SUMMER 2019 SEEING HUMANITY p20 Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices FALLING FOR THE CLASSICS p30 CROWNING GLORY 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu am —Willi Shakespeare (from Troilus and Cressid a) KIN.” SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN O T E N “O E K S A T M H E E R W U T H A O N L E F O WORLD H C U SUMMER 2019 COME BACK FOR GARNET WEEKEND OCT. 4–5 Family Weekend Enjoy open houses, tours, and activities with your student. Homecoming All alumni are welcome back for special athletic and affinity programming. Advancement Volunteer Summit Alumni and parent volunteers will gather for their annual conference. All attendees are invited to the pep rally, annual McCabe Lecture, and closing reception with President Valerie Smith. Registration opens Sept. 2: swarthmore.edu/garnetweekend Rooted in Humanities p44 in this issue FAMILY FARMING 40 Field Work Intergenerational cooperation guides the Rosenbaums of Winddrift Farms. by Michael Agresta MOMENT IN TIME Dakota Gibbs ’19, an economics and philosophy major from Newark, N.J., at Commencement on May 26. + MORE: bit.ly/WhySwat 2 20 DIALOGUE CLASS NOTES Seeing Humanity Editor’s Column Letters Community Voices Alumni News and Events An appreciation for art and culture, language and literature connects medical professionals to their patients. Melina Healey ’08 30 Leonard Barkan ’65 Rita Kamani-Renedo ’08 Books Looking Back Global Thinking Their Light Lives On Pendle Marshall-Hallmark ’14 78 SPOKEN WORD 9 COMMON GOOD Falling for the Classics The love of the text ignites this close-knit group. by Amy Stone ’64 34 Swarthmore Stories Quiz’more Learning Curve Professor of French Studies Jean-Vincent Blanchard Julian Randall ’15 Liberal Arts Lives Marshall Curry ’92 Kimaya Diggs ’15 Question, Challenge, and Imagine The humanities inform our perceptions—and sometimes reshape them. JAMES PEYTON JONES by Ryan Dougherty ON THE COVER Photographer Laurence Kesterson captured the Scott Amphitheater at dusk. Lamps illuminate the green tarp covering the stage, providing an otherworldly glow. Profiles Studentwise Cameron Wiley ’19 by Karen Brooks JOE ROSENBAUM ’68 47 FEATURES Professor of English Literature Betsy Bolton at a religious festival at Yonphula­, a monastery in eastern Bhutan. “We were waiting for the masked dances to start, and a jester figure (an atsara) had come to speak with the chilip (foreigner), much to the amusement of the women and children we were sitting with,” Bolton says about her Fulbright in Bhutan. + READ MORE about the humanities on pg. 34. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 1 dialogue LETTERS EDITOR’S COLUMN Shared Stories SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN Interim Editor Kate Campbell Class Notes Editor Elizabeth Slocum Senior Writer/Editor Ryan Dougherty Designer Phillip Stern ’84 Photographer Laurence Kesterson Administrative Assistant Lauren McAloon Editorial Assistant Eishna Ranganathan ’20 MARC CHAGALL, THE FALL OF ICARUS, DETAIL, 1975 Editor Emerita Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 bulletin.swarthmore.edu facebook.com/SwarthmoreBulletin instagram.com/SwarthmoreBulletin Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu Telephone: 610-328-8533 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. KATE CAMPBELL Interim Editor Send address changes to records@swarthmore.edu The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume CXVI, 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 Alumni Records, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Printed with agri-based inks. Please recycle after reading. ©2019 Swarthmore College. Printed in USA. pr inted w i th SUMMER 2019 It’s astonishing to me that an experienced teacher like Emanuel Jinich ’79 doesn’t know “why math is so difficult for students to learn” (Spring 2019). Answer: Because students don’t always function the same way their teachers do. Some people’s brains are hard-wired for quantitative thinking and theoretical abstractions, while other people’s aren’t. My brain is hard-wired for words and pictures, sounds and tactile distinctions—but not formulas and symbols as they appear in traditional textbooks. I got decent grades in high school math and science only because I have a photographic memory and could “see” the relevant pages in my mind when I had to take tests. When a quantitative problem is posed in words or images, or applied to some practical use, I’m fine. I have no trouble with the dimensions of something I’m sewing or constructing out of paper or wood, the ingredients in a recipe, or the cost of something I’m buying. In college biology, the lectures went over my head, but I passed because I loved dissecting specimens in the lab, feeling the different textures under my hands as I used the scalpel and other tools. Later, I applied the same skills to filleting fish, deboning meat, and doing various kinds of household repairs. Just don’t ask me to calculate anything more complicated than the arithmetic needed to balance a checkbook or figure out who owes how much at a restaurant. —JACQUELINE LAPIDUS ’62, Brighton, Mass. NASA AT WORK nd e Swarthmore College Bulletin / Send letters and story ideas to bulletin@swarthmore.edu e c o-fri 2 THE HUMANITIES infuse our modern consciousness. How else could ancient myths remain so poignant? Painter Marc Chagall must have somehow felt the message of Icarus pulsing through his creative mind and onto the canvas shown above. Icarus, and Chagall’s reimagining of him, exemplifies the importance of the humanities—without them, we float uninformed into the universe and, like Icarus, into dangerous territory without the benefit of the right tools. Jeremy Lefkowitz, associate professor of classics, explains it this way: “The fall of Icarus is a tragic tale, of course, but it’s also a story about human genius and creativity. Unfairly imprisoned, the father-andson team used what they had at hand and invented flight, escaping captivity and achieving liberation, even if it meant dying in the process.” In this issue, Swarthmore poets, farmers, doctors, teachers, and sages express how their paths have all been collectively shaped by the power of the humanities. Come along on their journeys. Forget the wax and wings for now. ly H-UV ks by HARD-WIRED in I really liked the story about Nancy Grace Roman ’46, H’76 (Spring 2019). I was a physics major at Swarthmore and find her story very relatable. I even have the NASA Legos in my office at work! —ALEXANDRA ZELASKI ’09, Cleveland, Ohio “You often hear politicians and public figures say that no one wants to study the humanities in college anymore, but that doesn’t match my experience in the classroom. My students are desperately searching for ways to think through the incredibly complex times in which they live.” ­—Krista Thomason, associate professor of philosophy TELL US. What do you the humanities mean to you? bulletin@swarthmore.edu “A deep engagement with music helps us to focus on truly listening to others, staying aware of our own voice while striving to hear many other voices simultaneously. A musical connection can then become a human connection.” —Andrew Hauze ’04, lecturer in the Department of Music “Humanities taught me quite literally how to begin understanding humanity ... how we can be better humans.” —Margaret Cohen ’19 YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN Thank you for covering international alumni in your article “The Global Bridge”! As an international student who went back to her home country to work at a nonprofit after graduation, it was so great to see many more who had done the same and who were contributing to their societies. One of the things I’m grateful for is that Swarthmore gave me the confidence and toolkit to go back home and build something there. Hope to see more such coverage. —SABRINA SINGH ’15, Cambridge Mass. + WRITE TO US: bulletin@swarthmore.edu CONTRIBUTORS Laura Markowitz ’85 is a writer, editor, and pubic-radio producer based in Tucson, Ariz. She’s co-author of the forthcoming book Voices on the Economy: How OpenMinded Exploration of Rival Perspectives Can Spark Solutions to Economic Problems. Amy Stone ’64 is a founder and contributing editor of Lilith, the Jewish feminist magazine. She was lucky enough to have Professor Helen North for Latin at Swarthmore. Karen Brooks is a Philadelphiabased freelance writer specializing in higher education and nonprofit development. She has an M.A. in journalism and public affairs from American University. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 3 COMMUNITY VOICES GET LOST I cobbled together 8- and then 12-mile unpaved runs on interconnected parkland (and through backyards, over hoppable fences, and along railroad tracks and river beds) that looped away from and returned to campus. Some teammates, among them my future husband, gamely accompanied me on these misadventures. We often arrived back I GREW UP IN New York City, always with scars from stinging nettles and looking for forests to get lost in. There thorns and bushwacking, or chastened was nothing more thrilling than by property owners, well after dark, losing the horizon of high-rises as I and after Sharples had closed. ducked deeper into thick brambles of In class I found myself enchantingly off-trail Central Park or, even better, adrift, as well. I was an English major the woodsier Van Cortlandt Park. I with a history minor, and my search craved solitude and the excitement of for narrative unity and historical wandering. perspective often by My first fall at seemed intentionally Swarthmore, it took unmoored. I wandered me just a few runs with Leopold Bloom with the cross country through his endless team to learn the postmodern day, entirety of the Crum, or waded through so I went in search of more exotic and the strange landscape of William far-flung woods beyond campus. With Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County (in the help of a very early beta version of Professor Philip Weinstein’s glorious Google Maps, I could identify streams courses). I attempted to decode and green spaces that might be the American history by immersion in kinds of wooded land where a person scholars’ intricate analyses of Black could remain in semi-wilderness. communities and kinship networks Enchantingly adrift, exploration intensifies MELINA HEALEY ’08 Attorney 4 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 in exotic cities like Cincinnati and Buffalo (in Professor Allison Dorsey’s dynamic seminars). Revelation in either discipline was only possible after these baptisms. My need to explore has only intensified, and it is not coincidental that much of my professional work has been in places far from typical destinations for liberal arts graduates. I teach at NYU Law School (pretty typical destination), but I also still practice law. Among my clients are the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. The work I do for these tribes takes place in a town that has been calculated as the literal “middle of nowhere” of the United States, more isolated than any other town in the nation. I first saw this region of the country when I graduated from Swarthmore and my husband and I drove with a fellow Swattie and his old textbooks and bike gear back to his home in Nevada. I was captivated by the prairie and high plains, wondering what life was like for teenagers there, what kids did after school, how the light filtered into their farmhouses as the sun set endlessly over the long horizon. My work in eastern Montana and in prisons in rural southern Illinois and northern New York enable me to take adventures in places that fascinate and educate me—and where I also witness injustice that outrages me. I bring students with me to these places so that they, too, can learn from local wisdom and get lost with me. We’ve been buried under hundreds of letters of client mail from prisons and conducted dozens of interviews with young people facing discrimination at rural school districts, and we are deeply immersed in myriad stories. Sometimes I feel as though we are drowning. But we dig ourselves out with broad policy reforms and impact litigation informed by the voices of those we serve and advocate for, made all the better for having been lost among them. LAURENCE KESTERSON LAURENCE KESTERSON dialogue STUDENTWISE: HABITS SHAPE CHARACTER Humanities and my vision for the future by Cameron Wiley ’19 T HIS MAY, I graduated from Swarthmore with honors in philosophy and history. I did not expect to focus my studies on the humanities upon enrolling at Swarthmore—in fact, I thought I would be an economics and history double major. That all changed my first year when I stumbled upon philosophy. I’m so thankful I did. Studying the humanities developed me in ways that I could not have anticipated. Philosophy taught me the importance of empathy. I gained the ability to understand and share the feelings of others—the mark of a good leader. I can identify with increased sensibility the needs and experiences of others. As a leader on campus, this principle dictated the manner in which I interacted and communicated with my peers and basketball teammates. Reading Aristotle’s thoughts on happiness—how it’s an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence— motivated me to redefine my purpose. It occurred to me that my own success is an upshot not of what I do, but of who I am. Now, I strive for excellence in all my activities, vitalized by the habits that shape my character. Now that I’ve graduated, I plan to open an Allstate insurance agency in my hometown of Atlanta. I look forward to the opportunity to begin my career as an entrepreneur and a leader of my own organization, after which I intend to pursue a law and business degree. Moreover, I plan to establish an organization in Atlanta that provides educational and career services to help young people achieve life milestones— such as going to college, getting a job, or growing a business. I hope to foster a real community around that vision, inspired by my passions for leadership and self-development. However, I doubt my vision for the future would be the same without the humanities. Swarthmore was the most enriching and fulfilling period of my life. I’m appreciative of the person I have grown to become over the past four years, and I attribute much of my intellectual and personal growth to studying philosophy. Although my path from Swarthmore will present many changes, I’m certain of one thing: I will continue to be that principled leader who practices integrity, values relationships, and demonstrates commitment. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 5 dialogue BEHIND THE BOOK RECASTING THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE by Elizabeth Redden ’05 In American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World (NewSouth Books), Christina ProenzaColes ’92 calls for recasting the national narrative to recognize the rightful roles played by people of African descent. In a book spanning five centuries and the whole of the Western Hemisphere, Proenza-Coles writes of the roles people of African descent played in establishing and defending New World settlements, in fighting for American independence, and in challenging slavery throughout the Americas by force or in the courts. She chronicles innumerable contributions made by people of African descent in the arts, medicine, industry, politics, and the sciences. And she reminds readers that “if we turn up the lights on our history, it becomes evident that people of color were there at every point, and not just as passive observers.” “The vast number of individuals included here is overwhelming and deliberate,” writes Proenza-Coles, who holds a dual doctorate in history and sociology from the New School for Social Research. “I encourage the reader to let the sheer weight of their number, and their intricate connections to global currents of history, compel us to rethink our own history, our national narrative, and our creation myths. These black men and women are not exceptions; they are our founders.” Submit your publication for consideration: books@swarthmore.edu HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans Robin Smith Chapman ’64 The Only Home We Know Small Press Distribution Chapman’s poems in this collection urge us to pay attention. “In the face of daily encounters with news, science news, friends, fellow creatures, a green world—I wanted to make poems that could save us from destroying our home, to celebrate and marvel and puzzle at what we have, to include the play of arts and sciences in our daily lives.” production of the Tea Party brand. An assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, White argues that “the Tea Party was less social movement and more mass-mediated brand—a construct fashioned, facilitated, managed, assisted, organized, and maintained by the national press.” Sarah St. Vincent ’04 Ways to Hide in Winter Melville House In this debut novel, a young widow named Kathleen in Pennsylvania’s beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains befriends a self-described visiting student from Uzbekistan who ends up confessing to a terrible crime. O, The Oprah Magazine describes Ways to Hide in Winter as an “atmospheric suspense novel. … Pick it up now.” Andrew Garner ’89 and Robert A. Saul Forgotten Fighters by Elizabeth Redden ’05 In Farthest Field, journalist Raghu Karnad ’05 tells the stories of his grandfather and two granduncles who died serving the imperial Indian armed forces during World War II. It is a war, he argues, that India has chosen for the most part to forget, an epic battle fought on behalf of an empire from which India would separate a mere two years after its conclusion. Karnad writes that the fighting in then-Burma and northeast India constituted the British Empire’s largest and longest campaign, but that the soldiers there already called themselves “the Forgotten Army” in 1944, even as the fighting was ongoing. Karnad describes his project as “my 6 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 attempt to draw back the dead”—to not just tell the story of his ancestors, but also to keep the common memory of India’s Second World War alive, “as the people who lived it take their leave.” In March, Farthest Field won the $165,000 Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize at Yale University in the nonfiction category. “Farthest Field represents an astonishing union of imagination and archival research,” the jurors wrote, “in which the bitter ironies of family, loss, memory, and national identity are deeply explored and exceptionally told.” Thinking Developmentally: Nurturing Wellness in Childhood to Promote Lifelong Health American Academy of Pediatrics The authors, both pediatricians, explore the effects of childhood experiences on adult health and the childhood origins of adult-onset diseases including hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, and substance abuse. As they note, recent advances in developmental science “have confirmed what astute pediatricians have known for ages: What happens in childhood does not necessarily stay in childhood.” Khadijah Costley White ’04 The Branding of Right-Wing Activism: The News Media and the Tea Party Oxford University Press White analyzes the way in which the news media actively aided in the Keetje Kuipers ’02 All Its Charms Boa Editions Ltd. The poems in Kuipers’s third collection “chronicle Kuipers’s decision to become a single mother by choice, her marriage to the woman she first fell in love with more than a decade before giving birth to her daughter, and her family’s struggle to bring another child into their lives,” to borrow the summary from the book blurb. U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith describes Kuipers’s poems as “daring, formally beautiful, and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.” Alexander Robinson ’99 The Spoils of Dust: Reinventing the Lake that Made Los Angeles Applied Research and Design Publishing Robinson’s subject is the “reinvention” of Owens Lake. Once the third-largest lake in California until it was drained to supply water to Los Angeles, it has now been partially restored and re-watered in the name of a $1.5 billion dust-control project. Robinson, an associate professor in the Landscape Architecture & Urbanism program at the University of Southern California, writes that the lake “has now been reinvented as a new, nearly fantastical, middle ground, where large portions of its original function and value have been restored in the face of the ongoing water extractions that originally despoiled it.” Marcelle Martin ’80 Our Life Is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey Inner Light Books Martin explores the beginnings of the Quaker movement during the 17th century. The Mullen Writing Fellow at the Earlham School of Religion while working on this book, Martin writes that the first Quakers “experienced a divine Light that was within them and active in the world. God was not just an idea or belief but a dynamic power they felt in their bodies as well as their minds.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 7 common good dialogue SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE THE PEACE PRESENCE Drawing attention to international conflict PENDLE MARSHALL-HALLMARK ’14 arrived in Colombia two months after the signing of the 2016 peace accords that ended the country’s 50-year civil conflict. She joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence, working as an “accompanier.” “It’s a technique that’s used in conflicts all over the world,” she says. “Foreigners are invited by activists in the country to physically go with them while they do their activist work. The idea is that we are harnessing our passport, racial, and language privilege to try to draw attention to the conflict, dissuade violence from happening, and de-escalate conflict with our presence.” Local officials wouldn’t listen to the campesinos living out in the jungle who wanted protection from paramilitary groups that were moving into their areas. But they couldn’t dismiss a white woman from Rochester, N.Y., MarshallHallmark says. One day while living in the northern part of the country, she and another accompanier heard gunfire and bombs in the distance. Early the next morning, a paramilitary soldier showed up. “He was dressed in fatigues and carrying an AK-47 on his shoulder,” Marshall-Hallmark says. “We were two young women, still in our pajamas because it was 6 in the morning. But we confronted him and told him he had to leave.” It was a tense standoff, she says, but he finally agreed to be escorted off the property and disappeared into the jungle. Raised as a Quaker, MarshallHallmark originally chose Swarthmore for its peace and conflict studies program, but she ended up majoring in sociology and anthropology. A class with Assistant Professor of Sociology Nina Johnson on “Race and Place” got her thinking about nongovernmental organizations and how they operate, after she volunteered at a Mexican cultural center in South Philadelphia as part of the course. After graduation, Marshall-Hallmark wanted to do work that created lasting social change. She served as a resource coordinator at a refugee resettlement agency and as a community organizer at advocacy nonprofits in Philadelphia before moving to Bogotá. But after Marshall-Hallmark had been in Colombia for 18 months, the NGO she was working for closed because of funding problems. “My last day in Colombia, we had lunch with campesino activists who happened to be in Bogotá for a meeting,” she says. “The waiter turned on the TV news, and we learned that a number of human rights activists had just been killed. It was demoralizing.” Marshall-Hallmark had come to believe that the “charity model” for nonprofits was rife with problems, “Studying humanities taught me I could try things that were new ... before I decided where I wanted to focus.” 8 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 MAYRA LINARES RODRÍGUEZ by Laura Markowitz ’85 PENDLE MARSHALL-HALLMARK ’14 Peacemaker such as organizations drifting from their missions just to stay funded. So she decided to explore for-profit models to fund social justice work. As a Fulbright binational internship recipient, she has been taking business classes at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México in Mexico City and worked at an entrepreneurship center, learning how to pitch ideas and get investors on board. Next for Marshall-Hallmark will be a semester back in the U.S., studying radio journalism at the SALT Institute for Democracy Studies in Maine; a natural storyteller, she plans on using multimedia as a tool for community organizing. She credits her liberal arts education with inspiring her to go outside her field­­—and her comfort zone—to forge a path that combines her passions, values, and beliefs into a career that will promote long-term, positive social change. “It sometimes seemed like I had a disparate path,” she says, “but now I see a through-line in all that I’ve done.” ON THE WEB WHY SWARTHMORE? Seven members of the Class of 2019 reflect on their time at the College. + WATCH bit.ly/WhySwat SUCCESSFUL S3P Among 2019’s graduates is the first cohort from the Swarthmore Summer Scholars Program. + CELEBRATE bit.ly/S3Pgrads DOWN TO A FINE ART Sixteen senior art majors showcased their thesis exhibitions in the College’s List Gallery. + VISUALIZE bit.ly/FineArtSwat ‘HUNTING VISION’ Associate Professor Bakirathi Mani discusses her new book on South Asian diasporic visual and exhibition cultures. + LISTEN DC COMICS GLOBAL THINKING bit.ly/BakirathiMani BOOSTING NUMBERS An experiment by Swarthmore economists Amanda Bayer and Syon Bhanot aims to diversify their field. + READ bit.ly/BayerBhanot LOOK OUT! Rightful Recognition by Maria Aghazarian AN EXHIBITION at McCabe Library this spring highlighted the work of Bob Haney ’48 (1926– 2004). Although he co-created iconic characters for DC Comics, such as the Teen Titans, Doom Patrol, Metamorpho, and Eclipso, and wrote memorable team-ups during his tenure on The Brave and the Bold, Haney is perhaps best known for not receiving rightful recognition for his work while he was alive. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 9 common good COLLECTIVE REFLECTION MOTT CHALLENGE SUPPORTS SWARTHMORE STUDENTS + MORE: swarthmore. edu/mottchallenge College initiates campus conversations after closure of fraternities COMPASSIONATE CONNECTION The first day of a lighthearted Swarthmore alumni “Getaway to Iceland,” a quick trip in search of the aurora borealis, was the March 15 massacre of Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand. We asked ourselves, what meaningful outreach could a busload of Swarthmoreans do thousands of miles from home and even farther away from New Zealand? In Iceland, a tiny­—mostly white and mostly Lutheran­—country with a small Muslim population, I realized a letter to this community in Reykjavik was one way to express our support and sympathy. All 34 group members signed the letter, which read: We are far from home and want to reach out to you as all of us feel linked in this time of unspeakable sadness. We are here on a trip of alumni, friends and family of Swarthmore College, a small, nonsectarian Quaker college near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With a tradition of Quaker activism for peace and commitment to working for a better world, we express our hope that change is possible and hate can be transformed into compassion. I connected with the executive director of the Islamic Foundation of Iceland and presented our letter to him at the Grand Mosque of Iceland. Kasim Askari, from Reykjavik via Italy and Morocco, was truly touched and grateful. —AMY STONE ’64 As a result of increased planning and action around student voter engagement, Swarthmore has been designated a “Voter Friendly Campus.” The initiative, led by national nonpartisan organizations Campus Vote Project and NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, held participating institutions accountable for planning and implementing practices that encourage their students to register and vote. Swarthmore was 10 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 evaluated based on a campus plan about how the College would engage student voters in 2018, how it facilitated democratic engagement efforts on campus, and a final analysis of those efforts. The designation is valid through December 2020. —EMILY WEISGRAU + ENGAGE: vote.swarthmore.edu IN MAY, President Valerie Smith announced that fraternities and sororities would no longer exist at the College, noting that “exclusive, duespaying social organizations no longer effectively meet the needs of our residential liberal arts environment.” She added that a reflective series of conversations among students, staff, and faculty will begin this fall to discuss the relationship between academic and cocurricular priorities and programming at Swarthmore. Those conversations will be led by Vice President and Dean of Students Jim Terhune and Provost and Professor of Sociology Sarah Willie-LeBreton. “The struggles we have faced [as a community] offer an opportunity for self-reflection and growth, for movement towards, rather than away from, each other,” Smith said. Her decision followed the yearlong efforts of a task force that examined student life generally and Greek letter organizations specifically. Toward the end of that process, several student protests took place that were, in part, a reaction to disturbing and misogynistic documents from 2012– 16 that were published in student publications and appear to have originated from Swarthmore’s Delta Upsilon and Phi Psi chapters. “I recognize that serious fissures in our community remain open,” Smith wrote May 10 in a community message that was sent to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents. “As we move forward, I call for each of us to examine how we live up to the aspiration of inclusivity. We must try to do so together, without giving up on one another and without giving up on our community.” Smith noted that the voluntary disbanding of Phi Psi and Delta Upsilon on April 30 reflected “a broader change in student needs and desires.” The Swarthmore chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority will continue with its current members through spring 2022 but may no longer recruit or initiate additional members. “The big takeaway from the challenging moments and difficult conversations we have experienced over the last year,” said Terhune, “is that the systems and structures that shape social life on campus have not evolved in the ways that are required to best meet the needs of current students. It is evident that we need to engage all students in shaping a rich and rewarding campus culture that is truly equitable and inclusive.” Following her decisions—which included other measures to bolster student social life—Smith met with the campus community at a forum May 13 at Bond Memorial Hall. The forum was planned as a listening session where Smith, Terhune, and others could gather information on some of the most pressing concerns as a result of the closures. Among those issues were the long-term plans for the two former “It is evident that we need to engage all students in shaping a rich and rewarding campus culture that is truly equitable and inclusive.” —Jim Terhune, vice president and dean of students LAURENCE KESTERSON LUCRETIA MOTT changed the world through her tireless work as an abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and social reformer. As one of Swarthmore’s founders, she also changed the College with her philanthropic and vocal support, ensuring that students would have access to an education “equal to that of the best institutions in our country.” On April 17–18, 2,122 alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends honored Mott’s legacy and supported Swarthmore students by participating in the Mott Challenge. Together with the support of several generous challengers— including Peter Fritschel ’84 and Pam Nelson ’84, President Valerie Smith, and Katherine and David Bradley ’75, H’11—the Swarthmore community gave $555,130 in 24 hours. All gifts counted toward the Changing Lives, Changing the World campaign, bringing the total raised (at time of publication) to more than $350 million. —AMANDA WHITBRED fraternity houses. As Smith stated at the forum, the future use of the nowclosed houses is yet to be decided. “We will begin this summer to determine how those spaces might integrate with plans for a re-imagined Sharples,” Smith wrote in her community message, noting the College is at a critical moment as it envisions new social gathering spaces as part of the Sharples Dining and Community Commons project. “We will then work with students and other community stakeholders to identify how we can best support students’ needs, including the future of those buildings.” Above all, Smith encouraged the community to listen to one another. “Practice the art of deep listening,” she said. “Do not accept division. Remain in difficult conversations, especially with those with whom we disagree. This work will not be easy, but we will all be the better for it.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 11 common good Maxine Frank Singer ’52 Hall 12@25 by Alisa Giardinelli and Emily Weisgrau Celebrating 25 years of teaching at Swarthmore College, 12 faculty members shared their insights on the evolution of the liberal arts and on navigating the relationship between teaching and scholarship, during the 12@25 symposium April 13 at the Inn at Swarthmore. Faculty who celebrated the milestone included: LAURENCE KESTERSON Swarthmore’s new building for biology, engineering, and psychology will be named Maxine Frank Singer ’52 Hall, President Valerie Smith announced at the Board of Managers meeting May 10. The naming in honor of the pioneering molecular biologist was proposed by the family of Eugene Lang ’38, H’81, who committed $50 million—the largest gift in the College’s history—to the project prior to his passing in April 2017. “My grandfather knew and admired Maxine,” Manager Lucy Lang ’03 said at the meeting on behalf of her aunt Jane Lang ’67 and the Lang family. “But at the heart of our choice is the belief that Maxine has lived a life in science that is exemplary in every dimension. By naming the building for Maxine Singer, we seek to expand recognition of the women who graduated from Swarthmore who have made significant contributions to the sciences in research, writing, and leadership.” Singer Hall, an initiative of the Changing Lives, Changing the World campaign, will be one of only a few science buildings named for a woman on an American college campus. In support of the College’s desire to increase the representation of under-acknowledged luminaries, 18 managers MIKE BROWN, Morris L. Clothier Professor of Physics TIM BURKE, Professor and Chair of History responded to the announcement by pledging a combined $160,000 in gifts to recognize two additional Swarthmore women scientists. In Singer Hall, the Psychology Department seminar room will honor eminent psychologist, ethicist, and educator Carol Gilligan ’58, H’85. The Biology Department’s “front porch” will be named for Isaac H. Clothier Jr. Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer, who has educated generations of students since joining the College faculty in 1989. BRUCE DORSEY, Professor of History FRANK DURGIN, Elizabeth and Sumner Hayward Professor of Psychology TED FERNALD, Professor of Linguistics SIBELAN FORRESTER, Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Russian + READ MORE: bit.ly/SingerBEP AIMEE JOHNSON, Professor and Chair of Mathematics & Statistics Swarthmore College Peace Collection and the FBI McCABE LIBRARY accepted approximately 70,000 documents that Washington Post investigative reporter Betty Medsger used in writing her 2014 book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. The journalist, who was the first to report on files stolen from a Delaware County FBI office almost 50 years ago, donated her book research on the topic to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. “These were the documents that convinced Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham to defy J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell and break the story that the FBI was spying on ordinary Americans who had committed no crimes,” says Wendy Chmielewski, George Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 12 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 NORA JOHNSON, Professor of English Literature “The publication of the stolen records from the Media [Pa.] FBI office also directly influenced and encouraged the editor and publisher to go forward with publishing investigations of the well-known cases of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, and in the subsequent two years of investigations over Watergate.” Some of the information detailed ways College staff members informed for the FBI through a program called COINTELPRO, which operated from 1965 to 1971. Medsger spoke at an April 3 event at McCabe Library. Her work is now alongside that of Nobel Prize laureate Jane Addams, whose donation of books and papers helped establish the Peace Collection in 1930. + READ MORE: bit.ly/CollegePeaceCollection HAILI KONG, Professor of Chinese GRACE LEDBETTER, Professor of Classics and Philosophy, Chair of Classics, Director of the Honors Program LISA MEEDEN, Neil R. Grabois Professor in Natural Sciences and Engineering, Computer Science PATTY WHITE, Eugene Lang Research Professor and Chair of Film & Media Studies + WATCH: bit.ly/12at25 AT SWARTHMORE’S 147th Commencement on May 26, President Valerie Smith awarded honorary degrees to visual artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby ’04, biochemist Jon Lorsch ’90, and justice advocate Bryan A. Stevenson; 395 undergraduates also received degrees at the ceremony. Doctor of arts recipient Akunyili Crosby is best known for her art that reflects the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native home in Nigeria. Her work—which combines collage, drawing, painting, printmaking, and photo transfers—invites a global dialogue about social and political issues, and can be found in major museums including Yale University Art Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she earned a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate. For her accomplishments, Akunyili Crosby was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2017. Lorsch, recipient of the doctor of sciences, uses his expertise in biochemistry to make a difference in medical research for all. Since 2013, he has been director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, where he oversees the multibillion-dollar budget that supports basic research, increases the understanding of biological processes, and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. He is also known for his own research, which focuses on RNA and initiation of translation. Lorsch has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters, and other papers; edited six volumes of Methods in Enzymology; and received two U.S. patents. Stevenson, who received the doctor of laws, is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, where he has won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color in the criminal justice system. In 2012, he argued before the Supreme Court and won a landmark ruling banning mandatory life without parole sentences for minors. Last year in Montgomery, Ala., Stevenson and EJI opened the widely praised Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. His book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption received the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. LAURENCE KESTERSON TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE From top: Honorees Njideka Akunyili Crosby ’04, Jon Lorsch ’90, and Bryan A. Stevenson. NOMINATE A 2020 HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENT: Email Jennifer Piddington at jpiddin1@swarthmore.edu. + EXPERIENCE Commencement and watch the speeches: bit.ly/SwatCom19 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 13 common good BRANDON HODNETT “BRAVE YOU” A Magical Season DORCAS TANG ’19 The Swarthmore men’s basketball team made history this season by playing in the NCAA Division III National Championship game, the furthest any Garnet team had ever advanced in the tournament. The magical season, which ended in a 96–82 loss to the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, eclipsed the previous high-water mark set by the program last season, when the Garnet reached the NCAA’s Elite Eight. SPORTS SHORTS by Roy Greim ’14 MEN’S TENNIS The Garnet advanced to the Centennial Conference championship match for the sixth consecutive season. BASEBALL Swarthmore’s .351 team batting average ranked first in NCAA Division III this season. WOMEN’S TENNIS Head coach Jeremy Loomis was honored as the Wilson/ Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Atlantic South region Coach of the Year after leading the team to a top-25 ranking. SOFTBALL The Garnet made their first appearance in the Centennial Conference playoffs since 2010. TRACK & FIELD The men’s and women’s teams each finished second at the Centennial Conference championship, and head coach Pete Carroll received conference coach of the year honors for both teams for the second straight year. 14 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 MEN’S LACROSSE The team began the 2019 season with a seven-game winning streak. WOMEN’S LACROSSE Despite narrowly missing the conference playoffs this season, the team has improved in overall wins and conference wins in each of the past four years. The summit was a celebration of the successes of women. It included an art show reception featuring the works of students and alumni and a music performance by Cecily Bumbray ’12. Women and Power A space to be strong by Brittni Teresi ’19 SWARTHMORE hosted its first Womxn’s Leadership Summit in March where more than 60 members of the College community who identify with the term “womanhood” came together to challenge the notion that success must be male-oriented. The theme of the conference, “Brave You,” encouraged participants to be vulnerable, courageous, strong, and authentic with one another. Through a wide range of events, including workshops, guest speakers, and art performances, the summit provided diverse spaces for women to feel empowered and supported. The idea for the summit came from four recent alums: Jasmine Rashid ’18, Meghan Kelly ’18, Niyah Dantzler ’18, and Samira Saunders ’18. While scrolling through Wikipedia’s page on notable Swarthmore College graduates, they noticed that only 22 percent of the listed alumni identified as women. After that revelation, a team of seven current students worked with various departments to make the summit a reality. Organizations involved in supporting the summit included the Center for Innovation and Leadership; the Women’s Resource Center; the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Development; the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility; the Hormel-Nguyen Intercultural Center; the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; the Black Cultural Center; and the Office of the President. “The summit was a way to formally celebrate the Swarthmore women community,” said Susan Gonzalez ’19, a neuroscience major from Cambridge, Mass., and one of the organizers of the event. “It offered a space for Swarthmore women to come together and reflect on an individual and community level about what womenhood means, and how they can celebrate their bravery.” + READ MORE: bit.ly/SwatWomxn SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 15 common good QUIZ’MORE LEARNING CURVE INFLUENTIAL AND INDESTRUCTIBLE He’s moving into the breadth of his powers LAURENCE KESTERSON ? How well do you know your alma mater? Give this the ol’ College try! Take time to smell the roses! Fossils of roses discovered in Colorado date back to 35 million years ago. 1. How many varieties of roses are in the Dean Bond Rose Garden? 2. How many winning records did men’s basketball have prior to head coach Landry Kosmalski’s arrival? 3. 4. What 1873 graduate known for her work in the humanities was the first U.S. woman to receive a Ph.D.? What philosophy major developed a method of representing the 3-D structure of proteins, earning her an honorary degree? 5. What art history professor gave a keynote address at the 1999 Youth Odyssey Series titled “The Usefulness of Uselessness”? Hint: This person retired the following academic year. Know any fascinating Swarthmore trivia? Send your question/answer to quiz@swarthmore.edu. If we use it, we’ll send you a prize! 2. The Garnet had just 23 winning records between 1900 and 2012. (They’ve had four since Kosmalski took the helm.) 1. 182. The garden was established to memorialize Elizabeth Powell Bond, Swarthmore’s dean of women from 1890 to 1906. 5.T. Kaori Kitao, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita of Art History. You can find her speech in the June 2000 issue of the Bulletin (bit.ly/Bulletin0600). 4. Jane Richardson ’62, H’86. The creator of the Richardson diagram, she is now a biochemistry professor at Duke University. Boston University, where she earned a doctorate in Greek in 1877. SUMMER 2019 3. Helen Magill White. The daughter of Swarthmore’s second president, Edward Magill, Helen went on to graduate school at Swarthmore College Bulletin / ANSWER KEY 16 ACCORDING TO Julian Randall ’15, “Midwest kids don’t do a lot of stunting on the same achievement.” So envisioning just what’s next for this dazzling poet— his first book, Refuse (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for 2017—tests the imagination. “I’m just trying to keep getting better, feel me? That’s all I’m trying to do with whatever time I have left,” says Randall, who writes at least 500 words a day. With Refuse out in the world, Randall is immersed in exploring a new tone. The 2019 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Work–Poetry (alongside the legendary Alice Walker) says writing his first book was a navigation. “You don’t quite know what those poems—and by extension you—are fully capable of,” he says. “I’m just trying to move more fully into knowing the breadth of my powers.” Those powers tend to pulse on the page, such as in his poem “Flex”: Trees feathered with their hollowed offspring Here the wind don’t howl just blooms a militia Starting out, the Chicago native knew he had something to say, but he wasn’t sure how to be heard. “What surprised me was learning that I was not alone,” says Randall, who turned to poetry in college as a means of managing his anxiety. His best friend Noel Quiñones ’15 invited him to an open mic through Swarthmore’s slam poetry group, Our Art Spoken in Soul (OASIS), where “I found what I needed to to give voice to a hurt I hadn’t known others were feeling at such a huge scale.” Winning the Cave Canem Prize was a dream realized, says Randall, but his focus has stayed intact. “I don’t think the recognitions really separated me from my voice at all,” he says. “The day I was named an Image Award finalist, I bought myself a book to celebrate, and went back to work on my novel.” Especially supportive in Randall’s early work was Nathalie Anderson, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of NICHOLAS NICHOLS by Kate Campbell English Literature and director of the creative writing program, who “helped me learn more about what I actually wanted to explain in a poem and what I didn’t.” As a Black studies and literature major, Randall says he views the humanities as the indestructible moral center. “I might sound mad corny saying this, but poetry is really a priceless thing in this world,” he says. “I don’t know how it could ever be properly valued.” “Poetry is really a priceless thing in this world.