake Forest Alumni Council. Victor Fisher Harllee Jr. (’80), Dec. 4, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam. He worked in advertising with Ed Kemp Associates in High Point, NC, in financial securities with Dean Witter Reynolds in Winston-Salem, NC, and with Interstate Securities in Greensboro, NC, and for the last 19 years as a vice president and assistant bank manager with Deutsche Bank Alex Brown in Winston-Salem. His community involvement included SciWorks, Forsyth County Historic Resources Commission, Hospice Grief Camps and BOOKMARKS. Mark Douglas Midkiff (’80), Jan. 8, 2009, Pensacola, FL. He graduated from Western Carolina University and Aviation Officer Candidate School. He served 10 years in the U.S. Navy. James Douglas Hill (JD ’81), Nov. 11, 2008, Durham, NC. He had a private practice in Charlotte, NC, prior to joining the N.C. Attorney General’s Office in 1999. He retired in 2006.

Mary Jackuelyn Harris (MD ’82), Oct. 20, 2008, Carlsbad, CA. She completed her postgraduate studies in geriatric psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and was a faculty member at UCSD until retiring in 1998. She is survived by her husband, Robert E. Wailes (MD ’81), and three children: Dustin (19), Shannon (15) and Shelby (13). Catherine Clark Huber (MAEd ’84), Jan. 22, 2009, Winston-Salem, NC. After graduating from Wake Forest, she began a counseling career at Step One, a drug abuse agency. She later joined a private practice and retired in 2006. She was a courtappointed Guardian ad Litem, supervising foster children for the Department of Social Services. She was preceded in death by her first husband, Paul Montague Jr., and is survived by her husband, Bob, and their children. She is also survived by a niece, McKenzie L.M. Clark (’07). N. Todd Praigg Jr. (MBA ’84), Jan. 10, 2009, Durham, NC. He was a partner with the accounting firm of Praigg & Praigg PA in Durham. Alison L. Newman Davis (’88), Jan. 29, 2009, Toms River, NJ. She was assistant township attorney for Toms River. Patricia Parker Ridenhour (JD ’91), Nov. 1, 2008, Greensboro, NC. She was of counsel with the Worth Law Firm in Greensboro. She was preceded in death by her husband, Walter. She is survived by her daughter, Katherine Woodard; two grandchildren; a brother, Ralph; and a sister, Marian F. Parker, associate dean and director of the Wake Forest Law Professional Center Library.

Rae Lynn Yates (’92), May 5, 2008, Ocean Isle Beach, NC. She was a physician at the Seaside Medical Center in Sunset Beach, NC. Douglas Warren Thiessen (JD ’98), Jan. 9, 2009, West River, MD. He was 35, the assistant general counsel for the Parole Commission in the federal Department of Justice and the Maryland Republican Party’s general counsel. He is survived by his wife, Sarah; a son, Taylor; and four daughters, Hannah, Heidi, Charlotte and Clara. Amy Delp Byrd (JD ’03), Jan. 21, 2009, Winston-Salem, NC. She was an attorney with McAllister & Hanks and an assistant public defender with the Forsyth County Public Defender’s Office before joining the Law Offices of Walter C. Holton Jr. PLLC. She is survived by her husband, Jones Pharr Byrd Jr. (’99, JD ’02).

Friends, Faculty, Staff, Students Jack H. Baur, Dec. 1, 2008, Huntington, WV. He was preceded in death by a son, Donald A. Baur (’74); and he established a scholarship at Wake Forest in his memory. He served in the U.S. Navy and was a former associate dean at the Marshall University School of Medicine. He was the first hematologist in Huntington and was vice president of medical affairs at Cabell Huntington Hospital, retiring in 1993. He is survived by his wife, Maxine; a daughter; two sons; a stepdaughter; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Memorials may be made to the Donald A. Baur Scholarship Fund, Wake Forest University, PO Box 7227, Winston-Salem, NC 27109.


Florence Gordon Chandler, July 16, 2008, Pittsfield, MA. She was the wife of John W. Chandler (’45), who taught philosophy on the Old Campus and later had a long distinguished career as president of Williams College. A native of Pittsboro, NC, she graduated from what was then Women’s College of the University of North Carolina and was an assistant dean of women at Wake Forest before going with her husband to Williams College. In 1995, Williams awarded her the Ephraim Williams Medal for exceptional dedication to the college by a non-alumnus. She is survived by her husband; a son, John Chandler Jr.; three daughters, Alison Chandler, Patricia Finn and Jennifer Chandler; and five grandchildren. George Johann Doellgast, Jan. 31, 2009, Thousand Oaks, CA. He was a professor emeritus in biochemistry. He worked at the Wake Forest School of Medicine from 1976 until his retirement in 2000. In 2002 he moved to Thousand Oaks and was a research scientist at Amgen until his death. He is survived by his wife, Janet, two children, and one grandchild. Virginia Davis Hellard, Jan. 11, 2009, Clemmons, NC. She was retired from the bookstore at Wake Forest and was a volunteer at Forsyth Medical Center. She was preceded in death by her husband. She is survived by a son, Terry; a daughter, Judy H. Needham (’71); five grandchildren; three greatgrandchildren; and a sister.

