SUMMER 2016 Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices VIETNAM REVISITED p7 KAYAK CRUSADER p14 MAKING MISCHIEF p32 ISSUE IV 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu VOLUME CXIII SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN LAURENCE KESTERSON SUMMER 2016 YES, I WILL ATTEND GARNET WEEKEND OCT. 28–30 swarthmore.edu/garnetweekend JUSTICE Hungry for Change p20 in this issue 38 SOLDIER, SWATTIE, SON One Gave All Joe Selligman ’37 was the first American casualty of the Spanish Civil War. by Adam Hochschild MOMENT IN TIME Tears, joy, fireworks: Commencement sparked them all. Experience it for yourself at bit.ly/SwatCom16. Congrats to the Class of 2016! 26 28 32 FEATURES Planting Seeds Tristan Reader ’89 reintroduces the O’odham community to its traditional foods. by Laura Markowitz ’85 The Edible Journey Alumni at the delicious intersection of entrepreneurship and artistry. by Jonathan Riggs Gotcha! A tribute to some of the College’s memorable larks and pranks. by Matt Zencey ’79 2 DIALOGUE Editor’s Column Letters Community Voices Valerie Smith Rewind Julio Alicea ’13 Books Global Thinking Sa’ed Atshan ’06 9 COMMON GOOD Swarthmore Stories Learning Curve Elizabeth Coleman ’69 Liberal Arts Lives Keiko Itoh ’74 Caleb Ward ’07 72 SPOKEN WORD Don “Donny” Thomas WEB EXCLUSIVES BULLETIN.SWARTHMORE.EDU GRATEFUL GOODBYE Watch retiring professors Sharon Friedler, Cynthia Halpern, Frank Moscatelli, and Barry Schwartz look back—and ahead. AN EXALTATION OF LARKS Check out the pranks that made us laugh, even if they didn’t make our print piece. OUR HERO See what makes Sharples star Don “Donny” Thomas so special. YUMTUBE View John Lim ’16’s special installment of his web series Sharples Cookbook. ART OF THE MATTER 43 CLASS NOTES Alumni News and Events Marvel at a gallery of art by architectural design aficionado Kelsey Rico ’16. BON APPÉTIT Get cooking with a collection of Swarthmoreans’ favorite recipes! VIETNAM WAR Enrich your understanding of the conflict’s legacy with recommended reading from Karín Aguilar-San Juan ’84. Profiles Esther Ridpath Delaplaine ’44 Scott Young ’06 ON THE COVER Food photography by Laurence Kesterson SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 1 dialogue EDITOR’S COLUMN OUR TOAST TO YOU SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Editor Jonathan Riggs Managing Editor Carrie Compton Class Notes Editor Elizabeth Slocum Designer Phillip Stern ’84 Photographer Laurence Kesterson Administrative/Editorial Assistant Michelle Crumsho LAURENCE KESTERSON Editorial Assistants Aaron Jackson ’16 Aziz Anderson ’17 Editor Emerita Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 by JONATHAN RIGGS Editor NOT SO SWIMMINGLY I enjoyed reading Karin Colby’s “The Life Aquatic” (spring 2016) and was thinking about her positive approach to swimming, until I had a horrifying flashback: Swarthmore’s mandatory swimming test. Male students just swam a certain number of laps, but female students had to master many different strokes, swim underwater, dive from the low board, and jump from the high diving board. I managed to fake everything except that last jump. I had to petition the 2 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Rosenberg Rejoinder LETTERS DESPITE BEING HIDDEN behind a flying slice of sourdough, I spent our shoot—and production cycle—grinning. Half because I relish my fellow cooks in this kitchen, including new Class Notes Editor Elizabeth Slocum; half because I relish sharing your remarkable stories. Breaking—and throwing—bread with Swarthmorean world-changers and mischiefmakers is a joy. I hope it flavors every page. dean of women to graduate. Despite her annoyance at my viewpoint that Swarthmore should award its degrees based on academics, not athletics, and my astonishment at her statement that jumping would save me on a sinking ocean liner like the Titanic, she grudgingly allowed me to graduate. At that point, in my senior year, I’d been managing editor of The Phoenix and president of the Student Council, and was on the Student Judiciary Committee as well as in Honors. It was bizarre to fear not graduating because I was afraid to jump from the high board! Perhaps Ms. SUMMER 2016 Colby can explain what today’s exam involves. —ANN MOSELY LESCH ’66, Philadelphia, Pa. KC responds: “I’m so sorry, Ann! Happily, the test has undergone a few changes: Now students must swim 75 yards, climb out of the pool without assistance, jump in the deep end (no high dive), and tread water for two minutes. For those who can’t pass or opt out, we offer stress-free swimming lessons throughout the year. We want to teach water safety without scaring—or scarring— anyone!” Website: bulletin.swarthmore.edu facebook.com/SwarthmoreBulletin Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu Telephone: 610-328-8435 We welcome letters on subjects covered in the magazine. We reserve the right to edit letters for length, clarity, and style. Views expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the official views or policies of the College. Send letters and story ideas to bulletin@swarthmore.edu Send address changes to records@swarthmore.edu The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume CXIII, number IV, is published in October, January, April, and July by Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Printed with agri-based inks. Please recycle after reading. ©2016 Swarthmore College. Printed in USA. OVERHEARD ON OUR WEBSITE I’d like to respectfully take issue with the publication of “Medicine Man” (spring 2016). I recently completed medical school in Rochester, N.Y., and have witnessed patients taken advantage of by “alternative medicine.” (Let me be clear that I have no firsthand knowledge of Ethan Borg ’94’s practices or patients.) I have seen patients forgo proven, beneficial treatments in pursuit of therapies such as “energy medicine” described in the article, which have no evidence of benefit and can be expensive. All the while, their diseases remain unmanaged and damage accrues. Swarthmore should not promote “leaps of faith” when it comes to medicine and health. Although you are not physicians, I’d encourage you to heed Hippocrates and consider “first doing no harm.” People’s lives are on the line. —BENJAMIN MAZER ’10, New Haven, Conn. One of the great things about Swarthmore is its encouragement of dialogue and respectful openness to the ideas of all of its community members. There clearly is a large divide in Dr. Mazer’s mind between Eastern and Western ideas of health and health care. Nonetheless, there are many Swarthmore alumni who are practitioners of Chinese medicine and far more alumni who seek it out for their own personal supplementary care. I work hard every day, like all Swatties I know, trying to do good in this world. I am as passionate, concerned, and considerate about my work as I imagine he is about his. So thank you, Swarthmore College, for giving me and my work a moment—if it does nothing but increase the dialogue between East and West, then I have served my class well. —ETHAN BORG ’94, Rochester, N.Y. + READ full responses at bulletin.swarthmore.edu SOUTHPAW POWER “The Poetry of Pen and Ink” (winter 2016) fails to mention that the pleasures of a fountain pen are hard to enjoy for the left-handed, requiring constant vigilance to avoid smudging. However, languages other than left-to-right (e.g. Hebrew) offer retribution for this distinguished minority. —PAUL NESS ’72, Rochester, N.Y. + WRITE TO US: bulletin@swarthmore.edu GREEN THUMBS UP Always wonderful to see what Josh Coceano (“Adventures in the Arboretum,” spring 2016) creates in our gardens. We truly have a treasure in him! —JODY DOWNER, Media, Pa. David Randall ’93’s letter (“Repellent Rosenberg Read,” spring 2016) might have been more persuasive if he had responded to specific points raised by my brother and me in our op-ed in The New York Times (bit.ly/Meeropol) and in my interview with the Bulletin. The fact that my mother was never given a code name and that David Greenglass in his grand jury testimony explicitly denied her involvement in any espionage activity (corroborating what Ruth Greenglass told the grand jury) were not mentioned. Instead, he invoked Ronald Radosh, co-author of The Rosenberg File. In 1997, I debated Radosh’s collaborator, Joyce Milton ’67, at Swarthmore—the video is not great, but it can be seen on the Bulletin’s website. Even after close to 20 years, the incompetence (if not dishonesty) of the Radosh-Milton book is evident. Perhaps the most egregious failing of Mr. Randall’s letter is the assertion that my parents were traitors. Even if every word testified against them at the trial were true, they could not have been indicted for treason because the Soviet Union was an ally during World War II. In my opinion, the best, most recent analysis of the case is Walter Schneir’s Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case. Those interested in our campaign to exonerate our mother can visit rfc. org/ethel, where the petition to President Obama with supporting documentation is available. I agree with Mr. Randall about one thing: If you are interested in the issues in my parents’ case, you need to read more; if the fine article in the Bulletin succeeds in stimulating readers to do so, it will have done a great service. —MICHAEL MEEROPOL ’64, Putnam County, N.Y. CORRECTIONS & CONNECTIONS Two lines of print, two misspelled names in Christopher Densmore’s “Living Black History” (spring 2016): The names should be Ralph Bunche and Melville Herskovits. Incidentally, Herskovits’s daughter, Jean ’56, was my wonderful first history professor at Swarthmore in 1964. Bunche, according to some sources online, was not simply a lecturer but a co-director in 1936 of the Swarthmore Institute of Race Relations. —JOHN McDIARMID ’68, Falls Church, Va. Friends of a Feather “Sayed Dreams of Birds” (spring 2016) brought back many fond memories of hikes in the Crum Woods. Sayed Malawi ’18 is to be congratulated for leading the Bird Club and sharing his passion. I was disappointed, however, that no one mentioned the legacy of Janet and Tim Williams ’64, members of the biology department from 1976 until 2002. They touched the lives of hundreds of students with field trips all over the Atlantic Seaboard, delicious meals hosted at their home, and in countless other ways. —STEVE LAUBACH ’96, Madison, Wis. Epiphany? Have you ever had a Swarthmore “Aha!” moment inspired by a community member, classmate, campus location, professor, or something else entirely? The Communications Office would love to hear it: news@swarthmore.edu. SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 3 dialogue COMMUNITY VOICES PETER ARKLE NO STRANGERS HERE W HEN I WAS an together 10–12 people—faculty, staff, English professor at students, and local alumni—whose UCLA in the 1990s, paths wouldn’t ordinarily cross and I was introduced to invite them to engage in wide-ranga university-sponing conversation. Most guests describe sored program called being surprised by the invitation and Dinners for 12 Strangers. Established curious about who their “strangers” in 1968, this program was designed will be. to bring small groups of randomly At each dinner (so far there have selected students, faculty, and alumni been four), we strive to bring together together over a meal. I attended one of students who represent different these dinners and thorclass years, areas of acaoughly enjoyed the oppordemic interest, and geoby tunity to meet people and graphic regions; tenured gain a deeper sense of and nontenured facconnection within a large ulty from a range of acauniversity community. demic departments and Fast-forward to fall divisions; alumni from 2015, my first semester at Swarthmore. different generations; and staff from I was having a wonderful time meeting various areas of campus. So an athmembers of the community on and off letic coach, a sophomore engineering campus. As I got to know the College, student, a librarian, a psychology proI was surprised to hear that—even in fessor, a member of dining services, a setting as small as Swarthmore—we and an artist from the Class of 1961 still can feel disconnected from one might meet one another and six other another. It occurred to me that if the Swarthmoreans over a simple, healthy, Dinners for Strangers model could delicious meal and enjoy fascinating work on a campus with tens of thouconversation for a couple of hours. sands of students, it would probably These occasions are fun, and the work on our campus of 1,500 students, guests are remarkably candid with one as well. another, displaying curiosity, comLast November I began hosting our passion, and empathy. As we gather version, called Dinners with Strangers, around the table, I see the full potential at Courtney Smith House. We bring of our diverse community come to life. VALERIE SMITH President “As we gather around the table, I see the full potential of our diverse community come to life.” 4 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 Guests often admit that they were a little nervous about attending the dinners. Would they be able to sustain conversation with people they don’t know? So far that hasn’t been a problem. Somehow, finding oneself around a dinner table in a homey atmosphere leads people to relax and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts while enjoying others’, too. A few months ago I sent a message to the College community inviting staff, faculty, and students to let me know if they would like to either attend or host one of the dinners. We received a large number of enthusiastic responses, and I look forward to expanding the initiative next year. Other members of our community will host local dinners, and we encourage Swarthmoreans around the country and world to consider hosting these events, as well. Dinners with Strangers is designed to remind us that, even on the campus of a small residential college like Swarthmore, we don’t often make time to meet and share ideas with people with whom we don’t have an obvious connection. Several guests remarked that they enjoyed learning more about people they had seen for years but with whom they never had a substantive conversation. Now, when their paths cross on campus, they feel a deeper connection with each other. At its best, the Dinners with Strangers program shows us that, in the words of the poet William Butler Yeats, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.” —VALERIE SMITH is president of Swarthmore College. RYAN DEVOLL Strengthening our Swarthmorean bonds, one dinner at a time REWIND: A LESSON FOR LIFE Swarthmore taught me what a true teacher is— so I became one GROWING UP LATINO and working class in Bethlehem, Pa., I wondered why life always seemed so hard and uncertain. At home, I watched my parents go off to backbreaking jobs; at school, I couldn’t escape bigotry and low expectations. I will never forget my high school physics teacher making derogatory remarks about Latino students in my presence, as if I were invisible or in agreement. by At Swarthmore I majored in sociology and anthropology to ’13 better understand these experiences. In Sarah Willie-LeBreton’s “Intro to Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.,” I realized, much to my chagrin, I had internalized some of my physics teacher’s intolerance: In an essay, for example, I referred to “Hispanic opportunists” who participated in citywide looting during the 1992 Los Angeles race riots. In the illuminating conversations with Professor Willie-LeBreton that followed, I unpacked many of the problematic ideas and perspectives I had absorbed over the years. I went on to study social movements with renowned peace activist George Lakey and theories of oppression and resistance with the fiercely inspiring Nina Johnson. Unlike the experience with my physics teacher, I felt valued and empowered in these professors’ classrooms. They and others gave me not only the tools but also the love and confidence I needed to become the person I am today. Outside the classroom, I involved myself in many activist campaigns and worked with youth of color in Chester, Pa., as a tutor, mentor, and Chester Community Fellow. Seeing these young people confront similar JULIO ALICEA inequalities made it clear that I could make a real difference. After all, my thesis research revealed that youth, especially those underserved by society, are keen social critics who reap immeasurable benefits from having impactful, nonparental adults involved in their lives. This realization—affirmed by my own experience with mentors at Swarthmore—solidified my desire to become an educator and to work toward disrupting inequality through teaching and mentoring. That’s why I completed my master of arts in teaching at Brown University, where I learned to bridge progressive theory and practice. Today, I teach at a Title I charter school in Rhode Island, serving mainly students of color. In my classroom, I challenge students to be critical thinkers while also affirming their cultural backgrounds. I want my students to see that their perspectives matter, even if they aren’t always represented or valued in the dominant discourse. As a teacher of color, I also share my experience and how it continues to influence me as I navigate different professional contexts. In keeping with my core values fortified at Swarthmore, I am constantly searching for ways to disrupt inequality in other facets of my students’ lives. Accordingly, I was thrilled to be chosen as a 2016 fellow for the Rhode Island chapter of the New Leaders Council (NLC), a national organization that “recruits, trains, and promotes the next generation of progressive leaders.” As a fellow, I will complete a rigorous five-month training program and capstone project. I hope to acquire new skills from NLC that will extend my influence on the state’s educational landscape. When working with youth, whether in or out of the classroom, one adage always holds true: They won’t care what you know until they know that you care. Knowing this, we should all bring warmth and empathy into every interaction with young people; as was the case with my professors and me, the result will be a mutual trust that helps to unlock their full potential. SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 5 dialogue AND, OH, MY HEART GOES OUT by Nathalie Anderson EARLY in Christine Poreba ’97’s moving and compelling book, Rough Knowledge (Anhinga Press), her poem “Silent Elegy” recounts how a photographer, bereaved, purposely creates “small accidents” through his art: “a pitcher crashing to the floor in slow motion, / its contents pouring out over and over.” This image eloquently recalls the process Freud called “fort/da”—basically “gone, then there”—through which, he posited, children manage the fear of a mother’s absence by throwing their toys out of sight. Poreba’s book works in just this way. It continually anticipates loss, and—in recognizing its possibility—continually defers it, manages it, sets it gingerly to one side: A model airplane flies “into the light of things that were / about to end”; a woman soon to be married dreams “a world / which one of us / will be first to leave”; a visitor to an exhibition of miniature rooms wonders, “Is this what the world will look like when we’re gone?” This pattern of deferred or managed trauma is particularly clear in poems that circle a fear of flight. First, a butterfly strikes a windshield “with the force / of a harsh current of sky.” Then a woman dreams of flying, “a simple breaststroke / in the air,” and flies her model plane: “If only other things were this easy to let go.” But a poem about the rituals we deploy to manage risks, “tiny as the chances of being a passenger / in flames,” ends with a crash, and subsequent poems imagine further dangers, culminating in an actual air disaster, the passengers “not alive when I awoke,” “and, oh, my heart goes out.” That’s Poreba’s last line, and the whole book stands behind it, giving it the full heft of true concern. NATHALIE ANDERSON is director of creative writing as well as the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Literature. EDITOR Q&A PEACEMAKER: KARÍN AGUILAR-SAN JUAN ’84 In 2006, Karín Aguilar-San Juan ’84 met Frank Joyce, a U.S. peace activist who risked the charge of treason to travel to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to practice person-to-person diplomacy. The two edited The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (Just World Books), which sees past activism echoing into the future. What inspired you? We asked activists to return to Vietnam to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords. The ones who did—the “Hanoi Nine”—wrote chapters. The 10th is by Myra MacPherson, who went on a trip of her own, hosted by five ex-combat U.S. veterans who had each moved to Vietnam as their way of doing reparations. What was surprising? Four of our authors— Rennie Davis, Jay Craven, Doug Hostetter, and Becca Wilson—were instrumental in the People’s Peace Treaty, which many don’t know about. In 1970, the National Student Congress was frustrated by how slowly the Paris peace talks were proceeding, so they wrote their own treaty, which ended up being signed by high-profile politicians and figures. It was an incredible example of how, when there’s no map, there’s still a way. How were you affected as a professor? Students in my course read this book and meet with peace activists like a Hmong spoken-word artist, a Cambodian educator, and a Vietnamese intellectual, who open their hearts about how this war, for them, is not an intellectual enterprise— it is their lives, full of SOPHIA HANTZES BOOK REVIEW broken memories, silences, and pain. What’s the takeaway? Getting people beyond the Forrest Gump fantasy to put intergenerational energy into remembering that past. Our book is a personal view of the actual choic- es made during a confusing, difficult, scary time. Mistakes got made, and some people have never recovered. + SEE: Karín Aguilar- San Juan ’84’s recommended reading: bulletin.swarthmore.edu HOT TYPE: NEW BOOKS BY SWARTHMORE GRADUATES Teresa Nicholas ’76 Willie University Press of Mississippi 6 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 In this sensitively drawn, impeccably researched bio, fellow Mississippian Nicholas reclaims the legacy of writer’s writer and Southern icon Willie Morris. Rising to national fame as the youngest-ever helmer of Harper’s Magazine in 1967, the brilliant, demon-battling Morris wrote 23 books (including My Dog Skip) and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. “For me, personally, he was a key figure,” Nicholas says. “He encouraged me to ‘get a good liberal arts education’ before embarking on any writing career. It’s because of Willie that I applied to Swarthmore.” Carl Abbott ’66 Imagined Frontiers University of Oklahoma Press Exploring the intersection of Western history, urban planning, and science fiction, Abbott digs into American artists’ long fascination with life on the edge, whether that’s the suburban New Jersey of Tony Soprano or the sagebrush-and-outerspace aesthetic of Serenity. Cutting across genres to blend history, social science, and art, Abbott analyzes how “frontiers, finally, are places of possibility for the invention of new institutions or the reinventions of self ”—in other words: the ways Americans think about and define themselves, their world, and their future. John Potash ’87 Drugs as Weapons Against Us Trine Day Subtitling his book “The CIA’s Murderous Targeting of SDS, Panthers, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, and Other Activists,” Potash argues that government-sanctioned drug-trafficking oligarchs promote their product—and ultimately silence dissent—by hooking musicians and leftist leaders. A longtime addictions counselor who drew on more than two decades of research to write Drugs as Weapons Against Us, Potash says his rhetoric is provocative in the name of activism. “I’m hoping my sources create a healthier debate over these issues,” he writes. Lauren Belfer ’75 And After the Fire Harper What if a lost cantata—dizzyingly beautiful, dauntingly inflammatory—by Johann Sebastian Bach bound two women across time? Epic yet intimate, And After the Fire connects the thoughts and actions, loves and hates, of 18th-century Enlightenment Berlin to modern-day New York City. What originally seemed like two stories, best-selling author Belfer discovered, was actually one: “urgently relevant to today’s concerns, told through the prism of a problematic artistic masterpiece and the individuals who must try to grasp its history, and their own.” SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 7 common good dialogue SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER Sa’ed Atshan ’06 balances scholarship and peace activism AS A STUDENT at Swarthmore Sa’ed Atshan ’06 felt torn between two worlds. Atshan came to campus from the Palestinian territories, where he grew up a “minority within a minority within a minority.” An Arab Quaker, who attended the Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank, he also came out of the closet during his undergraduate years. His two worlds were reflected in his aid at Swarthmore: the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship for minority students interested in becoming professors; and the Eugene M. Lang Opportunity Scholarship, aimed at students who will influence the world at the grass-roots level. “I was always torn between this desire to be a researcher, a scholar, a teacher, but also this calling to become a practitioner, someone who works within communities,” says Atshan, who is now a visiting assistant professor in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. After graduation, Atshan’s search for resolution to that tension between scholarship and activism led him to Harvard. There, he earned a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School and then a Ph.D. in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies. “Teaching courses on some of the most important issues of our time and encouraging students to engage, to put their ideas into practice, has been a beautiful way to connect those two worlds,” he says. Atshan’s most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip (see “Trip of a Lifetime,” Page 15), but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism. As a graduate student at 8 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year. He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, among other leading organizations. As a teacher at Harvard, Brown, and Tufts he explored hot-button issues in his courses, which included “Gender, Sexuality, and Human Rights in the Middle East” and “The Arab Spring and Nonviolent Strategic Action.” “It is essential to talk about Israel/ Palestine, considering that Israel is the world’s largest recipient of U.S. aid,” says Atshan. “I believe it’s my responsibility to help students discover the full range of perspectives on issues that relate to the conflict. My role is to ensure that they are literate and aware of diverse viewpoints, planting the seeds for a lifelong intellectual and ethical pursuit of knowledge.” One goal of Atshan’s research is to provide a counternarrative to the stereotype that the Middle East is devoid of nonviolent movements or philosophies. Atshan himself embodies that supposed contradiction, but he finds his Palestinian and Quaker identities deeply compatible. LAURENCE KESTERSON by Michael Agresta SA’ED ATSHAN ’06 Professor “Being born into so much violence, and having experienced violence myself, I am deeply committed to pacifism,” he says. “The Quaker world allows me to be part of a community that shares those values; that’s part of a long history of faith-based social justice activism.” Undergirding his teaching is a bedrock belief, rooted in his own bridging of worlds and culture, that peace is possible. “I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation,” says Atshan. “I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime.” ON THE WEB THROUGH THE YEARS In a frosh-to-senior video, Stephanie Kestelman ’16 traces her journey. + WATCH bulletin.swarthmore.edu PRIORITIES President Valerie Smith shares her vision for the College’s future. + PLAN bit.ly/SmithVision GREEN DREAMERS Five students’ Indonesian anti-pollution proposal won the 2016 Innovation Marketplace Challenge. + IMPROVE bit.ly/SwatRideShare BETWEEN THE NOTES Multidisciplinary Swarthmoreans add context to the opera Dido and Aeneas. + WATCH bit.ly/SwatOpera “Being born into so much violence, and having experienced violence myself, I am deeply committed to pacifism.” DEBATE OF THE CENTURY Professor Mark Kuperberg and Kevin Hassett ’84 tackle economic inequality. + LISTEN bit.ly/EconDebate LAURENCE KESTERSON GLOBAL THINKING BY DESIGN The Art of Choosing a Major by Carol Brévart-Demm BRIGHT AND AIRY, Beardsley Hall provides creative space for art students, including Kelsey Rico ’16, the department’s second studio artist to graduate with a special major in architectural design. Her small studio is filled with lamps made from pieces of finely cut wood, a walnut-slab tabletop, and a rubber mold she made to create plaster wall art. Breathtaking pictures of buildings cling to the walls. Her art is inspiring, but the path she’s crafted to get here may be more so. + FIND OUT WHY: bulletin.swarthmore.edu SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 9 common good Words of Wisdom Honorees Leo Braudy ’63, F. Stuart “Terry” Chapin III ’66, and Carol Padden. in seeking solutions, no matter how big or small, rather than assuming that someone else will fix the problems.” “To think about language expansively and creatively is to understand that it can take different forms, spoken and signed, whistled and clicked,” Padden concluded. “In their breathless diversity, not one language is identical to the other, but in all of them we discover the breathtaking possibilities of diversity. I hope we never lose sight of this important fact about the world.” + EXPERIENCE Commencement and view video of speeches: bit.ly/SwatCom16 + SUBMIT your picks for 2017 honorary degrees: news@swarthmore.edu LAURENCE KESTERSON At Swarthmore’s 144th Commencement May 29, President Valerie Smith awarded honorary degrees to film critic and cultural historian Leo Braudy ’63, ecosystem ecologist F. Stuart “Terry” Chapin III ’66, and world-renowned scholar and advocate for deaf communities Carol Padden. After Smith praised them—calling Braudy “a polymath’s polymath,” thanking Chapin for his “example” and “prophetic voice,” and describing Padden as a “remarkable” global leader—the three gave stirring speeches. “You’ve learned here an impressive armory of methods and approaches, attitudes and perspectives,” Braudy told attendees. “But don’t forget that you learned it in a community of others, each with a personal take on everything.” “I ask each of you to take this opportunity to make it your responsibility to shape the future of our planet,” Chapin said. “Each of us must take an active role SCHOLARLY ADVICE PARENTAL GUIDANCE Four times a year, 10 or so men in Stamford, Conn., gather in one another’s homes for Fathers First, a support group celebrating the (sometimes messy) blessing that is fatherhood. Rabbi David Hordiner ’95, director of Gan Yeladim Early Childhood Center and the father of six—ages 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, and 1—leads the discussion and ties it back to Jewish teachings— mindful of when to step in with advice and wisdom, but always willing to share his own struggles. “When it comes to my family, I admit I’m not an expert, and I think the fathers appreciate that. I’m learning, too,” he says. “Giving them a place to say, ‘This is something that’s hard at my house,’ and to be able to hear other dads say, ‘Me too,’ has really struck a chord.” As a philosophy major at Swarthmore, Hordiner was motivated by a love of learning, growth, and truth, three things he brings to the Fathers First forum—and to his role as a dad. “We’re trying to learn the best methods, philosophies, and ways of thinking and how they impact our practice as parents,” he says. “We’re all growing together. That’s the true success of the group.” —ELIZABETH SLOCUM “My relationship with Professor Rubin allowed me to achieve so much in my life. I’m a better man because of him,” says Maurice Foley ’82, a Rubin Scholar founder and mentor. Mentors Matter F “We’re all growing together,” explains Rabbi David Hordiner ’95, with wife Nechama and their six kids. “When it comes to my family, I admit I’m not an expert, and I think the fathers appreciate that. I’m learning, too.” —Rabbi David Hordiner ’95 10 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 OR THE CLASS of 2020, you might think that the hard part— getting into college—is behind them. But for students from disadvantaged backgrounds— first-generation college attendees, underrepresented minorities, low-income pupils, or children of immigrants—navigating Swarthmore and everything after can be overwhelming. Established in 2004, the Richard Rubin Scholar Mentoring Program gives disadvantaged students the tools and support they need. It was named to honor the professor whose friendship and guidance changed countless lives, like Maurice Foley ’82’s. Coming from an underperforming public high school and one of a small number of African-American students on campus, Foley struggled at Swarthmore—even receiving a suspension—until he took a course with Rubin, a political science and public policy professor who asked him about his aspirations and devoted time to him. Hearing that Foley was interested in tax law, Rubin put him in contact with tax attorneys and mapped Foley’s path to success—everything from improving his public speaking skills to taking an LSAT prep course. “He did all the little things that I needed assistance with,” says Foley, now a federal tax judge and a mentor himself. In the more than 30 years since, Rubin has remained close with Foley and a number of alumni, including Gordon Govens ’85, Keith Reeves ’88, and Philip Weiser ’90. Reflecting on their experience, the group wanted to honor Rubin and his legacy of kindness and community building. “We decided to design a program that duplicated what Professor Rubin did for us,” says Foley. For alumni of the Rubin Scholars program, like Jaky Joseph ’06 and Danielle Toaltoan ’07, their mentorship experience continues to play a major role in their lives. Both Joseph and Toaltoan asked their mentor, Foley, to officiate their weddings. “The Rubin program is about providing the support that many students might get from other places in their lives, especially if they come from a more privileged background,” says Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Diane Anderson, a member of the program steering committee and mentor to many Rubin Scholars. “As it expands, we hope it can provide more resources for students who struggle with the ‘hidden costs’ of a college education, whether that’s help paying for books or finding a job.” There are currently 134 Rubin Scholars on campus. Dean of FirstYear Students Karen Henry, who oversees the program, is excited to see more applicants, but she worries about the current funding limitations. For example, if every Rubin Scholar applies for the $375/week summer internship stipend, there are not enough resources for them all. To give the Rubin Scholars program the support it needs, Rubin and his supporters have offered $500,000 in matching funds to expand the program’s endowment by $1 million. “I think that most Swatties—and most people who are connected to our institution—are very committed to student success,” says Henry. “So you want them to have everything at their disposal to thrive. Having a Rubin Scholars mentor to support them is a key component of that.” —AMANDA WHITBRED SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 11 common good Earned It “Unfortunately, the only size we have left in the club jacket is extra large. Alexander Hamilton took the last medium.” LAURENCE KESTERSON FILM NOIR LIBRARIANS 12 Inn Style CARA EHLENFELDT ’16 The faces to be added to U.S. currency before 2020 should be familiar to our community. They include Lucretia Mott, a founder of Swarthmore College, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Her portrait, papers, and memorabilia are in Friends Historical Library (FHL), and her collected sermons and speeches will be published next year. Another is Alice Paul, Class of 1905, a legendary women’s rights activist and pioneer in furthering social justice through nonviolent resistance. In April, President Barack Obama designated the building that, since 1929, has housed the National Woman’s Party—founded by Paul—as the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. Harriet Tubman had several Quaker associations, including longtime friend Emily Howland, whose papers are at FHL. The library also has significant letters from Susan B. Anthony, a Quaker. At one point, Elizabeth Cady Stanton claimed membership in the New York Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, and many Friends and Quaker organizations worked with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Finally, Sojourner Truth once said she would have become a Quaker, except that, at the time, Quakers did not sing. Happily, a reminder of these world-changers’ shared song of equality will soon only be as far away as your wallet. —CHRISTOPHER DENSMORE Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 It begins with an urgent request for information: A stranger up against a deadline walks into an office with a question. But with a little digging, ulterior motives shine through; the answer found is not always the answer sought. Reference librarianship is a shadowy art—part hardboiled experience, part blind luck. These portraits by College photographer Laurence Kesterson of Swarthmore’s reference librarians playfully disrupt wellworn stereotypes of hard-nosed “shhh!”