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 17 common good MARSHALL CURRY ’92 LIBERAL ARTS LIVES by Elizabeth Slocum + RICHARD SHOTWELL/INVISION/AP Curiosity drives this three-time Oscar-nominated director Marshall Curry ’92’s night at the Oscars in February was a joyous affair, full of red-carpet photobombs and celebrity encounters with the likes of civil rights icon (and personal idol) U.S. Rep. John Lewis. It stood in stark contrast to Curry’s A Night at the Garden, the documentary short that landed him there. The chilling film, pieced together from archival clips, highlights a little-talked-about rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939 where 20,000 Americans gathered to celebrate the rise of Nazism. “I thought the footage was a cautionary tale about the way that demagogues whip up audiences and take power,” says the Brooklyn-based Curry, noting the eerie parallels between the political climates of then and now. “They attack the press, they scapegoat minorities, they wrap hate in the icons of patriotism, they cheer casual violence against protesters, and they use sarcastic, sneering humor to dehumanize their opponents. “Seeing the enthusiastic reaction of the audience—New Yorkers who would be my neighbors today—was particularly frightening.” When a screenwriter friend told him about the event, Curry didn’t believe him—“I figured there was no way I had gotten through Swarthmore without learning about that!” he says. Intrigued, he called upon an archival researcher for help, finding rally footage at the National Archives, UCLA, and other institutions. The resulting 7-minute documentary garnered Curry his third Academy Award nomination, his first in the short-subject category. (Period. End of Sentence. ultimately took home the top prize.) Though his previous work has largely been unscripted—including his other Oscar-nominated films, Street Fight (2005) and If a Tree Falls (2011)—Curry recently released his first dramatic short, The Neighbors’ Window, which premiered to glowing reviews in April at the Tribeca Film Festival. With every project, Curry is driven by a curiosity and critical sense that he says Swarthmore helped to sharpen. “Some people make films because they have something they want to say, but I’m usually attracted to a topic because I have something I want to understand,” he says. “Making a film gives you a license to ask people personal questions, to follow them closely, and to think deeply about complex things.” “Studying comparative religion was great preparation for becoming a documentary filmmaker,” says Marshall Curry ’92, who majored in the subject. “Religion teaches us to hold contradictory ideas in our heads at the same time—to accept, for instance, that justice is a virtue, but so is mercy. And a good filmmaker who is trying to capture human complexity as it really is often has to be able to do that, too.” LIBERAL ARTS LIVES MASTER CRAFTSMAN 18 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 SEE IT: anightatthegarden.com AWJIN AHN ’15 AND CATHERINE XIANG ’15 Filmmaker “Having a wide range of interests has allowed me to nurture the different parts of myself to prioritize what I really want to do,” says Kimaya Diggs ’15. FINDING HER VOICE She interprets stories to process emotions by Ryan Dougherty KIMAYA DIGGS ’15 has not yet recorded her second album, but the experience has already gone gold. She underwent surgery to fix her vocal chords in January, then suffered through two weeks of complete silence and torment: Did it work?! Will I ever really sing again?! But at last the switch flipped, and the songs poured out. “I was reveling in the fact that I could sing again,” says Diggs, an artist, teacher, polymath, and more. “These songs feel like a celebration.” She wrote the new album in—and to—her new voice. Diggs deems it more upbeat and “dancy” than her debut, Breastfed, on which she struggled to sing because of her injury, and plans to record it with a full band. “This one is feeling really good,” she says. “It’s been a much more joyful process.” At Swarthmore, she majored in English literature and threw herself into musical performances of Here in My Garden, South Pacific, and The Royal Singer. That devotion likely led to the calluses on her vocal chords. After performing around the world with the group Northern Harmony, Diggs moved to western Massachusetts to direct a chorus of more than 100 children. There, she spoke and sang so much that a callus hemorrhaged, and she could use her voice only 20 minutes a day. “I attach so much of my self-worth to my performances that I developed a very diminished sense of myself,” she says. Helping her through that pain was a fulfilling music-therapy position, as well as the private music lessons and graphic-design gigs, all of which contributed to supporting her music. It’s a path Diggs did not foresee while at Swarthmore. But it was there that she caught the bug, recording her first demo (which became “Bus Stop” on her debut) on a cracked iPhone. “It was such an incredible moment to realize I could do this sort of creative, analytical, storytelling kind of thing,” Diggs says. “And that’s still what fuels me today.” KIMAYA DIGGS ’15 Singer SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 19 SEEING HUMANITY by Karen Brooks 20 Swarthmore College Bulletin / “It is so easy along the very long road to becoming a physician to get sucked into medicine, medicine, medicine—but most people you meet don’t come from that background,” says Daniel Hodson ’09. SUMMER 2019 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 21 LAURENCE KESTERSON In health-focused fields, an appreciation for art and culture, language and literature connects professionals to their patients—and one another “When you study science, you learn about science. When you study the humanities, you learn how to communicate, relate to others, and have a shared experience.” —Daniel Hodson ’09 22 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 MARCH OF DIMES FOUNDATION E IGHT YEARS LATER, Dan Hodson ’09 can still hear the wailing: “A woppii kam. A woppii kam!” Hodson hasn’t retained many words from Fulacounda, the dialect spoken in the district of southern Senegal where he volunteered with the Peace Corps from 2011 to 2015—but he will always remember this phrase, which translates to “You threw me away.” Crumbling with grief, a woman cried it over and over as she watched a young girl die at a health post during the region’s rainy season, when more than 80 percent of malaria cases occur. This was the first time, but certainly not the last, that Hodson saw death close up. During his service in West Africa, the scourge of malaria dominated his attention. He coordinated mosquito net distributions, created malaria education programs, trained community care providers, and lobbied politicians for malaria rapid diagnostic tests and first-line antimalarials. He relied on his host family, fellow volunteers, and local health workers for support and collaboration at every step. Hodson, who earned a bachelor’s in psychology with a minor in theater, credits his foundation in the humanities with helping him build strong connections to these diverse individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. Enrollment in academic humanities programs has waned as an emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professions has swept the nation. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the number of undergraduate humanities degrees granted in 2015, the last year for which data is available, had dropped nearly 10 percent from three years prior. But as this trend has persisted, so have humanities champions who maintain that exploring literature, history, philosophy, languages, religion, music, and the arts fosters invaluable traits such as a plasticity of mind, an ability to view the world from different perspectives, and an understanding of human endeavors over time. The resulting skill set particularly benefits those pursuing careers in health care delivery, research, and advocacy—as demonstrated by several Swarthmore alumni, including Hodson. “One thing that drew me to Swarthmore was its emphasis not on someone’s opinions or beliefs, but their ability to think critically and engage in meaningful dialogue. This concept is so important when you’re working with people from different backgrounds, and it’s the core of the humanities,” says the Yale School of Medicine student. “When you study science, you learn about science. When you study the humanities, you learn how to communicate, relate to others, and have a shared experience.” WRITING ON THE WALL On another occasion, Hodson watched a man carry his limp, lethargic son into a rural health clinic, where caregivers responded by administering a malaria rapid diagnostic test. The child did not survive. “In the U.S., if you were at death’s door, you would receive intensive care unit-level care. This moment was poignant not only because the boy died but because of the lack of resources available,” says Hodson, noting that experiences like this amplified his determination to persuade government officials in Dakar to allocate more supplies across southern Senegal. Malaria is easy to diagnose and treat, but residents in peripheral areas face barriers to obtaining the necessary test kits and medications. Hodson developed such a drive to solve the malaria crisis that he spent the summer after his first year of medical school conducting malaria research in Cameroon. At the end of his subsequent semester, he returned for a short follow-up trip before coming back to the States for the holidays. The day after Christmas, he was visiting his girlfriend’s family in a small New Hampshire town when he felt feverish and tired. “I was actually carrying malaria rapid diagnostic tests and a few doses of a first-line antimalarial with me, since I had just been in Cameroon and knew malaria was always a possibility,” he says. “The test was positive, so I started treatment—it was as simple as that. It was a huge irony that I was sick with malaria in a remote place and happened to have the medicine on me. If only that could be the case for everyone.” Hodson’s time overseas continues to inspire him today. He writes notes on chalkboard walls in his bedroom—a habit he formed in Senegal. He ties his bag to the back of his bike as he was taught there. He wears a neon yellow knitted cap made by a community health worker who named his son Mamady Daniel. And he is eager to begin a primary care clinical rotation this fall in the poorest county of Tennessee, a low-resource area where he hopes to draw on lessons he learned in Senegal. He also remains in touch with many of the people he met during his Peace Corps service and believes his humanities background has helped nurture that closeness. “It is so easy along the very long road to becoming a physician to get sucked into medicine, medicine, medicine— but most people you meet don’t come from that background,” he says. “If all you know is science and medicine, you’re not going to be able to identify and interact with people. And what mattered most throughout all of my experiences is relationships with my host family, friends, and collaborators.” Chris Howson ’71, who earned a B.A. in anthropology and sociology before pursuing a doctorate in epidemiology, echoes the importance of developing interpersonal communication skills through the humanities. Now an independent global health consultant, Howson spent 12 years doing health research with the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) and 18 years Chris Howson ’71, an independent global health consultant with a doctorate in epidemiology, stresses the importance of developing interpersonal communication skills through the humanities. “My education taught me to enter into the minds of other people—to see their perspectives and understand their fears, hopes, and dreams.” —Chris Howson ’71 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 23 SOCIAL JUSTICE AS A MOTIVATOR Kendra McDow ’07, a pediatrician serving an Epidemic Intelligence Service fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came to Swarthmore planning to focus on the sciences. To meet College requirements for coursework in multiple academic divisions, she enrolled in a religion class on Islam—and fell in love with the readings and discussions. “I discovered a breadth of thought I’d never been exposed to before,” says McDow, who ultimately earned a dual degree in biology and religion. “Religion involves more than just theology. It’s people’s histories, philosophies, and approaches to the world.” These studies benefited McDow throughout her medical training and later in her practice at a Marylandbased federally qualified health center that served a large immigrant population. “Our patients came from all over: the Middle East, South America, Africa. My background allowed me to connect to them with compassion; I understood how culture and belief systems might impact their health and how I could deliver care to them respectfully and effectively,” she explains. “For example, when you’re examining a patient who wears a head covering, there are certain ways you should touch them, and I recognized that.” Like Hodson and Howson, McDow views her work through a lens of social justice. When an uninsured Nigerian immigrant came into her office with her 10-year-old son, whose severe arm pain had been dismissed by emergency physicians, McDow performed a comprehensive exam and determined he had sickle cell disease; she then persistently followed up to make sure he got the care he needed. When a teenager from a troubled family came in seeking a pregnancy test, McDow took the time to get to know her; she learned about the girl’s history of depression, drug use, and suicide attempts, then spent an entire year working with colleagues to secure a spot for her in a residential treatment facility. “The paperwork and coordination needed for this to happen took so long—families could never do it on their own. These patients have to overcome so many barriers to obtain equitable access to health care,” McDow says. “As a black woman, a physician, and a public health professional, I want to be a voice for minorities in America.” Social justice is also a motivator for Noah Metheny ’03, who studied political science with a minor in history and a concentration in peace and conflict studies, then earned a law degree and a master of public health. Metheny has devoted much of his career to empowering and advocating for people living with HIV/AIDS and now lives in Geneva, where he leads community engagement efforts for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Metheny pursued public health because it is a unique approach to addressing broader human rights concerns. “I work to strengthen advocates’ capacities to tackle underlying social justice issues that make their communities vulnerable to these diseases,” he says. “The HIV epidemic, in particular, starkly illustrates the injustices and incoherence within societies and health systems. It impacts some of the most marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed, who often experience compounding discrimination due to gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, immigration status, or socioeconomic status.” The interdisciplinary nature of peace and conflict studies helped Metheny carve out his professional path; his courses, which covered everything from history to religion to politics, consistently emphasized social context. “My professors and the other students created spaces to talk and debate, not only about what is written in every textbook, but also the real, lived experiences of people who ... might not have had the power or privilege to have their experiences documented in the same way,” he explains. “We discussed and analyzed information in a critical way that allowed me to form my own opinions, then identify and understand connections to broader issues, often involving social justice.” DANIEL NATHAN with the March of Dimes, which he joined in 1998 to build the maternal and child health organization’s first global programs, primarily to support developing countries. Howson’s work has taken him all over the world, and he attributes his ability to engage with researchers from widely varying backgrounds to his study of cultural anthropology, “a fascinating field that deals with different human societies and elements of cultural life.” The competencies he cultivated at Swarthmore have served him beyond professional interactions. Once, when traveling in a region that was less than welcoming to Westerners, he found himself amidst an unfriendly group. He did the only thing he could think of: grabbing three rocks off the ground and starting to juggle. “They all crowded around,” Howson recalls. “I stopped and held a rock out to the person in front and motioned asking if he wanted to learn to juggle. Suddenly, he smiled, and everything was cool. Underneath it all, we really are the same. “My education taught me to enter into the minds of other people—to see their perspectives and understand their fears, hopes, and dreams,” he continues. “I became more compassionate, more accepting, and more understanding of astounding diversity that is all around me.” For Kendra McDow ’07, a class on Islam—where she fell in love with the readings and discussions—led to a double-major in biology and religion. “Our patients came from all over. … I understood how culture and belief systems might impact their health and how I could deliver care to them respectfully and effectively.” —Kendra McDow ’07 24 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 25 Noah Metheny ’03 says the interdisciplinary nature of peace and conflict studies helped him carve out a professional path in public health. “We discussed and analyzed information in a critical way that allowed me to form my own opinions, then identify and understand connections to broader issues, often involving social justice.” —Noah Metheny ’03 26 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 “The humanities deal with emotion, motivation, psychology, spirituality, and empathy, and these things stay with you for a lifetime. My belief is that everyone should learn culture and compassion in college and then learn their trade in graduate school.” BETH GAGE ERIC NELSON THE HEART OF WHAT MATTERS About five years ago, Jim Forrester ’59, longtime cardiology chief and the George Burns and Gracie Allen Professor Emeritus of Cardiovascular Research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, was reflecting on his career and how it all began: with one of his first coronary disease patients, a 39-year-old man named Willie. Forrester called him “Willie the Phillie,” a nod to the men’s shared love of Philadelphia baseball. When Willie died of a heart attack, Forrester was at his bedside. “I felt helpless because there was no treatment at that time, and all I could offer him was morphine for pain relief. I knew medicine had to be better than that,” says Forrester, who vowed to find ways to reduce deaths from heart attack. He succeeded. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he developed several major advancements, including the Forrester Classification—a method of assessing heart function, drug response, and prognosis in real time as an inpatient is having a heart attack. The approach, and several others pioneered by Forrester and his peers, revolutionized heart-failure treatment. “Today, Willie the Phillie would have survived to live a long, fulfilling life,” says Forrester, who was inspired by memories of his friendship with the patient to write The Heart Healers: The Misfits, Mavericks, and Rebels Who Cardiologist Jim Forrester ’59, who majored in English literature, says his education taught him how to express himself effectively— a skill he has relied on throughout his career. —Jim Forrester ’59 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 27 LAURENCE KESTERSON Cardiologist Nazanin Moghbeli ’96 spends at least an hour each morning painting. “Art education improves observation skills and empathy. It forces you to figure things out and make yourself vulnerable by accepting the discomfort in not having clear-cut answers.” —Nazanin Moghbeli ’96 28 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 Created the Greatest Medical Breakthrough of Our Lives. Reading like a novel, the 2015 book traces the evolution of cardiology while detailing Forrester’s personal and professional encounters with innovators who transformed the field. Forrester, who majored in English literature, says his education taught him how to express himself effectively—a skill he has relied on for more than just book-writing. In fact, he believes he owes his entire career to his humanities background. Shortly after he completed his training and joined what was then a small community hospital in California, the National Institutes of Health announced its largest-ever clinical research program, which would establish nine heart attack research units across the country. Forrester’s supervisor charged him with crafting their group’s grant, knowing he had writing skills that physicians with exclusively science backgrounds didn’t. “With our grant, we challenged conventional wisdom and thought outside the box, which is what my humanities education was all about,” Forrester says. “Other institutions proposed looking at bed-rest treatment, but ours was an entirely different proposal to catheterize the heart and treat right in middle of heart attack.” The creativity paid off: Grant awardees included eight large, well-known universities “and our little private hospital with its radical ideas.” Forrester led the newly established research unit for the next 20 years. Another cardiologist, Nazanin Moghbeli ’96, also thrives off creativity. Most mornings, Moghbeli wakes at 5, turns on the Persian music she’s listened to since her childhood in Iran, and spends at least an hour painting. The opportunity to unleash her creative energy leaves her more focused on Last fall, Swarthmore College and Thomas Jefferson University announced an early acceptance program for Swarthmore students interested in becoming physicians with expertise in health policy, population health, and community engagement. The program combines medical education, community engagement, and policy for the public good. “Swarthmore has long produced doctors from diverse academic backgrounds who go on to be leaders in their field,” says President Valerie Smith. “Doctors trained in the liberal arts are increasingly vital to the profession for their ability to treat patients holistically. The fact that medical schools seek out Swarthmore students demonstrates that they appreciate the value of an excellent liberal arts education.” her work parenting three children and directing the cardiaccare unit at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. Moghbeli earned a dual degree in biology and art, fields that seem disparate but that she feels complement each other perfectly, especially when it comes to cardiology. “The way the heart works is beautiful, and so is the imagery in the pictures we do—angiograms, echocardiograms, electrocardiograms. I am constantly looking at visual interpretations of scientific information that appeal to me both aesthetically and intellectually.” Medical practice is intense and draining, notes Moghbeli, who works two-week blocks in the cardiac intensive care unit, a stressful environment where patients are very ill and often dying. Painting rejuvenates her and protects her from burnout. Her art background also helps her connect with patients; once, a man asked to delay a surgery until he finished restoring a car—and instead of rolling her eyes, she identified with his passion and supported him. Three years ago, Moghbeli collaborated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to introduce an art workshop for medical residents at the hospital where she worked at the time. The class was so successful that she has begun offering it at Einstein and is developing a similar program for Descartes University in Paris, where she lived for a year. “Art education improves observation skills and empathy,” she says. “It forces you to figure things out and make yourself vulnerable by accepting the discomfort in not having clearcut answers. You learn to think more creatively.” SYNTHESIZE THIS Humanities education does not simply prepare people to be artists, novelists, musicians, historians, and philosophers. It teaches them to be self-aware, well-rounded problem solvers who are equipped for a career in any field. “Programs that only emphasize science and technology fail to develop students’ emotional IQ, which is a crucial deficiency,” Forrester says. “The humanities deal with emotion, motivation, psychology, spirituality, and empathy, and these things stay with you for a lifetime. My belief is that everyone should learn culture and compassion in college and then learn their trade in graduate school.” Rather than strictly being vocational training, an undergraduate experience like that at Swarthmore lends itself to opportunities for learning about subjects that cause people to think more broadly about the world, as well as their place in it. Chris Howson distills it this way: “The most creative people are synthesizers who can pull in things from different fields and make them fit. You can’t engage in the humanities without developing some understanding of and appreciation for diversity. This brings people closer together—and when we’re closer together, the world is better for it. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 29 C FALLING FOR THE CLASSICS The love of the text ignites this close-knit group in Manhattan by Amy Stone ’64 30 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 ALL IT LOVE. Call it fervor. Call it an inner need that could not be quelled. If an old-style Swarthmore honors seminar was reborn in Manhattan, it could well be New York City’s Ancient Greek Reading Group. Often gathering in a SoHo loft, members come by train from Westchester County and the Hudson Valley, by subway from Manhattan and Queens, and, for the group’s first five years, by car from Swarthmore driven by the original mentor, Gil Rose. The small group of readers, who have met monthly for more than a decade, are drawn together by their deep respect for the ancient work and an unquenchable desire to continue to learn from it. In the seminar tradition, they discuss text for four to five hours, with a nontraditional break for sushi, wine, and, yes, the occasional fig. The club formed from Rose’s “The Athenian Golden Age,” a 2006 course offered in New York through Lifelong Learning at Swarthmore. A few alumni wanted to read the Greek classics in the original. Rose, the Lippincott Professor Emeritus of Modern and Classical Languages, was game. Rose had fallen hard for ancient Greek during his senior year at Berkeley. “It appealed to something deep inside me,” he says, noting that he even dreamed in the language, “and I attacked the first year of Greek ferociously.” Barbara Probst Morrow ’66 majored in French at Swarthmore but came to the group with a master’s in classical Greek from Columbia. A member of the four-person editorial staff at The New York Review of Books in the ’70s and ’80s, Morrow is now on the board of the Friends of the Hastings-onHudson Public Library in Westchester County, N.Y., and leads ESL conversation classes at a center for new immigrants. Her motivation for taking on ancient Greek was to read the Iliad in its original language. “The figure of Achilles deeply attracted me,” says Morrow. “More than any of the other heroes, he is able to face—to accept—his own death. I think ancient Greek language and literature resemble Achilles. “I continue to love the clarity I find in ancient Greek, and to be exhilarated and, at times, defeated by its complexity.” Demetri Bonaros ’97, who lives in Astoria, Queens, is one of two original members still involved in the group. The initial undertaking was “the ultimate eccentricity,” he says. The Fall of Icarus painted by Marc Chagall in 1975. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 31 some people who might be interested in classical studies— and not the languages—might become motivated to learn the languages, which is exactly what has happened,” Ledbetter says. “We still regularly send students to the top Ph.D. programs in classics, and those students have read a staggering amount of Greek and Latin in our program—for example, the entire Odyssey in the Greek Epic honors seminar.” The new classics offerings have encouraged intellectual exploration without excluding curious students who haven’t yet mastered the language, says Provost and Professor of Sociology Sarah Willie-LeBreton. “Our extraordinary faculty have not only increased class sizes, but have reminded all of us that inclusion and accessibility reveal what a true liberal arts education offers,” she says. “From gods to ruins, odysseys to mountains, classical studies is a 21st-century program for students seeking answers to humanity’s most vexing and timeless questions.” Other innovations have included offering classical Hebrew and new courses in Sanskrit; supporting an increasing number of students to work on archaeological digs over the summer; as well as lectures and social gatherings to foster a sense of community. “Although it is not yet a permanent part of our program, the courses we have been able to offer in Sanskrit during the 2018–2019 year have been a huge success,” says Jeremy Lefkowitz, associate professor of classics. “Not only is the Sanskrit language as rich, beautiful, and challenging as any I have ever encountered—I have been enjoying studying it for over a year now, too—but offering Sanskrit also shifts in positive ways the demographics of who studies classics. “Moving forward, we need to think about becoming a department invested in the study of the ancient world in all of its diversity,” he adds. “Classics has always been concerned with philology and the unearthing and re-animating of buried, silenced worlds—there is no limit to how broad and diverse our vision of antiquity can become.” Lefkowitz hopes the next decade will reveal an even more radical evolution of the classics, both on campus and beyond. “We must continue to broaden the boundaries and parameters of what and how we study, and seek ways to make our field more responsive to, and representative of, the diverse society of which it forms such a vital part,” he says. To Ledbetter, the addition of classical studies was a great step forward. “These changes have expanded us,” she says. “This is the wave of the future.” —KATE CAMPBELL AGF SRL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO Even in study of antiquity, there are opportunities to evolve, says Swarthmore Chair of Classics Grace Ledbetter. A recent review of how requirements were assessed for the classics major revealed an out-of-date assumption that students must have already had a background in Greek or Latin—credits for beginning courses in those languages didn’t even count toward the major. Soon, the department was envisioning ways to keep classics both a rigorous academic discipline and an inclusive, evolving curriculum. “We wanted those credits to count,” says Ledbetter, “and to acknowledge that many people don’t necessarily study Greek or Latin in high school.” And so, a new option emerged: classical studies. “The classical studies major allows students to count any language work they do in Greek or Latin, but does not require them to do work in the languages,” says Ledbetter. Faculty added a double-credit classical studies capstone seminar with all readings in English. Greek, Latin, ancient history, and classical studies can be studied as majors or minors in either course or honors. Three of these subjects (Greek, Latin, and ancient history) require advanced work in one of the original languages; however, a major or minor in classical studies does not require, but can include, language study. The move to offer an option that did not require language study was bold, says Ledbetter. “The idea of having a major that didn’t require the languages appeared threatening to what we consider the center of what we do, which is to teach the ancient languages, and to teach them really well,” she says. Initial concern stemmed from the notion that if the department offered an option that did not require language study, students might be less likely to major in Greek, Latin, or ancient history. However, “our idea, which turned out to be accurate, was that The ancient Greek amphitheater of Segesta in Sicily, Italy. 32 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 LAURENCE KESTERSON ALL ANCIENT WORLDS In New York, the Ancient Greek Reading Group has met monthly for more than a decade. The discussions of text can last for up to five hours—snack breaks included. Despite having grown up in Athens, Bonaros insists his knowledge of ancient Greek was almost nonexistent. The start of the group “was entirely unexpected” for the math and theater major—“one of those serendipitous and life-changing events.” He’s gone on to co-run Eclipses Group Theater New York, a “cultural bridge between Greece and the USA” promoting modern and ancient Greek performance art. The reading group was in attendance for Hercules: In Search of a Hero, Bonaros’s translation of excerpts from Euripides’s plays Alcestis and Hercules, exploring gender and heroism. Classics major Jane Alpert ’67 still recalls her joy at Swarthmore while “hooked on the mystery and arcaneness” of ancient Greek— “the sense of being initiated into another world that others didn’t have access to.” A charter member of the reading group, she encountered some anxiety before their first session, “with the very easy assignment, just crying at my desk because I’d forgotten more than I remembered.” She persevered, though, and has been an active participant ever since. Though grammar work is no longer assigned in the group, the session format remains the same: Members decide what major work they’d like to take on, translating 300 to 400 lines for each meeting. They may get through half that amount together— translating directly from the text, with some discussion of interpretive and grammatical issues. The current group includes two Harvard grads and has attracted new mentors as needed—including two Rose protégés, Carolyn Jones Dewald ’68 and Rachel Kitzinger ’69. For now, the group alternates between Dewald leading them in histories and Kitzinger doing tragedies. This spring, they completed Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War with Dewald, a professor emerita of classical studies at Bard College. With Thucydides’s primary focus an exploration of military and political power and its abuse, Dewald considers his observations and analysis about Athens in the 5th century B.C. “all too depressingly relevant today.” Dewald was guide as the group toiled its way through Thucydides’s complex syntax and vocabulary, focusing discussions on the central issues of Greek civic culture and the way political decisions by individuals and groups had enormous consequences for Greek—and even European—history. “Our intrepid seminar members really got it,” Dewald says—finding especially gripping the work’s depiction of the complete collapse of the Athenian democratic state. Led by Kitzinger, professor emerita of classics at Vassar, the group is now tackling the Eumenides, the last play in Aeschylus’s great Oresteia trilogy. The works chronicle Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband, Agamemnon, for his sacrificial slaughter of their daughter, Iphigenia; Orestes’s murder of his mother to avenge the death of his father; and Orestes’s trial. On a grand scale, Kitzinger explains the trilogy as the movement from the justice of familial vengeance to the justice of the law court in a democratic state. For Kitzinger, part of the attraction of these meetings is finding an opportunity in retirement to return to reading Greek literature for pleasure— “no grading, no papers, just the love of the text.” Over the years, members have become close. They don’t socialize much outside their meetings, but they’ve been through major life events together. What unites the Ancient Greek Reading Group—and why members have been drawn to this group for so long—is the opportunity for reflection. To quote Plato (who is believed to be quoting Socrates): The unexamined life is not to be lived. “It’s an amazing piece of wisdom that comes from a small community in Greece some 2,400 years ago,” says Rose.   Morrow agrees. “I obviously come down firmly on the value of the humanities and classical language,” she says. “It’s beauty and it’s truth. If you have the chance to study Greek or Latin, seize it.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 33 QUESTION, CHALLENGE, AND IMAGINE The ways in which we are influenced by art, literature, the classics, religion, philosophy, music, theater, film, and dance are layered by centuries of storytelling. Together, they build a global meeting place for new and creative ideas. At Swarthmore, innovation is key in teaching the humanities. Explore a sample of the vibrant—and critical—fabric of the humanities on campus. LAURENCE KESTERSON by Ryan Dougherty 34 “Humanities build bridges between various individuals, subcultures, and cultures,” says Nadia Malaya ’22. “There is no making a just decision without an understanding of what justice is; no effectiveness of communication with the other side without understanding its roots and values; no common ground without a shared cultural code.” Malaya was part of a creative team project that addressed unconscious biases on race, gender, and sexuality. “The viewers coconstruct the exhibit with us as they contribute to the space, cooperate with each other, and engage with the objects displayed.” Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 The humanities inform our perceptions—and sometimes reshape them PERCEPTION is a mostly subconscious process, says Nadia Malaya ’22, of Moscow. “It’s important to be more aware of what affects it—and to, therefore, have a greater understanding how we perceive the world around us.” Last October, Percepticon, an interactive, three-room installation created by students and faculty from the departments of film & media studies and theater, ran in Beardsley Hall. Think museum meets escape room—a chance to explore and engage a patchwork of audiovisuals designed to rattle your perspective and shatter the status quo. The creative team offered “an unsettling immersive experience,” says Amy Kim ’19, an honors English literature major and film & media studies minor from San Diego. Sunka Simon, professor of German and film & media studies, wanted people to see it as a productive challenge. “Not just a brain spin,” says Simon, “but something they will really have to troubleshoot and think about.” Supported by a Mellon Diversity grant and the Office of the President, the exhibit invited visitors to spend 20 minutes absorbing each of the interconnected rooms. The material was not just a visual exercise, says Laila Swanson, assistant professor of theater. The exhibit traced back to a fall 2017 workshop on genre and mise-en-scène, held by Simon and Swanson; Logan Tiberi-Warner ’11, former administrative assistant for film & media studies; and Bob Rehak, associate professor of film & media studies. The workshop connected film & media studies with theater and “the analytical and hypercritical with the hands-on application that can often be lacking,” says Simon. To that framework, Percepticon added the theme of perception and notions of gender, race, class, and crosscultural thinking. The hope, says Kim, was that each installation would push participants to question and interrogate unconscious biases about race, gender, and sexuality. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 35 36 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 “The cultivation and enactment of music, dance, theater, poetry nurtures our wonderment, our connection to the universe, to nature, and to each other,” says Professor of Dance Pallabi Chakravorty. “Indian aesthetic theory calls it rasa ( juice, sap, or emotion).” Chakravorty’s company, Courtyard Dancers, will host its biennial dance festival, Facing East, in October in Philadelphia. The humanities create community conversations LAURENCE KESTERSON Mensa Latina, or “Latin table,” came about from a desire among some Swarthmore students to “vivify our experience of Latin as a living language,” says Tobias Philip ’20, a Greek major from Brooklyn, N.Y. The group started in 2016 to create an opportunity to practice the spoken Latin language, “engaging with it as did generations before and eschewing the 19th-century practice of sterile textbook learning,” says Philip. “The ideas and discussions of the ancients are, rather, continuously present and formative to our world,” he says. “Beyond any mercenary objective of improving my grades, spoken Latin is one facet whereby I communicate with the ancient world and its ever-living reception.” A number of independent student groups read Greek outside of class regularly; this spring, for example, Rebecca Rosenthal ’20 read Euripides’s Medea with fellow Swatties. But Rosenthal notes that Mensa Latina meetings are usually intentionally about less-lofty topics. “We play board games, talk about pets, or work on our own translations of easy or colloquial English texts,” says the Greek and art history major. “Because the content is lighter fare than reading for coursework, but still utilizes and drills Latin, I find it a really useful way to study and improve without really studying.” Rosenthal joined to boost her skills and appreciated the exposure to new grammatical concepts. “I also got to build friendships with my fellow classics students who were more advanced than me in Latin,” she says. “As someone who is looking for a career in language pedagogy, it has been great to work with my peers to examine new routes of learning and teaching the language.” Studying the humanities today is important for the same reason it always has been: “for thinking through your own values, priorities, and what kind of life you want to live,” says Classics Chair Grace Ledbetter. “The ancient Greek philosophers, for example, thought that the good life­—and the happiest life— was a life of virtue,” says Ledbetter, a professor of classics and philosophy and the director of the Honors Program. “They provided us with the tools to investigate these ideas on our own. We still care about these debates; we all still care about leading the best possible life. “Nothing could more relevant today, or at any other time in history, for that matter.” —KATE CAMPBELL SASHA FORNARI The humanities reveal the world through language Building language skills and getting comfortable with grammatical concepts are all part of the Mensa Latina, or “Latin table,” a Swarthmore group formed in 2016 where classics students forge friendships while working on translations. Above: Tobias Philip ’20 (left) and Nathaniel Stern ’20 put a Latin spin on Bananagrams. “As someone who is looking for a career in language pedagogy, it has been great to work with my peers to examine new routes of learning and teaching the language.” —Rebecca Rosenthal ’20 SWARTHMORE’S DANCE STUDENTS learn to situate the performing arts within the larger discourses of culture, power, and history. The classes that Professor Pallabi Chakravorty teaches— such as Dance and Diaspora, Anthropology of Performance, and Arts in Action—are routinely cross-listed with sociology & anthropology, religion, gender & sexuality studies, music, and other departments and programs. “These classes, among others, create a conversation between the performing arts and other subjects from humanities and the social sciences,” she says. “The liberal arts approach combining practice and analytical rigor inspires our students to see the performing arts not merely as abstracted aesthetics, but connected to identity, politics, democracy, and globalization. It also teaches them how to write with clarity and develop their own argument. It teaches close readings and analytical thinking that is in the tradition of the humanities and social sciences.” Build and collaborate Students develop programs in and out of the classroom, including these Mellon Grant-funded projects from 2018–19: “Bridging Narrative Through Art and Humanities,” from Kaitelyn Pasillas ’20, Sonya Chen ’18, and Josie Hung ’19, offers a space for community members to engage in meaningful discourses on race and ethnic studies through the humanities and art. “Reimagining Black Narratives: Considering the Dominant Archetype of the African-American Male,” from Cameron Wiley ’19, Sharples cook Donny Thomas, and Louis Lainé ’16, challenges the stereotypes, beliefs, and other limiting implications that surround what it means to be a Black male. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 37 24 hours of theater: Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, staged this spring in a marathon manner. The humanities teach us to see in new ways The humanities stir our consciousness. This spring, six Swarthmore students put on an absurdist play in the most absurd way possible: by staging it 24 consecutive times over the course of 24 hours. Shelby Billups ’20, Max Marckel ’19, Arijit Nerurkar ’19, Josie Ross ’21, John Wojciehowski ’19, and Emily Uhlmann ’19 performed Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano for the Theater Department’s acting capstone. The marathon concluded with a community serving of pancakes. Swarthmore also bolstered its commitment to creativity and interdisciplinarity with the opening of the MakerSpace & Wood Shop, which became more widely used this year. The space is open to anyone, for anything. “There’s almost no limit to what you can create here,” says manager Russell Prigodich. With nine student employees trained to monitor both the wood shop and digital fabrication lab, the space invites all students, faculty, staff, and alumni for about 60 hours each week. It provides machines like 3-D printers, a 3-D scanner, and a laser cutter—making it a big hit with engineering and sculpture students. And it’s been a creative hub for the 16 students who presented their senior art exhibitions this spring, ranging in media from functional ceramics and light sculptures to paintings, prints, drawings, architectural studies, and collages. The humanities build empathy As Professor of English Literature Betsy Bolton listened to her students discuss Jane Austen’s work, she observed an increased skill in reasoning, inference, and critical analysis. The students noted, too, when a character, such 38 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 as Austen’s Emma, fell short in their capacity for empathy, says Bolton. It’s important to see such practices evolving. “The humanities specialize in questioning, challenging, and articulating human values, as well as imagining new possibilities,” she says. “In a world of soaring atmospheric carbon, economic inequality, and social injustice, we need the humanities more than ever before.” Exploring Religion “The study of religion is vital to the humanities, and the arts and humanities are vital to the historical mission of the College,” says Professor and Chair of Religion Yvonne Chireau. In one collective project and learning experience, students in Chireau’s African Religions in the Old and New Worlds and Religion and Food courses and Professor James Padilioni’s Decolonizing Religion course co-created traditional altars in multiple campus spaces, including McCabe Library, the Black Cultural Center, and the Intercultural Center. “More so than any other field, the study of religion allows us to explore the greatest questions of the human experience in its many forms, through languages, histories, and cultures,” says Chireau. “It centers on how humans have made moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of the world. It teaches profound empathy and fosters human flourishing, creativity, and equality among all beings.” Understanding Art In the Department of Art and Art History, students learn many ways of thinking about making art and about what art might be, says Logan Grider, associate professor of art and art coordinator. “As the level of understanding progresses, I move the focus away from observational painting and toward the student,” he says. “I see my job as a teacher as one where I must first open eyes; second, get out of their way; and then help them get out of their own way in order to make the work they are meant to create,” Grider adds. “They learn to accept their personal artistic nature at this point, and typically this is also the stage where art happens. Art comes in many forms and can mean many things, but ultimately all art addresses a larger bond that links humanity.” LAURENCE KESTERSON SIMONA DWASS ’19 To appreciate one another “I wanted to explore lesser-known diaspora narratives and question what it means to belong,” says Dorcas Tang ’19. The humanities foster belonging DORCAS TANG ’19, a studio art major and Spanish and educational studies double minor from Malaysia, in April presented the photography exhibition Los Paisanos del Puerto: Living Narratives of the Chinese Diaspora Community in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. While interning in Costa Rica, Tang realized she knew little about the Chinese diaspora in Latin America. A third-generation Chinese Malaysian, Tang felt strongly connected to the descendants of Chinese immigrants residing in Puntarenas. She embarked on a seven-week research trip, interviewing and photographing residents for what became the photography exhibition. “Through my lens, I wanted to explore lesser-known diaspora narratives and question what it means to belong,” says Tang. “For the community I documented, it was important to them that their stories be visibilized. It was a way that the beauty of their stories, previously unheard, were finally being validated.” —LAUREN McALOON SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 39 N OT LONG AGO, David ’70 and Janice Archer Rosenbaum ’70 set out on a drive to northwest Iowa to buy some refurbished hog feeders. They traveled through a thousand miles of farm country, past operations cultivating many of the same products—hogs, corn, soybeans, barley, chickens—as their own Olathe, Colorado-based Winddrift Farms. No strangers to industrialized agribusiness, the Rosenbaums have competed with grocery-store pork for more than three decades. Still, the sterile, rural landscapes they observed from the road unsettled them. “When I was a kid, farms would have a pen for a few cows, some pigs, and a chicken house,” says Jan, who grew up in Ohio and northeastern Connecticut. “Now, you still see the old house sitting up on the hill, but all the outbuildings are gone, and in some places it’s just a 3-acre lawn with a huge machine shop. That’s it, for acres and acres.” It can be tempting to conclude that the economics of family farming don’t add up these days. Markets tend to favor bigger operations that use industrial, extractive methods, like feeding antibiotics to pigs in indoor confinement pens, or spraying crops with soil-harming anhydrous ammonia to maximize yields when the market price is high. But the Rosenbaums believe there is a better way of assigning value when it comes to food production. For decades, they have demonstrated that sustainable approaches and alternative economic models can pay off. Those values put into practice over the past 30 years reflect the family’s Quaker leanings and deep roots in the Swarthmore intellectual tradition. “I guess we’re the ‘small is beautiful’ kind of idea: Know your producer, and know your customer,” Jan says. “It’s an encouraging sign that we can make a living doing that.” Intergenerational cooperation guides the Rosenbaums of Winddrift Farms by Michael Agresta photography by Joe Rosenbaum ’68 A CRASH COURSE IN FARM ECONOMICS The Rosenbaums’ first foray into farming, in the late 1970s, ended in financial distress. Young, freewheeling, and just a few years removed from Swarthmore, the couple moved to Colorado after the birth of their first two children, Nancy ’96 and Betsy ’98. One day while out driving, they met Mrs. Grett, a dairy farmer’s wife who was looking for some help because her father-in-law was slowing down, Jan says. They started working for the family, milking cows. After gaining a few years of invaluable­—and unexpected— farm experience, the Rosenbaums were able to buy their own farm in 1977, opting for hog farming because it was cheaper than dairy. (Though their time around cows was short, their relationship with the Gretts was for the long haul: Jan and Dave bought additional farmland from the family just a few years ago, calling it “JOG” for “Jewel of Grettdom.”) The pair put together an operation of about 110 sows in Olathe. But after a few years, much of the U.S. agricultural industry entered a crisis of skyrocketing interest rates and debt, while commodity prices and land values fell. Soon, the Rosenbaums found themselves on the wrong end of a variable-rate mortgage and washed out of farming. “It took them 10 years or so to pay everything back from that venture,” says son George ’01, who grew up under the shadow of that debt. “So now, the impetus on Winddrift Farms is much more of a locally sourced, locally consumed business model.” A CASE STUDY IN SUSTAINABILITY Even more than his sisters, Nancy and Betsy, who arrived in Colorado as small children, George Rosenbaum was born into farming. As kids, he and his siblings brought home from a friend’s house the incredible sow Agnes, who delivered 12 litters—inspiring the elder Rosenbaums to seriously pursue farming again. These days, Winddrift Farms produces about 500 pigs per year for markets in local Montrose County, Durango, and Grand Junction. They also keep a few cows and raise about 100 chickens per year. All are raised with access to the outdoors, and antibiotics are used only sparingly. At an industrial confinement farm, pig waste might be washed into an anaerobic lagoon with the potential to pollute local watersheds; at Winddrift, it’s instead incorporated into the agricultural cycle, stored in dry piles, and spread onto fields once a year as compost. Since George joined his parents as a partner in the farm in 2012, Winddrift has also focused on vertical integration. “If we’re growing our own feed, we have a constant market for the grain that we produce, and we have fixed feed costs,” George explains. “That allows us to then fix our