Frank H. Hulcher, Dec. 3, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He was an associate professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for 36 years. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and received a master’s from VPI and a PhD in biochemistry from Yale University. He was preceded in death by his wife, Louise, and a son, Alex David. He is survived by two sons, Mark Charles and Frank Alan, and three grandsons. Harry Lee King Jr., Nov. 11, 2008, Henry, VA. He was a professor emeritus of Romance Languages who taught Spanish from 1960 until retiring in 1981. He was 92. A native of Virginia, King graduated from Richmond and served as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II. He later earned his master’s and PhD from the University of North Carolina. He taught briefly at Hampton-Sydney College and Richmond and for eight years at UNC before joining the Wake Forest faculty. “He was a strong advocate of study abroad, even in the days when Wake Forest had only one program with Colombia, limited to one or two students at a time,” said Jenny Puckett, an instructor of Spanish who had King for several classes as an undergraduate. “His vivid and anecdotal style of teaching made every class interesting. I particularly enjoyed his remembrances of traveling and dining in Spain.” He is survived by two sisters and 10 nieces and nephews. Betty Jean McArthur, Dec. 11, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. She was a housekeeper at Wake Forest’s Graylyn Conference Center for the last 16 years. She completed her GED, and earned her nursing license through Experiment in Self-Reliance. She was previously employed at Arbor Acres for many years.

Alton H. McEachern, Jan. 3, 2009, Sharpsburg, GA. He served on the Board of Trustees at Wake Forest. He was a graduate of Mercer University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Glasgow in Scotland, and Mansfield College in Oxford, England. He pastored churches in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina before becoming the founding pastor of Cornerstone United Methodist in Newnan, GA. He is survived by his wife, Virginia; five children; a step-daughter; and 10 grandchildren. John Alexander McMahon, Oct. 30, 2008, Durham, NC. He received an honorary doctor of law degree from Wake Forest in 1978. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and was a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve from 1946 until his retirement as a colonel in 1972. He was a professor of public law and government and assistant director of the Institute of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was chairman and professor in the Department of Health Administration at the Duke University Medical Center and executive-inresidence for the program in health administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He held many leadership positions in public service and health care and received awards and recognition for his service and achievements. George Allen Mebane, Nov. 14, 2008, Mebane, NC. He was a past member of the Babcock Graduate School of Management Board of Visitors. He was the retired chairman of UniFi Inc., which he co-founded in 1971. He previously served as president and CEO of Throwing Corp. of America and Universal

Textured Yarns. After retiring, he devoted his time to supporting education through the Mebane Charitable Foundation. He is survived by his wife, Marianne; two sons; a daughter; eight grandchildren; and two greatgrandchildren. Memorials may be made to A Storehouse for Jesus in Mocksville, NC; Christ School in Arden, NC; Columbia University c/o Brian David in New York; or Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Kathryn M. “Kitty” Morris, Jan. 15, 2009, Mocksville, NC. She was a longtime secretary and receptionist in the Wake Forest Alumni Office. After retiring, she served as a test monitor with the School of Law. She is survived by three children; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Ruth High Pettit, Nov. 13, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. She worked at Wake Forest for 20 years, retiring in 1986 as a library technician. She was preceded in death by her husband of 60 years, William. She is survived by three children, Malcolm, Ruth “Malene” P. Scheer (’69) and Marshall; three grandchildren, Angela, Nicholas and Brett; and a brother, Eugene High. Daisy C. Proctor, Dec. 30, 2009, Winston-Salem, NC. She served in the American Red Cross during World War II. She taught basketball, swimming and other sports. She was preceded in death by her husband, Richard C. Proctor (’42, MD ’45). She is survived by a son, Richard D. Proctor Jr. (MBA ’82); a daughter, Sallie P. Dowd; and two grandchildren.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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obit ua ry Charles F. ‘Chuck’ Longino Jr. Washington M. Wingate Professor of Sociology