-ers. They ask,“What if we see librarians as key agents in an unfolding story of danger, intrigue, and mystery?” You know how to ask us for help, don’t you, Swarthmore? You just come into the library and tell us what you want to know. —PAM HARRIS + KISS ME DEADLY … or at least view the gallery of images at bulletin.swarthmore.edu IN MAY, the Inn at Swarthmore opened for business. Whether you’re there for the night, a meal at the Broad Table Tavern, or a quick visit to the Campus & Community Store, check out the inn’s 130-plus artworks by Swarthmore College students and alumni. “These paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and mixed-media works represent the high caliber of work created in the department of art,” says Randall Exon, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor of Studio Art. “The selected works will provide a unique experience and highlight Swarthmore’s seasoned as well as emerging artists.” Come experience the inn’s hospitality—and art—for yourself! Clockwise from top: Seen by Nazanin Moghbeli ’95; The Chair by Eberhard Froehlich ’86; Magnolia Vessel by Alex Anderson ’13 + LEARN MORE: bit.ly/SwatInn COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF EXTRA CLASSY Lifelong Learning at Swarthmore, now in its 15th year, is expanding. Here are the offerings for the fall: PHILADELPHIA “Seven Great Paintings,” taught by Michael Cothren, Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities, will meet Mondays, 6:30–9 p.m., Sept. 12–Nov. 7 (except Oct. 10), with two Sunday afternoon sessions at local museums. SWARTHMORE “Education in America,” taught by Mark Kuperberg, professor of economics, will meet Tuesdays, 7–9:30 p.m., Sept. 13– Nov. 8 (except Oct. 11). NEW YORK CITY “Bach,” taught by Michael Marissen, Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music, will meet Mondays, 6:45–9:15 p.m., Oct. 3–Nov. 21. BOSTON “A Century of American Short Stories,” taught by Philip Weinstein, Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of Literature, will meet Tuesdays, 6:45–9:15 p.m., Sept. 13–27 and Oct. 25–Nov. 22. + TO LEARN MORE OR ENROLL: bit.ly/SwatLL THANKS TO our readers for your generous helpings of Swarthmorean scrumptiousness! Your recipes were tasty, your stories savory, and your photos the icing on the cake. We’ve served up some of your favorites at bulletin.swarthmore.edu— why not whip one up to help us better connect with our community, one dish at a time? Happy eating and happy reading! —MICHELLE CRUMSHO SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 13 common good + DEBUT ISSUE of new e-zine VISIBILITY, published by the Intercultural Center and helmed by Jasmine Rashid ’18: bit.ly/SwatZine KAYAKING FOR JUSTICE “I’M AUTHORIZED to shoot you,” the gun-toting man told Deborah Walters ’73 when she unintentionally kayaked into a security zone near Sandy Hook, N.J. It required some negotiation before he escorted the retired neuroscience professor ashore. The incident occurred partway through a 2014–16 extended fundraising trip in which Walters kayaked 2,500 miles from Maine to Florida with a boatlift to Guatemala. She ultimately raised $425,000 for Safe Passage, a Rotary International-sponsored organization that helps to feed, educate, and provide health care for Guatemala City garbage-dump-dwelling families. Her journey was inspired by the persistence of these guajeros, or recyclers, who come from all over the country to scavenge. 14 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 Activist Deborah Walters ’73 is the self-described “grandmother who paddled from Maine to Guatemala for the kids of the garbage dump.” Growing up a few miles from the Appalachian Trail in rural Virginia, Walters was Quaker-schooled at Swarthmore and Guilford before earning a Ph.D. at England’s Birmingham University. She finished her academic career as provost at Unity College in Maine. In November 2015, Walters received recognition for her work in Guatemala as one of six Rotary Women of Action at a United Nations conference. She is happy to report parallel success at Safe Passage—as Guatemalans gradually replace Americans on the board, literacy and sustainable job levels have soared for the guajeros. —ELIZABETH VOGDES Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor. Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience. “They were rigorous, emotionally draining days filled with phenomenal meetings,” says Omri Gal ’19, whose parents are Israelis from Jerusalem. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve been to Israel before this, but this was something else entirely: an all-access, insider’s trip.” The group’s itinerary swept the region, with stops in Israel and the West Bank: Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Negev, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron. On each day the travelers spoke with about 10 of the area’s most influential peace activists, including Israeli and Palestinian Swarthmore alumni, during meetings that began at 8 a.m. and typically ended around 10 p.m. “We really got to see every single aspect of the region’s struggles from the conflict zones, which as a tourist, you’d never be able to do,” says Gal. “The vast majority of students came away from the experience with an incredible amount of hope for the situation, because the people we met were so full of strength and resilience.” “One of the inspirations for this trip was to help students better think about how they can be engaged globally,” says Atshan, “and how they can contribute to the amelioration of suffering and creating a more peaceful and nonviolent world.” Professor Atshan’s course on the Israel-Palestine conflict is slated again for fall 2016, but funding for another trip has yet to be secured. —CARRIE COMPTON 1 2 3 OMRI GAL ’19 Have you ever wondered how the College creates its annual budget, makes financial aid decisions, manages its endowment, or determines how much interest from the endowment to apply to current annual spending? To answer these questions and more, Greg Brown, vice president for finance and administration, led three classes on the topic of “Budget Essentials” for students, staff, and faculty earlier this year. Featuring speakers like Chief Investment Officer Mark Amstutz, Director of Financial Aid Varo Duffins, and Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Karl Clauss, the class explored some of the financial realities currently facing the College. For example, over the past two decades the average gap between the cost of a Swarthmore education and what families pay has grown from about $15,000 to about $40,000 per student per year. For a detailed account of the information presented in the Budget Essentials class, including information on the College’s building plans and its initiatives to reach low-income and first-generation students, visit bulletin. swarthmore.edu. —RANDALL FRAME KILLIAN MCGINNIS ’19 Fiscal Fitness TRIP OF A LIFETIME 4 1. Rainbow near Jericho. 2. Palestinian potter. 3. Lunch in Hebron. 4. Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount, Jerusalem. SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 15 common good LEARNING CURVE MEN’S LACROSSE The team made its first postseason placement in the Centenniel Conference by routing Haverford. Cam Marsh ’18 finished second in the conference with 54 points, becoming the fourth All-Centennial Conference First Team member in program history. + MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu WOMEN’S LACROSSE Lizzie Kölln ’16 recorded the 100th goal of her career in a 16-5 win over Bryn Mawr. MEN’S TRACK & FIELD The team tied for fourth at the Centennial Conference Championships with two silver- and two bronze-medal performances. Katie Jo McMenamin ’16 wins the 1,500-meter national championship—and makes history. Speed Queen by Mark Anskis and Roy Greim ’14 When Katie Jo McMenamin ’16 won the 1,500-meter run and placed second in the 5,000-meter run at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships May 28, she became our first NCAA national champion in track and field and the first Swarthmore woman to win an NCAA title of any kind. (The title also marks Swarthmore’s first NCAA national championship since the 1990 men’s tennis team won the crown.) “It still hasn’t really sunk in that I won or that it’s all over, but I can’t imagine a better way to end my Swarthmore running career,” says McMenamin, a native of Lafayette, Colo., who finishes her career as a three-time All-American. This milestone came as part of a whirlwind day for McMenamin. In a 24-hour span, she won a national championship, cel- 16 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 ebrated her 22nd birthday, and traveled more than 1,000 miles back to Swarthmore from Iowa to receive her engineering degree at Commencement. Her track triumph occurred at Wartburg College, where McMenamin won the 1,500-meter run with a blistering time of 4:24.33—a program, Centennial Conference, and stadium record. Just a few hours later, she placed second in the 5,000-meter run, finishing with a time of 16:44.02. Following that run, the race back to campus for Commencement was on. McMenamin and Peter Carroll, head track and field coach, drove five hours to Chicago, stayed at a hotel, and caught a 5:40 a.m. flight back to Philadelphia. Ultimately, McMenamin credits the Swarthmore community—particularly her fellow athletes—for helping her reach her goal. “I’ve had a lot of teammates to look up to over the past four years and am honored just to have been able to represent our program at the highest level,” she says. “It’s really a team more than an individual accomplishment, and that’s what makes it so meaningful.” SOFTBALL Shortstop Marit Vike ’19 was named All-Centennial Conference and set a program record with 26 stolen bases. GOLF Rookie of the Year Vamsi Damerla ’19 tied for second overall at the Centennial Conference Championship. WOMEN’S TENNIS The team qualified for the Centennial Conference tournament for the sixth time in seven seasons. MEN’S TENNIS The team defeated nationally ranked Johns Hopkins and Mary Washington for the first time in nearly a decade. AND I WANT TO START AGAIN Elizabeth Coleman ’69 finds renewal in art and activism by Elizabeth Redden ’05 IN ELIZABETH COLEMAN ’69’s poem “And I Want to Start Again,” the speaker has left her job. It took moxie to walk away, a colleague says. How I love that word, born of a soft drink. But it wasn’t so much moxie talking as a brush with cancer. A classical guitarist, watercolorist, and lawyer, in addition to poet, Coleman worked as a legal aid attorney and consumer law specialist before entering private practice in Atlanta, where she and her husband raised two children. Upon returning to her hometown of New York City, Coleman served as civil rights director for the AntiDefamation League and executive director of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association until 2005. “After my illness, I felt compelled to figure out what I wanted to do with my remaining time on the planet,” says Coleman, who was successfully treated for endometrial cancer four years earlier. “I ended up falling in love with poetry. Having studied it locally for several years, I received an M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012.” Coleman has written five books of poetry, including Pythagore, Amoureux—Pythagoras in Love, a French translation of Lee Slonimsky’s sonnet collection. All of Coleman’s books feature her watercolors on the covers, and her office is zoned around her passions: “I have my computer on my desk, an art table, the area where I play guitar, and the couch where I read, write, and think.” In addition, Coleman teaches meditation and runs a small family foundation focused on addressing climate change. “I’ve always looked around the corner to see what I want to do,” she says, “but now I think what I’m doing will keep me challenged and growing for the duration.” “I ended up falling in love with poetry.” SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 17 common good LIBERAL ARTS LIVES KEIKO ITOH ’74 SHANE LIN “Writing is something I love doing,” says Keiko Itoh ’74, “but getting a sentence right requires thought and effort.” LIBERAL ARTS LIVES HER SHANGHAI She penned the novel of a lifetime—her mother’s by Jonathan Riggs 18 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 Swarthmore gave Keiko Itoh ’74 an education in more ways than one. “There I was, this sheltered Japanese student from a convent school suddenly surrounded by all these incredibly socially aware, politically active, very engaged people,” she remembers with a laugh. “It was intimidating but wonderful.” Initially, Itoh pursued a career at the United Nations in New York and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. But her inquisitiveness led her to research and write about her family’s unusually international background. “When I was little, my mother, a Londonraised Japanese woman, used to talk of her time living in China with great fondness. As I grew up and studied history, I realized she had lived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II,” Itoh says. “And yet she always made that time sound so rosy—I was so curious, I had to learn more.” Itoh’s exhaustive research has yielded two books: her doctoral dissertation published in 2001, The Japanese Community in Pre-War Britain: From Integration to Disintegration, and her recently published fiction debut, My Shanghai, 1942–1946. Inspired by her mother’s story, the novel traces the journey of Eiko Kishimoto, a London-educated Japanese newlywed in Shanghai whose courage, compassion, and cultural loyalties are tested by the horrors of war. “That question has always interested me: What happens to people with multicultural identities and affinities when countries you love are at war with each other?” she says. “That was something I was trying to figure out.” As she begins her research for a sequel— or another project in the same vein—Itoh remains endlessly inspired by the brave, creative ways women around the world make their way, whether it’s her mother’s journey, her daughters’, or her own. “The globe is much smaller now,” she says, “but the power of our stories of coming of age remain universal.” LAURENCE KESTERSON Author “My Swarthmore experience helped my relationship to academics become one of genuine play and adventure,” says Caleb Ward ’07. ETHICAL EPIPHANY Disruption helped him discover himself by Jonathan Riggs WITH EVERYTHING Caleb Ward ’07 studied at Swarthmore, from improvisational jazz to political theory, he sought to better understand why moments of disruption matter so much. In fact, he changed his own life, postgraduation, when he disrupted his nonprofit career path to book a shoestring six-month trip through Asia. “I returned thinking about moments of encounter in which we make moral decisions, and how those moments can be so uncertain and slippery,” he says. “I realized I wanted to study ethics in moments of encounter—not just overarching questions of responsibility and justice, but also the concrete challenges of responding to another person.” Today a third-year doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University in New York, Ward researches a variety of ethical concerns, including issues of sexual consent. He’s also become an internationally recognized figure in the growing field of food ethics, co-editing Global Food, Global Justice: Essays on Eating Under Globalization and The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics, to which he contributed a chapter reframing the ethics of eating as a human organism. “It’s fascinating—as something humans have in common with all animals, food is this fundamental encounter around which we’ve spun a web,” he says. “We’ve woven food into our lives so thoroughly that it defines cultural, religious, and even gender identities; it’s right in the middle, too, of how we think about health and the relationship between body and mind.” As he continues his work—and dissertation—Ward is weighing the possibility of additional research in Germany and India, but he has a goal much closer to home first. “I’m new at teaching, so I’m working hard to become as creative as I can,” he says. “Besides, in terms of what I want to do philosophically, the classroom is the perfect place for disruption and moments of unexpected encounter.” CALEB WARD ’07 Ethicist SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 19 HUNGRY FOR CHANGE LAURENCE KESTERSON O 20 VER THE PAST decade, the conversation about the politics of our food system has quickly risen from a simmer to a steady boil. Studies of the American industrialized food complex—which relies heavily on chemical processing and refining of foods to enhance flavor or shelf life by loading food with sugar, salt, and artificial ingredients—have revealed damning consumer health implications linked to a range of ailments, including obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Our national eating habits began to change in the late 1950s and ’60s, just as many American households transitioned from single to double incomes. Slowly, home cooking was sliced from Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 daily routines, leading to many families’ reliance on affordable, expedient options offered by fast-food chains. In the five decades since, the manufacture of fast food has taken a grotesque turn. As a way to keep costs down and cravings high, the corporations cooking for Americans today rely far more on fat, salt, and sugar than most home-cooked recipes. Agricultural practices have suffered, too. According to food author and activist Michael Pollan, the fastfood giants’ demand for flawless french fries, for example, has led potato farmers to rely on a toxic pesticide so potent that, once harvested, the potatoes require six weeks’ rest to expel their noxious gas. Now, as food consumers become savvier than ever about food systems and Food justice warriors fight to make fresh food available to all by Carrie Compton the many inequalities therein, the food justice movement is heating up, and Swarthmoreans involved in outreach, education, entrepreneurship, and policy are all helping to stir the pot. HOT-BUTTON LUNCH In 2002, Jerusha Klemperer ’96 was a New York-based actor when a friend gave her a copy of Fast Food Nation, which examines the global effects of the United States’s fast-food giants. After reading it, she “became obsessed with the food system” and landed a job with Slow Food USA, a nonprofit that connects eaters with the sources of their food. A few years in, she was assigned to research the Child Nutrition Act, which was up for congressional reauthorization, and met a cohort of activists working to improve SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 21 LAURENCE KESTERSON processed fast foods often become the lifelong staples of many in underserved neighborhoods. The implications of this paradigm are grim: One in three children is on track to develop diabetes. In communities of color, the number jumps to one in two; by 2030, the eventual diet-related illnesses of today’s children will cost our nation more than $1 trillion a year in medical costs and lost productivity. “At this exact moment, we’re seeing how many supply-chain things are changing because of consumer demands, like antibiotic-free chicken, cage-free eggs, and GMO labeling,” says Jerusha Klemperer ’96, co-founder of FoodCorps. “I never thought we’d get to this point. It’s exciting.” school lunches. In 2010, she and five others—including some from that child nutrition cohort—started FoodCorps, which trains emerging leaders to connect kids to healthy food in school. FoodCorps is an AmeriCorps grantee that works in 17 states and Washington, D.C., to partner service members with underserved schools where 50 to 70 percent of the student body receives free or reduced-priced lunch. Klemperer, the communications director of the nonprofit, says their work focuses on underprivileged children, a key demographic that is most threatened by systematic food inequities. “School lunch is the main source of many children’s daily calories, so if we’re going to give kids meals, they should be the best possible calories we can give them,” says Klemperer, noting that vulnerable populations in hospitals and prisons are also widely being fed some of the most highly processed foods our system has to offer. 22 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 “As our food system became more TV-dinnered over the last generation, schools got rid of trained staff. They got rid of all the equipment, and budgets were slashed. Now we’re trying to tip it back.” FoodCorps aims to set kids up for a healthy future by introducing them to new and fresh foods through gardening and cooking lessons and to make the whole school—especially the cafeteria—a place associated with nutritious foods. The imperative is straightforward, but the stakes have never been higher. Children’s taste and familiarity with food develop at a young age, and children from low-income communities are especially prone to develop unhealthy diets because of neighborhood redlining by supermarkets and independently owned restaurants— leaving fast-food chains and corner stores as the most accessible sources of food. By forming cravings early in childhood through heavy marketing and an overreliance on fat and sugar, NO MORE KITCHENS When education major Corey Carmichael ’14, one of FoodCorps’s approximately 200 service members, arrived at her assigned Boston and Cambridge, Mass., schools, she discovered that most Boston schools were without kitchens. Boston schools aren’t alone: A 2014 Pew survey revealed that the nationwide need for school-kitchen funds runs in excess of $5 billion, since a program that maintains school-kitchen equipment has gone unfunded by Congress for the last three decades. “It’s interesting having the comparison between Cambridge and Boston, because the quality of food is so vastly different,” Carmichael says of the two school districts. Cambridge has a median household income of $73,000 to Boston’s $54,000. “Only three elementary schools that FoodCorps works with in the Boston public school system have an in-house kitchen— otherwise the food is shipped in. In Cambridge, most schools have their own kitchen, and they prepare everything on site.” Carmichael, who hopes to one day run an educational farm in her native Maine, teaches kindergartners through eighth-graders about the industrialized food complex while also helping them develop grocery-shopping and food-prep skills. Her pizza-making lesson in a kitchenless Boston school— which included making and rolling out dough, preparing sauce from scratch, and dicing vegetables from the school garden—demonstrates the creativity needed by FoodCorps members. “We got access to the teachers’ lounge and brought an electric burner to pan-fry our pizzas,” she says. “The teachers were OK with it when we gave them some of the leftovers.” Another of FoodCorps’s objectives— to connect children with the source of their food—is an imperative that played out when Carmichael’s Boston pupils watched in disbelief as she worked a cider press: They didn’t know that apple juice came from apples. These victories inspire Carmichael, who takes pride in seeing her students at grocery stores with their parents purchasing foods they tried in her classroom. She says that of kids surveyed after a semester, 80 percent report trying a new vegetable and 50 percent report liking a new vegetable—a beacon of hope given that 95 percent of American children do not receive the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. A CAPITAL NEED Oakland, Calif., native Sarah Ting ’10 came to FoodCorps in 2014 with an already-impressive social-justice résumé. After Swarthmore, she dove into policy work at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that conducts national social and economic research on the challenges of rapidly urbanizing environments. From there she pivoted to work in India at its largest women’s trading union, which led to field research on farming, food systems, and the effects of globalization on the developing country. As a FoodCorps service member in her hometown, she supported the nascent California Thursdays program, which engages local farmers to bring fresh food into school cafeterias. “Switching from frozen lunches to fresh, scratch-cooked meals sourced from local famers was a win-win-win. We could support the local economy, local farmers, and kids who are getting exciting, healthy, fresh food,” she says, adding that a child’s performance in school often drastically improves in proportion to the healthiness of their diets. Ting, a public-policy graduate student at UC Berkeley, also worked with the district’s diverse student body to develop suggestions for culturally appropriate, healthy dishes for the cafeteria—like jambalaya, enchiladas, and chicken rice bowls. “Communities of color have long histories of healthy diets. Over a generation or two these communities have experienced a shift in the way that they’ve been exposed to unhealthy food products, which are marketed to them. All of that was not by accident,” says Ting. “Sodas and junk food entered into schools and vending machines, and their local stores no longer carry healthy products. These systematic eating-habit changes are not necessarily out of pure choice but out of the larger dynamics of our inequitable industrial food system.” This is playing out in Oakland, which, in part because of the Silicon Valley tech boom, has become more stratified than ever. North Oakland is flush with high-quality grocery stores and healthy restaurants—a “food oasis,” as Ting calls it—whereas East and West Oakland are bereft of grocery stories and beset by fast-food chains. Nationally, 23.5 million low-income citizens live more than a mile away from a supermarket and do not have access to a car. Low-income neighborhoods typically have 50 percent fewer grocery stores per square mile than their wealthier counterparts, according to the Department of Agriculture. “East and West Oakland have entrepreneurial communities of color, including immigrants from across the world who’ve risked everything to come here, yet they are unable to build or expand pre-existing food businesses because of a lack of access to capital,” she says. “We need an economic shift in how we help undersupported food businesses and entrepreneurs looking to fulfill the need for fresh food in their communities.” One idea for improvement, according to Ting and others, is creating a dialogue with members of the affected community about how they’d want to help heal their food system from within. “The consumer-choice conversation can only go so far when communities being served by food programs aren’t invited to help create them. This is a reality we see not just in food policy FOOD DEFICITS calories per day in the average American’s diet are from highly processed foods 1 in 3 children is on track to develop diabetes Only 5% of American children receive the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables Sources: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Journal of the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 23 but in general,” she says. “Real, democratic policymaking functions best when all communities are included in the decision making and dialogue.” Ting, in one of her many roles in food-based nonprofits in Oakland, is working to improve guidelines for low-capital entrepreneurs in mobile businesses, like food trucks and carts— which often sell scratch-cooked foods—since that model has been proven to provide a foot in the door to food-service entrepreneurs. LAURENCE KESTERSON THE GREEN GROCER Before being singled out by a middle-school guidance counselor and accepted into the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy for high school, James Johnson-Piett ’03 grew up in Philadelphia’s infamous Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, making him intimately familiar with the meager food options in low-income urban areas. One of his first jobs out of Swarthmore was as a data analyst for the The Food Trust based in Philadelphia, working to “define what a food desert was before the term existed, ” he says. “I feel like a 37-year-old grandfather of a movement. Things have evolved quite a bit in the last 12 years.” The Food Trust creates public-private partnerships with the goal of bringing supermarkets and other purveyors of fresh food into underserved communities. To make this happen, Johnson-Piett turned to pre-existing independent grocers and owners of In addition to providing entrepreneurial opportunities to low-income communities, James Johnson-Piett ’03’s Urbane Development also works with New York City credit unions to determine alternative ways of measuring creditworthiness, like taking into account on-time rent, utilities, and parking ticket payments. 24 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 corner stores, using grants and loans to renovate rundown spaces to create room for fresh produce and prepared foods alongside less healthy standard bodega fare. “Nationally, we were the only ones doing raw economic development/real estate work around food issues,” says Johnson-Piett. “Most of the focus was on shifting the products of the bodegas, and the marriage of economic development and food access as a strategy caught on, so now there are multiple organizations funded in the multimillions of dollars from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the USDA, and other federal agencies.” Eventually, Johnson-Piett went into business for himself working on economic and mixed-use real estate development in communities in Detroit; Newark, N.J.; and New York, where his firm, Urbane Development, is situated. “I care about underserved markets, because that’s where I came from and where I feel our support is needed the most. Our mission is to create wealth-generating opportunities for underserved communities,” says Johnson-Piett. “Food is a core requirement, and hunger is a pain point you can’t necessarily alleviate unless you create opportunities around entrepreneurship.” Urbane Development was recently awarded a major redevelopment project for the Flatbush Caton Market in the heart of Flatbush, Brooklyn. The market—which hosts 47 vendors of mainly Caribbean descent who sell food, housewares, and clothing—will be razed this year and rebuilt by 2020 with even more vending space, plus 166 affordable housing units. In the meantime, Johnson-Piett’s company will train the vendors, who will operate from a temporary structure, in topics like bookkeeping, marketing, and food safety. Additionally, Urbane helps low-income residents secure funding for entrepreneurial ventures, but finds that food-related businesses hit a sweet spot. “Food is a unifying agent, and very powerful in terms of our sustenance and economics,” he says. “It’s timely that people are looking at food as an issue. Most movements are at the “DON’T GIVE UP ON YOUR KIDS. GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH FOOD.” —JERUSHA KLEMPERER ’96​ core of who we are, and we’re just giving the food movement a chance to be something we’re really focused on intentionally.” DEFINED SUSTAINABILITY Food-movement activists are hard at work everywhere, including in rural landscapes—like Alice Evans ’10’s native Alabama—where agriculture abounds. Evans attributes her career to a summer at Swarthmore “following around” Tina Johnson, co-director of the Community Grocery Co-Op in Chester, Pa., on a Summer Social Action Award from the Lang Center for Social Responsibility. “I credit Tina with a lot of my politics and for framing the beginning of my interest in the food movement,” she says. “We had all of these great conversations about what food access and food justice mean.” After working on a research farm for a year postgraduation and then doing other odd farming jobs, Evans became director of the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network (ASAN), which connects farmers interested in sustainable practices and works to strengthen local food systems. ASAN was established by frustrated organic farmers in Alabama in the early 2000s, after they had been turned away from land-grant universities’ agricultural extensions. “They were being told, ‘You can’t do that in Alabama.’ I think at that time, organic was too foreign,” says Evans. “Places that were farming organically then were culturally and agriculturally very different from here.” Evans has found that defining sustainable farming is a complex task, and she works to dispel common misconceptions about organic food. “From a systems perspective, a sustainable food network has so many more pieces to it than how many chemicals you do or don’t use on your farm,” she says, noting that while an organic certification might provide some hallmark of fresh food, if someone uses pesticides occasionally but helps to feed their community from their garden, that’s sustainability in action, too. “A lot of this work is about getting diverse people with diverse experiences in the room and allowing our analyses to change based on what those folks are saying,” she says. “We have to be open to changing our movement’s priorities based on what this new, inclusive version of us has to say. If we’re going to move forward in a productive way, that’s what’s important.” Also of importance to Evans are economic incentives to continue farming, organic or otherwise. “If products are made locally and sold locally, there’s a decentralized, bottom-up economic impact that is harder to measure, but much more resilient,” she says. “If farmers, whether they identify with the movement or not, go out of business or sell their land to subdivisions, that’s a hit to sustainable agriculture. We lose generations of farming wisdom and topsoil that we can’t get back.” THE FOOD PRISM As the food movement has increased its momentum, it has become incredibly multidisciplinary, making room for more and more Swarthmoreans along the way. Food can be viewed as a prism, Jerusha Klemperer ’96 explains, and through it, you can see any parts of our system that are broken. “If you’re concerned about poverty, inequity, nutrition, environmental degradation,” she says, “you could focus on one piece of the food system and effect change.” Within our vast food system, leaden with so many inequities, how should a thoughtful eater proceed? One tenet to live by, says Klemperer, is to simply cook—and cook simply—especially since a recent study suggests that Americans get 1,000 calories per day from highly processed food. “There are a lot of ancillary elements to cooking, like knowing a food’s source or shortening the distance the food has had to travel to get to you by shopping at farmers markets, but home cooking, regardless of where the food comes from, is a good start,” says Klemperer. Klemperer also suggests introducing fresh food to children at home and says FoodCorps service members have found that introductions to new foods can take five to 10 tries before a kid gives the thumbs-up. “As parents, you have an opportunity. Don’t give up on your kids,” she says. “Try things more than once and prepared in different ways. Give them a chance to fall in love with food.” SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 25 PLANTING SEEDS Tristan Reader ’89 helped the O’odham community rediscover its traditional foods by Laura Markowitz ’85 LAURA BECKMAN T RISTAN READER ’89 knows a lot about a little bean called the tepary, the most drought-resistant and heat-tolerant legume on Earth. He discovered teparies in 1995, when he moved onto the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona and launched a community-based nonprofit, Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA), with O’odham basket weaver Terrol Dew Johnson. “Every day at TOCA I used the philosophy training I received at Swarthmore to ask fundamental questions,” Reader says. “What does it mean to be human? To be O’odham? To create change? To empower people?” The Nation, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, crosses the U.S. border into Mexico, and comprises 20,000 residents living in small rural villages. Reader and Johnson came to realize that the issues they wanted to affect all connected to food, including culture, economics, the environment, youth empowerment, and especially health. The O’odham have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes of any ethnic group in the world. “In 1960, not a single person on the Tohono O’odham Nation had Type 2 diabetes,” says Reader. “Today, 60 percent of O’odham adults over age 35 have the disease, and it appears in children as young as 6.” Reader says this public health crisis stems largely from the disruption of the traditional O’odham food system. The Nation was food self-sufficient up until World War II. But by 1960, most O’odham depended on the Commodity Assistance Act allotments of free food to Native American communities that introduced lard, flour, and sugar into the O’odham diet—to devastating effect. TOCA began modestly with a community garden and eventually established farms. Reader and Johnson developed training programs and internships to teach young people traditional O’odham farming practices. In the process, Reader became passionate about food sovereignty, advocating for a return to traditional O’odham foods like tepary beans to help combat diabetes and obesity, promote food security, and also reconnect community members to their culture. “To be Tohono O’odham—a desert person—means to be connected to these foods. Their songs, rituals, and culture revolve around them,” Reader says. “The O’odham believe the Milky Way was made when Coyote scattered white tepary beans in the sky. There are no songs about fry bread, but there are songs and legends about O’odham corn.” TOCA hosts planting and harvesting festivals and works in schools on the Nation to teach youths about traditional foods. It runs farmers markets to make native foods more widely available, and in 2009, it opened the Desert Rain Café. Located in the Nation’s capital of Sells, Ariz., and a few doors down from the Nation’s sole supermarket, the café offers a menu of healthy dishes made with traditional foods—things like tepary quesadillas, O’odham squash enchiladas, and fruit salads sprinkled with desert-harvested chia seeds and drizzled with prickly pear cactus syrup. TOCA also works with the schools to include traditional foods on cafeteria menus. In 2015, Reader left TOCA to finish a Ph.D. on indigenous communities and food sovereignty at the Center for Agroecology, Water, and Resilience at Coventry University in the U.K. He is optimistic about the Tohono O’odham Nation’s food-health future because a growing number of the Nation’s new leaders came up through TOCA and are advocates for food sovereignty. They see the connections between traditional foods and cultural, economic, and physical well-being. Reader’s favorite example is CissiMarie Juan, who began volunteering after school in the TOCA community garden at age 7. By 9, she declared that one day she would run TOCA. Ten years later, she was developing and leading TOCA programs as a paid staffer. Today, she is the head of the Nation’s Youth Services division. “From the beginning, TOCA was never just about physically planting seeds,” says Reader. “We were planting seeds of change and empowering people to become strong, positive leaders.” + LEARN MORE: tocaonline.org “TO BE TOHONO O’ODHAM—A DESERT PERSON—MEANS TO BE CONNECTED TO THESE FOODS.” —TRISTAN READER ’89 SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 27 Alumni at the delicious intersection of entrepreneurship and artistry “THE WORLD BEGINS at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live,” writes poet Joy Harjo in “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” “It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.” So, too, one might say about Swarthmore and the feast it offers, which may be why so many of its community members have found inspiration in all things appetizing. Inextricably linked with culture, society, economics, the environment, politics, and art, the topic of “food and drink” 28 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 has inspired professors like Hansjakob Werlen and Allison Dorsey to lard interdisciplinary courses with related material and students to pursue a cornucopia of projects and professions before and after graduation. “As with everything,” Werlen says, “Swarthmoreans bring a lot of passion, intellectual probing, and active engagement to the issues connected with food.” Here’s a taste of the unlimited flavors in which food has inspired alumni to cook up new and creative paths. MONICA CARRASCO by Jonathan Riggs “People often hesitate to cut my cakes because they don’t want to spoil them, but I like that part,” says Polina Kehayova ’01 with daughter Anna, cats Furry Snuggly and Tiny Smokey, and her dragon-inspired dessert. (Yes, that’s all a cake.) “It’s liberating to see them eaten so I can start planning a new one.” the Explorer on top, but before the family picked it up, I discovered that she had become decapitated,” she recalls with a laugh. “I managed to reattach her head, but it was a good reminder that mishaps—with cake and life—happen, and we have to rise to each challenge.” REUBEN CANADA ’99 JIN+JA NINJA: drinkjinja.com In 2009, Reuben Canada ’99 was a patent attorney in Philadelphia looking for his true calling. He found it in a boiling pot of ginger, mint leaves, lemon, green tea, and cayenne pepper. It was more than “the world’s best cocktail mixer” that he perfected over that summer, but an elixir full of the spice and zest his life had been missing. He’d always loved food: At 10, he sold homemade chocolate chip cookies to classmates and dreamed of being a Walt Disney World chef. So he jumped at the opportunity to reconnect with the empowering, create-your-own-destiny self he’d discovered at Swarthmore—even if reinventing himself as a culinary creative meant giving up his day job and investing his life savings. “Anything terrific requires a lot of luck and timing, so I decided to make my own luck,” he says. “I didn’t want to die one day without having done all the things I’d always wanted.” Dubbing his drink Jin+Ja (think “ginger” but pronounced with panache), Canada brewed and bottled his creation— first in his own kitchen, in potion-style bottles inspired by Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, then at the Rutgers LAURENCE KESTERSON —JOHN LIM ’16 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 At Swarthmore, Lim sought to recapture some of that close-knit communal feeling over food by turning the College’s dining hall into his own personal kitchen. Viewers of his how-to video series, Sharples Cookbook, learn to elevate and innovate cafeteria fare to make everything from Sriracha mayo panini to balsamic stir-fry. “Everyone at Sharples does a great job, but I was getting a little restless—like any other senior,” he says. “I also have an interest in cooking and video production, so it seemed like the perfect intersection of ideas.” His edible innovation isn’t limited to YouTube, either— along with his friend Brian Shields ’18, Lim launched his own late-night campus food business, Quesadrop, in March. Fridays between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., students order quesadillas by text, which Lim and his co-workers make in their dorm kitchen and then deliver anywhere on campus—combinations ranging from chicken/cheese to banana/Nutella to avocado/pico de gallo, limited only by the imagination. Whether he’s pursuing new recipes in front of the camera or feeding friends behind it, Lim’s discovered a universal truth: There’s a healing power to food and its preparation. “Food always makes me feel better, so I knew creating easy-to-cook recipes was a great way to make the community feel better, too,” he says. “One of the tough lessons I learned from losing my father so early is that I really enjoy bringing smiles to people’s faces. Seeing others experience happiness helped me heal, and that’s something I’m going to try to do for the rest of my life, with or without food.” JOHN LIM ’16 VICTUALS VLOGGER: bit.ly/LimCookbook Growing up, family dinner was a formative ritual for John Lim ’16. The child of Korean immigrants, he still remembers how it felt when his father came home at 7 p.m., marking the moment when the family could at last enjoy his mother’s cooking. “It felt super late, back when I had a bedtime, and very special,” he says. “Dinner had a much bigger meaning than just eating.” That sentiment hit especially hard after his father died when Lim was in middle school, emphasizing how closely intertwined food and family really are. “BACK WHEN I HAD A BEDTIME ... DINNER HAD A MUCH BIGGER MEANING THAN JUST EATING.” “We all have a lot of things we can share with other people to improve their quality of life,” says Reuben Canada ’99. “For me, Jin+Ja is a conversation-starter and relationship-builder in a bottle.” 30 Center for Culinary Innovation, a food-entrepreneurship incubator, where he was able to hire a production and sales staff. Thanks to his hard work, Canada’s soft drink won over his corner grocery, Philly eateries, Whole Foods’s mid-Atlantic region, and, most recently, 1,800 Kroger stories nationwide. Today, Jin+Ja produces an additional flavor, dragon fruit; a 4X concentrate; and a diabetic-friendly sugar-free version. That last part is important to Canada: He sees his drink—at 39 calories per 4-ounce bottle and made with natural ingredients—as less a treat and more a natural complement to a healthy, holistic, happy lifestyle. “I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, so I started by taking a big risk in mine,” he says. “The most validating thing I can hear, more than any award or contract, is that, thanks to Jin+Ja, I have brightened someone’s day.” + WATCH a special episode of Sharples Cookbook at bulletin.swarthmore.edu LAURENCE KESTERSON POLINA KEHAYOVA ’01 QUEEN OF CAKES: bit.ly/PKCakes Three fondant ballerinas—two seated in white, one en pointe in black—gracefully adorn the Swan Lake cake Polina Kehayova ’01 made and decorated for daughter Anna. As a foil to the flawlessness of the finished product, however, Kehayova keeps a box of “ugly duckling” ballerina prototypes. “I want to show Anna that reaching excellence requires a long and sometimes discouraging behind-the-scenes process,” she says. “Getting caught up in being perfect from the beginning stands in the way of learning, accomplishing, and becoming more confident through mistakes.” This was the ultimate lesson Swarthmore taught the Bulgarian-born Kehayova, and one that’s helped with her professional work as the scientific director of Harvard’s department of molecular and cellular biology and with her amateur pastry practice. Both roles not only require creativity and precision, but also present intellectual puzzles. “For my daughter’s seventh birthday, I made a cake based on a story she and I came up with inspired by How to Train Your Dragon,” she says. “I had to figure it all out: What kind of texture do I need for a dragon’s skin? How can I shape a dragon’s wings so there’s motion to them?” Whether she’s crafting a cake inspired by green fluorescent protein for co-workers or plaiting a dozen rainbow unicorn manes for a preschool class’s cupcakes, Kehayova’s ongoing scientific and artistic experimentation keeps her sketching, dreaming, and yes, occasionally failing. “I made a birthday cake with the cartoon character Dora “I’m enjoying Sharples Cookbook and Quesadrop and am humbled by people’s reactions,” says John Lim ’16. “They’re a modest success in the grand scheme of things, but a big deal to me.” SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 31 A tribute to some of the College’s memorable larks and pranks 32 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 BRAD GUIGAR by Matt Zencey ’79 SWARTHMORE STUDENTS have often turned their creative and intellectual powers to the commission of pranks. Engineering especially has a long history of pulling off remarkably clever and creative stunts—check out a gallery at bulletin.swarthmore.edu—but the mischief-making gene spans the College’s entire population. Seats in a lecture hall have disappeared, Adirondack chairs have hung from trees, and Clothier’s bell tower has chimed erratically. There’s a healthy aspect to the benign pranks. Swarthmore is such an academic pressure cooker, it’s a rare student who doesn’t look for occasional relief. The roster of memorable pranks offered here is not exhaustive, of course. Many exist only in oral legend, and some alumni, nominated by classmates as notorious pranksters, declined to respond to queries for this story, perhaps out of modesty or a more mature sense of judgment ... UP THE FLAGPOLE Like moths to a flame, swallows to Capistrano, and Elvis fans to Graceland, generations of student pranksters have been drawn to the forbidden territory atop Parrish Hall. Perhaps most memorable was April Fools’ 1997, which dawned with the Canadian flag flying high above Parrish, announcing a revolutionary development: Swarthmore had been taken over by the Canadian government. With signs around campus declaring the school “under new management,” Swarthmore would be known as “McGill South” and offer free tuition for Canadian students, not to mention socialized medicine for everyone, and a better brand of beer at College events (Moosehead over Milwaukee’s Best). In a surrender ceremony documented in the April Fools’ edition of The Phoenix, President Al Bloom graciously posed with the Canadian flag. The “Most Arduous Effort Producing a Disappointingly Ephemeral Payoff ” is the prank reported by Bob Norman ’49. He and a 6-foot-9 classmate somehow managed to hoist a bicycle onto Parrish’s roof and raise it up the flagpole. However, shortly after daybreak, maintenance workers had taken it down. FRIED PETRINA? Never let it be said that physics students lack a sense of humor. Petrina Albulescu Dawson ’76 reports this one from April Fools’ in the mid-’70s: “Professor Paul Mangelsdorf ’49 had worried the previous year, in the electromagnetics lab, when I pointed too close to one of the high voltage plasma tubes: He could see a fried Petrina in front of his eyes! So we made a full-size person by stuffing clothes, a pillow, and a hat with newspaper and posed her as ‘electrocuted’ by the tube.” She writes that it was one of many physics pranks and puns committed in the lab that night. (We understand that Schrödinger’s cat was not harmed during the event.) Speaking of risks in electrical experiments, for her class’s 50th anniversary yearbook, Sandra Dixon ’61 fessed up to dissing Benjamin Franklin, who back then was honored with a bust in Dupont science library. She swiped Franklin’s bust and replaced it with a black cape, some frayed string, a key, and a placard saying, “Benjamin Franklin After Kite Experiment.” HIGH-TECH HIGH JINKS What is a Swarthmore term paper without a raft of those learned-sounding academic buzzwords, like dichotomy, hegemony, deconstruction, and postmodern? Students in 2002 found out, thanks to prankster Gabriel Rosenkoetter ’02. He hacked a couple of libraries’ public printers and programmed them to delete a list of more than 200 “typically Swarthmorean” words. Upon finding their intellectual handiwork pocked with blank spaces, desperate students fell into a frenzy that left tech-support gurus baffled. Hours of anxious chaos ensued until normalcy was restored. Rare among the pranksters featured here, Rosenkoetter publicly claimed credit in The Phoenix—and paid a fine for the staff time spent trying to fix the printers. On April Fools’ Day in 2001, an unnamed SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 33 hacker sent an all-campus email in Associate Dean Tedd Goundie’s name, reminding students about daylight saving time, but advising them to turn their clocks back instead of forward. The Phoenix reported that Goundie called it an “elegantly understated prank.” PAPER, PAPER EVERYWHERE … A surprising number of pranks involved a fairly primitive technology, invented millennia ago in Egypt. Back when students were required to attend campuswide Collection several times a year, it often meant surrendering precious free time to listen to a boring minor-league speaker. A favorite form of protest was for students to whip out copies of The New York Times and rustle the papers en masse. Mimi Siegmeister Koren ’60 made use of these papers when she and her pals pranked a dormmate who was away for the weekend by filling the victim’s entire room up to the ceiling with crumpled wads of newsprint. 34 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 ’94 left Sharples for her 8:30 a.m. class when she saw official College letterhead notices posted on several doors declaring that classes had been canceled for the day. Only after spending the morning holed up in the library did she learn that the notices were bogus and classes had gone on as normal. THOSE ‘WORSHIPPERS’ WERE NUTS! A prank-as-performance-art satire was reported by Bulletin designer Phil Stern ’84. “Posing as expert anthropologists/art historians,” he writes, “two students from the Class of 1984 ‘discovered’ evidence of a tribe of squirrel-worshippers who lived in the College heat tunnels.” The two—who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty—held a carefully advertised “reception” in those steamy warrens, complete with warm wine and melting brie, drawing a crowd of about 50 sweltering Swatties to marvel at the tribe’s wall paintings. The affair went “swimmingly,” says Stern, until it was interrupted by College security, who were alerted by a gullible student asking where to find an entrance to the underground tunnels. NAME GAMES Melissa Morrell MacBeth ’99 fondly remembers the prank her senior year when hundreds of the black nameplates identifying specimens in the Scott Arboretum were simplified to labels such as “Green Plant—Greenus Plantus,” “Small Shrub,” and “Short Tree.” When France failed to support President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, some U.S. lawmakers protested by symbolically renaming the french fries served in the congressional cafeteria as “freedom fries.” That bit of patriotic absurdity inspired Raghu Karnad ’05 to perform some relabeling work at the department of modern languages. Using stickers, he converted all occurrences of “French” to “Freedom.” (He notes he was mocking the war hawks, not the French.) Swarthmore pranked itself during the Sesquicentennial celebration in 2014, producing an official-sounding April Fools’ news release declaring, “Swathmore Drops ‘R’ from Name to Fix 150 Years of Pronunciation Confusion.” OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PRANK! One of the more legendary highbrow pranks had a musical theme. In the 1950s, during a campuswide Collection, noted lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II spoke. When it was time for the hymn, a cabal of students instead started singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! “Eventually the organist gave up and joined in,” Peter Van Pelt ’54 says. “Everyone was singing like crazy. Hammerstein said it was the best welcome he ever had.” AU NATUREL? OH NO! Swarthmore students love to do things in public without their clothes on. The rugby teams’ naked coed fundraiser, the “Dash for Cash” through Parrish Hall, is a legend in its own right. In our clothing-free category, the best prank was described in a 2009 Phoenix article by Kendal Rinko ’09. As a tour guide led a group of prospective students into her dorm, they encountered a group of students, all in the buff, having tea in the lounge. Rinko wrote, “A shocked mother replied, ‘Oh, my stars! Is this normal?’ To which the tour guide replied, ‘Would you care for a cup?’” WEATHERING ACADEMIA Many students had trouble returning to campus from spring break in 1993 after a blizzard blanketed the region on the Saturday before classes resumed. Monday morning, Joanna Vondrasek LOWBROW CULTURAL COMMENTARY John Fischer ’81 cops to being in the group that planted a pink flamingo in Wharton Quad and chuckled as maintenance crews struggled to extricate it, because the conspirators had anchored the bird in place with concrete. John Bowe ’83 reports that the flamingo later made appearances all over campus, most notably on President Theodore Friend’s windowsill. FROM THE AWESOME-IF-TRUE ARCHIVES Some stories of long-ago epic pranks remain unconfirmed despite diligent digging. A couple of early 1970s alums mentioned a legendary episode in which students supposedly raided Sharples for a huge stash of butter and applied it to the train tracks at the Swarthmore station. As the locomotive arrived, so the story goes, it hit the butter and slid past the station. (If true, it proves that some things are not better with butter.) No one wrote in to claim credit for the time the clock face on Tarble was turned into a Mickey Mouse timepiece, but several alums remembered seeing that one circa 1980. Joyce Klein Perry ’65 recollected seeing treetops on Magill Walk toilet-papered (presumably, Swarthmore’s own Scott brand), reputedly scattered there by a student piloting an airplane. And then there’s the distant legend of the cow that was led up to the president’s second-floor office in Parrish and refused to go back down the stairs. Fran Brokaw ’76 says it happened, citing her grandmother, Class of 1909, as the source. True or not, generations of Swarthmoreans have milked that story for all it’s worth. + MORE capers and an engineering pranks photo gallery at bulletin.swarthmore.edu. Share your Swarthmorean mischief: bulletin@swarthmore.edu BRAD GUIGAR BRAD GUIGAR Then there’s Bill Schmidt ’76, who confesses to leading the Great Toilet Paper Heist of 1975. Like locusts stripping a field clean of crops, the pranksters methodically plundered every common dorm bathroom and public restroom for toilet paper. The heist happened on a Friday after maintenance staff had clocked out and locked up replacement supplies for the weekend. The campus was wiped out until Monday morning, when supply closets reopened and the conspirators revealed where the stash was hidden. SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 35 Archiving can yield new opportunities, says Winifred Armstrong ’51 by Jonathan Riggs W HEN SHE WAS HONORED with the Clara Lemlich Social Activist Award last year, Winifred Armstrong ’51 filmed an interview with Labor Arts that opens with her laughter. “Somebody asked me a few weeks ago if I could sleep in a strange bed,” she begins, eyes sparkling. “I said I would have had a totally different life if I couldn’t.” This is a woman who traversed Africa for two years in the late 1950s on a self-financed fact-finding trip—via airplane, boat, train, lorry, canoe, and, for 22,000 miles, a Volkswagen and camp bed—to study its educational and economic challenges and opportunities, well before the U.S. State Department had a dedicated Africa bureau. And while that expertise led her to become a speechwriter and adviser on Africa for then-Sen. John F. Kennedy, Armstrong’s 60-year career as a scholar/activist also includes experience with mining, sustainability, development, and tenants’ rights. Looking back on her career, however, interests her 36 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 1. Go through your materials with a realistic eye as to what can be donated and used. In my experience, libraries have welcomed paper files, correspondence, photos (with identifications, if possible), tape recordings, and memorabilia such as passports, clothing, keys, or medals. Books and reports could be good, too, if they’re not already publicly available. 2. Once you know what you have, think about where it could go. You may have to shop around. Sometimes you connect with the first inquiry, and sometimes you’re surprised by who does or doesn’t want your material. It’s also important not to disregard your smaller or older files. Last year, for example, I donated to Swarthmore’s Friends Historical Library a 2-inch file I’d kept for 65 years on the Swarthmore Race Relations Club’s 1950 survey of the College and local community. Early on, I decided that I didn’t want to create a “Winifred Armstrong Collection” at one location, because I don’t really see most of what I have done as “mine.” Since the work covers different interests and organizations, I sought libraries where people would look for those interests. 3. When you talk with libraries, there are a number of questions to ask. What’s their protocol and timeline for processing your papers? You’ll also want to see if they will list your individual files online or just the contents of each box. You also need to determine how libraries prefer to receive the material—if you’re collecting materials from a group of people who have been part of an organization or program, it may be better to have one person sort and label everything. However, most libraries do not expect you to file everything perfectly. 4. Collecting history can inspire others. There’s great satisfaction and fun in contacting former colleagues, and it may nudge them to action themselves. You need not only consider past work. I helped round up material from my and others’ involvement with the Park West Village Tenants’ Association—still active—which helped spark the creation of Tamiment Library’s housing collection at New York University. 5. Face the question: Will anyone actually use your stuff? The honest answer is yes and no. It depends very much on whether the library has processed the material and put the LAURENCE KESTERSON LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD primarily when it is joined with looking forward. “I’ve had a great time the last few years getting the stories and records of work I’ve done with a variety of organizations to libraries that want to archive them,” Armstrong says. “I’d like to encourage other Swarthmoreans to think about what in their own history might be of interest to archive and the value and fun in pursuing it.” Here, Armstrong shares what she’s learned about archiving and how it can be a creative, community-building step. “We are the inheritors, interpreters, and creators of our history,” says Winifred Armstrong ’51. listings online—my African files at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, my AMAX African mining files at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, and the tenant files at Tamiment are consulted often. Not everything is, of course, but when you’re able to connect with someone who’s interested, it means a lot. I happened to meet a student from St. Louis looking through my Kennedy archives in 2010. When I introduced myself, he looked at me as if I were a ghost coming out of the box! We had a wonderful conversation, and I gave him much better sources than my stuff. 6. Accept that you don’t control how people will interpret your archives. Later, I was speaking with another student, who had come to research and photograph my 1972-era files on the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) on their way to the Pace University Law Library. “Well,” the student told me, “I see that UNEP failed—they are saying in 1972 that this is what they are going to accomplish, but by 2012 they are still saying the same thing. That’s failure.” I thought, “OK, if you’re 19, that’s a fair criteria for failure, but if you’re 82, I don’t know.” So he and I sat there on the dollies in the storage room and had a major discussion as to how one judges these things. We weren’t trying to settle the argument; we were looking at how you think about it. Because of my archives, I’ve had some wonderful discussions with people like that—their perspectives and mine are deepened and stretched, which is great fun. 7. Ultimately, be realistic about your expectations. Not everything saved over a lifetime may find a home, but that’s OK. It’s freeing to view this as an effort to celebrate ongoing work, ideas, and processes. For me, this isn’t only a personal thing. The best part has been talking with old and new colleagues and friends, recognizing the good work we’ve done and are doing, delighting in remembering the work and one another, and moving it forward so this intellectual capital is not lost. I hope you’ll consider doing the same with yours. + VIEW a list of libraries holding Winifred Armstrong’s papers at bulletin.swarthmore.edu. To email her: wa400cpw@aol.com SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 37 LAURENCE KESTERSON ONE GAVE ALL Joe Selligman ’37 was the first American casualty of the Spanish Civil War by Adam Hochschild SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 39 T HE SAME YEAR Joseph Selligman Jr. ’37 was a senior at Swarthmore, a group of right-wing Spanish army officers rose up against their country’s democratically elected government. Under Francisco Franco, the Spanish Nationalists, as they called themselves, seized control of nearly half the country. Franco’s ideological allies, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, flooded Spain with hundreds of warplanes and tanks, and tens of thousands of military personnel. Amid the tumult, the first of some 40,000 volunteers from more than 50 countries came to Spain’s aid. The war was a test, they felt, of Europe’s capacity to resist the rise of fascism. A continent away in Pennsylvania, Selligman agreed, although at first his friends did not realize how deep the 19-year-old’s feelings ran. (Previously, he had traveled the country with a Quaker-sponsored summer “Peace Caravan,” talking with community groups about America’s need to stay out of the world’s wars.) But the military coup in Spain came as a shock to him. A doodle later found among Selligman’s college notes provided a clue: He had drawn a map on which Germany, Italy, Portugal, and part of Spain were blackened, captioned, “Europe: Again Victim of the Black Plague.” HAILING FROM LOUISVILLE, KY., Selligman and his two sisters grew up in an unusual home. Their father was a former chairman of Kentucky’s Republican Party as well as a prominent lawyer who’d argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court; their mother voted Socialist. He took to Swarthmore with great enthusiasm. Editor of the literary magazine the Manuscript and on the business staff of The Phoenix, Selligman won awards for everything from playwriting to public speaking and made many friends, including Charles Crane Jr. ’36, whose home in Montpelier, Vt., he visited for Thanksgiving 1936. After the holiday, when Mrs. Selligman telephoned Joe’s dorm, she was told, to her shock, that he had disappeared. A week later, the Selligmans received a letter from Joe explaining that he had decamped to Spain. “I am really too excited and angry . . . to do anything else,” he wrote. “Besides, a lot of good a diploma would do in a Fascist era—and Spain seems to me to be the crucial test.” (“He expects eventually to return to Swarthmore,” The Phoenix reported at the time.) Selligman’s worried father sent a telegram to Crane’s father: “Just learned our son Joseph left Swarthmore College December third for Spain—Rumored your son gone with him—Wire any information you have.” But the rumor was not true, a reply telegram said; Charles Crane Jr. had not gone to Spain, and Joe had confided nothing of his plans—instead, he had been a “very agreeable” guest, memorable for his kindness and courtesy. HIS PARENTS WERE FRANTIC. Selligman’s father hired a private detective, who located Joe in Paris. Too young to volunteer, he’d used the name of a would-be soldier who’d changed his mind at the last minute. When the detective caught up with “Frank Neary,” he persuaded him to take a call from Kentucky. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you over the phone the other day, but by the time you called, I had already enlisted, and I didn’t want to make a scene in the embassy and run up the alreadytoo-high phone bill,” Selligman wrote his parents soon after. “For God’s sake, quit trying to catch me.” Eventually, 2,800 American volunteers would go to Spain in units later known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but Selligman was the first to arrive, so he was assigned to a battalion of British volunteers. Working as a driver and interpreter—he knew French, German, and a little Spanish—he assured his family he would be in no danger. “Quit worrying,” he wrote, promising to send them a picture of himself “in full regalia (including moustache and incipient beard) as soon as I can find a photographer.” SELLIGMAN PENNED HIS last letter Feb. 7, 1937, explaining to his family why they needed to direct his mail to “Frank Neary.” Not only was it safer, he wrote, but “an alias rather adds to the adventure-feeling, romance, etc.” He cautioned them against sending stationery, food, and supplies—“there is plenty”—and told them that although he’d asked his roommate to save his books, he hoped he hadn’t caused too much ado at school. “I hope you haven’t let all this get out around Swarthmore,” he wrote in closing. “Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while.” Less than a week later, the hastily trained British battalion was ordered into action, advancing through rain-soaked olive groves in the hilly country southeast of Madrid. The volunteers had had almost no practice using their rifles, and their decrepit machine guns tended to jam quickly. Heavy shelling by the Nationalists’ Nazi-supplied 88 mm artillery (the first combat test of a major German weapon of World War II) cut the battalion’s telephone lines, so Selligman was made a message runner. By the end of the day, most volunteers in the British unit were casualties; Selligman, wounded by a shot to the head by a sniper, was evacuated by mule. When his family heard the news, they sent panic-stricken messages to American officials in Spain and Washington. “Urgently request effort be made to remove him farther from fighting zone or into France if possible and his condition permits,” his father telegraphed Secretary of State Cordell Hull. “I will bear all necessary expense.” But it was no use: Joe Selligman was dead. ULTIMATELY, THE EFFORTS of volunteers like Selligman were essential in preventing the Nationalists from capturing FROM JOSEPH SELLIGMAN TO FRANK NEARY Pictured in his senioryear Halcyon, Joe Selligman ’37 left Swarthmore to become “Frank Neary” (right), the Spanish Civil War’s first American volunteer ... and casualty. In that yearbook caption, classmates praised his “sly humor” and “quiet thoughtfulness,” describing Selligman as “a Southern gentleman” who “approaches subjects from a profoundly philosophical point of view.” TAMIMENT LIBRARY/NYU “A LOT OF GOOD A DIPLOMA WOULD DO IN A FASCIST ERA— AND SPAIN SEEMS TO ME TO BE THE CRUCIAL TEST.” —JOE SELLIGMAN ’37 40 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 41 Madrid for nearly three years of brutal fighting. Some 750 more American volunteers would be among the hundreds of thousands killed in the war. One who survived was classmate Theodore Veltfort ’37, who, moved by Selligman’s death, drove military ambulances under fire for a year and a half in Spain. Unable to recover his son’s body, Selligman’s father asked the State Department to return his belongings. But all that could be found were two billfolds containing a Kentucky driver’s license and an ID card from the Swarthmore gym. Some letters discovered only recently add a poignant coda to the story. Two months after Joe had left for Spain, young Crane’s father wrote again to Selligman’s. His letter began formally, “Dear Mr. Selligman,” but was handwritten on lined paper. It reported that Charles Crane Jr. had committed suicide. “From youth up he had been somewhat of an anxiety to us,” Crane Sr. wrote, “because of his too-serious interest in ‘the purpose of life’ . . . in mockery of this cockeyed world he has quit it—a brilliant, companionable son—leaving us crushed.” A note at the bottom added, “Excuse the paper. Written in bed.” Selligman Sr. immediately wrote back a heartfelt letter of sympathy, from one father to another. Of Joe, in Spain, he said, “We shall not write him of Charles’s death. Knowing how devoted they were to each other, we would not want Joseph to have the shock of this news when he is alone so far from home.” The letter is dated Feb. 12, 1937—the very day that young Joe Selligman suffered the fatal bullet wound. When his father wrote to inform Crane, he ended his letter, “We shall face the years to come with such grim courage as we can summon . . . hoping also that for the betterment of the world such idealism as our two boys cherished may not perish from the Earth.” SELLIGMAN WAS NOT forgotten at Swarthmore. That year’s Manuscript was dedicated to him; students, faculty members, and residents of the borough raised $275 to be used for medical aid to Spanish children in Loyalist territory, as that area still controlled by Spain’s elected government was known. (Those who objected to this but still wanted to honor Selligman were encouraged to donate books to the College library in his memory.) His memory lived on in other ways, too. “In one of his letters, Joe said, ‘If I don’t come back, use my money to send Lucy to Swarthmore,’ ” said his sister Lucy Selligman Schneider ’42. “The money he referred to was a very modest legacy that our maternal grandfather had left to each of us. I doubt that it would have seen me through college. But that sentence from Joe was a message to me.” (His niece, Lucy Schneider McDiarmid ’68, not only attended the College, too, but also won the same one-act playwriting contest he’d won some 30 years before.) Selligman’s absence was deeply felt, and March 17, 1937, the College held a silent memorial meeting as a tribute. “Joe Selligman will not be back. We feared as much when he went, but we honored the sincerity of conviction which led him to throw in his lot with the Loyalist forces in Spain,” 42 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 Harold E. B. Speight, Swarthmore’s dean of men, told The Phoenix. “He felt that life would not be worth living in any civilization that might survive the defeat of the Popular Front and he went to play his part. “No one of us fully knows his own motives, but all of us who knew Joe were aware that he was acting after careful thought and not out of any passing impulse or desire for adventure; he had counted the cost and was willing to pay it to the full. “Joe’s going brings home to us all the question of what we are willing to give for the things we believe in,” Speight concluded. “While we remember him we shall feel that his sacrifice continues to put that question to us all.” POETRY BY JOE SELLIGMAN ’37 From the Manuscript, May 1935 “Motion and Rest” If I should lie upon the grass Until the evening’s coolness comes, And let the countless seconds pass Without a word, If I should count my fingers there, And find them ten, and be content, And feel the wind about my hair, And ask no more, Oh, would it not be better far Than these wild dreams, these frantic plans? Why hitch my wagon to a star, When none are fixed? “Unbalanced Budget” Not ours to ask you why, when we are done, The little time we spent before the sun Was bought so dearly, with such wealth of grief, Such wasted hopes, such sad, betrayed belief. Not ours to ask why you, who had the wealth To waste a billion stars on empty space, Could find but one cold world, one dying sun, For those who might find meaning in your grace. Not ours to ask why, of the endless time You spend on tearing galaxies apart, You gave but one short day, one bitter day, To those who have your image in their heart. It is not we shall ask. We shall be dumb, Back in the nothing that you drew us from. class notes THE PLACE TO FIND ALUMNI-RELATED ITEMS ALUMNI EVENTS SEND-OFFS TO SWARTHMORE Welcome the Class of 2020 to the Swarthmore community at a summer send-off. Events are planned for locations around the country and internationally: swarthmore.edu/ sendoffs Network with fellow Swarthmoreans and access academic resources like JSTOR through AlumnIQ, our new alumni directory. Learn more: bit.ly/AlumnIQ THANK YOU! Read some findings from the alumni survey on Page 70. ROBERT O. WILLIAMS ALUMNIQ Alicia DeWitt ’11 and partner Joshua Sokol ’11 share a moment June 4 during Alumni Weekend. More photos, Page 71. 1934 Gertrude “Trudy” Mitchell Bell, 103, died Feb. 19 at her retirement community in Blue Bell, Pa. A lifelong student and Quaker, Trudy attended George School before Swarthmore and received a master’s of library science from Columbia. “My mother often downplayed her intellectual abilities and would remark that she only got into Swarth- more because there was automatic acceptance for George School graduates,” writes daughter Barbara Bell Seely ’67. “But nevertheless, she remained intellectually curious all her life.” Trudy took classes at the Cheltenham Township (Pa.) Adult School, ranging from furniture refinishing to belly dancing. She and late husband Craig hosted international students through the Rotary Club, took German lessons, and traveled abroad with the International Hospital Federation. Trudy was an avid listener of NPR, and she enjoyed reading Trudy Rubin’s column in The Philadelphia Inquirer. At Normandy Farms Estates, where she moved at age 91, Trudy attended a monthly discussion group focused on politics, economics, and health care. Trudy was predeceased by son John ’63. In addition to daughter Barbara, Trudy is survived by son Harry, daughter Carol Bell Mosher ’68, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. 1936 Ophthalmologist David Pao ’65 checked in with patient Carolyn Keyes Cadwallader, who says she is “in ‘middling’ good health” and has “excellent care at Pennswood Village, a Quaker retirement community in Newtown, Pa. My husband, Sidney, who passed last year, was one of the founders of Pennswood 35 years ago, and we have resided here SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 43 class notes 1938 1941 Margaret Peter Ashelman, of Fairfield, Iowa, died Nov. 28, just shy of her 99th birthday. Born in Shanghai to medical missionary parents, Margaret spent her first nine years there. In 1926 her family left China for New Haven, Conn., where in high school Margaret was given the honor of presenting flowers to Amelia Earhart, who, she said, inspired the young girls of the day to expand their choices in life. At Swarthmore, Margaret spent summers on Navajo reservations, where her father was medical director of 11 hospitals. She married the late Sam Ashelman ’37 before her senior year and the couple lived above the small food cooperative they founded in Swarthmore. In 1944 the couple and their children moved to Greenbelt, Md., where Sam worked in the Greenbelt Co-op. In 1961 the Ashelmans bought 1,100 acres near Berkeley Springs, W.Va., and slowly built Coolfont Resort, which became a popular mid-Atlantic destination. Margaret later taught transcendental meditation, and she subsequently 44 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Libby Murch Livingston lizliv33@gmail.com It has been difficult to inspire our aged class to write. I understand, for although I am enjoying my pleasant life, it is certainly not newsworthy. (I might go on about my playing the part of a 15-year-old in love in a reading of the play Ah, Wilderness, but it would not do more than get a laugh.) Barbara Ferguson Young made me realize that we do have noteworthy information through our talented children and grandchildren. Her granddaughter Kristin Rocha (aka K.E. Rocha) has had publishing success. Concerned about getting boys to read, Kristin wrote Secrets of Bearhaven, a novel that has struck a note nationally. I’m ready to order it. I followed this up with a call to Walt Steuber and was pleased to talk with his son David, who has been his parents’ caregiver, filling an important need in a way that is pleasing to all involved. That, too, is special. SUMMER 2016 At our stage of life, we need not feel that we are not doin’ nothin’ if we are no longer CEOs or discovering planets. Instead we have been in the production of offspring who may be doin’ somethin’. Please share your children’s and grandchildren’s activities. Now, never fear: You won’t hear all about my umpteen kids and grandkids … or greats. Well … maybe just this once: Daughter Elinor spends much time fixing my efforts (i.e., mistakes) on this darn iPad. Thank you, dear. Again looking at the next generation: My daughter and I attended a loving memorial for my first cousin once removed, Molly Chase Wiellette ’62, whom I met only once but wish I had known better. What a beloved and accomplished person she was, and what a loving family she had. Molly’s mother, Elinor Robinson Pennock, was Class of 1934, and her grandfather 1905. I won’t bother you with all the other relatives who were alumni. 1943 Betty Glenn Webber bettywebber22@yahoo.com Felice Klau Shea sent a welcome email updating us on her life since Swarthmore. Except for a few years after graduation, she’s been a lifelong New Yorker, where she practiced law after Columbia Law School, followed by 25 years in the judiciary, mainly on the New York State Supreme Court. She retired in 1999, but only from the bench: She has served on a mayoral Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, as a referee in disciplinary proceedings against judges and lawyers, on the board of a prisoners advocacy organization, as a Montefiore Medical Center trustee, as a pro bono legal adviser, and on the dean’s Advisory Council at Columbia Law. Her Swarthmore connection is strong: a daughter attended, a grandson graduated in 2013, and a granddaughter has been admitted to the Class of 2020. Jane Hand Bonthron’s daughter says Jane is in the nursing-home section of her retirement residence. She is healthy but needs a little help. In the last Bulletin, Mary Stewart Trageser suggested that we share recollections of our experiences of the World War II years. Mary writes, “Thanks to Betsy Thorn Coleman—who got a job at the Office of Strategic Services through her aunt and recommended me for her department—I was in for the next two-plus years after graduation. In Washington, D.C., we read intelligence coming from the field, cataloged it, and sent it to pertinent researchers. In August 1944, I went to the London office. Three days after V-E Day in June 1945, we flew to Wiesbaden, Germany, where we continued the same work. I felt I made a contribution to the cause and saw London’s bombing and war-torn Germany in person.” I know that subsequent trips back to London have been a joy to her. Herb Fraser’s son, Peter ’68, wrote that he and his father made computerized recordings of Herb’s experiences and memories. During WWII he flew Navy fighters from the carrier USS Hancock in the Pacific and the China Sea. During one mission his plane sustained so much damage that he had to ditch into the water, where he was picked up by a fleet destroyer and returned to the Hancock. However, since destroyers didn’t make ice cream and carriers did, Herb’s exchange required a quantity of ice cream commensurate with his rank of lieutenant junior grade. Ginny Curry Hille and the girls’ winning hockey team participated in a publicity project for the Philadelphia Recruiting Office in 1942. After crash training four soldiers in archery for a month, the contest was filmed with Ginny as one of the Swarthmore archers and Bob Hille as one of the soldiers. Bob offered to drive her back to the College; she accepted and says, “The rest is history.” They were engaged by Christmas, but the wedding waited until June 1943, her dad having said: “I’m not putting some other man’s daughter through college.” Postwar they moved to Bob’s hometown of St. Louis, where she still happily lives. I, too, met my husbandto-be, Bob, under WWII circumstances. My mother had, without consultation, “volunteered” my sister and me for a dance a friend was organizing for officers from several military facilities near my Harrisburg, Pa., home. We were not happy walking (no car, no gas) down Front Street in evening gowns in the light of a June evening, but at the party I received a lot of attention from a young ensign. It was such a brief courtship that the marriage couldn’t possibly last, but it did for 65 years. We moved to Bob’s ALUMNI IN ACTION Trudie Blood Seybold ’39 was honored by the Boothbay Region Health & Wellness Foundation in Maine for being—at 98—the oldest member of a YMCA senior walkers group. Swarthmore Business Network alumni and friends gathered in New York City for their annual spring networking event. Adam Haslett ’92 (far left) marked the release of his new novel, Imagine Me Gone, at a party in Brooklyn, N.Y., with Jonathan Franzen ’81; Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Philip Weinstein; and former professor Mark Breitenberg. Heather Rigney Shumaker ’91 celebrated the launch of her newest book, It’s OK to Go Up the Slide, at Horizon Books in Traverse City, Mich. Stephanie Lechich ’14 and Joann Bodurtha ’74 gathered alumni of all ages living in Baltimore for a happy hour. William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science Ken Sharpe spoke in Seattle about his program at Swarthmore that pairs faculty for one-on-one coaching in the classroom. MARDI LINK studied holistic health care and the ancient science of life planning. In her later years in Fairfield, she was an active member of the Peer Group for seniors and one of the authors of Being Our Own Heroes, a collection of short stories published by the writing group. Margaret is survived by five children, Peter ’62, Eric, Siri, Randall, and Lisa; eight grandchildren; and 21 great-grandchildren. LISA VAN DYK for more than 25 years. We met at Swarthmore in 1934. Son Tom lives in Newtown, and daughter Elizabeth lives in nearby Yardley. My other son, Leonard, is in Hanover, N.H. There are quite a few Swarthmoreans here. The trees are blossoming now. We will have an enjoyable spring and summer. I wish you all well.” Alumni in Boston; North Carolina; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Daly City, Calif., took part in Collection of Service events this spring. Lifelong Learning at Swarthmore hosted a reception in Philadelphia to gauge interest in bringing courses to Center City in the fall. The response was so positive that the first, “Seven Great Paintings,” begins in September. + SEND YOUR PHOTOS/BLURBS TO BULLETIN@SWARTHMORE.EDU home state, and I’ve been an enthusiastic Michigander ever since. Edwin Moore died Feb. 5 after a long illness. He enrolled at Swarthmore, but later transferred to an accelerated program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. His WWII years in the Maritime Service were spent on tankers delivering fuel to European and Pacific bases. Postwar study at Oxford was followed by a variety of assignments—at Pratt & Whitney; the Merchant Marines during the Korean War; studying philosophy at NYU; and founding E.T. Moore builders around Underhill, Vt. His community involvement drew from his engineering expertise and his commitment to church and town; recently the Underhill Center was named in his honor. Admiration for his remarkable career and sympathy go to his wife, Betty, and sons Tom and John. 1944 Esther Ridpath Delaplaine edelaplaine1@verizon.net Our sympathy to the family of Kathryn “Kay” Detreux Halpern, who died View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu Jan. 10. Kay’s daughter, Anne Halpern, sent details of her mother’s busy life. After she left Swarthmore, Kay joined the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA). There she met Samuel Halpern, and the pair married in 1948. They had two children, Anne and Michael, and the family lived in Hollin Hills, Va. After spending two years in Tokyo, Kay received a master’s in library science from Catholic University in 1964. She was a cataloger for the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library system for 48 years, retiring in 2012. She then moved into an apartment attached to her daugh- ter’s home in southern Maryland, kept up with her library colleagues, and walked three Labrador retrievers almost every day. I was happy to encounter Nancy Grace Roman ’46 at a Montgomery County, Md., Women’s Democratic Club luncheon. She left my condo for a nearby retirement community. I had the pleasure of hosting Htet Win ’16, who was shadowing a Swarthmore alum at the World Bank. Htet is from Myanmar and helped me understand recent political events there. When her parents came for graduation, she promised to bring them to D.C. and introduce them to me. Her presence here, just before a snowstorm, was a gift. Washington is showing off its trees in bloom— cherry, pear, tulip, magnolia; the best of spring here. I invite visitors and can offer a guest bedroom. 1945 Verdenal Hoag Johnson verdij76@comcast.net I am writing in March, and we had a snowstorm last night. Winter was nothing like last year, but it still seems long and cold. We SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 45 class notes are relatively housebound because neither Edward ’46 nor I is in decent health. I have congestive heart failure, and he has lost much of his strength. We live independently in most aspects. I am strong enough to wait on him, although I am very, very tired. I have always been able to lose myself in a book, but I can’t read now because he wants my undivided attention and conversation. Frankly, I have run out of conversation after more than 70 years. I have told everyone who matters how much I love them, as has Edward; I have divided out my treasures, and I have no idea what the children and grandchildren will do with all the stuff we collected over the years. Just think of all the magnificent photographs Edward has taken. Did you know he took photographs of each of the roses in the rose garden at Swarthmore, put them in an album, and presented it to the College? I have no idea how many quilts I have made and given away, but there are still so many beautiful pieces of fabric in my stash. I hope someone will treasure all the books I have kept and enjoyed. But none of this matters. Our legacy is our family, and each is a superb human being in her/his own fashion; there is no way I could be prouder. I know that each of our souls will return to another infant, whom I hope will have as wonderful a life as I have had—a life that Swarthmore has been at the center of since Edward and I met in the Commons so many years ago. 46 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 1946 Nancy Fitts Donaldson n.f.donaldson@gmail.com It seems that most of the information falls in the obituary column. It is no surprise as we are now in our 90s and those of us who read the Bulletin have outlived our four score and 10 allotted years by some measure. I do hope those of you who are able will send positive news for our next edition—news of your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, as well as your travels, books you’re reading, and TV shows you enjoy. Such information will liven up this column and be of interest to classmates. Pat Frank Carey died in March at home in Rye, N.Y., leaving husband John, three sons, and a daughter. Pat founded and for many years was president of the Rye Arts Center. Her bright smile and bubbling enthusiasm will be missed. Mary “Molly” Keay Adams died in January at home in Wayland, Mass. She was predeceased by husband Dwight, but leaves one son, two daughters, and five grandchildren. She received a master’s degree in library science and served as librarian at the Wayland Middle School for 17 years. Molly and I attended high school and played sports together but had no contact for years, as she did not attend reunions. Our 70th Reunion is fast upon us. Nancy Smith Hayden and Kinnie Clarke Schmidt are making plans for the day. I hope to see you there, at which time I SUMMER 2016 hope to find another class notes secretary, as I’ve done this job since our 65th Reunion. Please let me know if you’d like to take over. 1947 W. Marshall Schmidt kinmarshal@aol.com Somber news: Grace Kemp Harris died Jan. 18 in Fort Collins, Colo., surrounded by family and friends. Days before, she had celebrated her 90th birthday with all her children and grandchildren. Grace was a lifelong volunteer. Through the Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Methodist Church, she co-organized church rebuilding trips to Angola after almost 30 years of civil war. Grace, who spent her early years in Angola as the daughter of Methodist missionaries, remembered Africa fondly, watching her father, a doctor and surgeon, work in strikingly beautiful places like the Pungo Andongo Rocks and Kalandula Falls. Grace received a master’s in biology from Wesleyan University. She worked in developmental biology research at Princeton and then in a lab at Harvard Medical School. While in the Boston area, she met Dwight Harris, who was finishing his doctorate at MIT, and the two married in 1952. For the next 33 years, Grace and Dwight moved across the country for his jobs in mining engineering and metallurgy, retiring in 1985 in Clayton, Wash., near Dwight’s boyhood home. Grace also continued her education with programs in childhood education and nutrition. She worked for the Head Start program in Ventura County, Calif., for several years. The couple moved to Fort Collins in 1997 to be near son Rodney. Grace’s volunteer activities included action on affordable housing, voter education, peace advocacy, and economic development in underserved communities, including work at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Her outreach projects helped establish a cooperative preschool in Pennsylvania, an annual Crop Walk fundraising event in California, and a Habitat for Humanity chapter in Spokane, Wash. Grace was predeceased by Dwight, son Craig, and two sisters. She is survived by sons Alexander ’78 and Rodney, daughter Donna, a sister, and three grandchildren. In happier news, Kinnie ’46 and I had a pleasant visit with Liz Crawford Uhlman in early March at her apartment in Sanibel, Fla. We had two lovely hours comparing grandchildren and old times at Swarthmore. Her son drove her back home to Bowling Green, Ohio, in mid-March. 1948 Philip Gilbert plgilbert@aol.com I received an update of class telephone numbers and have been calling around. Though many report limited movement, there was much pleasure in those calls, even for members whom I did not know well. I suggest trying a few such calls—it is like a daily reunion. Sadly, Jane Ann Jones Smith’s husband, Donald ’47, died March 24. He was my first roommate and a friend all these years. Don earned a master’s from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1951 and retired as president of the consulting engineering firm of Andrews & Clark in 1989. He is survived by his wife, three children, and six grandchildren. Charles Bestor died Jan. 16 at home in Amherst, Mass. The composer and educator studied at Yale, Juilliard, and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and received a doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder. He began his career at Juilliard, where in 1958, he, wife Ann Elder Bestor ’51, and three sons accompanied the Juilliard Orchestra on their State Department-sponsored European tour. Ann died in 1999. Charles is survived by six children and five grandchildren. Isabel “Brownie” Brown Galligan died Nov. 14 under hospice care in Kalamazoo, Mich. Brownie came from an artistic family and painted primarily in watercolor. She met husband Edward at Swarthmore during World War II, and they were married 62 years, until his 2011 death. Brownie was the secretary to the provost at Kalamazoo College for many years. She is survived by two sons, two grandchildren, and a sister. View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu MATT RIGGLE ALUMNI PROFILE Esther Ridpath Delaplaine ’44 took action after seeing the segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park’s pool in the early ’60s. A FRIEND TO ALL Swarthmore led her to civil rights work by Carrie Compton MONTHS BEFORE picketing, headlines, lawsuits, and arrests rocked Maryland’s Glen Echo Amusement Park in summer 1960, Esther Ridpath Delaplaine ’44 and Mary Lou Rogers Munts ’45 watched a throng of exuberant white schoolchildren dash from a yellow school bus toward the park’s pool and wondered where their black classmates were. The pair, reunited by chance a few years earlier in the Bannockburn neighborhood of Bethesda, sought answers from the head of the county’s recreation department. “The black students get to swim,” he reassured them. “They go to a pool in Washington, D.C.” “We said, ‘Aha! That’s separate, but not equal,’” remembers Delaplaine, who was recently honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award in Montgomery County, Md., for her work to desegregate the park and to pass a public accommodations law in the county. Outraged by the discrimination and led by Munts and Delaplaine, the left-leaning Bannockburn neighbors presented a united front to desegregate the park just before a wave of sit-ins by African-American students swept the country. In early June 1960, Howard University students had integrated lunch counters in nearby Alexandria, Va., and were confident of a quick victory at the park, too. With one day’s notice, Bannockburn organizers prepared lemonade and cookies for the student protesters. Delaplaine, her late husband, John ’41, and their five children under 10—one still in a stroller—walked the picket line every day that summer and organized their neighbors’ participation. The summer was fraught with students’ arrests, clashes with park security, and a menacing presence by the American Nazi Party. “All of the credit goes to the students,” says Delaplaine, a retired social worker. “As white people, we were just spinning our wheels trying to get the park integrated—their presence and commitment gave it the thrust.” The Bannockburn neighbors—composed largely of members of the old Left, some of whom had been in labor unions since the ’30s—were skilled protesters and organizers. As a picket captain, Delaplaine helped make placards for demonstrators, leaflets for passers-by, and schedules to keep the line manned. When summer 1960 drew to a close without acquiescence from the park’s owners, demonstrators vowed to return the following summer. Over the winter, the park owners announced a nonsegregation policy, and Munts and Delaplaine organized a countywide committee to support a model accommodation that banned racial discrimination in places serving the public. After extensive public hearings, it was passed. “This achievement helped me realize how it is possible for a few concerned individuals to organize and bring about social change,” she says. Delaplaine and Munts’s civil rights teamwork dates back to when they joined with other Swarthmoreans to successfully petition the College to admit its first black student in fall 1945. Munts, who died in 2013, served seven terms in the Wisconsin Assembly and was later appointed by the governor to head the state’s Public Utilities Commission. In 2011, Delaplaine was inducted into the Human Rights Hall of Fame in Montgomery County for her role in the picketing, but she always emphasizes Munts’s leadership. “Mary Lou was the real visionary—I was just her lieutenant,” Delaplaine says, adding with a laugh, “I get all the credit because I’ve lived so long.” Delaplaine, who became a Quaker after graduating from Swarthmore, nowadays never leaves home without a Black Lives Matters pin on her lapel. Each Sunday, she holds a sign in a Black Lives Matter public vigil near her meetinghouse. “Swarthmore was my alma mater in the truest sense,” she says. “It was my whole education. It’s where I got my values.” SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 47 class notes 1949 Robert Norman robert.z.norman@dartmouth. edu Marjorie Merwin Daggett mmdaggett@verizon.net Nita and I, Bob, explored the contrasts along the border between California and Baja California. At the Pacific end, the border features a 14-foothigh wall. On the U.S. side near the wall are rolls of barbed wire and beyond that, scrubland, part of which is a county park. The wall has reduced the number of migrants, but doesn’t discourage illegal immigration entirely. A few feet away on the Mexican side is a small but lovely Tijuana city park, with lots of flowers. The wall is decorated in one part with attractive artwork and in another with political graffiti. Tijuana extends right up to the wall. All three parts of the city we visited were very clean. In contrast, the streets of San Francisco, which I visited later, had lots of trash bags and litter. Farther east in the sandy desert, we found an RV park with lots of dune-buggy vacationers from the U.S. and Canada, while the other side of the fence in Mexico was mostly desert. We toured the famous Tecate brewery and had lunch in Puerto Nuevo, famous for its lobsters. Lobsters? Anyone from Maine would cringe at calling these giant crayfish “lobsters,” even if they tasted good. In January Ted Wright and wife Sue took a Road 48 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Scholar cruise of the upper Amazon, which is in Peru before the river enters Brazil. They saw colorful birds, monkeys, tarantulas, boa constrictors, and three native villages. He writes, “We were supposed to attend a conference in India in March but the panel I was to be on collapsed because of visa difficulties for Pakistanis going into India. We had my 90th birthday party April 2 and will celebrate again with my California relatives by way of the Canadian Rockies in mid-July. I have found that out-of-town friends and relatives are no longer able to travel great distances. Nancy Gibbons Walden ’53 has moved into Glen Eddy, our retirement community. “Sad news is that one of our daughters has separated from her husband despite three kids.” More sad news: John Kennedy died Jan. 8 in Ithaca, N.Y. He studied philosophy at Swarthmore and received a law degree from Yale in 1952. After marrying Barbara Allen in 1957, he moved to Rockland County, N.Y., to join his father’s law firm before beginning his own practice. He is survived by his wife; children Ian Kennedy, Caitlin Kennedy Loehr ’87, Meghan Kennedy, and Sean Kennedy ’93; brother Irving Kennedy ’53; sister Karen Yearsley; and 10 grandchildren. Our class philosopher, Bill Hirsch, writes, “Recently at a dinner party I replied to an oft-heard World War II inquiry: Why did the Allies not bomb the Auschwitz death camp rail station? Rather than restate my view, I wonder what others might have to say, through knowledge or any other influence, on that disturbing subject.” SUMMER 2016 I, Bob, suggest that our classmates get opinions by asking at their dinner parties. Bill concludes, “Not quiet on any front.” 1950 Dot Watt Williams william4@illinois.edu Tom Kinney enjoys independent living in a health facility in northern Ohio. He has a photo of Josephine “Finy” Krimsky Hansen at 16 and would send it to her if he knew her address. Finy, if you’d like to have it, let me know. Carlos Luria, after enjoying the dental delights of Costa Rica, went to Switzerland in June. He and Ann rented a condo in the Bernese Oberland for a couple of weeks, after determining that it was “handicapped accessible.” He wasn’t quite sure the rest of the country was (all those Alps), so they considered spending the two weeks on their balcony, which had a lovely view of Mount Eiger. James McKnight still wants to share news about global warming and invites classmates to visit summerhillbiomass. com, an alternative fuel system company, or www. letscoolitglobally.info, his blog. These report have specifics about reversing global warming within the foreseeable future. You can email Jim at james. jtmcknight@gmail.com. Jerome Ravetz contributed an article about the crisis of quality to The Rightful Place of Science: Science on the Verge, published by Arizona State University and available on Amazon.com. For the first time in many years, Gertrude “Gee-Gee” Joch Robinson spent Christmas with daughter Wendy and her family in Corvallis, Ore., where four generations of Gee-Gee’s family assembled. They enjoyed hikes around the university town of Corvallis as well as visits to Newport and its aquarium. Gee-Gee traveled to Oregon with youngest son Beren, a fish biologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and her grandchildren Calder, 21, who studies ocean science in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Oriana, 16, a high school student in a French-immersion program. Jane Hooper Mullins was pleased when her globe-trotting daughter, Polly, phoned to say she had to be in New York on Janie’s birthday and suggested Janie take the train from Kendal to join Polly; her husband, Mike; and Jane’s cousin, Jacquie, from Westchester for lunch. But Janie was astonished as other members of her family began arriving from all over the U.S.—her children from Oregon, Minnesota, and Rhode Island; a niece from Colorado; plus grandchildren, two nephews, and a great-niece. Polly had used her frequent flyer miles and hotel chits to bring in all the relatives. “We ate, talked, walked the High Line, and went to Ellis Island. Everyone had a grand time,” Janie reports. I, Dot, visited Pat Edwards Weston in her gorgeous new 13th-floor apartment overlooking the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers, Fla., near daughter Amy. The spacious apartment is a perfect setting for the art that she and Jim collected when they lived in Mexico. I’m happy to report that our May Queen of 66 years ago (remember May Queens?) is as beautiful as ever. Sadly, we have lost three classmates. We send our sympathy to their families. William Kunder, of Port Charlotte, Fla., and Manahawkin, N.J., died Jan. 29 at his daughter’s home in Mystic Island, N.J. Born in Philadelphia, he was a lifelong Eagles and Phillies fan. During World War II, Bill served in the Army Air Corps and attended Swarthmore and Drexel University. After 36 years with IBM, he and his wife retired to Florida, where they were active in the Native Plant Society. Bill is survived by his wife, a sister, three children, eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. John deVeer died in December. Born in Brooklyn, he served in the Navy and received a master’s in applied mathematics from Harvard after graduating from Swarthmore in electrical engineering. He spent much of his career at IBM as a senior engineer, and was part of a team that designed computers for the U.S. space program. He was also a talented woodworker and enjoyed restoring his pre-Revolutionary War home. He was married to Priscilla Peirce deVeer for 65 years. In addition to Pris, he is survived by two children and two grandchildren. Aase Arnold Loescher died in November. Born in Brooklyn, she spent much of her childhood in Norway and the U.S. After graduating from Swarthmore, she won a Fulbright scholarship and studied in Bergen, Norway. In 1953, she married Samuel Loescher ’44, professor of economics at Indiana University. She was a devoted peace activist; in 2009, Monroe County (Ind.) Church Women United gave her its first Human Rights Award for her “unwavering belief in the importance of peace.” She is survived by three children and six grandchildren. 