costs to our “We’re the ‘small is beautiful’ kind of idea: Know your producer, and know your customer.” —Jan Archer Rosenbaum ’70 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 41 FARMING IS CONSTANT LEARNING Each of us—Jan, Dave, and George—was interested in agriculture prior to our college experiences. Farming is a constant learning experience. Particularly in a vertically integrated farm, the number of variables is great: soil health, genetics, herd health, feeds and feeding, product quality, marketing, and sales. A large part of our success is in creating successful situations for others, from suppliers to buyers. Having a broader background helps us live with others’ political views with mutual respect. Dave has used the biology of animal communities idea that the bee colony is the individual in his approach to herd health; Jan started re-reading M.I. Finley’s The World of Odysseus on our first farm with kids when it seemed all the neighbors wanted to talk about was the Denver Broncos. —JANICE ARCHER ROSENBAUM ’70, an art history major at Swarthmore customers—if we’re selling a pig a year to a family, they can budget.” George didn’t originally intend to pursue farming full time, but after studying biology at Swarthmore and then spending several years in Hawaii’s construction industry, he decided to return to his rural roots. “What I’m doing now at the farm,” he says, “is much more satisfying.” With the assurance that Winddrift will persist into the next generation, Jan and David have reinvested in the farm, particularly in the feed-growing operation, where George brought a passion for soil health as a new frontier of sustainability. He introduced a crop rotation system that minimizes tillage, which can harm soil microbial activity, and presented on his experience at the Western Colorado Soil Health Conference, encouraging other farmers in their community to give the system a try. “Every decision that we make,” George says, “our most important priority is: Is this going to benefit our soil health?” MORE THAN JUST PRODUCTION Community is key for the Rosenbaums and Winddrift. Jan and George both credit David with developing a marketing strategy that allows their product to reach the sorts of customers who are interested in healthy, sustainable, local food—it’s one of the trickiest factors to master for idealistic farmers. “Hogs grow so fast that your marketing window is maybe “The humanities at Swarthmore enhanced our abilities to learn and confidently apply and communicate that knowledge.” three weeks,” Jan says. “So it takes a lot of arranging to get everybody satisfied.” Though they have earned a “natural” affidavit for their pork, the Rosenbaums haven’t pursued an “organic” designation for their products. “With that label, there’s a lot of abuse,” Jan says. “The idea of ‘organic’ produce in plastic bags shipped 1,600 miles is not something we’re looking to do.” Instead, they’re focused on developing and maintaining relationships with customers nearby. George’s next big idea that he hopes will catch on regionally is the “just price” model. In this centuries-old, ethics-based theory of economic relations, values are set not by a commodities exchange, but by reasonable agreements between customer and producer, neighbor and neighbor. To the Rosenbaums, the validity of just pricing is obvious. After all, they were nearly ruined financially decades ago by volatility in the national commodities market, and they’ve seen neighbors damage their soil for years to come, trying to make the most of a single harvest. The model also fits neatly with the tradition handed down from David’s Quaker mother, and from the College experience that the whole family shares. “We try to see that of God in everyone,” says Jan. “We’re not meeting-attenders; we just try to value and do right by everyone.” “I would say, ‘Do all the good you can to all the people you can in all the ways you can as long as you can,’ pretty much sums up my religious beliefs,” George says. That shared ethical compass is at the heart of what makes the family farm successful. “Even though there might be some differences in terms of how we’re getting there, we’re all pushing in the same direction,” George says. “It takes work, but Swarthmore’s definitely helped in our ability to communicate openly and honestly.” George Rosenbaum ’01 showed his grandfather, the late Robert A. Rosenbaum (visiting professor of mathematics at Swarthmore, 1950–1951), how the combine harvests corn. At right, soybeans are watered at Winddrift Farms. 42 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 43 CROWNING GLORY Ancient May Day tradition once thrived at Swarthmore S IXTEEN CROWDED trains pulled into Swarthmore station on what felt like the first real day of spring in 1926. The excited passengers swept up the wide walk toward Parrish’s steps to ask sunbathing students for directions to the gala. At 2 o’clock, the revelers gathered near the Rose Garden. Thirty women in white danced to violin and flute, nimbly weaving their red and white streamers around the maypole. “For the first time in history,” the Phoenix humorously proclaimed, “the maypole was successfully wound and unwound.” Later that day, a musical Italian carnival was held in the original wooden amphitheater. The Queen of May and her court were entertained by “men” in breeches and bright waistcoats who led picture-hatted maidens in a French dance. Peasants and flower girls all took part in the revelry before the Queen departed. First officially celebrated at Swarthmore in 1904, May Day traces its roots to ancient Greek and Roman festivals. The College’s first festivities began in the early morning, with female freshmen delivering newly assembled baskets of campus flora to the dorm doors of senior women. Later, a procession led by the basket- 44 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 carrying, capped-and-gowned seniors wound its way to a maypole—or sometimes to four, one for each class. The maypole dance was performed in good humor, perfection not required. The Queen, announced one year by “a scarlet-cloaked herald mounted on a white charger,” was then crowned in all her glory. On alternate years, the women staged an elaborate pageant of dances, many with international themes, viewed by hundreds of College members, families, friends, and neighbors. Swarthmore’s fete also included a “step ceremony.” Senior women advanced slowly down Parrish’s steps with the juniors close behind, all singing the alma mater as the older class symbolically bequeathed its privileges to the younger. Even as women students were protesting their lack of national suffrage, they alone voted for the May Queen, prompting mock outrage from some men. “Frustrated Male” protested in a 1939 Phoenix that “those who are most capable of judging beauty, the men, are given no opportunity to express their opinions on the delicate subject of a Queen. … In the name of 350 male students of this College … I demand that May Day be abolished.” Male May Day spoofs were a regular occurrence in the 1920s and ’30s. A 1936 Phoenix, for example, described FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY by Elizabeth Vogdes Sue Turner ’60, surrounded by her court, is crowned May Queen during Parents’ Day ceremonies in 1960. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 45 class notes A TREASURY OF ALUMNI-RELATED ITEMS 46 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 ALUMNI EVENTS Top: All around the maypole, May Day 1905. Bottom: Junior attendants and their queen, May Day 1924. woman of color was May Queen that year.” “On second thought,” she added, “maybe it was a statement.” Kathy Felmey ’71 was Swarthmore’s last official May Queen. She gladly shared her throne with the duly elected, quite-surprised first (and last) May King, Alex “Tony” Cilento ’71. The Phoenix weighed in: “Another great step towards the equality of the sexes was taken as Tony Cilento was elected May Queen. Through some bureaucratic mechanism, Tony was deprived of his crown and had to settle for May King. His supporters claimed a moral victory, nonetheless.” Even without the coronation ceremonies, the May Day tradition continued. The Lang Music Building was the site of the Queen-less maypole dance at both its groundbreaking and dedication in the early ’70s. Dana Mackenzie ’79 described his fond memories of coed Morris dancing, including the maypole dance on Sharples patio, a tradition that continued into the 1980s. The Swarthmore Folk Dancing Club still includes a maypole dance teaching workshop in early May every year. Reflecting the times, this is very informal, set up outdoors in varying campus locations. Any passersby may join in. And, to keep things practical, the regular club members still get P.E. credit. CELEBRATING BLACK EXCELLENCE AT SWARTHMORE: HONORING OUR PAST, IMAGINING OUR FUTURES 2019–2020 This academic year will mark significant milestones in the history of the College, including the 50th anniversary of the Black Cultural Center, the 50th anniversary of Black Studies, and the 25th anniversary of the Chester Children’s Chorus. swarthmore.edu/ black-excellence GARNET WEEKEND Oct. 4–5 Join us for Homecoming, Family Weekend, and the Advancement Volunteer Summit. swarthmore.edu/garnetweekend LIBERAL ARTS LIVES: SWARTHMORE IN FASHION Oct. 22 Save the date for this special event in New York City. lifechanging.swarthmore.edu/ events SWATTALKS Fall 2019 These live, online seminars feature professors, students, and alumni sharing knowledge and experience in their fields. swarthmore.edu/alumni-resources-events/swattalks ROBERT O. WILLIAMS FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY a “249-pound Queen of the May in flowing robes and a few burlap sacks... who smoked his pipe, complacently awaiting the crowning.” Swarthmore’s May Day celebration was regarded as not only a lark but also a serious athletic event, sponsored by the Women’s Physical Education Department. Participating students received P.E. credit, fulfilling the College founders’ belief that care of the body and the mind were equally important. The 1925 Halcyon lists May Day as an activity on par with baseball, hockey, basketball, swimming, and tennis. Publicity was extensive. The Phoenix reported in 1927 that that year’s May Queen photo appeared in more than 100 North American newspapers. The 1933 Halcyon boasted that “Swarthmore once more reaches the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.” In 1971, the College still prepared a news release of the event. Notably, at the height of World War II, 1944’s May Day celebration featured a folk festival with a powerful peaceful Quaker sentiment: Folk dancing from 25 countries was “an expression of the underlying similarities among the peoples of the world,” the Phoenix reported. Postwar queens have stated that though the honor didn’t have life-altering significance, it was nonetheless a very pleasant experience. The fact that the war was over, for example, had much more of an impact on Cornelia “Kinnie” Clarke Schmidt ’46 than the celebration itself, which was “just a fleeting weekend of fun.” In the 1960s, the festivities continued despite the decade’s social and political turbulence. Mimi Feingold Real ’63 was an activist who had spent over a month in a Mississippi jail (see bit.ly/ SwatFreedom). She regarded her election, sponsored by the Swarthmore Political Action Committee, as a kind of coup that was “great fun.” Says Judith Lorick ’69, Swarthmore’s first African American May Queen: “It didn’t even strike me what an amazing thing it was that a The Class of 1969 had plenty to celebrate at its 50th Reunion. More photos: alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu 1943 Betty Glenn Webber bettywebber22@yahoo.com 616-245-2687 After submitting this column, I received word of Jack Dugan’s death on April 17. His obituary covers his active and reserve Navy service and his career, divided between business and nonprofit leadership. The “extracurriculars” included the Buck Hill Conservation Foundation, his church, and community affairs. I have chosen to leave his final class note as he wrote it, a wonderful reflection of his lively interests, openheartedness, and commitment to Swarthmore. A faithful correspondent, Jack reminisced about Freshman Week, when he was intrigued by “so many pretty and sociable women, and boys who all looked as if they were preparing for the Olympics.” Noting how Pearl Harbor changed our trajectory, Jack said he and nine other engineers/football players accepted a recruiter’s offer of commissions delayed until graduation. He was sad to be the only survivor, especially missing Bob Trudel and Bob Hecht, his tennis doubles partner. Fast-forwarding to recollections of our 50th: He spoke of chair Connie Spink Fleming, and Tuck Taylor’s fundraising that garnered almost $4 million, more than any preceding class. Jack will be missed. Also thinking of first days on campus, Mary Stewart Trageser recalls feeling “a bit guilty that I had been accepted at Swarthmore, thinking everyone else was more qualified. But what an ‘open sesame’ it has been for the rest of my life—OSS, the State Department, the Marshall Plan.” Today, she seeks out books on World War II and remembers the brand-new tanks that rolled past Worth Hall senior year on their way to being loaded on ships. She relishes the “miracle of computer SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 47 class notes pictures” as the means by which her West Coast great-grands can be part of her life. A kind note from Connie Spink Fleming assures us that she is “up and about … enjoying each day, and appreciating fellow residents, the Kennett Square (Pa.) area, and extracurricular activities, like plays at the University of Delaware and a weekend visit to The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.” She included her Christmas letter, which mentioned daughter Connie Fleming Strickland ’71 and granddaughter Barbara Strickland ’99. Connie referred to the loss of friend, classmate, and fellow Crosslands resident Cindy White Lohr on Nov. 5. Cindy accelerated her senior year to marry Freeman Lohr. Their thoroughly Swarthmore family included children John ’69, Robert ’70, and Virginia ’73. Their life included residency in Mexico and Nicaragua in addition to several East Coast states. The interests that engaged Cindy were many and varied: opera at the Met (and Placido Domingo!), the Nonviolent Peaceforce, American Friends Service Committee, League of Women Voters, and Citizens’ Climate Education. Another loss came with the death of Hilda Findley-Knier on Dec. 6. She “made beautiful gardens wherever she lived, from childhood to Florida Avenue Friends Meeting in D.C. to her retirement community at Kennett Square. She was a strong, generous woman, a feminist by example, as a teacher [into her 70s] and a working mother.” She is survived by three children, Thomas, Rachel, and Rosemary Findley Muller ’66. Jane Hand Bonthron died Dec. 15. At graduation, she applied to the Naval Officers Training School, and when asked if she’d serve as a seaman if she were not accepted, Jane told them clearly that it would be a waste of her education! As a Wave she was assigned to the supply depot in Mechanicsburg, Pa., where she met future husband Bill Bonthron. (My husband and I, Betty, also worked there, and saw Jane and Bill frequently during ’45 and ’46.) The Bonthrons’ long residence in Princeton, N.J., was 48 Swarthmore College Bulletin / the scene of Jane’s activities as mother of four and homemaker, eager golf and bridge player, volunteer for Meals on Wheels, and 50 years with the Princeton Hospital Aid Society. She was an ardent supporter of the College and proud when daughter Susan Bonthron ’70 chose Swarthmore. We certainly miss those friends from our undergrad days, but isn’t it heartwarming to hear of the richness and variety of their lives since then? Our condolences go to the families for those losses that we share. 1947 Marshall Schmidt kinmarshal@aol.com We mourn the passing of several friends, including Cal Kaiser, Sue Bradley Bush-Wilcox, and Whit Stearns ’48. Our daughter, Peggy Schmidt Clark ’71, and her husband, Bob ’71, live in Farmington, Conn., where Cal worked, golfed, and was an important school board member. Peg is a college adviser at Kingswood Oxford, a West Hartford private school, and had interfaced with Cal on numerous educational occasions. He was a positive voice in the community. Sue Bradley Bush-Wilcox was a very popular classmate—always smiling and in the company of a large group of friends. My journey to the Pacific arena eliminated any chance of seeing Sue past sophomore year. Whit Stearns was Class of ’48 but was an important part of the large contingent coming to Swarthmore from George School in the 1942 timeframe. My recollection of the group starting that year, besides Kinnie Clarke Schmidt ’46, included Margaret Meeker Bushnell ’45, Ginnie Cobb Thibodeaux ’46, Conard Porter Mercer ’45, Barbara Gawthrop Hallowell ’46, Rolf Valtin ’48, Bob Wilson ’45, Brad Bodine ’49, and John Pratt ’49, to name just a few. SUMMER 2019 I welcome personal notes from those remaining ’47ers. These informal notes are much more fun than obits. 1949 Marjorie Merwin Daggett mmdaggett@verizon.net Bob Norman writes: “Early in 2019, Nita and I flew to California, near San Diego, where son Jeff and family and friends hosted two great birthday dinners for Nita as she turned 95, complete with a cake containing 95 candles. It took several tries to blow them all out, and the smoke almost set off the fire alarm. Last year, I took an Osher course on Wikipedia. It is fascinating how complex the system is for entries in the encyclopedia; it is all run by volunteers. As I write, my mind is not packing for a trip to Morocco with my son, Richard, who is giving a major address at a conference on consolidate photovoltaics. At the end we plan to visit a photovoltaic display in Ouarzazate, said to be the largest in the world. I hope to see many of you at our 70th Reunion!” I am taking a course at the Brandeis Osher center on the 1950s, in which we will read several plays written in that decade, starting with The Crucible. The first day, our leader asked each of us to tell about ourselves and where we were in 1952. Several classmates had not yet been born, and I was the only one in the class who was an adult at that time; many recalled family discussions of the critical topics of that decade. It’s interesting to dig deeper into those events and to hear the current comments on them. Sadly, two classmates have died. Sarah “Sally” Wood Fell died in January at her home in Doylestown, Pa. Sally attended George School before Swarthmore and later did postgraduate work at Drexel School of Library Science. Following graduation, she was a clerical librarian at the U.N., then worked as a librarian back in Bucks County. Sally was an active member of the Doylestown Friends Meeting and a Red Cross Blood Division volunteer for 40 years. She was an avid traveler. Our sympathy to her daughter and two grandchildren. Richard Longaker died in September in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where he had lived for more than 45 years. He grew up near Philly and was 18 when the U.S. entered World War II. He was a skilled mountain climber and skier and joined the 10th Mountain Division, which trained him for alpine fighting. In December 1944, he landed in Naples as part of the 86th infantry. After the war, Richard enrolled at Swarthmore, where he met his first wife, Dorothy Seiler ’48. He earned an M.A. at Wisconsin and a Ph.D. at Cornell, then taught at Kenyon, UC–Riverside, and UCLA, where he was later political science chair. In 1963, he met and married his second wife, Mollie Katz. Richard became provost and vice president of academic affairs at Johns Hopkins in 1976, and a decade later returned to California to open Hopkins’s West Coast Regional Office for Development. He and Mollie traveled extensively in retirement. Richard was known for his keen wit, bike riding, and passion for politics, the English language, and literature, plus his love of the ocean, mountains, wildlife, and night sky. Our condolences to his family. 1951 Elisabeth “Liesje” Boessenkool Ketchel eketchel@netscape.com Kathy Adams sounds active! “Home from skiing blue slopes at Winter Park, Colo. I arranged for an off-duty instructor to ski behind me to ward off drinkers, pot smokers, and out-of-control was my very first upper-division course, in 1963 (of course, not literally the same yellowing handwritten notes!).” And finally, from Paul Shoup: “Mrs. Shoup and I are still hunkered down in Charlottesville, Va. Thanks so much for keeping us in touch.” You are so welcome, Paul, and thanks to all of you for helping me do just that! Sadly, we have lost two classmates, John Yntema and Anne Thomas Moore. Our condolences to their loved ones. LIFELONG LEARNING AT SWARTHMORE CENTER CITY PHILADELPHIA “The American Civil War” Taught by Professor of History Bruce Dorsey Meets Mondays, Sept. 16–Nov. 18, 2019 (excluding Oct. 14 and 21) SWARTHMORE “What Do We Really Know About People?” Taught by Professor of Psychology Andrew Ward Meets Thursdays, Sept. 19–Nov. 14, 2019 (excluding Oct. 17) NEW YORK CITY “Opera” Taught by Professor of Music Thomas Whitman Meets Thursdays, Sept. 26–Nov. 14, 2019 BOSTON “All in the Family” Taught by Philip Weinstein, Cummins Professor Emeritus of Literature Meets Tuesdays, Sept. 17–Nov. 19, 2019 (excluding Oct. 8 and 15) bit.ly/LLSmore beginners. I got hit only once. Two years ago, my son skied off with a friend for just one run through the trees. I got knocked down from behind after he left and had a concussion, even with wearing a helmet. “Back home in Ohio, I find that Trump’s great aid package to help corn farmers subsidized us with about 1 cent per bushel. (Corn sells for just under $4/bushel.) Ohio Farmer says farmer income is only 57% of normal over the past two years. We hope to sell wheat straw to horse owners, and hay from pastures where our dairy herd grazed. The registered dairy Holsteins were sold with the low milk prices and two dairy barns rented out for equipment and straw storage. It’s a time to be flexible.” Dan and Maxine Frank Singer ’52 (pg. 12) live independently, “same address since 1960, but it’s a tad lonely since our kids are grown and living elsewhere: two in the U.K., one in Portland, Ore., and another in the Bay Area,” Dan writes. “We’re sufficiently optimistic to have purchased tickets for a March trip to the Bay Area for youngest grandchild’s bat mitzvah. Wish I could be as upbeat about the public scene.” Diane Duke Amussen had a stroke in 2015 and is in assisted living. “But I keep up with the news and am on the board of Friends of the Merced County (Calif.) Library. My contribution is mostly in terms of writing—for the newsletter and for fundraising—since I’m not very mobile. The Friends run a bookstore (great bargains!), have made a bookmobile possible, and are working on funding another one. We are also working on getting a small portion of a local tax earmarked for the library. We have a long way to go, but inch by inch … ” Ralph Lee Smith writes: “In my last posting, I suggested that we share info on what we are reading. I am re-reading The Tale of Genji, the amazing, long (54 chapters) 11th-century novel by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Heian Japanese court. It is generally regarded as the world’s first real novel, and some critics think it remains the greatest. It was unknown in Western literary circles until Arthur Waley published his six-volume translation beginning in the 1920s. The West was astounded, especially by the novel’s physiological depth. A more recent translation is that of Edward Seidensticker, more accurate and literal but perhaps less poetic. If you haven’t read this, an experience awaits you!” Dick Frost and wife Barbara divide their year between Santa Fe, N.M., where elder daughter Caitlyn lives, and Hamilton, N.Y., their summer and fall home in retirement from Colgate University. “I have spent time this winter as a self-appointed adviser to Elizabeth Warren in her Democratic presidential nomination campaign. Her strong, liberal policy issues, realistic feminism, and attractive presentations make her an ideal candidate for massive reform. The field is so crowded that it takes a reckless pundit to predict the outcome, which evidently keeps many conscientious but very busy Democrats on the sidelines. By phenomenal coincidence, John McIntyre, whom I have not talked with in months, just called me in the last sentence to talk about Elizabeth Warren. I hope some of you may get involved.” Ellen Lovell Evans loves her retirement community, though her activity range is limited by her increasing dependence on a walker. “I no longer travel, unless it is in a car with family member. I am somewhat fanatical about my water aerobics classes. I am active on the library committee—we have over 8,000 books and need to cull the collection regularly because of many donations and lack of shelf space. I read poetry every other month to people with dementia. I no longer teach Osher courses in Charlottesville, Va., but residents organized courses on campus, and I recently finished one on the French Revolution. That subject 1953 Carol Lange Davis cldavis5@optonline.net I am thrilled to have so much good news for you all! Congrats to Bill Fitts, who was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame at a Dec. 11 ceremony in NYC. It was quite an honor. We are all proud of him! John and Joyce Bok Ambruster ’55 moved to an assisted living facility in Flagstaff, Ariz. This puts them close to family—a 10-minute drive as opposed to six hours from Tucson. “It was time for such a move, but hard work for old folks,” says John. “Lots of help from family, which was much appreciated. Snow on the ground and on the mountains around us … makes a change from Tucson, and we’re enjoying it. Our health is good, but we have slowed down. Maybe it’s the altitude. Then again, maybe it’s just our age. So it goes.” John and Joyce’s new address is: 3150 N. Winding Brook Road, Apt. 315, Flagstaff, AZ 86001. Their phone number is 928-440-3608. Hanni Fey Sherman writes: “My husband, Dick, died of Parkinson’s last September. I kept him at home with the help of certified nursing assistants and was his caregiver for four years. I still live at WindsorMeade of Williamsburg, Va., a continuing care retirement SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 49 class notes community. We lived for 9.5 years in one of the villas, but a year ago, we moved to an apartment due to my macular degeneration, which caused me to lose my driver’s license. Last July, I had a heart attack, but I am fully recovered from it. I swim in our indoor pool every day and work out on the machines in the gym. I also volunteer at the local clothes closet for needy people, where I mend donated garments to make them serviceable again. We have five grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. Now that I can travel again, I hope to see them more often.” Clark Dean writes: “When I was thinking of applying to colleges, my uncle suggested Swarthmore; it had an engineering program, and my cousin Charlotte [Dean Appleton ’39] was a graduate. He also told me his grandmother Eliza Jane Fick had bragged that she’d taught school in NYC when she was 16. While I was at Swarthmore, he was a member of the NYC Board of Education, and someone there found an old directory (1848) that she was listed in at PS 6. Later, I learned her grandmother Polly Brelsford was from Bucks County and had Quaker ancestry back to the 17th century: John Palmer arrived in Bucks County in 1683 from Yorkshire, and John Headley arrived 1698 from Isle of Wight. So choosing a Quaker college was serendipity for me.” At the end of March, Stanley Mills expected to visit his son in Florida and take in some of the New York Mets spring training games. Stan likes hearing from classmates and wishes more would contact him. It would be best to phone as he does not use email, and because of poor eyesight, he has difficulty with written correspondence. He can be reached at 347-408-4525, but don’t call too early in the day! Bob Fetter was looking forward to Alumni Weekend again this year and hoped to have Saturday lunch in Sharples with any classmates who made the trip. “Whether just there for a few hours or more of the weekend, it is always a stimulating ‘nostalgia fix.’ Francis Ashton is a regular returnee to our campus each year, too … 50 Swarthmore College Bulletin / we exercise our Garnet Sage prerogatives and walk together in the Parade of Classes. During my ‘quiet time on campus,’ I also try to visit the two memorial benches for our classmates—one for Nina Williams Leichter near Clothier Tower, the other for Buck Jones, close to one of the steam tunnel entrances—and the memorial tree planted by the Class of 1982 for Jonathan Randall ’82, son of Charlie ’51 and Hedi Schmid Randall, who was the one Swarthmorean who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11.” Carol MacIntyre, who left Swarthmore after two years to follow her former husband, the late Judson Chrisney ’51, to NYC, caught us up on her life. “I entered Barnard for my junior year, but never found another college to match Swarthmore, so chose motherhood as my career. After 11 years, I became a single parent in need of a job. I found myself working for the NEA as a lobbyist, then for the University of Maryland as a fundraiser, and, finally, for 21 years as administrator of the D.C. Institute of Mental Hygiene, which provided outpatient treatment for those who could not afford private care. “Today, I live with my partner of 25 years, Edward Ericson, whose ministerial career began with the Unitarian Universalists and culminated as senior leader of the New York Ethical Culture Society. We divide our time between my home in Bethesda, Md., and his in Dunedin, Fla.” A music lover, Carol co-founded the Summer Music Festival in Glen Cove, N.Y., which continues to this day, as well as a chamber music series in Tarpon Spring, Fla. She has six grandchildren and enjoys volunteering. Please keep the good news coming. SUMMER 2019 JOIN THE LEGACY CHALLENGE Learn more on pg. 56 or at swarthmore.edu/ legacychallenge 1954 Elizabeth Dun Colten 36 Hampshire Hill Road Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 lizcolten@aol.com My updated College address list shows 142 members in our class. So—where are you? Check in, please! An email from Bruce Gould lists his extensive travels—28 countries and four continents last year, and two months in South Africa this coming year. Judy Kahlenberg Hestoft notes that the 2020 Democratic Convention will be held in Milwaukee. Although she does not plan to be an active volunteer (12,000 will be needed), Judy says this is a great opportunity to discover an attractive area of the USA. Fredericka Nolde Berger is on the steering committee for the Prince George (Md.) day center for the homeless. Twice a week, it provides lunch and a place to take showers and wash clothes at a local church. She is organizing “Faces from the Street,” a show of portraits of some guests, each done by a different artist. Hopefully, this will be an enriching experience for all concerned. Peter Bart laments that he could not persuade any of his 10 grandchildren to apply to Swarthmore and wonders whether other classmates have fared better. (Matthew Dreier ’18, grandson of the late Sue Marx March, comes to mind. Are there others?) Over the years, Peter has happily paid the tuition for six students selected by the College. Gabriel Hearn-Desautels ’20 is the recipient of the Class of 1954 Scholarship. An honors history major with an honors political science minor, he is involved in dance and the Swarthmore International Relations Journal, and notes that his favorite part of Swarthmore is the people. I recently learned that Al Metcalf suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died March 15, 2016. Except for his time in college and the Army, Al spent his life in Natchez, Miss., and was named the Natchez Democrat’s 2015 Citizen of the Year for his dedication to local charities and Rotary International. He and wife Gay lived in a certified antebellum mansion, the “Parsonage,” and welcomed visitors from around the world. Jay Ochroch mentioned that his family had visited and that he had traveled to Natchez twice in the 1990s to buy a car from Jordan Auto, the business Al ran with his father. Survivors include three children and six grandchildren. Sadly, I also note that David Dennison died March 10 at his home in Hanover, N.H. After receiving a biology Ph.D. from Caltech, David joined the faculty at Dartmouth and spent the remainder of his career there. A clockmaker, photographer, and family man, he is survived by two sons and four grandchildren. Wife Mary Eckler Dennison ’53 predeceased him. Marka Meckes Conrow wrote to say that husband Ken died March 18. One of our class couples, she and Ken were always grateful to Swarthmore for giving them a good beginning. They both taught at Kansas State University before retiring in ’98 and ’99, respectively: Ken in chemistry and then computer science, Marka in English. The Conrows enjoyed life in Kansas. Ken became a devoted sailor, bicyclist, and ice skater, and, after retirement, enjoyed exploring prime numbers and the Collatz conjecture on the computer. They have three daughters and eight grandchildren, and “are sorry that none went to Swarthmore”! Peter Van Pelt sent word that wife Patricia Bryson Van Pelt died April 14. An art history major at Swarthmore, Pat then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education; these two pursuits formed the basis for her many achievements. She and Peter lived in many places domestically and internationally. Most notably, Patricia was the art education officer for the Arts Council of Great Britain in the 1980s and ran a thriving independent bookstore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the 1990s. A gracious host and fabulous cook with a talent for maintaining longstanding friendships, Pat is survived by Peter, three children, five grandchildren, and four greats. 1957 Minna Newman Nathanson jm@nathansons.net Arthur Karlin writes: “Carol Edelstein Weichert’s death comes as a sad shock. Why at age 83, and having seen Carol maybe five times since we graduated, I should be so affected, I am not sure—possibly because she was warm, smart, and funny. I loved being in her company.” Joan Hall Wise reported that Pat Niles Middlebrook’s husband, Steve, called to tell her that Pat, who had been ill with respiratory disease, had died peacefully at their Virginia Beach, Va., home. Pat received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale, taught as an associate professor at Central Connecticut State University, and published two widely used social psychology textbooks. She enjoyed golf (nine-hole champion at the Country Club of Farmington, Conn.) and horseback riding until a mounting accident severely injured her right leg. In the more hospitable retirement climate of Virginia Beach, Pat loved the beauty of the ocean and her oceanfront condominium, and photographed the local landscape, eschewing digital photography for a Leica for which she received special training in Germany. Cora Diamond was the Humboldt Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig in Germany for winter 2018; she and James Conant co-taught a seminar on Wittgenstein that was followed by an October conference, “Cora Diamond: Logic and Ethics.” Cora also participated with Conant in a three-day intensive philosophy seminar at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic. She had a planned Dewey Lecture, “Reflections of a Dinosaur,” at the American Philosophical Association’s Eastern Division meeting. Dewey Lectures are given in each of the association’s annual divisional meetings by older philosophers invited to discuss their career and the state of the profession. 1959 Miriam Repp Staloff mrstaloff@gmail.com Retired from MIT’s economics department, Peter Temin still writes about a variety of subjects. His most recent book is The Vanishing Middle Class (2017), “a valuable guide to current events.” The Temins “are getting older—along with the rest of the Class of ’59—but doing well. We attend the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement, where we both teach and take classes.” Peter’s two daughters and grandsons live nearby. Given my deadline, Alumni Weekend has not yet taken place. Watch for news in the next edition. 1960 Jeanette Strasser Pfaff jfalk2@mac.com In July 1959, the summer before our senior year, the Class of 1900 started planning its 60th Reunion. That class entered Swarthmore in 1896! Now it’s 2019, and it’s our turn to plan. Send John Harbeson your ideas for the June 2020 event: jwharbeson@aol.com. But, most important, plan to attend! I asked you to comment on turning 80, a reality for most of us and soon-to-be for a few youngsters in our class. Susan Washburn reflects on what she calls her “big eight-oh experience”: “Last September, I sold my home in Taos and moved to an interim rental in Durango, Colo., to be near my daughter and her family. I knew this would be a dramatic change—leaving great friends, moving from semicountry to town, from an open, contemporary house to a turn-ofthe-century cottage—but I was doing OK with it until I turned 80 in February. For some reason, the psychological impact of becoming an octogenarian caused a horrible shift in my outlook on life. Or maybe it was the torn meniscus in my right knee and a surprisingly bad bone-density test, tangible proof that my heretofore healthy body was not immortal. At any rate, I could no longer envision a positive future. Images of death, degeneration, and loss invaded my consciousness. After several weeks of this mental festering, I had an epiphany: I could consciously change my attitude. I could focus on the positive aspects of my still-satisfying and active life. (Big “duh!” here.) So I’m getting the meniscus trimmed, ingesting a bunch of fancy bonebuilding supplements, and going back to skiing moguls. I now think of my physical self as an old but high-quality car, a Mercedes perhaps, requiring more frequent maintenance and possibly some replacement parts, but still capable of a few good road trips.” John Palka reports that the move from Whidbey Island outside Seattle to the bustling Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul has drawn him into a whole suite of unexpected activities. “Chief among them are organizations and events that relate to my Slovak origins. There are three major Czech–Slovak organizations here, so I get to read books for a book club, sing in a folk-song group, give talks, write for a newsletter, and more. During 2018, I wrote so many pieces and gave so many talks that I have decided to convert them into a whole new book. In 2019, I have represented Slovakia in an international studies class at Macalester College, and am among the organizers of an upcoming event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis. I also plan to travel to Slovakia in June. My blog, naturesdepths.com, continues, but quarterly rather than monthly. And that’s not all— not by any means!” John Harbeson’s main news “is our terrific two-week cruise to the Amazon River. Highlights included a walk through the pristine rainforest outside Santarém, the famed Boi Bumba folklore performance in Parintins, and a tour of the elegant buildings of Manaus. So far, year 80 has seemed less like a milestone than a return to normalcy after last year’s bout with a now-fullyvanquished lymphoma. I’ve resumed singing in my two choirs and my active involvement with an organization of foreignaffairs professionals here in D.C.” Sara Bolyard Chase had occasion to visit a big, old church in Harvard Square for which she had analyzed and color-matched mortar for the first time. “The light-colored granite was trimmed with local brownstone. All the mortar matched the brownstone; it actually took three different masonry pigments to achieve that. The contractor at the time tried to convince the church board not to use it, said it would be weak and fade. That was in 1978, and it still looks perfect. Ah! Turning 80 has found me with just enough work to keep me awake and alert, but not enough to halt what I am feeling, so far, as a glide into having less energy, less ambition, less cantankerousness … I think!” I, Jeanette, found turning 80 to be a surprisingly fraught event. On the one hand, I feel what I could almost describe as triumph at having navigated eight decades. On the other, I vividly see the much-closer horizon: the inevitability of impending frailty and extinction. But, hey … the sun is shining, I’m composing this column, and a glass of wine is not far in the future. I savor the moment. Will Fairley wrote, “Growing old is SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 51 class notes not for wimps!” When, concerned by this gloomy message, I asked whether he was suffering, he reassured me: “Nothing more than the inescapable existential angst.” A perfect ending to this column! 1961 Pat Myers Westine pat@westinefamily.com Class president Maurice Eldridge and the College both sent me a report on the state of our Class of 1961 Fund for the Arts and Social Change. The College endowment has grown significantly over the past year, and the current market value of the 1961 Class Fund is $317,177.87. The estimated distribution (according to the College) is $14,584.84. As you will remember, the fund supports internships enabling students to spend a summer “engaging meaningfully with nonprofit organizations, grassroots advocacy groups or public service agencies.” As Maurice says, “These organizations cannot provide much direct support to students who need summer earnings, thus making our gift a welcome source.” I have previously included parts of thank-you letters written by students who were awarded our grants and hope that class members have found their experiences as interesting and varied as I have. As I write, Jon Van Til is on his way to Istanbul for a six-week stint as a Fulbright Specialist at Marmara University. He will give four public lectures, interspersed with a four-day trip to Budapest for his wife’s book launch, then to return to Istanbul for the final weeks of his time there. I asked in the last column for memories of classmates who have recently died. John Wright ’62 remembered Jody Hudson “as a valued member of the Crum Creek Valley Boys and Girl and a dear friend.” John has very precious memories of swapping banjo 52 Swarthmore College Bulletin / discoveries with Jody. Dorothy Smith Pam in Amherst, Mass., has been a great correspondent through the years, sending me her annual newsletter. Last summer, she and Bob celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a party in the Berkshires, atop Mount Greylock in Adams, Mass. The dense fog did not dampen the joyous mood of the celebrants, which included the entire family on both sides. On the actual anniversary date, they celebrated with dinner and theater in NYC. Dorothy still teaches at Holyoke Community College and has added courses in public speaking, communications, acting, and theater history to her English teaching schedule. She campaigned and, in November, won election as one of the 13 new town councilors, and will help set up the new government mandated by Amherst’s new charter. This column is shorter than usual as I had my left knee replaced in February and have spent the past month rehabbing and getting back mobility. This spring, granddaughter Kira Emmons ’20 was the oboe (the duck) soloist in the College Lab Orchestra’s Peter and the Wolf (a Saturday-morning concert with area children invited) and was part of the College taiko (Japanese drumming) group that played at a Cornell symposium. Please continue sending your yearly newsletters and/or updates to be shared with classmates. 1963 Diana Judd Stevens djsteven1@verizon.net Latest news from ’63: The class extends sympathy to Ben Cooper whose mother, Elizabeth Stubbs Cooper ’38, died at age 102. Joan and Glenn Coven retired again and moved to Santa Fe, N.M., where they hike a lot. John Cratsley teaches, mediates, and does pro bono work in a veterans’ legal clinic, while wife Holly is a member SUMMER 2019 of the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Architects. Anne Howells sold her Seattle house and lives at Chobo-Ji, the Zen center where she practices and is a novice priest. Anne also spends time at an apartment she bought at Horizon House, a Seattle retirement residence, where Gail MacColl lives. Dave ’62 and Alice Handsaker Kidder’s son-in-law Robert Wolff ’88 was appointed dean of Central Connecticut State University’s school of arts and science. Let Alice or Dave know if you want to volunteer on refurbishing homes in Boston through Clergy and Laity for Affordable Housing, which recently held two successful fundraisers. Pat Horan Latham continues with cases for the American Arbitration Association and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Pat was also elected board chair of a federal credit union. In the past year, Bruce Leimsidor was in Chechnya investigating charges concerning an alleged gay pogrom; discussed LGBT rights in Europe and problems in this context in Ukraine at the University of Odessa, Ukraine; lectured at Drexel and Brandeis on EU asylum law and the European immigration situation; and counseled asylum seekers in Europe pro bono. To distract himself from migration concerns and European politics, Bruce collects early Buddhist sculpture and 17th- and 18th-century Italian and French drawings. He divides his time between Paris and Venice, and invites classmates to contact him if they visit those cities. On MLK Day, Dave McLanahan marched in Seattle, holding a banner, Physicians for National Health Program. Tom and Barbara Daly Metcalf took a Road Scholar trip to Ethiopia, perhaps their last exotic travel fling. Jim Patton JOIN THE LEGACY CHALLENGE Learn more on pg. 56 or at swarthmore.edu/ legacychallenge moved to Stratham, N.H., from Maine, to be closer to family and better able to make day trips to Baltimore for his land-development consulting work. In Amsterdam, Ellen Perchonock and former husband Ron Schaefer ’64 attended Joan Baez’s farewell concert and took Shameika Black ’11 out for an Indonesian dinner. Shameika, visiting Amsterdam for the first time, found Ellen’s name in the Alumni Directory and contacted her for information about what to do. Abby Pollak and Helen spent springtime in Portugal, the Pyrenees, and Paris. Clyde Prestowitz’s grandson graduated from the University of Northern Arizona and received a full ride to Utah’s chemistry Ph.D. program. In December, Terry Spruance was hospitalized with MRSA in one of his knee replacements. Surgeries, rehab, and all that can accompany such a situation followed. In March, Jane Jonas Srivastava traveled in Australia for seven weeks—hiking, sleeping in swags under the stars, and sharing space with small kangaroos. Diana Judd Stevens’s Swarthmore connections: dinners with Crosslands neighbors Connie Spink Fleming ’43, Esther Leeds Cooperman ’48, and George and Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49; lunch with Claire Thurman, Barbara Seymour, Martha Baird Ralphe, Paul Stevens ’65, and Bennett Lorber ’64; and lunch with ’63’s class scholar, Bethany Wiggin ’94, after she lectured on “Environmental Humanities and the Right to Research” for an Osher Lifelong Learning class at the University of Delaware. Earlier this year, Atala Perry Toy’s nature spirit and sacred geometry photos were in three art exhibits. Atala figured out a way to get her nature spirit photos onto jewelry, which is now for sale in her Geneva, Ill., store, Crystal Life. John Warn accepted United Technologies Aerospace Systems’ request to return to work as a contractor doing heat-transfer work, so his retirement didn’t last long. After our 55th, Sandy ’62 and Izzie Phillips Williams traveled by boat up the Rhine NICK BARBERIO ALUMNI PROFILE “At Swarthmore, there was an intense conversation that seemed everywhere in the air,” says Leonard Barkan ’65, the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton. “There was an atmosphere of talk—a vividness, a sophistication, a sense that I could learn more from listening to an evening’s conversation than I could learn in a book.” RENAISSANCE MAN His ‘life of the mind’ is guided by his heart by Elizabeth Slocum JUST TO BE CLEAR, Leonard Barkan ’65 is not retiring. He understands the confusion, considering the fete held in his honor in May. The two-day “Barkanfest,” planned largely by his former graduate students, brought together friends, colleagues, and mentees to wax poetic about Princeton University’s esteemed Class of 1943 University Professor of Comparative Literature. The gathering wasn’t so much a scholarly event as it was a celebration—of his academic work spanning five universities and nearly 50 years, and of his passion for art and theater, food and wine, Berlin and Rome. “It was one of the great events of my professional—and personal— life,” says Barkan, an expert on early modern literature and culture. “The talks were extraordinary in their range of approaches. One learned about literature, about art, about the Renaissance, about friendship—often all at the same time.” Barkan found his calling early at Swarthmore, studying English under Samuel Hynes (now a colleague as a professor emeritus at Princeton). In one class, Hynes spent the entire period on a seemingly naive four-line medieval poem, enlightening Barkan to the richness and density of premodern cultural activity. “It was written when—as I always say to students—they didn’t even have flush toilets, showing that you didn’t require modernity and all its comforts to write masterpieces,” Barkan says. “Our own time blankets us so thoroughly in the present. My job is to break open the monopoly the present moment has on our imaginations.” Though Barkan has always enjoyed studying literature, he’s also always needed something else, he says. Early in his career, that was theater, when he worked professionally as an actor while serving as an assistant professor. Later on, it was art, so he remade himself as an art historian over a 10-year period. Barkan’s first book on the subject won the Christian Gauss Award from Phi Beta Kappa, “but I always say, the first time I was ever in an art history classroom, I was the professor.” Barkan’s more recent interests in food and wine have led to his forthcoming book Reading for the Food, a scholarly look at the eating and drinking detailed in works of antiquity and the Renaissance. Among his explorations: the 60 feasts mentioned over the course of The Odyssey, and the bread and wine (and potentially other food) present at the Last Supper. Given the consideration Barkan lends to menus of the past, it was only fitting for him to have a say in the menu of the present. The honoree selected the wines served at the Barkanfest, whose “star performers” included Marjorie Garber ’66, H’04, Tom Laqueur ’67, H’14, and Ron Martinez ’69. Dear friend Alexander Nehamas ’66, a fellow professor at Princeton, delivered a “deeply learned toast” at the final banquet. A tribute to a career, and a life, enriched by the humanities. “The humanities are a place where we leave our own egocentrism and step into the mind, soul, and time of others,” says Barkan. “And we all have to do that, whether we think we’re living in good times or bad.