F

or many years on freshman move-in day, Charles F. “Chuck” Longino would put on his mustard-yellow tee-shirt with “Ask me for help” printed on the front and help new students move into their residence hall rooms. Working alongside facilities-management staff, most freshmen and their parents probably had no idea that he was one of Wake Forest’s most distinguished professors. Longino, the Washington M. Wingate Professor of Sociology and director of the Reynolda Gerontology Program, died on Dec. 25, 2008, in Winston-Salem following a short illness. He was 70. He was a world-renowned expert on retirement migration who was largely responsible for discovering the field in the late 1970s. He was the author of the seminal book on the subject, “Retirement Migration in America,” published in 1995. But he will best be remembered at Wake Forest for his service to students, in and outside the classroom. “He gave from his heart in all the things that he did. It made him an exceptional teacher and a thoughtful mentor,” said Andrea Badillo (’96). “He was one of the finest teachers I have had at any level,” said another former student, Greg Holloway (’01). “He took a true interest in his students, far more than most people of his stature.” Longino came to Wake Forest in 1991 after spending fourteen years at the University of Miami, mostly in research positions. At Wake Forest, he was expected to teach undergraduates, a change he came to relish. “I’ve never taught in a place where I care as much about the students as I do here,” he said in a 1998 interview. Soon after he joined the faculty, he approached Connie Carson (MBA ’96), then director of Residence Life and Housing, about having faculty and staff join facilitiesmanagement employees and upperclass students in helping freshmen move into their residence halls. “Chuck had a joy for life that would just shine through as he met our new students and families,” said Carson, now vice president of student services at Furman University. “His enjoyment of students always seemed to push him to find ways to engage with them in less formal ways outside the classroom.” Longino also started the now-traditional midnight exam breakfast. Working with Aramark Dining Services,

62 wake forest magazine

Chuck Longino, with students in his first-year seminar last fall, was a well-known researcher who left his mark in the classroom as well.

he recruited administrators, other faculty members and staff to serve a late-night breakfast to students in the Reynolda Hall cafeteria one night during fall and spring semester exams. Although he was too ill to coordinate the most recent breakfast in December, his longtime assistant, Peggy Beckman, carried on in his honor. He was also a freshman advisor and often invited students to his home for dinner. “He loved teaching and he loved being at Wake Forest because the students were so good and so eager to learn,” said his wife, Loyce Longino. “He felt very strongly that people like himself who had endowed chairs needed to introduce students to education professionally and to really encourage moving beyond just their four-year degree. He really loved that mentoring part.” Kelly Nesbitt Shiflett (’94) said that Longino made a special effort to get to know his students. “His level of care for his students and his passion for teaching sociology made him one of my favorite professors,” she said. “For me, Dr. Longino epitomized the ‘constant and true’ part of our alma mater, and he and Loyce made me feel at home, both on campus and at their house,” said another former student, Greg Omland (’98). “He helped me to quickly adjust to living away from home, to navigate the rigors of Wake Forest, and to set myself up well for a strong career post-Wake Forest.” Longino was also professor of public health sciences at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. During the 1990s, he was associate director of the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging at the School of Medicine. He was a past president of the Gerontological Society of America, the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education and the Southern Gerontological Society, and past editor of the Journal of Gerontology.


In the 1970s, at the University of Kansas and then at the University of Miami, he embarked on the first migration studies using three decades of U.S. Census data. He discovered that retirement migration—the streams and counter-streams in which the elderly move after retirement—affected the flow of billions of dollars and had implications for families, health care providers and local governments. His findings were especially groundbreaking because it showed not only migration patterns to Sunbelt locations, but for the first time documented subsequent moves, often back to Northern states, triggered by declines in health or financial status. His studies regularly generated headlines not only in gerontology journals, but in the mainstream press as well. “Although Sunbelt migrants represent fewer than 5 percent of the elderly population, Chuck argued correctly that their geographic concentration highlighted the need to understand both the experience of aging in new environments and the triggers encouraging further moves—either back to an earlier residential location or toward adult children,” said Eleanor Palo Stoller, a research professor in the Department of Sociology. “Perhaps his greatest talent was his ability to communicate the implications of his empirical findings to multiple audiences—to other social scientists, to policy analysts and service providers, and to older people and their families.” Longino also brought his research into the classroom. He taught a freshman seminar on retirement migration last fall before becoming ill. He said he tried to make the subject more relevant to 17- and 18-year-olds by making it about something they could relate to.
“One thing we do is analyze their move to college using some of the same criteria I use for my research so they begin to see mobility in a broader perspective,” he said. A native of Mississippi, Longino graduated from Mississippi College and earned his master’s degree at Colorado University and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to his wife, Longino is also survived by two children, Laura and Charles III, and two grandchildren. His family is establishing a scholarship at Wake Forest in his name.