1951 Elisabeth “Liesje” Boessenkool Ketchel eketchel@netscape.com Thanks to all who shared some news. It makes my job easy and interesting. Joy Sundgaard Kaiser writes, “Tempus certainly has fugited. Sixty-five years! I hope everyone in our class is as content as I am. (I exclude the political scene. There is much to be deplored—as usual.) “If any of Swarthmore’s recent graduates wants advice about where to retire, I would prescribe a university town near a big city, such as Palo Alto, Calif., near Stanford and San Francisco, an ideal combination. Plus, we have the coast and its glorious beaches—and the mountain and foothill trails nearby. “We’ve lived here over 20 years—the longest either Herb ’49 or I have lived anywhere. We enjoy access to world-class music, theater, art, and—very important at our ages— health care. Happily, we don’t need anything more than an attentive primarycare doctor. “We live across the street from our daughter and enjoy the company of her and her husband. We are slowing down a little. We switched evening subscriptions to the San Francisco opera and symphony to matinees to avoid the nighttime drive.” Dick Frost shares that the first review of his new book (see the spring 2016 issue for more details), The Railroad and the Pueblo Indians, came out Feb. 26. You can find it by Googling the book’s title. “If it strikes you as odd that I published a scholarly book at age 85, you are right,” Dick says. “It is beginning to be noticed in Santa Fe, N.M. All three public libraries have ordered copies.” Dick planned a lunchtime talk on the book at the New Mexico History Museum, and the Santa Fe New Mexican published an op-ed he wrote on the related topic of “whether one of New Mexico’s pueblos, Acoma (popularly known as the ‘Sky City’), has the right to interfere with Peter Nabokov’s republication of their sacred origin tale, which has no copyright. This may seem quixotic to Easterners, but in New Mexico, with its long interest in Navajos, Apaches, and Pueblos, there is interest and concern.” Setha Goodyear Olson says, “Eric and I have moved to the continuing care retirement community Commons in Lincoln, Mass. Lincoln is a town over from our old home in Lexington. We have a daughter in Lincoln, and our handicapped son can reach us. Our other two kids are farther away. Eric’s mobility limits us a little, but there are a lot of activities here.” I want to call your attention to the article on Winifred Armstrong’s archiving (Page 36)—an important achievement of one of our classmates— and encourage others to do likewise. This interesting note from Ralph Lee Smith: “Maybe we should call this ‘The Year When Old Music Things Got Revived.’ The first item that woke up from years of gathering dust was my Greenwich Village guitar. It’s a 1958 Martin D-18, the kind that Doc Watson played. I was always a top contender for the title of ‘World’s Most Hopeless Guitar Player,’ and in time I put the D-18 away in favor of the dulcimer. Several years ago, I gave the D-18 to my son-in-law, Loy Fankbonner, who can really play. This year, Loy used it on his album If. The world will hear more of the old Martin now that it is in the hands of someone who can do it justice. CAPTION THIS “My Greenwich Village dulcimer, Jean Ritchie dulcimer No. 228, made by Jean and her family in 1968, was included in the Museum of the City of New York’s highly successful exhibit Folk City. An instrument of the traditional Kentucky style, made of walnut with a spruce top, it was the only dulcimer in the exhibit and served as the museum’s tribute to Jean. “Back in 1986, I published a book, The Story of the Dulcimer. The book went out of print in the 1990s, and copies commanded high prices in the secondhand book trade. In January, I signed a contract with the University of Tennessee Press to issue a second edition. I did some updating, and the book was published in June.” 1952 Barbara Wolff Searle bsearle70@msn.com YOUR CAPTION HERE! Be creative! Submit a caption by Aug. 5 to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. To see last issue’s cartoon with suggested captions, go to Page 68. Walter and Marie Lenfest Schmitz have news about their move to a senior-living facility—I’m struck by how every such story is different. Please, keep them coming. Walter and Marie chose a place with only 30 units and no meal plan (although meals are easily obtained) that is more intimate and less institutional. With lots of help from family, they moved out of their home of 56 years. “We sold the house ourselves. Next came the estate sale. Dealing with the accumulation of a lifetime has been hard.” Marie has coped with illnesses but can take SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 49 class notes ALAN LLOYD ’51 HONORED ENGINEER Alan Lloyd ’51 received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hawaii Council of Engineering Societies. In his 43 years as an engineer, Lloyd identified ways to improve his customers’ operations and profitability, and he achieved the prestigious grade of ASHRAE Fellow from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. He retired in 1996 as the Hawaiian Electric Co.’s executive staff engineer. short trips, including to Florida to see twin brother Gerry and his wife. Gerry was publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and is founding chairman of the soon-to-be-established Museum of the American Revolution. Thanks to Gerry’s generosity, a new Jaguar XF was delivered to Marie in April. The Schmitzes’ letter has more details of activities— Walter and Marie enjoy an active and rich life, despite health issues that, sadly, many of us face. It is with sadness I report the January death of Arthur Obermayer, one of my most faithful correspondents. A Boston Globe obituary gave these highlights: His impact on Massachusetts politics began when he and some others prevailed upon the Rev. Robert Drinan to run for office. “Father Drinan became the first Catholic priest elected to Congress, and his victory opened the political door in Massachusetts to liberal Democrats such as John Kerry and Barney Frank.” The obituary also notes: “In a White House ceremony last June, the Obermayers were inducted into the Small Business Innovation Research Hall of Fame for their pioneering efforts. For the past 16 years, meanwhile, Dr. Obermay- 50 Swarthmore College Bulletin / er turned an inspiration from a 1997 genealogical trip to Germany into the Obermayer German Jewish History Awards. The awards are given annually to non-Jewish Germans who have done extraordinary work in preserving Jewish history, culture, synagogues, cemeteries, and other remnants of the Jewish past in their own communities in Germany.” Art received a doctorate in chemistry from MIT in 1956. In the early 1960s, he founded the research and development company Moleculon in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass. While building his company, he met Judith Hirschfield through friends. She was finishing a doctorate in mathematics at Harvard and teaching at Wellesley College. They married in 1963. Besides his wife, he leaves three children and five grandchildren. 1953 Carol Lange Davis cldavis5@optonline.net Bob Fetter and wife Susie met Mary Bartlett Caskey for dinner on Siesta Key, Fla., in the winter. All three happened to be in Florida SUMMER 2016 at the same time—Mary for four weeks and the Fetters for two. Susie and Bob spent their first week with Eleanor Hutcheson Epler and her husband around Port St. Lucie. Tedd Osgood and wife Dorothy are in their 15th year at Kendal at Hanover, a continuing-care retirement community in New Hampshire, which has fully met their expectations. Tedd traveled substantially in 2015. He spent a week in April with a grad-school housemate and his wife on a belated first-time exploration of Yosemite. In May he joined a group of British World Bank retirees for a gathering in Dublin. While there he toured the Guinness brewery and Abbey Tavern and traveled through the Wicklow Mountains and on to Glendalough, site of medieval monastic ruins. He also drove to Galway to visit the spectacular Cliffs of Moher and the peaceful Aran Islands. A month later Tedd went to Mongolia, stopping en route to visit friends in Finland. “Traveling via Helsinki we got to Central Asia without enduring a long flight over the Pacific. In Mongolia we spent three days in yurt camps in vastly different terrain: steppes in the east where Genghis Khan arose; mountains, lakes, and pine forests in the north near Siberia; and in the trackless Gobi Desert to the south where dinosaur eggs were discovered in 1923. Each area was characterized by animal herding and a nomadic lifestyle.” The Osgoods spent much of July and August at their cottage at Silver Lake, N.H., with grandchildren and friends, including Jonathan Fine ’54 and his wife, and Trudy Mott-Smith ’56. Back in Hanover, Tedd is line dancing, resuming bridge after a 50-year hiatus, and involved with the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation. In September he went to the ninth Biennial International Nevil Shute Conference in Oxford, England, where he dined with Jerry Ravetz ’50. I received a note from Phil Allen about the passing of Lew Dabney. Phil writes, “Lew was a soul mate of mine.” Lew was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 2015. As the malignancy took its toll, he was lovingly attended by wife Sarah, their children, and their families, and was visited by friends. “Best known for his 2005 definitive biography of Edmund Wilson, Lew took high honors in English literature at Swarthmore and his Ph.D. at Columbia, and lectured in Sweden as a Fulbright scholar. He bore witness to, and exemplified, extraordinary achievement in letters, advocating American and English literature with profound insight, eloquence, and wit at Vassar and Smith colleges and the University of Wyoming. This is a voice that is already painfully missed by those of us who knew him.” 1954 Elizabeth Dun Colten lizcolten@aol.com In February, Dick and I attended the 29th annual Camden Conference in Maine. Amazing topic: The New Africa. This brought to mind our three courageous African classmates. Only Rosalind Eronini Nnubia of Nigeria still appears on the College address list. Has anyone chronicled the others’ lives since 1954? Tonen Andrews O’Connor has joined the ranks of the retired, though she doesn’t sound “retired” to me. More than 50 of her articles were included in the Milwaukee Zen Center’s newly published 30 Years of Reflections. She still officiates at the Zen Center or one of the prisons, helps provide meals for the homeless, and is active with the Committee for Interfaith Understanding. Since fall, she has traveled extensively, within the U.S. (to visit family, which includes four great-grandchildren) and to Japan. Larry Franck notified me of wife Bicky’s death. Friends during kindergarten in Swarthmore, they reconnected at a high school reunion and shared their lives between ages 72 and 82. Larry has homes in Maryland and Florida and continues to sail, although he confesses he is slowly moving toward more power boating. Happily, he is recovering from a broken ulnar, caused by tripping over his boat trailer. Peter Bart has joined Deadline as editor at large. When seeing West Coast family in March, Raymond and Mary Wren Swain visited Punky ’55 and Anne Chandler Fristrom, who are flourishing in their new senior community. Nancy Weller Dorian and husband Quarnig happily live in Phoenix. She has self-published her husband’s biography, My Name is Quarnig, available on Amazon. Reportable news is scarce. Remedy? Your input. It’s easy to add a note on the envelope flap when you send in your Alumni Fund donation. 1955 Sally Schneckenburger Rumbaugh srumbaugh@san.rr.com Anne Schick Chappelka writes, “The past 29 years have seen us happily settled in rural central Pennsylvania, just west of Harrisburg and down the street from daughter Elizabeth Place ’79, her husband, Mike, and their five children, though only two are still at home. It’s been a rich time of family, friends, community involvement, and the more recent delight of retirement with Rog. Since my first child was born three months after graduation, it’s been easy to reach the current year with seven children (three step), 18 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Families are coast to coast, but we keep connected thanks to the electronic wizardry that we have struggled with.” The family plans to gather at Anne’s home to “say farewell to a place each of us has enjoyed these many years. With luck it will be sold soon, as Rog and I have tired of too much yard and house. We are in our Harrisburg apartment until spring, loving our perch along the Susquehanna and walking to all the midtown things we enjoy. Like others, we have loved some wonderful travels—a few destinations remain on the wish list—but nesting stays the special joy.” About three years ago, Punky and Anne Chandler Fristrom ’54 moved to a retirement community in San Diego. Punky says, “I am teaching a monthly poetry class for the other residents. Counting my church school teaching of youngsters, I have now covered the age range from 2 to 99.” Hank Bode, our class agent “before the indefatigable Bill Dominick,” had an interesting career that led to being president/ CEO of Videojet, a startup subsidiary of British General Electric. Videojet, Hank explains, “commercialized industrial ink-jet printers, a technology that allowed rapid application of use-by codes on food products among other things. (See the dot matrix marks on the bottom of beer cans or the bar codes on first-class envelopes.)” When he retired in 1997, Videojet had sales of about $450 million. Since then, he and wife Susan have enjoyed travel, 10 grandkids, volunteering, book clubs, family gatherings, choral singing, and summers on Cape Cod, which include woodworking, sailing, “quahogging,” and forest gardening. Hank especially enjoys sailing his 15-foot Marshall catboat on Waquoit Bay. “My health has been good—with a few replaced parts. Connections with Swarthmoreans, particu- View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu larly the Delta Upsilons, have been very satisfying.” They recently visited Nancy and Lee Hallberg in their Florida retirement community. Nancy Sturtevant Burleson writes of retirement: “Somehow life is still very busy and happily centered in the lively villages of Damariscotta/ Bristol in midcoast Maine. If you want history, intellectual activity, music, the sea, the forest, wildlife—we have it all.” She lives in a renovated 1768 farmhouse that she and her husband bought when she retired. They chose the area because good friends Christopher ’54 and Jane Walker Kennedy lived nearby, and also because Nancy’s family had come to that area since the late ’40s, her father’s family having settled in inland Maine just after the Revolutionary War. Five years ago, after 55 years of marriage, Nancy lost her “wonderful husband,” and, in the last two years, both Kennedys. Nevertheless, the farmhouse is still “the homestead” to her three children and their families and the center of holiday celebrations. Daughter Kate, who lives about an hour away, is a business manager for the Scarborough school system, while her husband works with special-needs adults. Their daughter, Anna, is a freshman at Fordham. Son Bill lives “right here” with his significant other. Their son and daughter are in their 20s. Nancy’s youngest, Margy, recently divorced and lives in Connecticut with her two boys, one in middle school and the other in ninth grade. Living in the 18th-century house, Nancy writes, “gives a sense of rootedness and connection.” Being removed from some of the current chaos has given Nancy “perspective on the changes we are seeing. At each life stage my thinking, reactions, and, yes, choices, have been formed by the Swarthmore worldview.” Edward Gelardin offered that if no column were to appear, people might start sending news. I think he’s an optimist. However, he gave me the perfect line to end with: “Please tell the editors to stop pushing the Class of ’55’s notes so far to the front of that section. It’s scary.” 1956 Caro Luhrs celuhrs@verizon.net For some unknown reason, I received very little news for this summer column, which was written in late March. Hopefully that’s because many classmates planned to come to our 60th Reunion in June, where they could personally share their stories. Norman Rush recently reviewed Horacio Castellanos Moya’s latest novel, The Dream of My Return, for The New York Review of Books. He called it “a character study of victims of past turbulence” (the U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency wars in El Salvador). You may recall Norman won the National Book Award in 1991 for his novel Mating. Have you read his 2013 novel, Subtle Bodies? It’s about the joys and tribulations of marriage and friendship as old college friends reunite in upstate New York. Former Sen. Carl Levin received the Detroit Police Athletic League’s Leadership Award for helping redevelop the old Tiger Stadium into a safe playing field for kids. Carl is now senior counsel at a prominent Detroit law firm. Wayne State University has created the Levin Center at Wayne Law, where Carl is Distinguished Legislator in Residence. 1957 Minna Newman Nathanson jm@nathansons.net Although Carolyn Gaiser feared her book Promettimi di Non Morire (Promise Me You Won’t Die) had indeed done so, a literary blog reprinted a 2013 Roman newspaper review that raved, “She writes of people and places with a rare elegance that reminds us of great literature.” Our condolences to Polly Witte Wright, whose husband, Rob ’58, a retired history professor, died in December at their retirement home in Cumberland, Maine. 1958 Vera Lundy Jones 549 East Ave. Bay Head, NJ 08742 verajonesbayhead@ comcast.net Roy Tawes is a retired vascular surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Having published more than 120 academic works, he now SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 51 class notes writes fast-paced thrillers under the name R. Lawson featuring veteran CIA Agent Biff Roberts, who helps thwart threats to the U.S. and its allies. While visiting friends in Phoenix, I met Roy and wife Joyce for breakfast. It was a lovely opportunity to renew a college-years friendship. I recommend his intriguing, entertaining novels. Kay Memelsdorff Johnson has an apartment in Amsterdam, where son Patrick ’89 lives with his wife and two boys. Kay speaks Dutch but wants to become fluent, so she took classes in January and February while there. Last year Ginnie Paine DeForest took a riverboat trip between Amsterdam and Ghent, Belgium. The trip, in late April, included a visit to Keukenhof gardens outside Amsterdam, where she saw tulips of every color and shape. In September Ginnie went to Italy with an American Association of University Women alumni group, starting on the Amalfi Coast, including a visit to Pompeii, followed by stops in Rome, Orvieto, Florence, Siena, and Venice. Tex Wyndham still teaches Road Scholar classes and continues to draw large groups. He also gives a music seminar for Road Scholar participants who are meeting at the same time as his group, including those in a golf program and another in a choral program. Tex is quite popular. He also SUBMIT your personal reunion photos to bulletin@swarthmore.edu 52 Swarthmore College Bulletin / does musical programs for various other groups. 1959 Miriam Repp Staloff staloff@verizon.net I received a long, interesting letter from Elena Scott Whiteside—most of the column is devoted to quoting and paraphrasing her words. “I had been wondering what I could do for my children and grandchildren—something that no one else could. I decided to give them a good glimpse of their Russian roots. Last August oldest son Nick, 53; his daughters, Bridgett, 19, and Sydney Rose, 8; and I flew through Paris, stopping long enough to see the Seine and Notre Dame and to sample real Parisian crepes. We then flew to Riga, Latvia, where I have two cousins and their offspring, who received us warmly. We spent one day swimming in the Baltic and another walking the Old Town. “Accompanied by my cousin Val, we took the overnight train to Moscow. What fun the girls had sleeping in the upper bunks. Val was a great help getting us around Moscow, including Red Square and St. Basil’s. The biggest thrill was traveling to my grandmother’s village in the heart of Russia. “It was exactly as I remembered it: dirt streets, wooden cottages, no running water, and only outside toilets. We visited the cemetery where my grandparents were buried and the church my grandmother attended, SUMMER 2016 a 5-kilometer walk each way. We met cousins from two generations and had a wonderful time being embraced and fêted by our family. “One additional observation: I could not help but notice that in Paris, Riga, and Moscow, I could have been in NYC. The women are slim and dressed in ‘stressed and morestressed’ blue jeans. They walk rapidly, look down at their smartphones, and live in the 21st century. “The trip was wonderful. The young people got out of it what they wanted. Next year I plan to take my daughter and her family. But traveling is getting challenging, and I am slowing down. I still enjoy the Swarthmore events I can attend in NYC. Thank you for having them. Love and God bless to all Swarthmoreans, especially classmates.” Please share your news. 1960 Jeanette Strasser Pfaff jfalk2@mac.com I had asked for comments from people who had retired from their main occupation. Most respondents sound even busier than before retirement. Charles Jackson: “I returned to my native Delaware 20 years ago after 33 years in Boston as an editor/publisher and as judge and commissioner of horse racing in Massachusetts. Life here in Newark, three blocks from the University of Delaware, has been good to me and for me. I’m in my fourth year at UD’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute with classes in Spanish, Portuguese, German, and history, and a seminar for writers. I was Delaware state president of AARP for four years, and in January I accepted the position of clerk of the Hockessin Friends Meeting, the Quaker meeting in which I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s. I have enjoyed our annual reunions and remain loyal and thankful to Swarthmore for opening the doors of my mind. I have no intention of closing them.” Joan Bond Sax: “You do mean ‘main’ not ‘mail’ occupation, don’t you? I was catching up on my email this morning after several days of ignoring it and wondered if I could completely retire from my (e)mail occupation. As for retirement from my main occupation, I have slid into ‘retirement’ gradually and by omission, so to speak. That is, I still translate when, and only when, I feel like it and I have nothing more pressing to do, such as go on a hike, visit doctors (far too frequently, alas, for me and my husband), or visit friends. I still read blogs about energetic translators a few decades younger than me talking about marketing and getting ahead. I heave a sigh of relief that I am not in that rat race … and then I take a walk.” Bill and Linda Rothwell Lee: “Having just returned from a cruise to the Panama Canal and Costa Rica with alumni from Dartmouth and Smith colleges, we are expecting soon to hear that the unit we want at Kendal at Hanover, a continuing-care retirement community in New Hampshire, is available. We have been on a waiting list for more than 10 years. (By the way, we just saw the announcement of the May opening of the Inn at Swarthmore. It looks like a wonderful addition to the town and campus.)” Norm Sarachek: “Jett and I visited northern Italy for our 25th anniversary, seeing little Lake Orta, Verona, Venice, and Milan. We are teaching a oneweek course in August at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading Pa., ‘The Next Step: Composing and Creating the Personal Photograph.’ I am also teaching a three-day course on the cameraless photographic process, ‘The Chemigram.’ Jett still teaches yoga and is an art therapist with the Cancer Support Group. I was delighted to have Swarthmore purchase three of my silver gelatin chemigrams for the Inn at Swarthmore. Although I spend way too much time on Facebook, it is an amazing way to learn and communicate.” Susan Turner: “Listservs for my church, neighborhood, chorus, and the Country Dance and Song Society, in addition to Facebook, are all ways I enjoy hearing about people’s lives. But there’s nothing like a warm body to talk with. I’m having a student move in now that I have three bedrooms, and I’m going to enjoy the company. (We are really not meant to live alone.) I had a lovely woman from the Galapagos Islands stay for three months. I had to keep the heat at 72 just for her. The house is 100 years old, so my almost-equally-old boiler kept running out of water for the radiators.” You may have noticed that I, Jeanette, have a new name. Richard Pfaff and I married April 9. Richard is a historian of medieval England and also an ordained Episcopal View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu priest. More important, I can say that this smart little girl with no heart has found her a wonderful guy. We both live at Carol Woods, a retirement community, and plan to keep our addresses as they are. For now, my email also remains the same. 1961 Pat Myers Westine pat@westinefamily.com As I write, in late March, the cherry blossoms are blooming in nearby Washington, D.C., thus heralding the beginning of spring. My thanks to those of you who answered my questions at the end of the last column and sent me updates on your retirement activities. Judy Davis Riggle in Ohio enjoys having five other Swatties at Kendal at Oberlin, where she and husband Tom, two dogs, and a cat moved in August. Judy sums up the tranquility: “I am watching the snow and the cat perched on my sewing (quilting) machine in the 14-foot window, 1,000 puzzle pieces are turned out on my design/cutting table, and I’m surrounded by things that have sentimental value.” She’s still treasurer of an anti-fracking-pipeline group and for the campaign of a League of Women Voters friend who is running for city council. She has served 20 years on the Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning and still plays tennis, which she did at Swarthmore. Ann Mercer Klein writes from Savannah, Ga., that she and husband Jeff still work in the family business (Closet and Cabinet Experts). He sells and designs; she works two days a week in the showroom. She has learned a complex computer program at 77, and two years ago they started a conference for independent closet companies needing to build their businesses. The attendance has doubled and the group will meet this year in Alexandria, Va. Son Josh now heads the business and runs the conference. Ann enjoys taming the wild deer on their island and working in her garden/orchard/trellis area. Last year she started growing milkweed to help the beleaguered monarch butterfly and “graduated” a dozen, hoping for more this year. The Kleins have hosted travel club and B&B guests for more than 30 years and have made friends around the world. According to Bob and Dorothy Smith Pam’s holiday letter, Dorothy teaches communication, public speaking, and English composition at Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts and spends a lot of time with her grandchildren, Lily, 6, and Oliver, 8. Daughter Caroline and her husband run their nearby Kitchen Garden Farm, providing vegetables to fine restaurants from Boston to Brooklyn. Last fall Bob and Dorothy saw several plays in New York. Like many of us, they also exercise at the YMCA several times a week. I received several letters mourning Dick Quarles. Tom Hodgson ’62 remembered Dick’s “helpful and comforting” friendship when Tom was a freshman and wished that they had reconnected when Tom returned to the D.C. area IN MEMORIAM Alumni death notices received by the College from Feb. 14 through May 14, 2016. 1947 1961 Donald Smith March 24, 2016 Barbara Price Feb. 18, 2016 1949 1962 Lloyd Craighill Jr. March 28, 2016 Harris Fischer Dec. 20, 2015 Caroline Underwood Feb. 26, 2016 Kathleen Blau Shapiro Jan. 24, 2016 Nicole Fischer Hahn Rafter Feb. 29, 2016 1942 1950 1970 Mary Nute Craighill April 13, 2016 Bonnie Betts Armbruster March 1, 2016 Janet Hostetter Doehlert Feb. 28, 2016 1971 1934 Gertrude Mitchell Bell Feb. 19, 2016 1937 John Wood Jr. April 1, 2016 1941 Eleanore Green Akina March 29, 2016 Donald Pelz Feb. 27, 2016 Mary Steeves Shern April 19, 2016 1951 Betty Bowen West Jan. 31, 2016 Ruth Alexander Finser Feb. 7, 2016 1943 Jack Meier Feb. 17, 2016 Ira Greenhill Feb. 21, 2016 1952 Beatrice Brewster Linton Feb. 26, 2016 Janet Letts Dec. 28, 2015 1944 Eldon Woodcock Jan. 28, 2016 William Busing April 14, 2016 1953 Matson Ewell March 8, 2016 Elizabeth Alden Bowers Dec. 15, 2015 1945 1954 Janet Stanley Mustin March 10, 2016 Barbara Hill Lindsay Oct. 8, 2015 1946 1955 Patricia Frank Carey March 17, 2016 Gwilym Owen Jr. Feb. 6, 2016 Elizabeth Roberts Gonzalez Oct. 6, 2015 1958 Martha Hill Renda June 9, 2013 Anna Coombs Rohrer May 1, 2016 Adrienne Sutton Cosenza April 11, 2013 1973 William Epstein Jan. 15, 2016 1979 Emily Hope Simson April 8, 2016 1981 Janet Taylor Feb. 1, 2016 1985 Webster O’Brien Nov. 29, 2015 Molly Roth March 9, 2016 David Porter March 26, 2016 1960 Vivi-Ann Hall Lowe Oct. 18, 2015 Harriet Shorr April 9, 2016 SUMMER SUMMER 2016 2016 // Swarthmore Swarthmore College College Bulletin Bulletin 53 53 class notes to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Steve Davidson shared rides to and from the College from Baltimore when he and Dick were underclassmen. Steve remembers, “There was no artifice about him; what you saw is who he really was. He was kind, generous, and modest.” Dick was a fine athlete who played soccer and lacrosse; in fact, one year his picture was on the cover of a national lacrosse booklet. Steve attended Dick’s first wedding, lost contact, and then reconnected at our 50th Reunion. By the time you read this, our 55th Reunion will be over, but I hope many of you echo Steve’s feeling that “we never are able to make up for lost time” and that you made the effort to come, reconnect, and reminisce. I will report on the festivities in the next class notes. Please send me your news and updates, especially if you cannot come to the reunion. 1962 Evelyn Edson 268 Springtree Lane Scottsville, VA 24590 eedson@pvcc.edu It was a nice surprise to receive a lovely little print, “Birches in Winter,” from John Wright. He and Elly Faber Wright ’64 are taking a printmaking class and he attends the Quaker meeting in Evanston, Ill. From John Nesbitt: “I am 90 percent retired from a very satisfying career in internal medicine. I still read EKGs at our hospital and volunteer as medical 54 Swarthmore College Bulletin / director of our free clinic. Married for 45 years to Lucy, and we have three sons—no grandchildren. Hobbies are cycling and cutting firewood.” An annual letter from Walt and Elizabeth “Bonnie” Holden Carter detailed their busy schedules. Walt is a member of two book groups, one conversation group, a walking group, a French conversation group, and two boards (Normandy Allies and the 29th Division Association), and took three courses in the spring and fall terms at Brandeis University. “Without the pressure of exams, papers, and grades, the result is increased familiarity with the topics, but nothing approaching expertise. The material mostly goes in one ear and out the other, creating a pleasant sensation while passing through.” Bonnie plays the flute with three ensembles and serves on the board of the League of Women Voters. After my last appeal for news, Herb Taylor took pity. His twin brother, Walter, in Boulder, Colo., is involved in Buddhism and watercolor painting. “I remember Professor Hedley Rhys showing a slide of Bernini’s statue of the Medici brothers illustrating the active and contemplative life, thinking that could be us, with me being the ‘active.’” Herb continues to hike, mostly in the Western canyons, and makes musical instruments. “Up to No. 218 now, mostly uncommon things players can’t find at their music store, like Irish bouzoukis, octave mandolins, tenor guitars, and now a Nordic-style låtmandola, and, hopefully, a harp-guitar.” (See herbtaylor.com.) SUMMER 2016 Harris Fischer died Dec. 20. After Swarthmore, he went to Stony Brook University, where he earned a Ph.D. in solid-state physics. He then headed a consulting team in the nation’s first county-level environmental department in Suffolk County, N.Y., and spent eight years as a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in health and environmental risk assessment. Harris then worked as director of environmental services and later as director of marketing for Lockwood, Kessler & Bartlett, retiring in 2005. He often reminisced about his Swarthmore courses, pranks, and lifelong friends, including Sandy and Izzie Phillips Williams ’63, with whom he and wife Judy always celebrated New Year’s. Harris is survived by his wife and their sons, John and Charlie. Nicole Fischer Hahn Rafter, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, died Feb. 29. She began her career as a high school teacher and English professor, but switched to criminal justice in her mid-30s. She took interest in the plight of women in the criminal justice system and wrote a number of books, including Gender, Prisons, and Prison History and White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1877–1919. In the early 21st century, she published several books on crime films, including Badfellas: Movie Psychos, Popular Culture, and Law. She also published The Criminal Brain: Understanding Biological Theories of Crime. She is survived by her children, Alex and Sarah Hahn. Thanks to all who wrote. Stay well. 1963 Diana Judd Stevens djsteven1@verizon.net In March, Carl and Holly Humphrey Taylor celebrated their 75th birthdays in Tucson, Ariz. (Let me know how you celebrated or will celebrate yours.) To get more time to hike, locate archaeological sites, camp, and be less responsible, Carl and Holly are giving up a few volunteer activities (Master Chorale, symphony board) and continuing with others (Flagstaff Arts Council, Friends of Flagstaff Area Monuments, Willow Bend Environmental Education Center, and the Unitarian Universalist Church). It’s been awhile since I checked the current 1963 address list provided by the College against the previous year’s. In comparing them, I noted the following changes: Alison Archibald Anderson has a new Philadelphia address; Susan Guettel Cole’s address has changed from Buffalo, N.Y., to Ann Arbor, Mich.; Bob Harnwell has a new address in West Chester, Pa.; and Bill Raich’s address has changed from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. Travelers: Jane Jonas Srivastava had almost as much fun meeting up with Nancy Hall Colburn Farrell while hiking in Patagonia in 2004 as she did English country dancing in Hawaii last winter with Paula Dale, director of the Swarthmore Campus and Community Store, and Paula’s husband, Martin Warner, Swarthmore’s registrar. During a vacation, Barbara Seymour and Jim Patton spent time with Anne Welsh and her husband at the Costa Rican home of Anne’s twin sister. Carl and Elizabeth Northrop Jockusch ’64 were in Hawaii last winter snorkeling, whale watching, and playing tennis. Though he is retired from teaching math at the University of Illinois, Carl still does mathematical research and is active in Spanish and German conversation groups. In February, Dave ’62 and Alice Handsaker Kidder spent two weeks in Guam visiting son Steve and his family. Steve flies for United Airlines and is based there. Before their trip, the Kidders hosted two Swatties doing externships around Boston. Future travelers: Abby Pollak and Helen are taking the grandchildren to Paris and Ile de Re, France, this summer. Also this summer, Dan and Betsy Maxfield Crofts plan to travel abroad with their daughters to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. In July, Carl and Holly Humphrey Taylor will attend a first-ever family reunion organized by daughter Natalia at Edisto Beach, S.C. Twenty-three are expected, many of whom have never met. Milestones: Just in time for this year’s elections, Polly Glennan Watts registered to vote for the first time in 45 years, in her new home state of Florida. (As a Virgin Island resident for those years, Polly could not vote for the U.S. president.) Earlier this year, Polly returned to St. Thomas to receive an award (along with husband Fred, posthumously) at The Family Resource Center’s Peacemaker Gala in recognition of their service. There was a record attendance of more than 200 at the gala. Kathie Kertesz is substitute teaching almost every day, singing in a choir, figuring out things like housing and health, and always having time for fun. Gail MacColl spent her birthday moving dirt in the foundation of a Habitat for Humanity rehab condo. She plays with music groups and spends time visiting late husband Al’s children and grandchildren in Texas and Florida. Seth Armstrong and Dave McLanahan are working to establish Medicare for All (single payer) through Physicians for a National Health Plan. Earlier this year, Bruce Leimsidor wrote from Astrakhan, Russia, where he, at the invitation of the State University and the Russian Migration Ministry, was a visiting professor teaching courses on European Union asylum law and practice. Bruce was also acting as an adviser on the Russian program for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the conflict in eastern Ukraine. (Astrakhan is one of the most polyethnic cities in Russia, and the first port of call for refugees and economic migrants.) Additionally, Bruce was examining the deteriorating situation for Russia’s gay population under homophobic laws instituted a few years ago. From Russia, Bruce went to Odessa, Ukraine, to teach at the Law Academy. Last fall, Bruce was in the U.S. on a lecture tour sponsored by the German government to talk about the migration crisis in Germany and the rest of Europe. He spoke at UC Berkeley, Brandeis, the University of Arizona, and the University of Minnesota. As a Facebook friend of Bruce, I find his postings on the migration crisis and other current issues very interesting. I am finishing these notes after a three-hour lunch at Barbara Seymour’s with Claire Thurman, Carol Finneburgh Lorber, Martha Baird Ralphe, and Ricky Strong Batt. Our conversation covered many topics, including travel, the election, painting, plans as we age, and friends. We agreed with the research that shows the vital importance of friends. Thank you, friends, for sharing your news. 1964 Diana Bailey Harris harris.diana@gmail.com As Peter Freedman notes, “It seems like I just wrote you.” Very true, and it’s probably a good thing. Even though we’re Garnet Sages now, there’s still a lot of news—we’re a tenacious bunch. Peter and Lynda “are heading to Clarksdale, Miss., in April to the Juke Joint Festival—a great place to hear the blues up close and personal. “As usual, summer will take us to the East Coast to visit children, grandchildren, nephews, and sibs, starting in Baltimore and Amtrak-ing our way to Boston via Philadelphia and New York,” Peter writes. “I’m now the oldest in our immediate family, as my dad’s second wife passed away a few months ago. My 74th birthday was in March, although I do have a 99-year-old cousin in NYC. Life is good, with occasional, but not serious, physical impediments—a slightly strained View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu Achilles at the moment. Itching to get back to the pingpong table!” John Simon “felt poorly on and off all fall and blamed it on this damn flu hanging on. Finally, thank God, I had a little pain in my right lower quadrant and Kaiser gave me a CAT scan. ‘The good news is, it’s not appendicitis,’ the doc told me. ‘The bad news is, it’s worse.’ Turned out to be an aggressive malignant retroperitoneal liposarcoma that tripled its volume in the endless month between discovery and excision. I spent a week in the hospital writing sonnets and doing laps of the floor while tugging my IV pole. “The best news is they got it all: The margins were clear; no metastasis within limits of detection; and I don’t need chemo or radiation, just biannual CAT scans to catch the beast if it comes back. My strength returns slowly. After six weeks, I’ve started teaching poetry to my granddaughter’s second-grade class. I’m off red meat and sugar; now everything tastes sweet. In May, the Berkeley Poetry Festival gave me its Lifetime Achievement Award.” Bernie Beitman reports, “New grandson Max arrived Jan. 23 joining sister Zoe, 2, in Cambridge, Mass., and rounding out the family of son Aaron and his wife, Liza. My book Connecting with Coincidence: The New Science for Using Synchronicity and Serendipity in Your Life was released March 7.” Peter Linebaugh also has a new book. “The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day tells the story of the red and the green: ‘Green is a relationship to the earth and what grows therefrom. Red is a relationship to other people and the blood spilt there among. Green designates life with only necessary labor; Red designates death with surplus labor. Green is natural appropriation; Red is social expropriation. Green is husbandry and nurturance; Red is proletarianization and prostitution. Green is useful activity; Red is useless toil. Green is creation of desire; Red is class struggle. May Day is both.’” Carol Seabrook Boulanger also has a new grandson. Kenai Jacques Russell was born to daughter Adriana Jan. 28. Peter Setlow “spent two phenomenal weeks last summer with family in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks—only two Swatties (me and Jen Setlow ’95), but all of our grandchildren and several of their cousins and their parents. This summer we’ll be in Alaska on a small boat, The Discovery, in Prince William Sound for a week with our son and his family.” Jim and Archer Dodson Heinzen went in January to Ilobasco, El Salvador— the town some are now calling “the murder capital of the world.” She writes, “We are now camped out at Long Key, recovering. A three-generation bike ride of the Allegheny Passage/C&O Canal trail (Pittsburgh to D.C.) is scheduled for the last week of March. I, happily, will be driving the chase car.” And, at the end, this sad news: Ron Tropp ’65 died unexpectedly of natural causes Sept. 16. Ron was born July 8, 1943, in Alexandria, La., and moved around during his first few years as the son of an Army psychiatrist. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and enjoyed many summers camping in Maine, and later teaching waterskiing. Ron played football and lacrosse at Swarthmore. He got a law degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and practiced law in California for many years. He lived his last 36 years in Woodland Hills, Calif. Ron is survived by his wife of 50 years, Peggy Colvin Tropp; children Josh ’01 and Rebecca; daughter-in-law Christina; granddaughter Sofía Secoya; and dog Gryphon. 1965 Kiki Skagen Munshi kiki@skagenranch.com Sadly, Nancy Myers O’Connor lost her husband in February. “Jim was diagnosed with throat cancer last June. Chemo and radiation appeared to have knocked it out, but late in the year, PET and CT scans showed the cancer had moved into his lungs. I’ve lost my best friend after close to 50 years together.” Betsy Winn van Patten also lost her husband. “Norm died March 6 ‘after a long illness’ as the obituaries always say. He went into a great assisted-living facility here in Oakland, Calif., for his last months. I could visit him every day and, without the pressures of 24-hour caregiving, spend my time loving him and thinking about the wonderful times we had in the last 35 years.” And Bruce Tischler lost his wife. “Jean died Jan. 20. The metastatic breast SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 55 class notes cancer that we had been dealing with for almost 23 years finally won the battle. Per her wish, she was cremated—after the New York Eye Bank harvested her corneas. We planned a memorial service April 16 so my new granddaughter, Celeste Elizabeth Reid—born Feb. 5 to Anna Tischler ’99 and Chris Reid in Minneapolis—could fly to the area. “Jean and I had put our house in New Rochelle, N.Y., on the market late last summer. I moved Feb. 12 into a nice apartment in downtown New Rochelle. I have a one-year lease and will use the time to grieve and figure out what is next.” David Darby writes, “At the reunion last year, Ann Stuart mused about who would remember her and, of those who did, ‘whom’ did they remember? That was the reflection of the reunion and perhaps the year for me. Who we are is hard enough. Who others think us to be is a different dimension.” Dave and wife Mary Lee “moved to Billings, Mont., but still spend time at our condo in Seattle. A postreunion highlight of the year was a four-day backpacking trip over 11,000-foot Sundance Pass in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains. It was a testament to the wonder of artificial hips and getting into shape.” They also traveled to Hungary, where they once lived. “It was a pleasure trip, but we had the opportunity to discuss the sad state of affairs in Hungarian and U.S. politics. The swing to the right, foremost in Hungary and Poland, is a great concern. While the Obama administration receives generally good marks, the view of current U.S. politics is 56 Swarthmore College Bulletin / discouraging. “One senior government official pointed out that if Hungary came apart at the seams, the world would hardly notice. However, if the U.S. were to adopt many policies being discussed among some presidential candidates and groups, the entire world would feel the result.” Bob Cohen writes, “I have been examining how the expansion of the internet and cloud computing-based technologies will affect the economy and business. The project also explores the contentious issue of whether new technologies will create or destroy jobs.” Julie Diamond moved 17 blocks north from 92nd Street in New York, where she lived for almost 40 years, to 109th Street, to be with fiancé Herb Ginsburg. Her short story “Debt” was listed as one of the “other distinguished stories” in the Best American Short Stories 2015. Tom Kramer keeps running. He finished the Marine Corps Marathon for the 39th straight year in October and plans to try for 40 this year. “As I slowed down with the passing of years, I’ve had to coin new terms to describe my running speed, like ‘hyperpathetic.’” And I, Kiki, continue to run so fast it’s hard to figure out what’s going on, but my historical novel about Romania, Whisper in Bucharest, is now available on Amazon. Whee! On to the next. Keep the news coming … And if you don’t get the Unexpurgated Class Notes but would like to receive more news, send me your email address. SUMMER 2016 1967 Donald Marritz dmarritz@gmail.com Our 50th Reunion is next year. Ponder that. I recommend “What I Think”—the confident, revealing musings of Professor Alexander Nehamas, posted online in December by Princeton in connection with his latest book, On Friendship. Pam Huessy Hazel has surfaced from the depths of almost five decades— whoosh!—with her first class note, “because I attended for only freshman year, graduating from Berkeley.” We won’t accept that excuse, Pam, but welcome back. She retired from law practice in 2006, and “now I practice mostly the guitar. I live a bucolic North Carolina life with husband Phillip and dogs, far from the madding crowd, which has been intruding nonetheless because of the appalling politics of this election cycle.” A lot of us are retired, but Phyllis Teitelbaum and husband Tony Lunn may have been the first, in 1998. “I didn’t start a new career. I didn’t get a new degree. I didn’t write a book. I just did a bit of this and a bit of that. These retirement years with Tony have been the happiest of my life.” Kenny Turan’s latest book, Not to Be Missed: 54 Favorites From a Lifetime of Film, came out in paperback this year. “Yes, they still publish paperbacks,” he claims. Carl ’66 and Marge Post Abbott went through Iceland and England to get to the Antipodes, where they spoke at Friends meetings. On the way home, Marge got to “sleep, snorkel, and otherwise goof off in Hawaii,” while Carl attended a conference. Sheridan Phillips retired from the University of Maryland medical school but will teach child development for one more year. Fiancé Tom Harriman will practice law in California from Maryland until he drops. Tom notes that he and I “are members of the world’s smallest vets group, Swarthmore College Viet Vets. Oooah.” Sheridan’s son, John Koenig, got an MBA from Georgetown after six years as an Army Ranger. While old hat to many, grandfatherhood is new to Jon Stewart. Isobel Holly Stewart McInnes was born Dec. 23 to Robyn Stewart ’01 and husband Grant McInnes. “All healthy though sleep-deprived. Grandparents thrilled.” After losing her husband, Paul Sprenger, Jane Lang has “spent the year adjusting to life on my own, with a strong supporting cast. One doesn’t ‘get over’ the loss of a beloved spouse, but the grief is gradually absorbed and life is faced with varying degrees of energy and joy again.” Jane chairs the Eugene M. Lang Foundation and serves on the Swarthmore Board of Managers. She invited us to visit her blog, langfollow.com, as well as herself, in D.C. In his limited spare time, Kim Tingley has done yeoman work as our class agent. The Class of ’67 Scholarship Fund has a balance over $432,000, and this year helped a young woman who was the first in her family to attend college. “Keep those checks rolling in—we will get to our $1 million goal.” His wife got a fellowship from Stanford, so Kim will spend next year in Palo Alto, Calif. After 11 years as partners, Mark Sherkow married Bob Hostettler. Mark retired from Northeastern Illinois University, where he was the office manager in the dean’s office of the College of Arts and Sciences, and anticipates “doing all the things I continually put aside, such as ‘tidying up’ my condo. I also would like to write a memoir. … I consider my time at Swarthmore one of the key events of my life.” Bill Jacobs retired about six years ago and lives in North Carolina with wife Susan and multiple pets. He volunteers and keeps healthy by “digging into the geology of the mountains (the science course I wish I could have taken at S’more), gardening and processing the crops, and lots of physical activity (especially cycling).” Their daughter is halfway through her pediatrics residency in Pittsburgh. “On a somber note, this past year we’ve been working through the loss of our son, a writer in NYC, in a cycling accident.” Wil and Edie DuBose Streams have lived in Nashville, Tenn., for almost 10 years. Their sons and families now live there, too. Edie retired from a market-research position with Change Healthcare and anticipates “having more time to garden, read, and volunteer. Classmates are encouraged to reach out.” Larry Arnstein sent me a rant about “President Trump” and “Chief Justice Palin.” Chill, Larry. Sad news in closing. Jan Vandersande’s wife, Marlene, died just before Christmas. They’d been married for 45 years. “Being on your own is not easy, especially with six cats to feed. Thank God I believe in an afterlife (see my book Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence), so her death is easier to accept.” 1969 Glenda Rauscher glendarauscher@juno.com When discussing creative inspiration in her poem “Petals,” the turn-of-thecentury American poet Amy Lowell refers to the product of our imagination as “petal by petal the flower of our heart.” Following are some of those petals strewn by our classmates into the stream of life. Catching Up: Michael Schudson says, “I continue to teach at the Journalism School at Columbia (since 2006) and, health permitting, don’t intend to retire any time soon. “I published my latest book in September with Harvard University Press: The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945–1975. It includes chapters on the origins of the Freedom of Information Act, on sunshine laws in Congress, on unit pricing and other ‘right to be informed’ consumer reforms, and on the origins of the environmental impact statement (1970) as a publicly available document. (Most of this was happening with few headlines and great consequences while we attended Swarthmore.) I got married in October in New York (with Nancy Bekavac, Bob Snow, and Art Block ’70 attending) to Julia Sonnevend, who teaches at the University of Michigan. Our wedding at the Yale Club (there is no Swarthmore Club) was followed by a reception, just after Christmas, in Budapest, Hungary, where Julia grew up and most of her family lives. I am incredibly lucky.” Maestro Robert Maxym’s creativity has turned from the auditory to the visual: “I spent most of 2015 sculpting, completing three works, Mama Warthog (March), Embracing the Swan (October), and Rhinocerae et Dolphinae (December). Mama Warthog was started in 2002 but remained unfinished. I returned to it in November 2014. It is an archetypal, primally intense scene of birth and death. The head of the swan in Embracing the Swan ‘appeared’ to me four months into sculpting, so until then I had no idea what the title would be. With Rhinocerae et Dolphinae, I was greatly aided by the years-long work of termites, who had all but hollowed out this massive trunk when I cleaned it out in 2009. I am returning to music this year and presently composing a double concerto for violin, cello, and orchestra.” Good news for Judith Lorick fans: “I am still slowly transitioning from France to New York. [My friend Artie and I] were together my last two years at Swarthmore, parted in 1970, and reconnected 44 years later … so I am called back to the U.S. after 28 years in France. His is an amazing story—too long to tell here. I’ll just say that this is not the first life we have shared, and it is beautiful to be back with my soul mate. How cool to start yet another View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu chapter at 68!” Kudos: In the announcement of Mary Schmidt Campbell’s inauguration as president of Spelman College, Rosalind Brewer, Spelman board chairwoman, says, “We are pleased and excited she accepted the call to serve the college, which prepares women of the African diaspora to excel academically and make a positive difference as agents of change around the world.” Calling It a Day: To sum up my feelings about the blossoming of intellectual and emotional fulfillment I’ve experienced in my teaching career, I, Glenda, am sharing part of my Christmas letter: “This will be my last year at Xavier College Prep. Yes, you heard me. I so enjoyed the freedom last summer that I began to think that 20 years was a good number to call it quits. … A sense of passing time and my desire to make the most of new endeavors weighed heavily in my decision to go out at the top of my game. I couldn’t have asked for a more rewarding teaching experience than I’ve had with these many, many girls. Meanwhile, as Thoreau said when he left Walden Pond, I have ‘other lives to live.’” Question: What flower of your heart has, as Lowell says, “fared forth, though its fragrance still stays”? SUBMIT your personal reunion photos to bulletin@swarthmore.edu 1971 Bob Abrahams bob_abrahams@alum. swarthmore.edu swarthmore71.org It’s been a long time—45 years—since we graduated. Perhaps we will connect at the reunion. Anyway, here are some updates: Ken Giles still teaches violin and guitar in the D.C. area, at the DC Youth Orchestra and in several group lessons. He also sings with the D.C. Labor Chorus, “where we keep alive the songs of the civil rights movement, labor movement, and other peace and justice campaigns. It is heartening to see young people learning the music and historical contexts for the songs.” Archie Cawley reports, “We have become parents again,” having taken custody of his great-nephew at Christmas. The 10-year-old is in the age range of their grandchildren. Archie says they are learning a great deal about the upcoming generation and the modern school system. “We are adapting, but we are teaching him the ‘old ways’ here at home. My wife and I are the ones being ‘homeschooled’ by our newest young teacher.” Tina Tolins and husband Grady Gafford visited California to see her father, 93; family; and friends, including Deborah Whittle Pulido. Their grandsons, 2 and 3, moved to Switzerland with their parents, which, Tina says, “should be illegal due to grandparents’ rights.” Their other two children are on the East Coast: a senior software engineer for Red Hat and a dentist. “Grady and I celebrated our 40th anniversary in December—pretty good for a $10 elopement. Grady works very part time, allowing us to travel or do nothing, as we see fit.” Don Mizell is busy with a bunch of “legacy stuff” since he is “Not Dead Yett!”—the name of the band he formed in 2013. They recorded Let Go, Let’s Go!! “which critics raved about to my great surprise,” along with a fun beach-party video (bit.ly/ NotDeadYett). Don also did a Mizell family legacy documentary for public television: “My Swattie years are not omitted. Writing my memoirs— hopefully finished by 2017.” Jim McKay and wife Eileen retired and moved to Southport, N.C., to be near the water and their grandchildren. “If you like tasty craft beer, stop at my son’s brewery—Hardywood Park in Richmond, Va. Ask for Eric.” Debbie Zubow Prindle lives in D.C., still working full time on a series of contracts for the U.S. Agency for International Development—mainly focused on food security for West Africa and providing staff training in project design worldwide. Marya Ursin has been in Jerusalem helping daughter Ana since the December birth of granddaughter Aarya Ursin Kaur Tiwathia, which means “noble bear princess.” Marya continues to write, run the Dragon’s Egg (dragonseggstudio.org) “full of dancers and actors and events,” and teach at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and Connecticut College. “It has been an intense year of losses and SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 57 class notes gifts. My husband, Dan Potter, and I continue to thrive.” Jean Murdock Warrington works with Historic Fair Hill (historicfairhill. org), a peacemaking green space in North Philadelphia, where Lucretia Mott and other reformers are buried. Husband Peter ’69 retired from medicine and now volunteers as a Fair Hill reading buddy and is helping to reopen a neighborhood public-school library. “If you are in Philadelphia, come by to visit, read aloud, or garden with us and the neighbors.” I, Bob, have pretty much recovered from my January foot surgery. I have new screws in my foot, and by the time you read this, I’ll know if the Transportation Safety Administration will let me board an airplane to get to the reunion. If you haven’t joined the new Class of 1971 email discussion group, please go to the “Contacts & Information” page on swarthmore71.org. 1973 Steve Rood-Ojalvo stevo@ieee.org Great news: Martha Shirk has agreed to write the class notes again. This is my last column. All submissions will be forwarded, so contact her directly: marthashirk@ gmail.com. Stephen Lang is a current-day rendering of Mark Twain’s Injun Joe in the indie film Band of Robbers, where he continues “his impressive evolution into this generation’s Warren Oates,” according to Variety. 58 Swarthmore College Bulletin / I also saw that Steve is slated (spoiler alert) to reprise his role as Col. Miles Quaritch in Avatar 2, despite dying at the end of the first movie. With deepest condolences, I share that Matthew Rosen of Manhattan and Quogue, N.Y., died peacefully Nov. 20 after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Matthew was known in legal and business circles for his brilliant analytic mind and his ability to solve complex legal problems and deconstruct complicated tax analyses. He was named Best Lawyers’ 2013 New York City Tax Lawyer of the Year, and Legal 500 U.S. Portfolio magazine included him in its list of the top 10 tax attorneys in the country. Chambers Global and Chambers USA repeatedly named Matthew in their top tier of lawyers, and he was repeatedly listed in Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Tax Lawyers. Matthew took immense joy in his work, but he also had an abiding passion for books, music, film, and art. He is survived by wife Mariana; children Amanda, Oliver, and Anthony; and brother Kenny. We will miss him dearly. Rick Ortega says elder son Aaron “works for the SEC network in Charlotte, N.C. Wife Sheila is enjoying her retirement immensely. After I lost my job at age 59 because of the recession, running my own practice again, Heritage Design Collaborative–A/E, has proved more difficult than at age 30, and less lucrative, but I am happier. On the other hand, I have been around long enough to get some recognition. I have been inducted into the College of Fellows of SUMMER 2016 the Association for Preservation Technology International; received their Oliver Torrey Fuller Award; and my Omaha, Neb., high school presented me with its Triangle Award.” Lana Everett Turner ’74 writes for her and Joe, “The most exciting things that happened last year had nothing to do with travel or photography, though there was plenty of that: Zoë Eleanor Smith, our first grandchild, was born to Patti and Roy April 6, 2015. We’ve visited them (in Dalton, Ga.) several times, just to watch Zoë grow up. Son Dave married his sweetheart, Ashley Toohey, Sept. 26. It was a perfectly lovely affair on Long Island. They live in Long Beach, and Dave is still with the Coast Guard, based in New Jersey. Joe works on several corporate boards of directors, so his travel schedule is packed. He’s scaling back a bit, though.” Finally, when Eleanor Maloney Smergel passed in 2010, I thought it was important to get in touch with Judy Wilson, her roommate and friend. The directory listed a phone number and a P.O. box, no email, so naturally I tried calling first. The number was for the wrong Judy Wilson. She was another health professional in the general vicinity and had heard of, but never met, our Judy. I had to put pen to paper and use the P.O. box, which fortunately was for the right Judy. Please don’t wait for someone to contact you—send Martha your class notes. 1975 Sam Agger sam.agger@gmail.com Barbara Sieck Taylor writes: “These days husband Mark is traveling even more than when he was the artistic director/ choreographer of touring contemporary dance companies like Mark Taylor & Friends and Dance Alloy. As director of the Center for BodyMindMovement, he offers somatic-movement education to a range of students and maintains a private practice here. Some of his work is in the U.S., but a great deal is in Mexico and, starting this year, Brazil. Less glamorously, I am in my ninth year as executive director of Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, the regional philanthropy association. Both of us are enjoying Pittsburgh’s new reputation. When we moved here in 1991, the rap was that Pittsburgh was a great place to be whenever the world’s end came around—because Pittsburgh was 15 years behind. No longer true.” Larry Schall notes: “Finishing year 11 in Atlanta as president at Oglethorpe, and I have extended to 2020, when I hope to hang up my spurs. We are opening our fourth summer campus this year, adding Barcelona, Spain, to Rome; Cape Town, South Africa; and Athens, Greece. Betty and I get to spend time at all these places. This summer we are adding a side trip to hike around Mont Blanc: 100 miles, 12 days, with lots of elevation and wine. Oh, and I forgot the three new grandchildren.” Dave Gold writes: “Bonnie and I made the grandparent club—two grandsons born in October and January. We have only boys in this family. Still having fun trying cases and mentoring young lawyers. Recently represented Swarthmore at a college fair. Complained to Bonnie that I had Penn State in front of me and Tennessee behind me. The Hamilton College rep told me to stop complaining because he always has Harvard next to him. Life is great.” Shellie Wilensky Camp writes: “In January I somewhat downsized and moved to my dream house. I’m now on the edge of Swarthmore borough, and as the weather gets nicer, I will be able to walk my dogs right up to campus. It’s added a commute to work, but getting off at the Swat exit of the Blue Route is well worth it. “I am in a show—playing Jack’s Mother and Cinderella’s Stepmother—in Into the Woods in West Chester, while my youngest daughter plays the Baker’s Wife. Such fun.” Kim Horan Kelly writes: “Jim ’74 has retired from Mercer County Community College and now teaches privately (guitar mostly but also jazz/blues improvisation for piano). I still work at theheart.org/ Medscape. We adopted a pit bull a year ago, and he’s settled in quite well.” Suzanne Benack writes: “I’m in the life situation that many of us are in now—looking forward to retiring in three years, kids out of school and getting established, caring for aging parents, and waiting for grandchildren (who may or may not materialize). I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts about View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu retirement—the timing and how you imagine spending it. Do your adult children question, more than we did, whether to continue your bloodline? (This is something I see in my kids, but also in the college students I teach.) Last year, I married Tom Swan, my partner of 20plus years.” Steve Harnik writes that in February Vienna honored him, “and on that same occasion, the consul general of Austria recognized me for my 20 years of service as the republic’s attorney in New York.” Check out the news at harnik.com. He also has been in contact with Jim Harvey ’78. Finally, apologies to Dennis Lanning who wrote a note a year ago with great news: “Joy and I married in October 1975. We moved to her hometown in Georgia in 1977, where I worked in the family grocery business until June 1992. I felt the call to ministry and began a career as a United Methodist pastor, attending seminary at Emory University 1992–95. At present, I serve Avalon United Methodist Church in Albany, Ga., and I write fiction as a hobby. My first novel, The Inside-Out Church, was published in 2014, with a second on its way.” 1977 Terri-Jean Pyer tpyer@montereybay.com I write this in early spring, when the presidential election is still 224 days away, there are only five candidates remaining in the two major parties, and 60 percent of the states I have lived in are considered toss-ups, including Pennsylvania. But in October, Bloomberg Politics ran an article about Robert George being the conservative mind that half the Republican candidates sought advice from. Back then, “half” was about seven, and included his former Princeton pupil Ted Cruz. Robert encourages students to find friends with whom they disagree, so that as they engage in debate, “despite their differences they are bound together as a little community integrated around a common good. What is that good? Getting at the truth.” He can point to his own example: an enriching friendship with Cornel West, with whom he has taught for a decade. Julie Pierson Lees breaks her long Swarthmore silence: “After getting a master’s in medieval church history at Columbia, I got an MBA from Cornell and worked in health care policy and hospital administration. Then, I changed gears and have been an at-home mom, civic activist, and piano teacher. I love teaching and have a great group of students in second to 12th grade. Husband Andrew owns FinaBio, a company specializing in conjugate vaccines and protein purification. He bikes 15 miles each way to work. We live (with three cats and a rabbit) in Silver Spring, Md., quite the Swarthmore haven. Son Adam and daughter Elizabeth live around D.C. and graduated from Ursinus and American U., respectively, and our daughter got married in October. I was pleased to have a letter published in The Washington Post using my favorite Mark Twain quote about God making idiots for practice before making school boards.” Ralph Rosen gave the annual Martin Ostwald Memorial Lecture this year at Swarthmore, “Greek Comedy, Aesthetics, and the Question of ‘Popular Culture’” (bit.ly/Ralph Rosen). Ralph earned a Ph.D. in classical philology from Harvard and is the Vartan Gregorian Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Alice Fich Zinnes invites everyone to drop by the Causey Contemporary gallery on Orchard Street in New York City. Her work is always there. She also posts her art to our class Facebook page and maintains a website, AliceZinnes.com. 1979 Laurie Stearns Trescott sundncr88@comcast.net Louise Francis reports that now that her sons are in college (Conor, UCLA; Michael, Kenyon College, where Louise sits on the Parents Advisory Council with Jordan Eth ’80), she works, travels, and develops new interests. As a career coach and Alumni Mentor Program director at alma mater UC Hastings College of the Law, Louise connects occasionally with Cathy Rivlin and Tiela Chalmers ’80. Hastings sent her to a conference in Seattle in 2014 where she reconnected with David Richter and Julie Pickering. Louise sees Penne Tompkins at least annually now that her sons are grown. Last summer Penne came from Vermont to Sonoma State for a master calligraphy class (where she created beautiful work), and she and Louise took a trip to Monterey and Big Sur with husbands Michael and Dennis. The four went to Martha’s Vineyard in September to see Petra Lent McCarron and her family. Penne and Michael then took them to Rockland, Maine, where Dennis and Louise spent a week on the 1871 schooner Stephen Taber; the couple helped sail, and Louise learned to paddleboard. Extremely happy on the water, Louise joined a master crew team in January that rows shells in the Oakland Estuary and now rows about three mornings a week. Brady Kiesling still lives in Athens, Greece, married (since 2012) to Brazilian therapist Regina Tassitano. “In December my book on Greek terrorism, Greek Urban Warriors, finally emerged after an embarrassingly long period of research. This coincided with the birth of a grandchild, Ladybird, happily growing in San Francisco, where daughter Lydia works at UC Berkeley and writes literary criticism (and a piece on studying Uzbek for The New York Times Magazine). I’ve gone back to archaeology (recent digs at Zagora, Andros, and Methone in Pieria) and a little bit of teaching, and have a massive classics/archaeology app called ToposText launching soon. Life is good, despite a real and dreary economic crisis, but leading students up Mount Olympus is harder on the knees than I remembered. Visitors welcome, climbing no higher than the top of Mount Hymettus.” Wendy Shotwell Ruopp is still managing editor at EatingWell after all these years (14 since the relaunch, five since it was acquired by Meredith Corp.). “We have a cookbook coming out in June, our first with Houghton Mifflin: EatingWell Vegetables. Very exciting.” Also exciting: Daughter Maggie is graduating from the University of Redlands— and she’s the student speaker. Twin sister Emma graduated from Brooklyn College last spring and is building a career as a stage manager and loving NYC. Son Caleb lives in Concord, N.H., and is a chocolatier, after being an outdoor educator. Wendy’s husband, Tom, “is into his fourth decade of being the most fun, hands-on, adventure-inspiring childcare provider in Vermont; he’s always known about the value of play, which everyone talks about now.” They do trivia nights weekly to keep in shape. Martha Kane Savage will go on sabbatical from mid-June through January. She will be in Colorado from mid-June to mid-July, then on the East Coast in late July and early August, followed by a month and a half in Bristol, England. In October Martha heads to Tokyo, where her son, his wife, and their daughter live, to study earthquakes and volcanoes at the University of Tokyo. Phillip Stoddard was re-elected for his fourth two-year term as mayor of South Miami, Fla. By day, he is a biology professor at Florida International University. Allen Webb has two little girls, ages 5 and 2 1/2. He teaches classes at Western Michigan University in English and environmental studies, and is writing a book on teaching climate change. SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 59 class notes 1981 Karen Oliver karen.oliver.01@gmail.com I hope that the lack of correspondence was because we were making plans to attend our 35th Reunion and that there will be a lot to report in the next round. Steve Zucker writes, “I guess I am a true Midwesterner now that I have lived in Cincinnati for 18 years (I was in Boston for 18 years before that). Despite becoming empty nesters, we haven’t been able to slow down much. I work as a liver specialist at the university, and my wife is a radiologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. My older daughter is a computer consultant in D.C. at the Department of Homeland Security (she cannot reveal details), while my younger is a junior at Swarthmore (computer science as well, not sure where they got that from). It was a blast returning to campus, and we enjoyed being the cheering section (in the pouring rain) for the Warmothers Frisbee team at last year’s regional competition in Columbus, Ohio. Go Swat!” Dan Slater is grateful to have happy news from San Diego. “I have been a faculty family physician at UC San Diego, practicing primary care and working with medical students and residents for seven years. After completing a two-year fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, I became board certified this year. Laurel and I and our dog are 60 Swarthmore College Bulletin / empty nesters. Older daughter Hannah works at Planned Parenthood in San Francisco after getting a B.S. and master’s from Yale in 2014. Younger daughter Allison graduated from Scripps College in 2015 and lives in Mexico City as she completes Fulbright research and applies to medical schools. Laurel completed a master’s in linguistics in 2015 at San Diego State University and teaches adult ESL. I ran my first two half-marathons. We look forward to reuniting with old friends—please get in touch.” Yes, Darius Rejali, doing class notes can feel like herding cats. Darius has been writing poems, and I will share an excerpt from “The Old Professor,” which may remind us of someone we know: “The other majesties did not count Him as one with verbal wit / Or personality but he was kind enough. / The students loved him for what he shared / And the staff for what he dared / To say to power when they could not.” David Ochroch reminds us that we never know where Swatties will appear. He played bridge with Michael Held ’66 at San Francisco’s premier Quicktricks club. You can find David in Claremont, Calif., near our sister school, Pomona, and occasionally back in D.C. Sharon Roseman Buckingham visited Ben ’84 and Julie Lewis Langhinrichs in Cleveland last summer while taking her daughter to see Case Western Reserve University. Sophie will soon hear from her remaining schools, but as I write, Sharon, like other parents of high school seniors, can only wonder which SUMMER 2016 direction they will drive the moving van next fall. In closing, some sad news: Janet Taylor has died. After leaving Swarthmore, Janet earned a library science degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She was last employed by the Free Library of Philadelphia. Janet volunteered at the library of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia for more than 10 years, as well as at the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society and at Project Transition in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. 