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 53 class notes and down the Danube; hiked in Utah’s five national parks; and had summer get-togethers with Renee and Paul Shield and Marvin and Peggy Schoenberg Menzin at the Menzins’ Cape Cod home, and with Andy and Lynn Hollen Lees. The Williamses greeted their second grandchild in November. Earlier this year, Izzie had a large consulting job, sang in Mozart’s Requiem, and pulled her first all-nighter in a long time preparing tax letters as assistant treasurer of their Unitarian Universalist fellowship. Marianne and Phil Wion made music in Ireland with Pittsburgh’s East Winds Symphonic Band. 2018 was not the best for David and Austine Read Wood Comarow. Shortly after moving Dave’s mother to Las Vegas, she died. Then Austine was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, currently in remission. 2019 is looking better. Austine was one of eight artists selected for the Las Vegas Aerial Gallery Banner Artwork Exhibition. On behalf of ’63, I sent a sympathy note to the family of David Morgan, who died Feb. 26. 1965 Kiki Skagen Munshi kiki@skagenranch.com smore65.com In February, I was invited to appear on an educational television program in D.C. There was also a Swarthmore connection to the trip, which included some other East Coast visits. In Cambridge, Mass., Andrea “Andy” Fleck Clardy came over for a cup of coffee and conversation. Andy is an accomplished playwright with one-acts being produced across the country, and we discussed her vision of presenting “the other” to audiences. I learned that she had been in labor relations publishing for many years before her present incarnation. Then in the middle of 54 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Massachusetts, Elizabeth “Elly” Rosenberg Rumelt invited classmates for lunch. I’m not sure Elly meant for it to last until 5 p.m., but we just couldn’t stop talking— it was a group of really interesting and interested people. Peter Bloom held forth on music, composers, and his feelings about amateur singing groups. Helen Lutton Cohen was mostly at another table, but I caught a bit about her work as a Unitarian pastor. Virginia “Ginger” Blake-Harris spoke passionately about the environment. Elly recently moved to Massachusetts and is clearly settling in very well. Frances Halsband moves from strength to strength. She was cited in Engineering NewsRecord’s annual class of the top 25 newsmakers. These are individuals who have “served the best interests of the construction industry and their communities.” ENR selected Frances “for her work in rallying the members of the [America Institute of Architects] College of Fellows to endorse an anti-abuse and anti-harassment resolution to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.” Dick and Gay Sise Grossman were off to Iceland for three days, then proceeded to Ireland for a medical meeting and exploration. Dick presented on why family planning is the most effective way to slow climate change. Earl Tarble is president of his HOA this year. “At least this way I know the meetings will be short. … As members of the Albuquerque Newcomers Club, we have several opportunities a month to go out and eat with a group of people.” Earl’s also a co-chair of a monthly wine-tasting meeting. That helps to keep his cabinets renewed with interesting wines, since he is no longer close to the California vineyards. “I remain an assistant treasurer at our Episcopal church. Next trip in April will be the intercoastal waterway from Jacksonville, Fla., to Charleston, S.C.” David Darby wrote to make sure we all know they’re still in Billings, Mont. (not Fiji), where Mary Lee paints and gardens while Dave SUMMER 2019 putters, serves on several boards, golfs, studies governance and public policy, and writes occasional guest opinions for the newspaper. Mary Lee now has two paintings in the Yellowstone Art Museum permanent collection. Dave’s opinion articles “have included ***************** (redacted).” In 2018, he alleges, they spent 18.6% of their time reading and watching TV news, 33.1% doing household chores and trying—but failing—to get organized, 16.8% on enjoyable leisure activities, 26.5% napping and sleeping, and 15.4% on travel and ‘other.’” Remember, he adds, “that 67.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot, unless you are the U.S. president, in which case it is more like 96.7%.” Tom Kramer is not relaxing. “Work went well in 2018. Version 3.0 of the Quality Information Framework was finished and became a national standard. (Google it.) I have been one of the primary developers since 2011. Since April, I’ve been working on the NIST Cyber-Physical Systems project. I was asked to fix complex, broken, undocumented code in a language I did not know written by a guy I do not know. Is that fun, or what?! The grant from which I was paid ended on Dec. 31. A new grant proposal is in the works. … If the grant gets funded, it will probably be decided that I am employed.” Walt Pinkus has taken over the class website and is doing a splendid job with it. He is heavily involved in all-things-computer at their Arizona community. His term as Computer Club president was extended, and he was given a number of other responsibilities. He put his “old Swat researching skills” to work looking at commercial scale networks in order to deal with the internet and Wi-Fi capability in their community center—only to find much of the problem was political rather than technical. Not only is Walt managing to prevail on both fronts, the club has named him a Volunteer of the Year. And speaking of computers and volunteers, send me your news— never forget, never ever let this get far from your minds … and thanks. 1967 Donald Marritz dmarritz@gmail.com swarthmore67.com Janet Munnecke Madden is “having an especially happy year while our younger son, Sam, who’s on sabbatical from MIT, is living here in San Diego with his family. FaceTime is all very well, but not nearly as nice as having our two youngest grandchildren, 6 and 8, in hugging range.” Larry Arnstein has been writing a detective novel. “I already wrote the last chapter so I don’t have to figure out how it ends. One time, in my so-called career as a writer, I wrote a movie where I was so in love with the beginning, I figured the characters would explain to me what the ending was. Ha ha ha. My advice to anyone writing anything is, ‘Don’t ever do that.’” Since October, Larry has been involved with a creative writing workshop sponsored by a social service agency that serves the area’s large homeless population. In conjunction with a Cal State–San Diego professor, participants have written “Dear Detainee” letters to undocumented immigrants in federal detention (aka jail) while awaiting decisions on their asylum applications. Participants also write poetry, some of which Larry says is “staggeringly good.” Spence Putnam planned to attend the 50th Reunion of wife Fran Hostettler Putnam ’69 and hoped to reconnect with other ’67ers there. He and Fran work on climate issues, and he’s “dismayed that Swarthmore’s Board of Managers still refuses to confront global warming by divesting from fossil fuel investments.” I am sorry to report the loss of Russ Kimura, who died peacefully at home in Cogan Station, Pa., in March, after courageously fighting lung disease in recent years. He is survived by wife Denise, daughter Keri, and other family members. After Swarthmore, Russ moved to Williamsport, Pa., where helped start a school and met his wife, with whom he built a home on Sunshine Farm, land they shared with friends. The farm was one of his greatest sources of joy. Yearround he could be found outside working, gardening, cutting wood, hiking, or cross-country skiing. Russ was a man who could fix anything, was never afraid to try something new, and who loved to create. He cared deeply for his community and devoted time to a number of nonprofits. He was a humble person who treated every individual with respect and whose advice was always measured, honest, and kind. “On an entirely delirious note,” Jack White ’68 “spent a splendid afternoon catching up with Paula Lawrence Wehmiller and husband John ’66 in Swarthmore. We covered a lot of ground. I feel revived by reconnecting and hope that she and I will build on it. She’s a remarkable person from a remarkable family.” I asked Greg Gibson if he wanted me to put in something about what I called the Galen Project, his lifelong effort to make sense of his son’s senseless death and his ensuing gun-control efforts. I can’t improve on Greg’s passion, eloquence, and determination, so here’s how he responded: “Why don’t you write that … I replied that I’d never thought of it as ‘the Galen Project,’ but of course it was, and I liked that name a great deal. The Galen Project commenced in 1974 with Galen’s birth and did not cease with his 1992 death in an ‘early’ school shooting. Anyone curious about where this has led can check out the project’s website, goneboy. com. It’s all there. Gun violence prevention work is frustrating, but not as frustrating as golf, and the highs are infinitely higher. Deeper. I don’t expect results anymore; the meaning is in the doing. And how terrific is it to be this old and learning new stuff every day?” If you are not yet a member of the Class of 1967 website (established for our 50th Reunion), please consider signing up, at swarthmore67.com, so that you can better keep in touch with what’s going on. And please send news! Because we’re old and sage, our class notes get space in every Bulletin issue. 1969 Jeffrey Hart hartj@indiana.edu We were all excited about the prospect of seeing one another at our 50th Reunion, May 30–June 2. Audrey Melkin retired from scholarly publishing last year and enjoys NYC more than ever. “I’m taking art classes—pastels and stained glass, at present—and love having more time to visit museums and galleries and for general exploring. I still study piano and go to classical concerts, the opera, and plays. I’m finding my way with volunteering and political activism, leaving time for a slower, reflective pace to see what may come. Life is good, and I feel blessed!” Mary Schmidt Campbell (2019’s McCabe Lecturer) is now Spelman College president. Clinton Etheridge won a Stanford Tapestry Award and published a memoir about his experiences in Africa. Fran Hostettler Putnam co-founded the Evergreen Preschool in Vergennes, Vt., and served on its board for 24 years. She is also a founding member of the Weybridge Energy Committee and Interfaith Climate Action Network; a dedicated elementary school volunteer; and a longtime participant in the College’s student-led Sunday Night Environmental Group. Judith Shenker is retiring “at the end of this year from practicing law in NYC (none too soon) and devoting myself to philanthropic adventures. I have contacted Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital to volunteer in the pediatric ward and also want to begin teaching preteens and teens. I am sure it will be a lot more fulfilling than law. While I have no children, I have my cousin Jack, who is like my grandson and turns 16 in August. I also have many cousins in their 20s in Austin, Texas, with whom I am close, so I am very lucky indeed.” Liza Crawford and husband David Porter “have retired from our adventure as goat farmers and cheese-makers for 12 years. The book on this wonderful interlude is in the works. I work part time in medicine but am thinking about retiring from that, too. We take care of David’s mother in our home—an enormous task, but very worthwhile. We are traveling more, most recently to Giverny, Monet’s amazing garden outside Paris. No one told us that growing older held so many exciting changes!” James Ribe retired after 30 years in forensic pathology as senior deputy medical examiner at the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, where he specialized in child death and child abuse pathology. Marilyn Holifield was elected to Harvard’s Board of Overseers. She previously served as Harvard’s Alumni Association director and on its Executive Committee. Bob Snow retired in 2017 but is “involved with NGOs and civil-society organizations in Asia, including a foundation that supports grassroots humanrights groups in India; a Londonbased group that works with human-rights lawyers in China; and an NGO that is training the next generation of documentary filmmakers in Cambodia. I get to Asia about once a year. From my Boston home, I help with grantwriting and fundraising. And I have two wonderful grandchildren who, happily, live nearby. My (nowmarried) partner, Howard Block, and I have been together for 15 years.” Linda Lee retired from Marquette University and volunteers with Ten Chimneys and the AARP Milwaukee Leadership Council. Mark Dean is a retired financial executive formerly with LNP Plastics in Exton, Pa. Leonard Nakamura is an associate VP and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Darwin Stapleton writes, publishes, and speaks. He is a historian of technology, science, and medicine, and a consultant SPOTLIGHT ON … TOM O’DONNELL ’69 Folk singer Tom O’Donnell ’69 recently released his seventh album, Rothbury in the Fall, and celebrated his 50th Reunion with performances at Alumni Weekend. “I am passionate about this music,” he says, “and find it incredibly joyful and fulfilling to be doing—finally—what I always wanted to do.” + MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu and folksinger.info SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 55 class notes to nonprofits and historical archives. Bill Herdle retired from Momentive Performance Materials in Wilmington, Del. Debbie Seeley Averill is retired in Portland, Ore., but stays active in social work, focusing on children placed in foster and adoptive homes. Kristin Wilson is a solution architect at Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. Elizabeth Leavelle Bennett ’68 is special counsel at Astor Weiss Kaplan & Mandel LLP near Philly. Greg Englund is of counsel at Laredo & Smith in Boston, focusing on tax law. Andrew Weinstein practices medicine near Philly and is associated with Asthma Adherence Population Health. Alan Brooks helped found the Quoddy Regional Land Trust in 1987 and became executive director in 1988. The trust merged with a neighbor in 2009 to form the Downeast Coastal Conservancy, at which time he became its stewardship director. He retired in 2013. Lyon Evans is English professor emeritus at Viterbo University. Betsy Weisberger Seifter is a selfemployed consultant and writer. Deb Frazer moved with husband Jack Malinowski into a longawaited condo April 25, 2018, and retired five days later. “I would never recommend combining those two life events, but it’s done. We’re recovering from all the changes and loving the condo eight blocks away from our house of 41 years.” John McDowell was the Alan Dundes guest lecturer at UC– Berkeley, delivering the talk “Ecoperformativity: Expressive Culture at the Crux of Ecological Trauma.” Finally, Nolan Jones, a postbaccalaureate student at Swarthmore during 1968–69, died in Houston in December 2017. He was possibly best known among our class as one of the students who occupied the admissions dean’s office in January 1969 to protest administrators’ persistent disregard of African-American students. Nolan completed a political science doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis and was a professor at the University of Michigan before joining the headquarters 56 Swarthmore College Bulletin / JOIN THE LEGACY CHALLENGE Roy Shanker ’70 and Linda Gibson have generously pledged $2 million to inspire you to consider the legacy you can leave to Swarthmore. Each gift you make that matures in the future qualifies the College to receive up to $10,000 in matching funds from Roy and Linda through their generous bequest to benefit financial aid. Gifts by will count toward the Changing Lives, Changing the World campaign for those who are 60 and older by June 30, 2020. + LEARN MORE: swarthmore.edu/legacychallenge staff of the National Governors Association; he eventually became an NGA liaison to Congress. Our condolences to Nolan’s family and friends. 1971 Bob Abrahams bobabrahams@yahoo.com swarthmore71.org We are sad to report the loss of three classmates since our last column: Bryan Butler died Oct. 1; John Palmer died Dec. 19; and Peter Cook died Jan. 12. We send our condolences to their families and friends. Bob Cushman joined Alumni Council, “despite not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. But it’s been rewarding so far. The Council is involved in issues such as sustainability (both on-campus and global, including fossil-fuel divestment), Title IX, and the value of Greek life. We recently met on campus and hosted a trivia contest as a study break for students. We also offer ‘SwatTalks’ (bit.ly/SwatTalks)—online seminars featuring professors, students, and alumni.” Neil Prose has expanded his interest in empathic provider- SUMMER 2019 patient communication. A research professor at the Duke Global Health Institute, Neil is working in Ethiopia and the south of Chile to develop curricula for midwives and health-extension workers in respectful maternity care. He also helped create a short documentary on the ways that hospital housekeepers participate in healing. The film, Keepers of the House, will be the centerpiece of a curriculum for health care providers and students on empathy and teamwork. His TED Talk on “Empathy, Curiosity, and Human Connection” can be viewed at tedxduke.com. IndieCollect and Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) founder Sandra Schulberg was honored at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival with the Berlinale Camera, awarded to individuals and institutions that have made an extraordinary contribution to filmmaking. “The IFP and First Run Features were inspired by my encounters in 1977 with founders of the Filmverlag der Autoren, the filmmakers behind New German Cinema, so I’m especially touched by this recognition from the Berlin Film Festival,” Sandra says. “This award allows me to shine a light on the current plight of indie films, many of which are doomed because of the shift to digital technology. Films on celluloid have to be converted to state-of-the-art digital files—a huge investment— and we all face an even larger investment to keep updating the digital files so the films remain accessible.” Tom Stephenson—musician from Music Orbis and Phaedra fame, sound engineer at Roland, author of The Warbler Guide, and inventor of the BirdGenie birdsong app—had an article on Audubon.org about a good (though not obvious) place to watch birds in the winter (bit.ly/ TomAudubon). As previously noted, Lynn West Salvo made a 70-day ride across Canada last summer, with a theme of world peace—and she set the Guinness World Record for oldest female to do so, finishing just weeks before her 69th birthday. Lynn put together a documentary about it, posted on YouTube. Find the link at swarthmore71.org. (Lynn notes that “it’s not a soundbite—it’s 59 minutes long. Break out the popcorn!”) Grammy Award winner Don Mizell reminds us that his music group Not Dead Yett!! (though that’s not what he won the Grammy for) has a debut album from a few years ago available on Spotify. David Inouye reports on a recent trip with wife Bonnie Gregory Inouye ’69: “We spent most of February in northern Patagonia, in part to look for the now-rare native bumblebee species, which has been largely displaced by an introduced European species that flew in from Chile, where it was introduced for crop pollination. (We finally saw two of the native bees.) We enjoyed the mountains, lakes, and summer fruits and vegetables, and crossed the Andes to Chile with a combination of boats and buses. When we got back to Colorado, spring was starting at our house at 5,800 feet, with dwarf iris flowering. But up at 9,500 feet, snow was up to the roof of our cabin at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab when I skied there in mid-March. Looks like the coming research season will have a late start. We plan to be in Swarthmore for Bonnie’s 50th Reunion* (which overlaps with our 50th wedding anniversary). Skip Atkins welcomes advice from those navigating a course to retirement. “I’m finding even the first steps quite difficult.” Well, I’m happily retired. Any thoughts on this? Email me. *And by the time you receive this Bulletin issue, it will be just under two years until our 50th Reunion. Save the dates: May 27–30, 2021 (with Memorial Day on Monday the 31st). 1973 Martha Shirk swarthmorecollege73@gmail.com swarthmorecollege73.com Since leaving her “day job” in 2015 as curator of Philly’s Gershman Y Galleries, Miriam Scheiber Seidel has “finally figured out how to make regular time for my own writing.” The result: her first novel, The Speed of Clouds, published by New Door Books last year. She’s working on another, and she’s also busy with book editing, volunteering with 350 Philadelphia, blogging at miriamseidel.wordpress.com, and being a mother-in-law. (Son Ethan got married last year.) Laura Welch retired last year as medical director for the Center for Construction Research and Training, but finds herself busier than ever. “I’m spending a good amount of time on electoral politics here in Maryland and in neighboring states, moving democracy forward bit by bit (or maybe just preventing more backsliding). And I’m president of our local Village, a national movement to support aging in place. I hope the organization will be here when I no longer can drive a car.” Martha King’s departure for a one-year Peace Corps Response stint in Zambia was delayed twice, once by bureaucratic sluggishness and a second time by the government shutdown, but she finally made it in January. She is stationed in Kabwe, a small city a few hours north of Lusaka, and working with Zambia’s Ministry of General Education in partnership with a USAID-funded initiative to support HIV-prevention education and other services for high-risk girls and women. Carey Donovan retired in 2015 after 28 years as K–8 guidance counselor in Mount Desert Island, Maine, where she met husband Art Paine, an artist and boat builder/captain, while waitressing there decades ago. They live on a fishing harbor in Bernard, Maine, and have two adult children, Rebecca and Nathaniel, and two grandchildren. Carey is a citizen activist, previously serving as a Girl Scout leader, chair of the Tremont School fund, and chair of the library board, and now as chair of Tremont Democrats, a library trustee, and the town’s representative to the Acadia Disposal District. She is also active in A Climate to Thrive, a grassroots sustainability group. “Living in a small town suits me,” she writes. After 40-some years creating thousands of products, ad campaigns, and infomercials, Arthur Johnson is a fulltime photographer. “Much to learn, but a year after taking ArthurPix online, I have a registered trademark and 16,618 subscribers—and I invite, nay beg, classmates to sign up and check out my work at ArthurPix. com. Meantime, I framed my first songwriting royalty check for pieces I co-wrote with David Hicks ’71 of Phaedra. Impossibly, long-lost Phaedra tapes were found, painstakingly cleaned up, and transformed into two epic albums—and in February we were informed by our online ‘label,’ CollegeBand, that Phaedra had already won three Gold Records. We want more, so please, classmates, go to CollegeBand. com, search for Phaedra, and start listening!” JoAnn Jones, who had a long public service career as an attorney and public agency official, retired in 2014 as deputy director of Philly’s Office of Housing and Community Development and began preparing for an encore career. She graduated from the General Theological Seminary and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in December 2017. She is now associate rector and transitional deacon at Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Polly Simonds Saltet retired from the Hartsbrook School, a Waldorf school in Hadley, Mass., after teaching eurythmy (an expressive movement art) for 28 years. Husband Jan-Kees retired from Hartsbrook at the same time, giving them more time to visit daughter Elisa, a Waldorf teacher in Berkeley, Calif. (As someone once said, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!) Polly continues her private practice with adults and children. After an academic publishing career, Julia Hough has provided private therapeutic yoga sessions for almost 20 years from her home studio in Weehawken, N.J., as well as various yoga classes in the New York area. She also leads courses on how to teach chair yoga and mudras (hand and finger gestures). On the personal front, she says she’s enjoyed living for the past two years with Phil Kapp and his two cats. Robert Weissman is in his 28th year at TechLaw after spending nine years as an attorney with the EPA. He was recruited by the founder, his EPA mentor, and now works for his son. He and wife Marilyn have two adult children, Adam and Sarah, and live in Alexandria, Va. Condolences to the families and friends of Julius Nicholas, who died Jan. 10, and Terrence Hicks, who died Oct. 18. To find more news about classmates, visit SwarthmoreCollege73.com. While you’re there, create or update your own profile! And start a conversation at facebook.com/ SwarthmoreClassOf1973. 