Sanford L. Steelman, Nov. 1, 2008, Hickory, NC. He established the Steelman Lecture Series at the School of Divinity in honor of his wife, Margaret. He was director of endocrinology for Merck & Co. for 30 years before retiring in 1986. Believing it was important for young people to hear from leading scholars in their field of study, he established lecture series at Wake Forest, the UNC School of Medicine, and at his alma mater, Lenior-Rhyne College. He is survived by two sons, Sanford and Brian, and four grandsons. Bobby E. Trexler, Nov. 28, 2008, Winston-Salem, NC. He was a retired Wake Forest maintenance technician with 22 years of service. He retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, serving during the Korean War, with 21 years of service. He was preceded in death by a son, Robert Eugene. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Evelyn; a daughter; two sons; and four grandchildren.

—Kerry M. King (’85)

A memorial service for Charles Longino will be held in Wait Chapel on March 17 at 3 p.m.

www.wfu.edu/alumni

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true

constant

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Looking Beyond a Paycheck By President Nathan O. Hatch

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he current economic turmoil is taking a toll on jobs and psyches on Wall Street and in other corridors of power. People who once felt invincible now feel vulnerable. They’re questioning whether the time and effort they’ve put into their careers will produce the returns they expected. Many of these people in their 20s and 30s graduated from America’s elite universities. Success has been a condition of life, but what about when success ends, even if temporarily? Have universities prepared graduates for the soul-searching that follows failure? I think we’re about to find that the answer is no. Too often, colleges and graduate programs have accepted outstanding students and, rather than help them develop as more complete individuals ready to step into a diverse, complicated, and challenging world, have emphasized measures of achievement such as salary or the prestige of employers. Until now, we haven’t seen the negative effects of this process. But now we’re left with the question: What happens when the rewards aren’t there? When the applause stops and the checks shrivel? The youngest people in our work force—those at the bottom of the ladder—are being forced to reassess what’s at their core. What are their values? Have they found the deeper meaning in what they’re doing? I suspect that many career choices are rooted in a paycheck and a craving for accolades and esteem, rather than a passion for a particular type of work. The good news is that students, like those at Wake Forest, are beginning to question this mind-set. They want to connect to something larger. They want to do good, and do well, as they lead an examined and purposeful life. College-age engagement in the presidential election and inauguration is unprecedented. And being on campus, I can feel the excitement that students express about larger issues such as a sustainable environment, the development of alternative energy, and the potential of micro-finance in the developing world. Universities must do more to capture students’ youthful excitement and help them turn it into a lifelong quest for discovering what motivates and challenges them—what gives them meaning and deeper purpose. To be clear, our efforts

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shouldn’t dictate values to students, but rather emphasize the importance of building a core of personal values and helping students discover how values can give meaning to their lives and careers—even in difficult times. We need curricular and extra-curricular courses that enable students to examine their own definitions of success, determine what is most important to them, and understand the forces at work in the contemporary world of business and the professions. At Harvard, psychologist Howard Gardner and others are teaching noncredit seminars for first-year students: Meaningful Work for a Meaningful Life. Universities should enhance career development programs to go beyond mere job placement, as important as that is. What students today need—and many yearn for—is more fundamental advice about choosing a profession. What are my gifts and talents and my passions and commitments? How do they square with a full spectrum of professional opportunities? And campus chaplains should be more active in helping students chart their professional path. For the past decade, the Lilly Endowment has given grants to more than 80 colleges and universities through the Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation. This initiative has led to dynamic programs and serious thinking and writing about the subject. Drawing on such resources, campus chaplains from a wide variety of religious traditions can challenge students to relate life and work. In 1841, the young Abraham Lincoln, doubting whether his life would amount to anything, confessed to a friend, “I would be more than willing to die, except that I have done nothing to make any human remember that I have lived.” All of us aspire to use our talents to do something for which others will remember that we have lived. In a time of economic tumult and professional uncertainty, we can give students no greater gift than to discover what their memorable contribution might be.

Nathan Hatch is president of Wake Forest. This essay appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on December 29, 2008.


“This is a place where students get to know each other, get to know you, get to know me. A place where faculty from different departments interact, exchange ideas, feel like a part of the same team. Where staff and administrators are as much a part of the campus life as the students and teachers in the classroom.”

Share your story … Why do you believe in Wake Forest? Send an e-mail to poovey@wfu.edu along with your name and class year.

President Nathan O. Hatch Excerpt from “Why I Believe in Wake Forest” www.wfu.edu/believe


Brought to Light: Long-hidden letters bring two Wake Forest professors together in an unexpected way. Page 20.