1983 John Bowe john@bowe.us A major theme these days is “empty nestdom.” After 20 years in NYC, Leigh Kyle set up shop at Spurlock Landscape Architects in San Diego in 2002, “deeply influenced by Scott Arboretum and particularly Scott Amphitheater.” Her husband is a molecular biologist in La Jolla, Calif., and their son is a freshman at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. Last year her mother, Kay Eagle Stein ’54, moved into assisted living nearby. Nancy Burton Dilliplane and husband Steve “are officially empty nesters with our youngest graduating last year.” They moved to Buckingham, Pa., last June, where Nancy is rector of Trinity Buckingham Episcopal Church. Steve commutes to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly. She earned her doctor of ministry from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia last year and “enjoys not writing papers.” Dan Werther still lives in Manhattan, “two kids out of the house, one working in the city and the other graduating from Penn this year.” He sold his confection and condiment business last year and is looking for the next gig. “Hoping there is another chapter (or two or three).” Last year Matt Sommer published Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China, based on more than 1,200 18th- and 19th-century legal cases from Chinese archives. Steve Smith’s youngest, Maisie, heads to Smith (yes, really) this fall. Steve runs a book group for Boston-area alums including Martha Reed. “We’re always looking for new members—get in touch.” Steve’s time in Parrish parlor doing the New York Times crossword put him on the path to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where he has competed for 12 years. Larry Moelis has three in college: UVA (prelaw), design school, and Columbia. His son is the reigning Cadet Men’s Foil World Champion. His youngest is in high school. His wife is studying physical therapy. Check out the iPhone 6s commercial with Cookie Monster for some of Larry’s recent work licensing Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.” Andrea Davis enjoys her kids’ happiness with their choices—her son graduated from Rice last year and loves vet school at UC Davis (say hi to Patty Pesavento) and her daughter studies architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. Andrea presents at conferences on “how parents and professionals can use a rich relation- ship-based approach to supporting development and behavioral growth in youths with autism and other special needs.” Dante DiPirro is busy with solar photovoltaic projects and filing legal briefs to protect wildlife. Keep it up, Dante. Felicia Rosenfeld has been in Los Angeles for 10 years. In November husband David Linde ’82 became CEO of Participant Media, a producer of Spotlight (Best Picture Oscar). “It was very exciting and gratifying since David has had many Best Picture nominations and this was the first win.” Felicia is now executive director of Dance Resource Center in Los Angeles. Their older son graduated from Brandeis and younger son is at Sarah Lawrence. Lisa Berglund is chair of the English department at Buffalo State, still restoring her 1875 Second Empire house, regularly directing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and “living with my two rescued Shetland sheepdogs, Bebop and Hepcat.” Deb Felix spent time on campus as part of a panel, “Chaotic Careers.” Not sure how they found out I had one, but it was fun to tell my story and the students seemed to get a lot out of it.” Deb advises on applying for college and how to get in. Send kids her way. Katy Roth and Dreux Patton ’84 are proud that daughter Megan Patton ’20 will attend Swarthmore this fall. “She is now our favorite, as her older brother chose Williams over Swat.” They recently dined with Dave Pazer, John Walsh, and Dante DiPirro, and get together at least twice a year. John Austin pushes economic and education View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu policies through the Michigan Economic Center. This year he will run for re-election as president of the Michigan State Board of Education, making it a referendum on reversing neglect of communities like Flint and Detroit. Diane Wilder got her first appointment as a U.S. Figure Skating Association judge and has enjoyed judging competitions and test sessions in the mid-Atlantic. “Our youngest is a fine arts major at the University of Delaware. I’ve enjoyed learning more about poetry in my spare time and writing some, too.” Emily Ingalls reports, “Last year Tracey and I lost our minds, bought an infill lot in Cleveland, hired a contractor, and built a house. For a while, we wondered whether we would be the first divorce after gay marriage was legalized.” 1985 Maria Tikoff Vargas maria@chrisandmaria.com Tim Kinnel kinnel@swarthmore.warpmail. net First, we’d like to hit you with a blast-from-the-past photograph from Paula Rockovich Gable, who’s an interim Unitarian Universalist minister, featuring Steve Nicolson (R.I.P.), Paula, Joe Carney, and Antony Sheriff. (See “Blast From the Past” at bit.ly/ AlumPhotos.) After 22 years, Susan Poser moved with husband Steve DiMagno from the University of Nebraska to the University of Illinois, where she is now provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. Daughter Eve DiMagno is a 2015 Swarthmore grad, and daughter Sarah is at Yale. Laura Moody Hoskins is exercising her expertise in adoption and attachment issues in her psychotherapy practice in Brattleboro,Vt.; she and husband of 18 years Dan have two adopted children. Laura is also active in the Friends’ New England Yearly Meeting and sees Lise Wagner a few times a year. Sue Gigler, as an employee of MilliporeSigma, has worked with many companies developing vaccines and helping fight the Ebola epidemic in Africa. On the plus side, she was named 2015 account manager of the year. Minus? She regrets missing the reunion. Tamar Datan is now senior adviser at Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, an executive recruiting firm. “I love the life of a matchmaker, bringing smart, driven people into new leadership roles at innovative institutions.” She and wife Sandy Shihadeh split their time between northern Virginia and North Carolina. Bill ’83 and Amanda Cheetham Green’s middle son, Paul ’16, is now a Swarthmore alum. Younger brother David is at Amherst College directing its version of Sixteen Feet, the Zumbyes, and older brother John works at Denny’s, helps stock the local food pantry, and is a four-season Special Olympics athlete. Amanda is in her fifth year at the Massachusetts Office of Special Education Planning and Policy, helping school districts assist kids with disabilities transition to adulthood. Bill? He’s done 18 years as a professor of chemical engineering at MIT. You can count on Becky Sielman; she has counseled Swat students who want to be actuaries and helped some get internships at her company, where she is a principal. Close encounters: Ted Abel, a biology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Julie Brill enjoyed seeing him at the induction ceremony in D.C. in February where they had their picture taken with former congressman, Swarthmore physics professor, and current CEO of AAAS, Rush Holt. The Michigan connection: Regina Lambert-Hayut and family are now in Ann Arbor; Regina is the cantor at Temple Beth Emeth, where she sees David Uhlmann ’84, whose family is in the congregation. Regina’s sons, Yoav and Alon, are talented students and musicians—no surprise. Living in Michigan has allowed Regina to catch up with James Rowley and Melanie Smith O’Brien (in the process of crossing the continent to drop her and husband Tom O’Brien’s daughter Jenny off at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J.). The LA scene: Karen Rosenthal Hilsberg often runs into Matt Seeberger ’81 and Triana Silton ’92 because they live within blocks of one another and their kids go to Culver City High School. As a clinical psychologist for Los Angeles County, Karen “provided treatment to chronically mentally ill, substance-dependent, homeless, incarcerated women at the world’s largest mental-health treatment facility, the LA County Jail,” including “mindful meditation and yoga.” She now helps mentally ill children and their families. And, finally, Matthew Roach works for Bancroft, providing vocational training for adults with disabilities on a farm in New Jersey; he plays tennis and road bikes on the side. Thanks for responding to our pleas—your classmates really do want to share in your highs and lows and in-betweens. That’s why it’s Swarthmore. 1987 Tom Newman thomas.newman@hdrinc.com Josh King’s Off Script: An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide is early in the roll-out process, “but the book has already received strong reviews from Fortune, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. For a first-time author it’s a very exciting, and I’m very thankful for the many friends I’ve made on this journey. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.” Congrats, Josh, and well-timed. Lenny Chen says, “For several years, I’ve worked at a technology company in Shanghai, developing smart set-top boxes (devices that allow simultaneous access to TV and internet applications), and I’m excited to experience firsthand the third wave of digital evolution to hit the cable/telecom industry. While in Shanghai, I see Bill Liang at least once a year, as he comes to visit from Hong Kong. My daughter Laura ’19 is a first-year and really enjoys it.” Zahid Maker writes, “Biz has been very tough as the recession headwinds buffet Africa and Asia, so I have concentrated on spearfishing—an amazing Zen sport, and great bonding with my boys before Rayyan ’20 leaves for Swat, where he will join the kids of so many other alumni friends. I just love the interconnected circles of life. Who could have imagined this? Also, I plan to be on campus Aug. 17–21 and again Sept. 2–3, and I hope to hold a reunion dinner for the International Club. You’re all invited!” 1933: Courage and Patience 1989 Martha Easton measton@elmira.edu Kathy Stevens stevkath@gmail.com What a terrible problem. For the first time, I, Martha, received nothing to report. Fortunately, many ’89ers responded to my sad plea. And folks, we have a column. In fact, we have so much news, it will need to be spread over several columns, so if you don’t see your news here, hang tight. And, of course, keep sending in your latest. Li-Lan Cheng headed to Tibet in April for his second attempt at climbing Mount Everest. “My climb last year was canceled due to the earthquake in Nepal. I was on a steep SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 61 class notes snow/ice slope when it happened and saw a huge chunk of ice collapse about 50 feet from me. It was a scary moment that I certainly hope won’t be repeated.” Javier Provencio writes, “My family and I moved last summer to Charlottesville, Va., and the University of Virginia. The kids are happily in a new school, wife is starting a new business, and I got a great opportunity to work with some smart people in the hospital and a great research group. I benefit from having my brother Iggy ’87 across grounds, and, transiently, a new office next to Bettina Winckler ’86.” Kirsten “Kupa” Condry had a minireunion with Scott Kisker, Penny Berrier, Kristina Lasher, and Ken Leonard at a retirement party for Sue Davis, Swarthmore’s longtime swim coach. Naomi Chesler is finishing a sabbatical year in Israel with her family and “did a Swarthmore world tour, visiting Ruth Wade Kwakwa ’91 and Patrick Awuah at Ashesi University in Ghana; Tamar DiFranco in Accra, Ghana; and Ipek Ilkkaracan in Istanbul. I also saw Michael Buehler in Jerusalem and Simone Schweber in Tel Aviv, Israel.” GINA SIMMS ’87 Last year, John Gastil joined a delegation of American scholars invited by Argentinian legal reformers to help shape their country’s new criminal jury system. John’s role was to explain the positive civic impact of jury service by drawing on research conducted with a team that included Perry Deess ’88 and Phil Weiser ’90. In unrelated (but more important) news, John got to meet his musical hero, Todd Rundgren, whom John tried (and failed) to bring to Swarthmore for four years. When Rundgren learned John’s profession, the rock icon replied, “I’ll bet you’re a darn good professor.” Glenn Berntson writes, “Not sure Chris Stodolski and I have ever contributed to class notes (we married in 1994—how time flies). We live in Jersey City, N.J.; Chris is principal at Golda Och Academy Upper School, and I’m an engineer at Google in NYC. Two kids, two dogs, two cats. Older kid finished her first year in college.” Roger Smith also checked in with his first update. Roger has a 14-year-old daughter and lives outside Ithaca, N.Y., where he is a freelance educational writer. “I also have a weekly radio show on Ithaca’s grass-roots community station. Listen on live stream, wrfi.org, Mondays 7–9 p.m.” David Harrison says, “My partner, Astrid Henry, professor at Grinnell College, suffered a stroke in March 2015, so we are recovering and understanding life in new ways. Any inspirational stories for dealing with aphasia are welcome. The situation reconnected me in Chicago with Laura McKee ’88 and Matt Sanders; I subsequently saw Matt in Dallas, where he lives. Other Swarthmoreans here have been incredibly supportive.” C.J. Malanga moved to Cambridge, Mass., for a translational medical expert position at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. About leaving academic research, he writes, “I could’ve easily spent the next phase of my career doing cool experiments and publishing good work in scientific literature, but for all of that effort, I probably wouldn’t have moved the human (medical) condition forward very much. At least, not as I (hopefully) can here.” Kevin Hall is CEO of the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit providing capital to expand the nation’s best performing charter schools. “I do this SUPER LAWYER Gina Simms ’87 was named to the 2016 publication of D.C. Super Lawyers, an annual list honoring attorneys from more than 70 practice areas with a high degree of peer recognition and achievement. This is Simms’s fourth consecutive year to receive the designation. Simms is a principal in Ober Kaler’s Government Investigations and White Collar Group; she was an assistant U.S. attorney before joining the firm. She received a law degree from George Washington University in 1992. 62 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 because it is a combination of ‘head’ and ‘heart’ work—what happens in our K–12 sector over the next few decades will be a critical driver for the future success of the U.S.” Kevin lives in Boulder, Colo., with wife Susan and sons Emerson, 9, and Banneker, 4. I’ll end with the most exciting, least surprising, news. Patrick Awuah won a McArthur “genius” Fellowship award in September for his leadership at Ashesi University. Congratulations! It was wonderful to hear from so many people. Until next time … 1991 Nick Jesdanun me@anick.org A brush with fame: Juan Martinez met former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and described her as having “a very firm grip.” He works in the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control and assisted foreign delegations at this spring’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. A new book by Scott Kugle is out this summer. Scott, who teaches South Asian and Islamic studies at Emory University, contrasted two Muslim poets in When Sun Meets Moon. Matthew Rudolph divides his time among the Bay Area, Vermont, and northern India. He teaches politics and works with a nonprofit that helps rural women in Asia and Africa escape poverty. Jim Ellis is back in McLean, Va., after a three-year stint with the U.S. Embassy in Jordan. Son Maximo, 13, is already eyeing Swarthmore. Deb Holtzman is an educational policy researcher at the American Institutes for Research. She’s “become increasingly pessimistic about the ability of K–12 education to reduce the achievement gap and American inequality.” She’d love to find a solution for poverty—but gets distracted by 2048 Cupcakes, a game where you slide similarly flavored treats around to touch. She compares it to her addiction to Tetris at Swarthmore. “So much for solving poverty. I can’t even get a white-chocolate peppermint.” In celebration of husband James Baker turning 50, Julia Dallman planned a two-week boat trip through the Grand Canyon with son Dylan. Larami MacKenzie lives in Glenside, Pa., and works at Abington Memorial Hospital. Home-brewing and beef-jerky hobbies got sidetracked, but he has an organic garden project that’s “sputtering along.” He’s “trying to keep some kale, chard, spinach, and collard greens on the table. And, maybe, if I’m lucky, some yummy tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. All are at the mercy of deer, groundhogs, rabbits, and cabbage looper moths.” Gabrielle Freireich Preiser Koelbel and husband Eric, a Penn alum, share a fondness for Philly and try to visit once a year. They live in New York with daughter Madeleine, 8, whom Gabrielle describes as a fan of cats, books, and Minecraft. Gabrielle’s sister, Rachel Preiser Feinberg, is across the river with her family in Montclair, N.J. On Long Island, N.Y., View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu Carolann DiPirro is “eco-renovating a 1920s duck farm on a creek that feeds into the bay a block down. It’s a gorgeous, bucolic setting—quite different from my 25 years in Manhattan and LA.” She tutors local kids and students from California, thanks to technology. She’s also in the early stages of opening a nonprofit learning center. “And I have been happily surprised that interesting theater and film projects have found me out here, so I have been able to fulfill my creative needs, too.” Rob Biggar said the New York City Marathon in November “kicked my butt.” He also ran races at Disney World and Disneyland, including ones I, Nick, participated in. But we somehow missed each other. By the time you read this, I will have caught up with many of you at our 25th Reunion. If you missed it, you don’t have to wait for our 50th for news. Details (read: gossip) in the next column. 1993 Noah Salamon nbsalamon@gmail.com Andrés Versage andres_versage@hotmail.com In the swirl of middle-aged life, we couldn’t put together decent class notes last round. As is our way, our class comes back strong with a global range of notes. Rebecca France Sorani has lived in Israel for 13 years. In summer 2014, she, husband Itzik, and son Yair Haim moved from Ramat Gaz, near Tel Aviv, to a house they built 20 minutes south. “Building a house—not for the faint of heart.” Two weeks after moving in, “Operation Protective Edge broke out. My husband was called for reserve duty, and my son and I spent the summer sleeping in our safe room (mandatory in all new homes). This is an Israeli childhood: You play in your muddy yard (because the gardener is also off at war) until you hear a siren (indicating that a missile will strike your city in 90 seconds). You put down your toys and walk into your safe room. You wait a few minutes, hear a boom, and go back out to the yard to resume your game, as your parent cleans up the mud you tracked into the house. Since it ended, things have been much calmer (tfoo tfoo).” Rebecca is training to be a Vijnana yoga instructor and is a part-time fundraising consultant and grant writer. She is “in almost-hourly contact” with Aviva Kushner Yoselis ’96, who lives outside Jerusalem. Lily Engle and husband Peter Dingman “live in Alexandria, Va., where he marvels at the number of plants I can fit into our townhouse’s small yard and the time I can spend on allegedly low-maintenance perennials.” Lily is deputy general counsel for The Conservation Fund, where she combines law with “innovative conservation in places as varied as Vermont and Wyoming.” Speaking of Wyoming, “we are awaiting word on whether we got permits in the antelope lottery. If yes, our annual fall vacation to Wyoming will include a few days hunting ‘speed goats,’ as they are known.” Scott Kane took a break from his role as director of psychiatry at Camp Pendleton in San Diego to report on a few Swatties who keep in touch on life, sports scores, and what music is playing at Seth Ovadia’s doctor’s office (Guns N’ Roses). Bernhard Sturm is VP of research for Volcano Corp. in San Diego, but for some reason, still lives in Davis, Calif. Mark Gwynne is the medical director for the University of North Carolina Family Medicine Center, which, as far as Scott can tell, puts him in charge of primary care for 90 percent of the state. Justin Anand is a U.S. magistrate in Atlanta. Bill Raich, Chris Denig ’92, Eric McCrath, and Andrew Ment are very important lawyers for very important firms with many names, which Scott cannot recall. Scott Lock leads his phenomenal life traveling more than National Geographic. He recently visited Rwanda. Not as exciting as Kane’s visit to Fayetteville, N.C., but it will have to do. Jeff Zinn ’92 is part of the same crew but reports that all has been “very pedestrian … except for an awesome but brief visit from John Colaianni and wife Danielle.” Jeff coached his way to his third basketball title this season in an 18team league. Son Morgan has “aged out of hoops but recently made the JV baseball team.” Best of luck, Morgan. Zee Khan Beams ’94 took a pause from doctoring and parenting to write from Maryland about her February visit to Los Angeles to attend the opening of Alexandra Grant ’94’s photography show in connection with the art book she co-produced with Keanu Reeves. Your secretaries, Noah and Andrés, joined Zee at Alex’s opening. While in LA, Zee “discussed literature and politics with Noah; reptiles, religion, and Godzilla with his boys; and appellate law with his wife. It felt like Swarthmore in ‘real life.’” Last summer Andrés, wife Rosa, and daughters Isabella and Elena took a marvelous trip to the Pacific Northwest. The highlight was the minireunion that included Mike Dennis, Becky Voorheis, Laura Morrison ’94, David Graham ’92, Ben Schonberger, Pete Jacobs ’95, Bess O’Neill ’95, and their families, hosted by Mike’s brother Andrew and his gracious family. It was such an amazing time that we didn’t even take photos or post on Facebook. Late-breaking news tells us that Mike Dennis has entered the homeowner ranks in Portland, Ore. We congratulate Mike, his wife, and his two kids. Look him up if you’re in the area, and tell us about your adventures. Whether momentous or mundane, we want to hear it all. 1995 Erik Thoen erik_thoen@alum. swarthmore.edu Sally Chin sallypchin@gmail.com News from you, from around the world … Sampriti Ganguli left Corporate Executive Board after 14 years to become CEO of Arabella Advisory, a boutique firm that helps philanthropists make the greatest impact. After a decade and a half of wandering, “I finally feel like I’ve arrived in terms of returning to my Swarthmore roots and focusing on issues like social justice, ending violence in our society, environmental stewardship, and income inequality. On the homefront, Devin is almost 13 and Keiran is 10, and we recently visited Costa Rica, practicing our Spanish and hiking through the Monteverde Cloud Forest. I am fulfilled and enjoy middle age more than I thought I would.” Darin Friess writes, “Jennifer Stoller (my wonderful wife) and I visited San Francisco for spring break. We did all the tourist things—Alcatraz, Chinatown, and the Musée Méchanique arcade. Our best day was spent biking nearly 20 miles across the Golden Gate Bridge to Tiburon with our three kids. For some reason, we were the only cyclists crazy enough to drag two kids on tag-alongs that distance. We especially enjoyed the hospitality of Brad Stohr and Maika Watanabe, who invited us for dinner. It was great to catch up with old friends— and to see our kids play together, even though they had never met.” Joanna Bergmann married last year and returned to NYC, where she is back in the law firm grind and delighted to be in the company of Swatties. Laura Snyder Brown saw the first of her three daughters off to college this year—to Haverford. The other daughters (16 and 11), husband Steve, and Laura enjoy living in a community with low-income families on an urban SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 63 class notes homestead that is a Catholic Worker community in Casa Alma, Va. She says please visit. Suzanna Brauer received the Fulbright-Saastamoinen Foundation Grant in Health and Environmental Sciences and spent a semester in Finland with her husband and two boys. Hannah Freedberg and wife moved to Cincinnati in summer 2013. A major gifts officer for Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit based in Boston, Hannah works from home when she’s not crisscrossing the country to meet with donors. She also enjoys gardening, romps in the woods with canine companion Ringo, and savouring Cincinnati’s vibrant food scene. Beth Bruch is thrilled with her new-ish role as media coordinator at Southern Alamance High School in North Carolina. In her spare time, she fights oppression and hangs out with her cat. Kristen Claeson “KC” Andrasko saw Joe Hackel when he extended a Vienna business trip to include a stop in Prague. KC writes, “After a decade in Czech Republic, I crave Swattie visitors. Ship ’em in. Meanwhile, life here is lovely, especially for kids. Isabella, 7, and Ines, 3, love small-city living and easy access to our old farmhouse nearby. I miss big-city life a little, but business takes me on the road a lot, so I get a frequent dose of the metropolis. I’m still with the same company, an emerging-Europe-focused bank, and I now look after the equities business. On good days, it’s great fun.” Ben Cook and wife Madeline Fraser Cook, a city planner working with HUD on resilience and sustainability issues, live in 64 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Belmont, Mass., with kids Alex, 10, and Lily, 6. Ben saw Nathan Fairman and Colin Heydt ’94 in Lake Tahoe last fall “for some mountain biking, which was outrageous given our age and ability. The three of us are elbow-patch academics: Nathan a clinical doctor in palliative care at UC Davis; Colin a philosophy professor (of course) at the University of South Florida; and I’m a researcher at Harvard Medical School.” Thanks, everyone, for entertaining and informing us—keep the news coming. 1997 Joy Oliver joy_oliver@hotmail.com Greetings from beautiful Morocco, where I moved in December to work in the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca. While not much of a tourist destination, it does make a nice home base for seeing the rest of the country. We have a guest room, and Swatties are always welcome. Annika Lister Stroope, husband Jeremy West, and daughter Vianne became a licensed foster family in late 2014. Their first placement was a 1-year-old boy who was with their family for 11 months. Lisa Ginsburg Tazartes and husband David had Neal Gabriel Dec. 23, shortly after moving to their Brooklyn home. Neal joins brother Jacob. Christopher Sunami happily announces that, after 10 years of entering, he finally won the New Yorker caption contest in December. Christopher also notes that he has SUMMER 2016 WILL TRACY ’98 STRATEGIC PARTNER Will Tracy ’98 was named vice president for strategic partnerships at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), an interdisciplinary research institute in Santa Fe, N.M., focused on complex systems. Tracy will create and maintain high-level partnerships with companies, universities, nonprofits, and other groups. He joins SFI from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management, where he was the undergraduate program director and an assistant professor. Heather Mateyak Bruemmer’s HTML tutorial to thank (taken in 1995—before several of his current co-workers were born) for starting him on his career path as a professional programmer. In his “spare time,” Christopher runs the Columbus Invitational Arts Competition in Ohio and helps coordinate the Columbus Independents’ Day Festival. Wife April is an artist and they have two children, River, 7, and Ella, 5. Theresa Williamson’s Rio de Janeiro-based nonprofit, Catalytic Communities, turns 16 this year. Check out RioOnWatch.org. Theresa and daughter Kay, 9, divide their time among the U.S., Australia, and Brazil. Thomas Makin still practices patent litigation but changed firms last fall. He now is a partner at Shearman & Sterling in NYC. The Lowenthal Lewis family has experienced much change this year. After almost four years as a software engineer for Birchbox Inc., Dave took a few months off to ponder his next career move. After 11 years of teaching high school biology and environmental science, Lena will begin graduate work in public policy this fall. Both still enjoy hobbling around the Ultimate Frisbee field. Oxford University Press published Eli Rubin’s second monograph, Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany. He celebrated his beginnings in history research when he returned to Swat in May 2015 to honor Pieter Judson ’78. Also in attendance were Erik Huneke and Tara Zahra ’98. When not writing, Eli stays busy in Ann Arbor, Mich., keeping up with his five children. Edward “Ted” Melillo is an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Amherst College. His book Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection was published by Yale University Press in the fall. In March, the same press published Abraham Nussbaum’s memoir, The Finest Traditions of My Calling: One Physician’s Search for the Renewal of Medicine, which visits medical schools, teaching hospitals, Army outposts, medical marijuana dispensaries, psychiatric asylums, and CrossFit boxes to describe how medical practice is changing. Miriam Shakow is in her fourth year teaching anthropology at the College of New Jersey and really loves it (she is lucky to share her place of employment with spouse Rob McGreevey ’98). Her book Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class was published in 2014. Miriam and Rob live in Narberth, Pa., with kids Theo, 11, and Jacob, 2 1/2. They recently signed up for free solar roof panels, choosing a company that installs and maintains them in return for unused power returned to the grid. Also doing her part to aid the environment, Meghan Kriegel Moore spoke this spring on a panel about urban permaculture practices in Lowell, Mass. Rebeka Ndosi’s first film and media-justice campaign for PBS premiered in September. Rebeka leads the American Graduate initiative at Twin Cities PBS in St. Paul, Minn. The first phase of the project includes a documentary, Black Brilliance, in which five black high school seniors from Minnesota share their journeys to graduation.(See bit.ly/ blackbrilliance.) Anne Richards serves on the Alumni Council (thanks, Anne) and enjoyed the opportunity to hear President Valerie Smith. Anne reports that the construction planned at the College in the next few years is really mind-boggling. Martin Carrillo has also served Swat, helping out with a recent documentary, Minding Swarthmore. In April, Martin premiered in his first musical, an adaptation of Lysistrata called GDP. Last year, he traveled to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to act as an associate sound designer at the World Music Festival. Little-known fact: “You could fight a revolution” for Uzbekistan’s ice cream. That’s it for now, dear Class of ’97. Safe travels. 1999 Melissa Morrell MacBeth mmacbeth@gmail.com McKenzie Funk won the 2015 PEN Literary Prize for Best Research Nonfiction for his book Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming. Congrats! Anna Tischler and husband Chris Reid welcomed Celeste Elizabeth Feb. 5. Rachel Gutman Light had Ramona Zahara Dec. 9. Rachel is on maternity leave until August when she’ll return as a principal at Wellspring Consulting. Daniel Laurison, who transitioned from Becca Hover, reports, “After three very nice years in London with a postdoc at the London School of Economics, I’ll be at Swarthmore this fall as an assistant professor of sociology, teaching quantitative methods and social class and politics, in various combinations.” He’s thrilled to teach at Swat and bring his family to the Philly area. Also in Philly, Rufus Frazer ran into Toki Rehder at Whole Foods. Toki “is as upbeat as ever.” Elizabeth Nickrenz Fein is an assistant professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She and husband Pete bought a house in Squirrel Hill, where they often see Jenny Briggs and husband Carl Wellington. Liz was in Rio last September and organized a multidisciplinary cross-cultural workshop on autism and culture. She is writing a book with the participants. Jenny and Carl “rang in the New Year with a wonderful visit from Kirran Bari.” Andy Caffrey and family welcomed Eloise Sept. 29. Andy got to see Kirran while on a business trip to the Bay Area in January. Deborah Stein lives in LA and teaches playwriting at UC San Diego. Jenny Harvey deHart is the chief sustainability officer at Unity College in Maine. Eric Bishop-von Wettberg is two-thirds of the way through the tenure process at Florida International University, where he teaches biology. He hopes to take his family to India on sabbatical “after I have run the gauntlet.” Darragh Jones Paradiso works at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, “wondering where the other Swatties in Hong Kong are.” Danielle Sass Byrnett works at the U.S. Department of Energy as a senior policy adviser to the deputy assistant secretary. “I am focused on how energy efficiency can help states meet their climate, air quality, and clean energy goals.” She had son Cameron Jay March 28. Stacey Bearden splits her life between work and caring for son Glen, 3. “Saturday is Mommy and Glen’s special day, to give my spouse (a stay-at-home dad), Vaughn, a break and give us time together out in the world.” Rachel Brooker started a business, Turiya Yoga Berlin, which organizes yoga programs in schools, retirement homes, and businesses in Germany. So far 2016 has been good for Lurah Hess, who lives in Muncie, Ind. “I still own the tiny off-grid cabin I built in the woods of Maine, but that will be more of a vacation spot.” Outside of owning a corporate services/project management consulting company, Lurah is heavily involved in field hockey, especially as a member of the PanAm Hockey Federation Umpiring Committee and as the technical director for Junior Premier Hockey. She will be a technical officer at the Junior World Cup in Santiago, Chile, this November. Chris Seaman and Allison Lyons ’02 moved to Charlottesville, Va., three years ago. Allison teaches medicine at UVA, and Chris teaches law at Washington and Lee University. “Allison and I returned to Swat in October for an alumni swim meet and banquet to celebrate the retirement of longtime coach Sue Davis. It was great to see a bunch of former Swatties there, including Keith Earley and Jill Belding Greenleaf.” Megan MacDowell is working to create national parks and other protected areas in Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia with the Andes Amazon Fund, while living in Alexandria, Va. Scott Samels is recording “a substantive hip-hop album.” He plans to drop a couple of singles soon and an album in the fall. Tyler Wigg Stevenson reports the arrival of Heloise Appeline in March. Tyler is working on his doctorate in interdisciplinary theology at the University of Toronto, while moonlighting in faith-based nuclear disarmament advocacy. Ilmi Granoff moved to San Francisco from London—where he led research on green growth at the Overseas Development Institute—to be closer to family, friends, and surf while working on climate and clean-energy law and policy. Ilmi appeared on the BBC News and BBC World Service speaking at the Paris climate conference, and his work appears in the April issue of The Economist. Ten days after the release of her book The Emotional Politics of Racism, Paula Ioanide and Taili Mugambee had Yekaterina Olayidé. “The journey that has brought these blessings into being has been full of remarkable life lessons for which I am truly thankful.” 2001 Claudia Zambra claudiazambra@gmail.com In addition to marking our 15th Reunion, which many attended, there is much to report this quarter. Reunion updates will appear in the winter Bulletin. Amber Adamson and husband David Dwyer had Daphne Pauline Adamson-Dwyer Feb. 8, arriving at a healthy 7 pounds and 20 inches. Amber’s already made a trip to campus and was looking forward to the reunion. Sari Altschuler, who married in March, is now an assistant professor of English (also teaching for the interdisciplinary Human Health program) at Emory University. Antoinette Graefin zu Eltz moved from Zurich back to London (for work) and would love to catch up with alumni there. Hannah Rakoff moved back to the Boston area in late 2014 and was looking forward to catching up in June. Kate Hutchinson’s big news is Eliot, born at home in August. After several years in the field with Doctors Without Borders, she and Yves (and Eliot) now live in Cambridge, Mass., and enjoy seeing local Swatties, including Sarah Jay, Ian Huntington, Amy Dickson ’99, and Jeff Doyon ’00. Talia Weiner and husband Eli had Claude Amari Thorkelson-Rose Oct. 23. They’re amazed that they managed to produce such a happy little person. Two months after Claude was born— just, you know, to keep life interesting—they packed up their home in Chicago and moved to suburban Los Angeles. They don’t know many people and would love to connect with local Swatties. Eric Leive is still in the Bay Area with his lovely wife, Keika, and son Elias. He continues to follow his passion for video games as a senior art producer on the upcoming Mafia 3 at Hangar 13 Studios. Lindsay Goldsmith-Markey is excited to start the Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Ph.D. program at Penn this fall. Matthew Davis switched jobs within the Environmental Protection Agency, moving from the Office of Children’s Health Protection to the Office of Congressional Affairs. He’s a little surprised he still enjoys D.C. so much SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 65 class notes after more than six years. Here is more evidence that D.C. really is a small town: Matthew learned that his (championship) indoor ultimate Frisbee team’s captain, Dave, was Peter Holm’s grad school roommate. (Hope Abu Dhabi is treating you well, Peter.) Aryani Manring and husband Scott had a second kid and will be in D.C. until summer 2017, when they plan to move to Myanmar where Aryani will be the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman. Visitors are welcome. Martin Krafft returned to hometown Munich after years in Switzerland and Ireland. He coaches young entrepreneurs when he’s not spending time with his two toddler daughters or playing in a squash league. Elizabeth Meehan moved this April to Bethlehem, N.H., in the White Mountains. Feel free to stop by for a visit and a hike. Claire Robbins is an assistant professor of higher education at Virginia Tech. She was named an Emerging Scholar by the American College Personnel Association–College Student Educators International for her research on social identity construction among graduate students. In April, Charles “C.J.” Riley expects the final recommendation for a revised general education program at Oregon Tech that he has worked on for three years. Jordan Brackett recently joined the 14th Street Y (a Jewish Community Center in the East Village) as its chief operating officer. Tim Stewart-Winter’s book Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Andrew Breitenberg published his third book, Parallel Bible Volume 1, 66 Swarthmore College Bulletin / which includes his translation of Matthew 5–7 (the Sermon on the Mount), illustrated with more than 250 images by professional and amateur photographers. He and wife Mariah are back in the States, living in Virginia Beach, Va., with bambinos Wills, 4, and Is, 2. Lastly, Jane Ng has had a good year so far. The small studio she works for shipped its first game, Firewatch, and it’s been incredibly well-received. She was the lead artist on the game and is very proud of their work. 2003 Robin Smith Petruzielo robinleslie@alum. swarthmore.edu Susan Henz and husband Mike had their third daughter, Georgina, in November. Justin Capps and wife Emma added Ezra Falcon George to their family of four in May 2015. Justin serves as a parent-governor of the local infant school (K–2). He plays music live on the south coast of England and is recording an album of original songs. Jeremy Schifeling and wife Rachel Burstein ’04 had Hannah Rose in February. Starting this fall, Sarah Kate Selling will be an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University of Utah. Becca Van Fleet Webb reports that her family and pottery business, Two Potters, are doing well in Vermont. She just finished a large commission of handmade pottery for the SUMMER 2016 private dining room at the Inn at Swarthmore. After 11 years in the Bay Area, Nori Heikkinen and husband Jack Hébert are transferring to new roles with Google and relocating to Seattle. Mathew So is starting a new job as a diagnostic radiologist, while wife Kristin starts a new job as a geriatric psychiatrist. Together with daughter Misa Elizabeth, 7, they will live in Minneapolis/St. Paul. U.S. Figure Skating appointed William Tran a gold-test judge and a regional competition judge in singles and pairs. Still skating, William placed second at the 2016 Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals in the Championship Silver division. Rashelle Isip released a new e-book, 31 Easy Ways to Get Organized in the New Year and is also celebrating the fifth anniversary of her blog, TheOrderExpert.com. Anna Perng was invited to join Pennsylvania’s Community of Practice, supporting people with disabilities and their families across the lifespan. She runs a monthly support group in Philadelphia’s Chinatown for Asian-American families whose children have disabilities. Hollis Easter moved to Burlington, Vt., to live with sweetie Jasmine Walker. He works as the business process manager for the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation. Hollis is starting an a cappella group and enjoys seeing Swatties at music and dance gigs around the U.S. Keep your updates coming. If you do not receive my class notes requests, update your email with the Alumni Office and connect with our class on Facebook (Swat ’03), LinkedIn (Swarthmore College Class of 2003), and Twitter (@swat03). Please email updates at any time—while magazine notes may be brief, full notes are available on our Class of 2003 website, courtesy of Kai Xu. 2005 Jessica Zagory jazagory@alum.swarthmore. edu Thank you for your contributions! Let me know if you’re not receiving my semiannual emails. Katie Stockhammer-Desimone and Joseph Des- IVAN SASCHA SHEEHAN ’00 imone ’04 had Brooklyn Adele in December. Matt Wallaert married Stef Sugar, had Marcus Bear Sugar, and moved back to NYC. Ben and Nicola Wells Chin had Anjali Marie in the wee hours of the morning on All Saint’s Day, just three days before Election Day for Ben’s campaign for mayor of Lewiston, Maine. Nicola writes, “Thankfully, things have calmed down a bit, and I have been building my practice of helping create liberatory businesses and nonprofits through UpWithCommunity.org. This summer, Jyothi Natarajan and Shreya Mahajan will fly north to take on the Hallowell Maine Rail Trail road race with me— other adventurous souls are welcome to join.” Kelly Kleinert and wife Lizzy had Isaac in November. Wee Chua ’06 and Jon Adelstein ’06 visited to welcome him. Kelly started a public psychiatry fellowship at Columbia University in July 2015, after graduating from a psychiatry residency at NYU/Bellevue in June 2015. Jason Bronstein is the newest sleep medicine fellow at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Derrick Wansom graduat- HONORED PROFESSOR Ivan Sascha Sheehan ’00, an associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Baltimore (UB), received the 2016 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Award, its highest faculty honor. Sheehan, who specializes in the intersection of global terrorism, counterterrorism, and international conflict management, was recognized for excellence in mentoring. Sheehan received a master’s and a Ph.D. from George Mason University, and joined UB in 2009 from the University of Massachusetts Boston. View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu NANDITA GUPTA ALUMNI PROFILE “To listen to your vines, you need to know their physiology. Wine chemistry helps, too,” says Scott Young ’06. “But the best education came from buying a lot of beers for a lot of winemakers, my new neighbors.” MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE A family winery works the land by Peter Baker ’07 “EVERY GOOD BOTTLE of wine tells a story,” says Scott Young ’06, head winemaker at Young Inglewood vineyards in Napa Valley, Calif. “It’s a story about where the wine came from but also about the people who made it.” For Young Inglewood, the story started in the late 1800s, when grapevines were first planted on the property (then called Inglewood Village). In the Prohibition era, the vineyard survived by camouflaging the vines with fruit and nut trees. Young entered the picture when his family purchased the land nine years ago. He had grown up learning about wine from his European parents, longtime lovers of French food and wine culture who had always dreamed of farming their own vineyard. “I’d just graduated with a philosophy degree,” Young recalls. “Obviously, none of my classes had been about anything remotely related to wine or the wine business. But in a strange way I felt prepared for anything, since at Swarthmore it was, ‘Here are tools to think rigorously about whatever you want.’ And that turned out to be wine.” The summer after graduation, Young made the journey to Puligny, a small town in the Burgundy region of eastern France, where he worked as a grape harvester at Domaine Leflaive, one of the world’s most renowned producers of white wine. The harvesters slept in a dorm together, rising before dawn to head out into the vines. “What I liked most was how physical it was,” he says. “Out in the vineyard, it wasn’t an intellectual discussion. It wasn’t about pretentious ‘wine theory,’ or showing off what special terms you knew. It was farming: clipping grape clusters, very carefully, all day long—but in the context of this larger, romantic enterprise.” In Puligny, Young also had his first real exposure to the notion of terroir, which refers to the vineyard’s specific environmental factors—the sun, the soil, the slope—and their cumulative impact on the way its grapes grow, taste, and age. “Terroir is what makes wine special,” says Young. “It’s the backbone of the story you’re trying to tell as a winemaker, the unique record of a time and place that can’t be repeated.” After Puligny, Young worked in a wine shop and took classes to build up his wine knowledge. The following summer, he moved to St. Helena, in the heart of Napa Valley. At first, he lived alone in an old farmhouse, working the vineyard and helping out at neighboring wineries. In 2007, he produced his first wine, a practice run made in the garage with rented, hand-powered equipment. “It was, in a lot of ways, like going right back to school,” he says. “So many people were so generous with their knowledge and perspectives, which really reminded me of Swarthmore.” Together with his parents, Young worked to design a winery and, alongside it, a home. “That’s the most amazing part,” he says. “Because we’re living here, working together, the wine captures something not just about our soil but about our family, about our philosophy, and about thousands and thousands of little decisions we’ve made together.” This fall, Young and his parents—with help from his wife, Nandita Gupta, and his sister, Mary—will complete their 10th harvest at Young Inglewood, picking the grapes that will eventually produce about 800 cases of wine. They’ll also ship their fifth vintage, sending one chapter of the Young Inglewood story out into the world while a new chapter starts fermenting, another ages in barrels, and countless more sit in the vines and soil, waiting to be told. + YOUNG INGLEWOOD offers visiting alumni a complimentary tour and tasting for two: younginglewood.com or 707-200-4572 SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 67 class notes ed from the University of Michigan Interventional Pain Fellowship and began working at Pain Specialists of Austin, Texas. Ace Chalmers graduated this spring from the master of science in physician assistant studies/master of public health program at Touro University California. He completed medical internships in eight cities and is contemplating a future in primary care versus surgery. Also in California, Jared Leiderman joined the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation as head of finance and operations. The group finds, funds, and supports innovative nonprofits around the world. “We’re always looking for more grantees, so reach out if you’re trying to change the world.” His daughters also just turned 4 and 1, so life is “fun, hectic, and full of Wonder Woman costumes here in Berkeley.” Garrett Ash completed a Ph.D. and is a research fellow at Yale School of Nursing, studying physical activity promotion for adolescents with juvenile diabetes. Garrett looks forward to reconnecting with local classmates. I, Jessica, was fortunate to see my fair share of alumni in the past two years while a research fellow at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Njideka Akunyili Crosby ’04, Justin Crosby ’04, and I explored culinary CAPTIONED! options in Eagle Rock. Then we met up with Claire Hoverman ’03, mother Isabel Vreeland Hoverman ’67, and John Fort ’03 to watch Kate Hurster Espinoza ’03 star in Guys and Dolls at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in LA. Njideka also took us to her art installation at the Hammer Museum. I got to meet Ele Forbes and Jeff Donlea’s adorable daughter, Penny, and had a completely random runin with Patrice Berry Addy ’06 in Santa Monica, Calif. Jeff and Ele moved from Oxford, England, for Jeff’s job at UCLA. Claire, Jokotade Agunloye Greenberg ’01, and I ran multiple races, including one in New Orleans’s French Quarter on my wedding day. Claire, Soenda Howell ’01, Imo Akpan ’02, and I surprised Joko for her birthday in Chicago. 2007 Kristin Leitzel Hoy kleitzel@gmail.com “Anywhere else we would have been A’s.” —Marcia Landesman ’91 “Quick, before the colony collapses, let’s see if these Swatties have any great ideas.” —Alex Gavis ’86 “I heard that this class of Swarthmore students has gotten so diverse that the school wanted to attract more WASPS!” —Ward Mazzucco “I’ll bet Charlie McCarthy couldn’t flap his wings at 230 times a second!” —James Pasterczyk ’81 + See more captions: bulletin.swarthmore.edu 68 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 John Diamond married Hannah Hirschland Nov. 7 in NYC. Dan Amato, Ilya Faibushevich, Taylor Hamilton, Matt Singleton, Jon Stott, Stephen St. Vincent, Russell Wight, and David Zee were there. John still lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan, where he conducts education policy research and program evaluation. Congratulations, John and Hannah. Anna Belc lives in Philadelphia and is a labor-and-delivery nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital. She and partner Krys McIlraith Belc ’09 had their third son in November. Welcome, littlest Belc. Kasie Groom Regnier is in her second year as the water-quality supervisor at the Virginia Aquarium. She enjoys lots of lab and fish time with her ridiculous co-workers. She also launched and manages a community water-quality monitoring program for the Virginia Beach and Norfolk area. They monitor 47 sites, help the state with data trending, and have an online map that allows community members to check the water quality at collection points. Her husband is in Connecticut for a training program, and they are waiting to hear where the next chapter in the Navy adventure will send them—either Connecticut or back to Hawaii (given that it’s 70 degrees in Virginia right now and Kasie is in a sweatshirt, you can guess which one she’s voting for …). After spending the last five years in her home state of North Carolina (during which time she earned an M.F.A. in creative writing, got married, and had a baby), Michelle Crouch returned to Philadelphia to work at Drexel University. Laura Mecklenburger loves living in West Philadelphia and making sculpture, jewelry, and installation art full time. Chase DuBois married a fellow Peace Corps volunteer (back in 2013), had a baby (last year), and will leave San Francisco later this year to settle down in sunny, scrubby Austin, Texas. He looks forward to having a garden, running through sprinklers with the wee one, and fulfilling his destiny as a dangerously unqualified household handyman. Juliet Braslow is in her third year in Nairobi, Kenya, working with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Her new favorite project is leading video workshops training groups of farmers throughout Africa to film themselves telling their own stories. Juliet and husband Carlos Villafuerte ’08 continue to enjoy exploring, camping, and hiking in the beautiful countryside. They are happy to have visitors, so let them know if you’re up for a safari adventure. Corey Baker decided that this—his fifth year as librarian at Milton Academy in Milton, Mass.—was his last. After finishing his dance company responsibilities in the Boston area and completing a farming immersion summer program, he ships out in July to join his partner in Palo Alto, Calif. He’s relatively newly passionate about minimalism, zero waste, and food sovereignty, so if you want to chat about those or recommend any contacts in the Bay Area (re: library work or housing), he’s all ears. Feel free to look him up. Caleb Ward continues to work on a Ph.D. in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He has lived in Brooklyn for two years with partner Michele, but they plan to spend the next year in Berlin. (Read more about his research on Page 19.) Catherine Healy was ordained as an Episcopal priest in February. Present for the ordination were Yvonne Asher, Andrew and Sarah Gillis-Smith, and Nathaniel Peters, along with many others. Catherine loves the black-collar life, even when strangers on the street ask questions like, “Are you celibate?” (P.S. Nope.) Susan Zell relocated in the fall from Chicagoland to Silicon Valley, where she has been learning web and mobile development and enjoying the blissfully snow-free weather. After taking part in several hackathons, she racked up three straight victories. She uses the resultant knowledge and confidence as co-founder of moxxie. io, which is developing a better wearable tech solution for resident safety in assisted-living facilities. Sonya Reynolds is a civic data strategy consultant for economic, racial, and social-justice nonprofits. This allows her to geek out about mapping things like voter registration equity gaps and conducting tactical experiments on political organizing strategies. This year she made great strides in becoming a Brooklyn cliché: She moved from Park Slope to Fort Greene and loves her urban garden, home canning, and her weekly shuffleboard league— where she overstrategizes plays with the likes of Sasha Laundy ’06 and Nick Farrar. 2011 Ming Cai mcai223@gmail.com Abroad and locations unknown: Bill Beck is finishing his Fulbright year in England. In fear of Donald Trump, he has decided to relocate in September to Athens, where he’ll spend a year at the American School of Classical Studies. Shameika Black remains a supervisor at McMaster-Carr, an industrial supply company. She traveled to Tanzania to facilitate a retreat for Princeton in Africa. Shameika also started her term on Alumni Council this year. Orion Sauter is five years out from cancer treatment and still disease-free. He is searching for gravitational waves with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which has announced the first-ever detection. Midwest: Sophia Uddin is in her third year of the M.D./Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. She lives on the South Side with Gabe Riccio and spends her spare time making music with him. A couple of times a year, she is lucky enough to revive the Mandelbrot Quartet with Amy Langdon, Leland Kusmer, and Ben Dair. Northeast: In Vermont, Eva McKend interviewed Brendan Kelly ’92 about his book The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis: Healing Personal, Cultural, and Ecological Imbalance with Chinese Medicine, for WCAX, Burlington’s television news channel. Zach Postone is enrolled in MIT’s master’s program in city design and development and lives with Eric Anderson in Cambridge, Mass. Alex Weintraub finished his fourth year in Columbia’s art history Ph.D. program and is in Europe this summer for dissertation research. During the upcoming academic year, he will be on a Fulbright in the Netherlands. James Preimesberger is a firstclass first-grade teacher at East Village Community School in NYC. He is also an organizer with the New York Collective of Radical Educators and the proud papa to two cats. Michael Roswell is driving around New Jersey asking if male BLAISE SHERIDAN ’09 ENERGY SAVER Blaise Sheridan ’09 received a 2016 Unsung Hero Award, presented by the Alliance to Save Energy. A legislative assistant for Sen. Al Franken, Sheridan helps to promote clean-energy policy including a national energy-efficiency resource standard and incentives for benchmarking building energy use. Sheridan received a master’s in marine policy from the University of Delaware with a focus on offshore wind power. and female bees prefer different types of flowers and is a second-year Ph.D. student in the ecology and evolution program at Rutgers. Niki Machac lives in Philly and is finishing her third year at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University with Kenyetta Givans ’12 and Rebecca Commito ’10. She spends any free time bumming around Philly with Althea Gaffney and Jason Bronstein ’05. Camilia Kamoun graduated from the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn and started her residency in pediatrics this summer. Kathryn Stockbower graduated from Temple University School of Medicine and moved west to start her pediatrics residency at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Westward: Candice Nguyen resides in Las Vegas, where she clerks for U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II. In her free time she hikes with her newly adopted pup, Olive. Candice will return to New York City in the fall to work at a law firm. Alex Breslow works at Advanced Micro Devices Research on near-data computing architectures in Sunnyvale, Calif., and will return to UC San Diego in the fall to defend a Ph.D. in computer science. In Los Angeles, Bryan Baum founded Represent in 2014, and the company was acquired by CustomInk earlier this year. Noah Marks graduated from Harvard Law School in May and will clerk in Los Angeles for the next two years for judges Cormac Carney and Kim Wardlaw. Noah would love to reconnect with any Swatties nearby. Blaine O’Neill started a digitally focused creative agency called Jodie (jodie.io) and is part of a small team developing a nonprofit crowd-funding platform for the trans community. Nicholas Gabinet and Beck Ringle still live in Oakland, Calif. Nick manages a medical scribe program in an ER in Berkeley, and Beck is a sales account manager at one of California’s preeminent organic produce distributors, Veritable Vegetable. Nick will move to Providence, R.I., at the end of the summer to begin medical school at Brown University. I’ll end with a Quaker matchbox submission: Aaron Zimmerman and Logan Osgood-Jacobs married May 28. They live in Seattle with their dog, Cosmo. 2013 J. Paige Grand Pré jpgrandpre@gmail.com As we enter our third year out of Swarthmore, our peers continue to accomplish a great deal in academia and the working world. Jonah Wacholder finished up his second year at Yale Law School. Brian Huser will transition this summer from teaching math in Oakland, Calif., to Ph.D. studies in film and media. He is grateful to be deciding between two exciting programs; either way, he’ll be on the West Coast for a few more years, much to his surprise. Becca Roelofs lives in Berkeley, Calif., in her third year of a computer science Ph.D., but is interning in NYC at Google for the summer. She has been hanging with Amandine Lee, and road-tripped to Joshua Tree National Park to rock-climb over spring break with more outdoor trips planned. Daniel Duncan is working on a linguistics Ph.D. at NYU and is figuring out how to split his time between classes in NYC and fieldwork in St. Louis. Taryn Colonnese SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 69 class notes 70 Swarthmore College Bulletin / their run this year. Tyler Hanson moved to Chicago and started a position with the data-science team at Reverb, an online marketplace for music gear. Sean Anthony Bryant is the community relations coordinator for Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts in New York, where he is responsible for communications and parent outreach. He bartends nights and weekends “slaaaaanging margaritas all day,” and notes that he is “in formation and twirling on his haters. Ashé.” In his free time, Sean plays dodgeball and serves as a kickball referee in an LGBT sports league. I, Paige Grand Pré, still live in New York City, but now with Joseph O’Hara ’12, who relocated from Baltimore this spring. I graduated from NYU’s School of Professional Studies in December with a certificate in screenwriting. I left my position in international admissions at Pace University in January to begin work as the film and media education program assistant at the Jacob Burns Film Center. So far, it’s been immensely rewarding. As always, please submit notes! I wish you all a happy and healthy summer. 2015 Alexis Leanza leanzaalexis@gmail.com Our female classmates have been busy. Lucia Luna-Victoria adopted a little dog named Sandy and will move to California in September to pursue a Ph.D. in history at UC Davis. Iris Fang relocated SUMMER 2016 KYLE CRAWFORD ’12 MOOT COURT STAR Kyle Crawford ’12 was named Best Oral Advocate at the 66th annual National Moot Court Competition in New York City. More than 150 teams from 113 law schools competed, with the competition addressing an insider-trading case that the Supreme Court will hear in the fall. Crawford’s team placed second overall. He is a second-year law student at Georgetown. to Florida in June to begin a master’s in biology at the University of Central Florida. Audrey Edelstein returned to Queens, N.Y., and studies orchestral conducting at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She rehearses Tuesday nights at a synagogue in Brooklyn across the street from Matthew Goldman. Catherine Martlin lives in Baltimore with her cat, Galileo. She works on the Hubble Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Catherine is planning her return to grad school, because— in true Swattie form—she believes it would be fulfilling and interesting. Julia Anderson is a clinical researcher in Washington, D.C., and will attend Georgetown University School of Medicine in the fall. Abigail Frank lives in Madison, Wis., and frequently travels to Virginia for her job at Epic. In her free time, Abigail tries to learn Spanish, cultivates her basketball skills, and contemplates life philosophies. Ariel Gewirtz is working on a quantitative and computational biology Ph.D. at Princeton, studying neurovirology in rats. Randall Burson has finally arrived in Temuco, Chile, for his Fulbright, and when he’s not researching, enjoys getting to know the region one hike at a time. Erick White is a lab technician at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Besides lab maintenance, he conducts his own research project under the guidance of his principal investigator, Annalise Paaby ’00, using RNAi to explore the cryptic variation within C. elegans strains that might be involved in embryonic lethality. When he’s not working, Erick is kicking ass in 5Ks, winning a few, as well as finishing fourth out of more than 1,000 people in the Georgia Publix Marathon. Your secretary, Alexis Leanza, wrapped up her first year of medical school at the University of Rochester. For fun, Alexis contemplates how to better target her male classmates to submit updates for class notes; this has not been a very fruitful pastime so far, but she has faith it will pay off someday. THANK YOU! 1 2 4 5 3 6 7 LAST YEAR, more than 2,000 alumni responded to an engagement survey on how we can better suit your needs, and dozens of others participated in regional focus groups. We appreciate everyone who gave their feedback and wanted to share a few of our findings. —LISA LEE ’81, Director of Alumni Relations Networking, intellectual engagement, and communication from and with the College emerged as three primary areas in which alumni want to see us focus, and these are key factors in our engagement strategy. Our initial responses include: • Creation of an LGBT+ alumni group (pride@ swarthmore.edu) • Development of webinars with current faculty starting fall 2016 • More tech-based opportunities for alumni and students to network • Launch of the Virtual Alumni Facebook Group (bit.ly/SwatFB), which has enrolled 2,700+ members since November 2015 View alumni photo galleries at bulletin.swarthmore.edu 8 9 10 ROBERT O. WILLIAMS AND DAN Z. JOHNSON lives in San Francisco, teaches third grade, and studies for a master’s in education. Griffin Dowdy is traveling this summer before beginning Columbia Business School this fall. Also in the fall, Allison McKinnon will move to upstate New York for a clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Binghamton University. Lisa Sendrow works as the pro bono legal assistant for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP’s D.C. office. She tries to hang out once a month with Ben Kapilow, who takes the MARC train from Baltimore. Eddie Montenegro is an assistant director of admissions at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He enjoys all the Mountain West travel, coordinating the tour-guide program, and preparing for a few South American recruiting trips this fall. He also coaches youth lacrosse in the West Hartford area, and generally enjoys the “slow” part of the admissions cycle. Emily Melnick lives in New York with Will Treece ’11 and a few non-Swatties. She works at AIDS service organization GMHC, doing program design and public development. Following Eugene Prymak’s promotion at the end of last year, his company, Powerhouse Equipment and Engineering, relocated him to its new office in West Chester, Pa. He left Center City Philadelphia and bought a house in Goshen Valley, just minutes from his office. His home projects have been successful, and he also leased a new car. Most of all, Eugene is happy that he’s close enough to visit campus and enjoyed the opportunity to support our men’s basketball team in ALUMNI WEEKEND, JUNE 3–5 1. President Valerie Smith greets William Nute ’38. 2. Swarthmore’s newest Sages, the Class of 1966, gather at the Parade of Classes. 3. Maurice Eldridge ’61 speaks at Alumni Collection. 4. Jason Morton ’91 pitches in the Class of 1991 ballgame. 5. Future alumni catch a ride on a golf cart. 6. Two alumnae snag a selfie. 7. A canine companion joins in the festivities. 8. Singers perform Fauré’s Requiem at Lang Concert Hall. 9. A couple of alumnae share a funny moment. 10. From left: Barbara Young ’41, Nancy Smith Hayden ’46, Barbara Hallowell ’46, and Kinnie Clarke Schmidt ’46 catch up at Alumni Collection. + MORE ALUMNI WEEKEND PHOTOS AND VIDEOS: bit.ly/2016AlumniWeekend SUMMER 2016 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 71 spoken word Why is that interaction important to you? I’m just a people person, and I try to make all my students feel at home. I like talking to them, especially when they’re stressed out or feeling down. I look out for my international students and freshmen in particular, since they’re far away from home and may not have made friends yet. I get to know most of them, and it’s a trip when they graduate, come back, and tell me about what they’re doing now. COOK, CONFIDANT, COMMUNITY LEADER YOU’D BE HARD-PRESSED to find a more beloved figure at Swarthmore than Don “Donny” Thomas. For 18 years, he’s been the smiling face of Sharples Dining Hall, the person colleagues and students turn to when they need someone to brighten their day. Fresh off of grilling hundreds of lunches, he chopped it up with writer Ryan Dougherty. 72 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2016 What brought you to Swarthmore? I always loved to cook and saw myself doing that, but there wasn’t much money in it. So I took jobs in metallurgy. I struggled with that: Do I want to make money, or do I want to love what I’m doing? Finally, I decided to go learn how to cook at the Springhaven Club in Wallingford, Pa., where I worked for 14 years. One of the cooks there left to work at Swarthmore, and she kept telling me to follow her. After three or four years, I finally took her advice. How have your responsibilities changed? I’ve basically done every job in the kitchen. I started out washing dishes, but they moved me over to the salad department, then line service, then meal prep, and then finally I got to cook. Now, you’ll usually find me at the grill. That’s where I was meant to be, since that’s where I can serve the students. What do you do in your spare time? I coach a drill team of about 35 kids from where I live in Darby, Pa. We travel for performances, and they’ll come to Swarthmore with the Rhythm N Motion dance company. Or we’ll bring a carload of kids to see a Swarthmore basketball game. I want to put positive examples and thoughts in their heads, to have them see college kids and think, “I want to do that someday.” What makes you smile? A lot of people wake up and don’t look forward to coming to work, but not me. I can’t believe I get paid to do what I’m doing. I come to work in a good frame of mind, and I don’t let too much get to me. And I just love Swarthmore, man. It’s my co-workers, the students, and the environment here, really. It’s just a very happy place. + WATCH Don work his charm—and the grill: bulletin.swarthmore.edu LAURENCE KESTERSON LAURENCE KESTERSON How have students showed their fondness for you? One time, one of the seniors asked me to be a referee for a pasta-wrestling match on Pub Night. I was like, “What?! Just keep me out of trouble.” Another time, they put my face on a shot glass for a fundraiser. They had the most popular people on campus—the president, the head dean—and here I am, the only blue-collar worker. That made me really happy. in this issue 38 SOLDIER, SWATTIE, SON One Gave All Joe Selligman ’37 was the first American casualty of the Spanish Civil War. by Adam Hochschild MOMENT IN TIME Tears, joy, fireworks: Commencement sparked them all. Experience it for yourself at bit.ly/SwatCom16. Congrats to the Class of 2016! SUMMER 2016 Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices VIETNAM REVISITED p7 KAYAK CRUSADER p14 MAKING MISCHIEF p32 ISSUE IV 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu VOLUME CXIII SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN LAURENCE KESTERSON SUMMER 2016 YES, I WILL ATTEND GARNET WEEKEND OCT. 28–30 swarthmore.edu/garnetweekend JUSTICE Hungry for Change p20