1975 Sam Agger sam.agger@gmail.com Tom Casey writes: “After 30 years we are moving; downsizing a bit, mostly shedding the yard. Two kids married. Both of us are still working without any intention of retiring; I was recruited last spring and love being back downtown with a bunch of very young (it seems) colleagues.” The Reporters Committee, which provides pro bono legal representation and resources to protect First Amendment freedoms and the newsgathering rights of journalists, honored David Bradley at its annual Freedom of the Press Awards on May 7 in NYC. The awards recognize leaders in journalism and media law whose work demonstrates a deep commitment to the First Amendment and press freedom. Eric Stein retired in May 2018 and has been traveling and helping son Jon at his craft brewery, Fogtown, in Ellsworth, Maine. “Spent a lovely week in San Diego with David ’71 and Carla Neuhauser Scheidlinger. Now proud to serve as treasurer for the Bobby McKinstry for PA Senate campaign. He’s got a great shot at getting elected in 2020 with a very (you guessed it) progressive platform. Good luck, Bobby!” Very exciting that the Swarthmore men’s basketball team finished second in the NCAA Division III tournament—and Ken Andres was there! John McKitterick planned to retire from Honeywell in March. “While the technical work is still challenging, and my co-workers stimulating, there is little joy in going to work anymore. Time to attend to the other things that are coming up. My daughter, Amelia, is getting a microbiology Ph.D. from Berkeley this summer and moving on to a postdoc at Harvard. My son, Chris ’09, is getting married in September. And I’m taking on a leadership role in the Maryland Ornithological Society. A busy start to retirement!” Gary Albright wrote about the four “babies” he and wife Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio have produced and nurtured: Their first, the Cactus Pear Music Festival, is going into its 23rd season of bringing world-class chamber music to San Antonio in the sizzling days of July. Their SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 57 class notes second bambino, Bella, 20, will spend the next academic year in San Sebastian, Spain, immersing herself in the language, Basque culture, beaches, and cafés. Third offspring Brie, 18, capped her senior year of high school with a state championship win in We the People, the national citizen and Constitution program. She and her teammates competed for the national title in D.C. this spring. And to ward off empty-nest syndrome, Gary and Stephanie begat “child” No. 4: Chamber Music Reno, a Nevada nonprofit whose mission is to provide chamber music locally with its “Silver Soirée Series” and to mentor aspiring high school musicians. And despite the music ringing in his ears, Gary still plays the game he loves: soccer. Pekka Mooar reports the birth of first grandchild Shea Mikala Kelleher. “My youngest went back to school for a postbac program and is now a first-year Temple medical student. So, I had four years added to my sentence as I had started to plan to retire. I will stop operating in July but will continue seeing patients in the office and teaching as well as supervising the ortho department clinical trials and research support office. I will also continue in my role as a unit-based medical director in the hospital.” Sadly, T.J. Morrison died Dec. 13 surrounded by his family. He graduated with a B.A. in political science with a concentration in Black studies and was instrumental in the founding of Swarthmore’s Black Student Union. T.J. went on to receive his MBA from Columbia and became a VP for J.P. West Inc., a Wall Street-based brokerage firm. He also served as city manager for Plainfield, N.J., before relocating with his family to Hartford, Conn., JOIN THE LEGACY CHALLENGE Learn more on pg. 56 or at swarthmore.edu/ legacychallenge 58 Swarthmore College Bulletin / where he was the city’s director of finance. An avid golfer, T.J. loved his family and was especially proud of his father’s legacy as a Tuskegee Airman. To cherish his memory, he leaves his devoted wife, Felicia; children Jason, Janelle, Tamara, and Krysta; mother Madeline Morrison; and sister Chandra Morrison. He also leaves grandchildren Jaden, Ezekiel, and Isabella. Peace to T.J.’s family, friends, and all. 1977 Terri-Jean Pyer tpyer@hartnell.edu Greetings, everyone! I wonder how many of us have retired or are considering retiring from our career jobs, and are contemplating something different for the next act. I’d love to hear your thoughts about that transition, and I’m sure others would, too. Drop me a line, and let me know if I can share it here. Lou Ann Matossian earned the professional designation of Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy from the American College of Financial Services in Bryn Mawr last year. That program gives professionals the broad knowledge and skills to help clients and prospective donors reach financial and philanthropic goals, and the designation recognizes fulfillment of rigorous educational, experience, and ethical requirements. I am sorry to report the loss of Lewis Shuster, who died Dec. 13 after a brief battle with advanced pancreatic cancer. Lew graduated with honors in economics and then earned an MBA with honors from Stanford. He spent more than three decades in the life sciences field, holding executive positions in several companies before starting his own firm where he could advise, consult, and invest in promising biotech startups. Wife Kate shared this from SUMMER 2019 his obituary: “He was a loving husband and father, a wine aficionado, and a tennis player. He also loved classical music, hiking in our national parks, and pie. He is survived by his wife of more than 25 years, Kate; his daughter, Anna—currently attending Georgetown University; stepson Trevor of Encinitas, Calif.; parents Duane and Irene Shuster of Avon Lake, Ohio; brother David and his wife, Jean, along with their sons, Jason and Robert, of Canton, Ga. Memorial donations would be especially appropriate to the Yosemite Conservancy (San Francisco) or Mainly Mozart (San Diego).” 1979 Laurie Stearns Trescott sundncr88@comcast.net Tim Dodge wrote a new music history book, Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso. It explores the roughly 20-year period starting in 1945 when African American R&B artists made more than 170 recordings incorporating West Indian calypso. Tim is a reference librarian at Auburn University and is serving a two-year term as Southeastern Library Association president. Besides teaching securities law at Brown, Ari Gabinet is taking jazz lessons and building guitars. He thanks Ira Gitlin ’80 and Charlie McGovern ’80 for being his musical inspirations. Dana Mackenzie’s book (cowritten with Judea Pearl) The Book of Why was named one of the Best Science Books of 2018 by Science Friday. The book has been translated into many languages, and Dana enjoys following its Amazon reviews. By far the most meaningful comment came from his co-author, who said, “More people tell me that they understand my work than I’ve had in the last 20 years.” Dana says this means the book has achieved its objective! The book’s top Amazon ranking was No. 77, one notch higher than Baby Touch and Feel Animals. Dana quips that any time you write a serious science book that sells more than a book with cute bunnies on the cover, you’ve done something right! (He adds that they were ahead of the bunnies for a day, at most.) Peter Plocki and wife Merry celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary with an October trip to Iceland, which “did not disappoint,” he says, and they hope to return soon. (I interject here because we loved our trip to Iceland, as well—everyone I know who has visited has come back with wonderful stories and photos.) Workwise, Peter is completing his 2.5-year detail to the Federal Transit Administration, where he’s been involved with safety oversight of D.C.’s subway system, and returning as the Department of Transportation’s deputy assistant general counsel for litigation. Caught in the latest government shutdown, Peter spent a week volunteering at José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, where thousands of sandwiches and salads, and thousands of gallons of soup were turned out to feed federal workers furloughed or working without pay. Peter commends Andrés’s drive and generosity and says this was one of the most uplifting experiences he’s ever had. Peter says Diana Furchtgott-Roth is now also at DOT as deputy assistant secretary for research and technology. She had been at the U.S. Treasury awaiting Senate confirmation to her new position, which places her office two floors down from Peter’s. Wendy Ruopp is still managing editor of EatingWell, but things have gotten busier since they absorbed Cooking Light and went from six issues a year to 10. For fun, she and Tom do trivia at least once a week with a multigenerational team—they recently won all six rounds at literary trivia (her English lit degree in action! Wendy quips). Her family includes son Caleb, recently married and a chocolatier in New Hampshire; and daughters Emma, a theatrical production manager in NYC, and Maggie, who works in university admissions and residential life in California. This column will reach you after our 40th Reunion. I look forward to hearing from more of you after the festivities, and I invite all classmates, generally, to contribute to this space. Happy summer, everyone! 1981 Karen Oliver karen.oliver.01@gmail.com Not too many notes this time around, but some of us are in the news: Who knew Jonathan Franzen was such a birdwatcher? Read all about it in this November Guardian article on climate change and birding: bit.ly/FranzenBirds And check out Elizabeth Anderson in the January New Yorker piece “The Philosopher Redefining Equality”: bit.ly/ AndersonEquality Congrats to Medha Narvekar, who was named Penn’s vice president and secretary of the university! Medha had worked in Penn’s Development and Alumni Relations Office for 32 years, beginning shortly after she earned an MBA from Wharton. “Medha is both renowned and respected across Penn,” Penn President Amy Gutmann said. “Her extensive experience across all areas— including working directly with trustees, overseers, and Penn’s most generous donors—gives her a unique capacity to step into the important position of vice president and secretary.” Reporting from the secondgeneration Quaker matchbox: Marc and Tina Sandberg Forster announce that daughter Sara Forster ’11 married Max Wilson ’10 in Scott Amphitheater last Aug. 4. In attendance were 19 alums (Danny Melnick, Todd Mayman, Julia Cutler Sullivan, Carrie Figdor, Meena Shivraj Desai, Keith Blaha ’10, Caitlin Adams ’11, Cecilia Marquez ’11, Emily Evans ’11, Jenn Medeiros ’15, Ariel Martino ’11, Jeffrey Lazarus ’10, Joe Spagna ’12, and Kevin Pytlar ’12—plus the bride and groom, parents of the bride, and the bride’s grandfather Bob Forster ’49) and three Swarthmore professors (Allen Schneider, Patty White, and Amy Vollmer). The ceremony was followed by cocktails on the Sharples patio and dancing to music by the Narwhals (Tom Sahagian ’74, Peter Jaquette ’74, and the rest of the band) under a tent on the lawn. From a bit farther south: Pete Alexander has been in Mexico City for the past two years managing the Latin America sales organization for Rohde & Schwarz, a Munich-based technology and test-and-measurement company. “It’s been an amazing experience exploring Latin America with my wife and some of the amazing cultures here. I’ve been asked to take on a new role in North America, so we’ll be moving to Miami to begin our adventure there. While I’ll miss Mexico and still have more to discover here, I’m looking forward to playing lacrosse regularly in one of the many ‘senior’ leagues in South Florida.” As for me, Karen Oliver, I moved in May 2018 for a view of the Washington Monument and a 10-minute walk to work at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (near DuPont Circle in D.C.). Missing my daughters (Peace Corps Morocco and University of Vermont Medical Center student in Burlington) but happy to explore the city parks with my dog, Riva. In December, I had the chance to catch up with Darius Rejali on a D.C. work trip, and he invited Marcus Noland to join us. Turns out Marcus not only works across the street from me (at the Peterson Institute for International Economics) but he also lives on my street. We must live in different time zones as our paths rarely cross. And Pete isn’t the only one playing in a “senior league”—I just started my 14th season with a women’s soccer team called Vintage. That’s all for now, folks. Hope to hear from more of you next time! 1983 John Bowe john@bowe.us Mamie Duff gave up the motorcycles and now rides to hounds—foxhunts—in the ancient tradition. After a lifetime of devotion to 2-D art, she completed her first bronze sculpture—of her actual horse, a paint mare. “Neither activity very Swarthmore-y!” she notes. She is pleased to hear (and envious) that there is a real studio art program these days. Matt Sommer celebrated being halfway finished with his threeyear term as Stanford’s History Department chair. Beth Varcoe’s youngest heads to college this fall, and her eldest is graduating. Her nest is not quite empty, still with a dog, a rabbit, and a pampered horse. Like many of us, though, Leigh Kyle’s nest is empty, her son having graduated from Macalester in May. She hosted an extern at her landscape architecture firm in San Diego in January, noting “she was 10 times more focused than I ever was as an undergrad.” Leigh was delighted to reconnect with Professor Patrick Henry, late of the Religion Department, who contacted her out of the blue as he ran across her senior thesis while going through old files. Dan Werther is two years past his last company, a candy manufacturer, and has purchased G&S Fight Supply, a well-known 80-year-old boxing brand from NYC’s Lower East Side. He has partners this time around, which he finds comforting. His wife is active in the art world. Their elder son is pursuing an MBA at Wharton and younger son is in venture capital in NYC. Suellen Heath Riffkin met up with Ellen Singer in Philly last fall. Daughter Sophie earned an occupational therapy master’s. “A ‘higher’ degree—Matt [who died in 2014] would have been so thrilled.” Suellen and partner Don live in Philly, Utah, and Long Beach Island, N.J. In February, they did a weeklong Habitat for Humanity build in Buenos Aires, then roughed it with a few 20K hikes in Patagonia. Congrats to Amy Robertson and husband Tim Fox on receiving the Carle Whitehead Memorial Award, recognizing lifetime commitment to protecting and extending civil rights and civil liberties. Deb Felix and Dave Hawver ’85 bought “an awesome little house in [Deb’s] hometown of Wellfleet, Mass.,” after selling their place in Maryland. They’ll split time between the two states. Deb can “work from anywhere as a (100% ethical!) college admissions consultant.” Their son has added standup comedy in D.C. to his acting repertoire, and their daughter is “crawling toward finishing a B.A. in biology.” Kevin Kuehlwein and husband purchased a large Georgian house in Salem, N.J.’s historic district, where they will sell antiques. “You learn a lot about yourself when you rehab a house—not all good!” Kevin notes it is a great, relaxing escape from city hassles, and he has enjoyed playing and recording his own music. Shoshana Kerewsky’s textbook, Finding Your Career in Human Services, was published by Cognella. Ellen Argyros has become interested in reading anything— novels, memoirs, scholarship— about Hitler-occupied Greece. She’s looking for suggestions. Her elder son is starting a real estate company in Austin, Texas, while the younger one is an engineer at NorChem, which provides greener chemical cleaning solutions. Dave Gertler and Sue Kost’s third and youngest child, Eli, was accepted to his top choice, Duke. “That means we’ve gone 0 for 3 on continuing the family’s Swarthmore tradition, but at least he picked a school with a similarly outstanding basketball team.” Meanwhile, Dave, after leaving his middle-school teaching career last spring, has SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 59 class notes begun working (remotely) for the D.C.-based education nonprofit Great Minds, where he is an editor for their widely used curriculum Eureka Math. Linda Estes writes: “Three years ago, my dad chose to use Washington state’s Death with Dignity law (which allows physician aid in dying) when cancer exploded throughout his body. The law is complex and difficult to access in our corner of the state, so I decided to make sure no family had to go through what we did. I’ve established a volunteer group, worked with our local hospital to change its policy, brought pharmacists and doctors on board, and am working on a statewide advocacy program. I never believed that thing about ‘one person can make a difference’ until I did it myself! Thank God for that liberal arts education—I’ve used every inch of it during this process.” I, John Bowe, went on my first Alumni College Abroad trip in March, to Iceland. It’s a fabulous country. By coincidence, Ethan Landis ’84 was on it, too. 1985 Tim Kinnel kinnel@swarthmore.warpmail.net Maria Tikoff Vargas maria@chrisandmaria.com It’s time for the next installment of As the Swattie Turns. However, this will be more YouTube-seriesepisode length, since only a few of you were able to escape the Schwarzschild radius of the Mueller report. (Sorry, it’s hard to stay topical with a three-month lead time.) On with the show! Lourdes Rosado is “delighted to announce that I have joined the New York Civil Liberties Union as its inaugural program director.” Lourdes oversees the legal, policy, and field-organizing departments, the Education Policy Center, and chapters and regional offices. “I went back to school to switch careers,” writes Lucy Harrington, “from nonprofit fundraising to teaching.” In her second year teaching English language arts at Middle School 131 in Chinatown, NYC, Lucy says, “I’ve never worked harder in any job, but I’m beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel.” Writes David Landes: “My first year of retirement has been a joy and very interesting. In addition to 100 books, predominantly science fiction/fantasy, my wife and I kicked off ‘Museum Tuesdays.’ … It turns out that if you are not dragging kids—or having them drag you—you can spend a lot of time in a museum.” David was also selected for grand jury duty, three days a month for a year. “I enjoyed it greatly and learned an awful lot. For example, about 1 in 10,000 hundred-dollar bills is counterfeit.” David notes that sister Jordan was named curator of the Friends Historical Library. A Haverford graduate, Jordan “will now have to stop teasing me about Swat.” Sue Levin hosted a terrific winter extern. “Alaina Chen ’21 was with us for a week shadowing me at work and living with our family. She was absolutely lovely, and we spent a lot of time getting caught up on how things used to be and how they are now. One thing hasn’t changed, and that’s Willets, where she lives now and I lived freshman and sophomore year with Gloria Thomas and Ellen Meeks. I walked through the Class of ’85 yearbook with her (haven’t looked at it in decades) and dredged up a lot of memories. It was a bit shocking how long ago it all seems!” Patrik Williams and wife Melissa were slightly agog at sending off daughter Lauren—seemingly just yesterday boarding the bus for kindergarten—for her freshman year at the University of Delaware. Patrik became superintendent of the Smyrna (Del.) School District in 2017, but this is his 34th year(!) of public education. Finally, Babak Etemad ruminates on nearly 11 years since returning to Philadelphia from New Orleans. “Winter’s a bear. [ed. Maybe you should host a Swarthmore extern!] Can’t wait for spring. Waiting for Chanticleer, Scott Arboretum, and other regional gardens to help put the cold and gray behind us.” ALUMNI COUNCIL NEWS Greetings from your Alumni Council! Our members swarmed onto campus in March and had a terrific time meeting with students and hosting several events, including: • Our annual Dress for Success professional clothing giveaway, with personalized tape measures and measurement cards. • A senior class cocktail party, where we welcomed our newest alums to the fold and announced a matching gift challenge to the graduating class. Alumni Council members had 100% participation this year to match this gift! • A multigenerational—and very competitive—Trivia Night, which included many students and alums and cool prizes. This will probably become an annual event. We are currently seeking nominations for new Alumni Council members. Email acpresident@swarthmore.edu to nominate a peer or yourself, or with any questions about Alumni Council. Students joined Alumni Council members this March at the annual Dress for Success clothing giveaway. We hope to have seen many of you at Alumni Weekend. We’ll be back on campus in October for Garnet Weekend to host our annual Career Networking Dinner with Alumni Council members, current students, and members of other volunteer groups— always a fun, diverse, and inclusive evening! alumni@swarthmore.edu 60 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 Fortunately, as you read this, that will have happened. That’s it for this round. Don’t forget to write! not only important for students to believe in their ability to create, it is important that they believe that they can create it here in Africa— in Accra, in Lagos, in Nairobi, all across the continent.” 1989 1991 Martha Easton measton@elmira.edu Kathy Stevens stevkath@gmail.com There’s not much to report, although I’m sure many of us connected at the reunion. Hope to have seen you there! Stephanie Gonzalez Ferrandez writes: “Life is crazy hectic at 50+ with three jobs! First, I opened a law practice in 2014 and have been helping lots of teens with family law needs for their immigration cases. Second, after the presidential election, I was compelled to do something. So in 2017, I ran for and was elected to my local school board, where I deal with an encroaching charter, rising special-ed costs and dwindling funding. And third, my favorite, I’m enjoying life with my two kids and husband! Maybe 60+ will be quieter.” Patrick Awuah wrote an interesting, reflective Quartz piece on education—for and by Africans—and his own experiences (bit.ly/AwuahQuartz). “The work we do as educators is about making the world a more hopeful place for the generations that come after us,” he writes. “We’re in the hope business. Our job is to help the next generation look beyond present challenges to a brighter future, and equip them with the skills to create it. But it is FOLLOW US! Facebook and Instagram: @SwarthmoreBulletin #SwatBulletin Nick Jesdanun me@anick.org This is the year many of us turn 50. Rather than dwell on the past—all the opportunities we might have missed, the bad decisions we might have made, the hopes and dreams left unfulfilled—let’s look forward instead … to the next generation. Starting with Cammy Voss and Denis Murphy ’89: Daughter Eliza ’23 got into Swarthmore through early decision, so she’ll join brother Declan Murphy ’21 this fall. Declan hopes to major in biology and environmental studies. Brett Summers and David Anthony’s eldest child, Willa, is a freshman at Earlham College in Indiana. Brett describes the small Quaker school as “a sort of Midwestern sister of Swarthmore.” She’s immersed in college life and already giving admissions tours. High school sophomore Jasper enjoys working in the ceramics studio and is an accomplished graffiti artist and shoe refurbisher, according to Brett. Oh, and he’s now driving himself to school, which Dave says “has aged us a bit.” Hazel, a fifth-grader, loves gymnastics and the piano. Brett teaches high school English to an underserved population in Providence, R.I. Alex and Dawn Rheingans McDonnell have just 10th-grader Kieran left at home. Grace is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis; the triplets are all first-years—Alex and Rose at Northeastern, and Amelia at Bryn Mawr. Alex, who was on Swarthmore’s men’s basketball team with Dave, says he was thrilled to follow the team as it reached the Division III championship game. (Sadly, Swarthmore lost.) Dave and Brett got to see the team play in Amherst, Mass., during the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds. Fran Altvater is taking a break from her job as associate dean for student academic services at the University of Hartford’s Hillyer College. She’ll be on sabbatical this fall, writing a book exploring the history of Christianity through art made for everyday worshippers— no Michelangelos! Husband Ed Bernstein works in the university library and played the ghost of John Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet for the community theater. Their elder child is headed to college. Where? All she had decided as of this writing was, “Not where you teach, Mama.” Laurel Hester moved on from teaching and is now assistant provost at Keuka College in upstate New York. Her job description has some 30 bullet points, including “assist colleagues in defining the question they are trying to answer and then assist in interpreting results.” Though she finds the job overwhelming, she’s learning a lot and supporting an institution she cares about. Jim Ellis is finishing a yearlong stint as executive assistant to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. Jim’s next gig is as a professor at National Defense University, which Jim points out is conveniently across the street from the new D.C. United stadium. Sadly, Jed Bell’s partner of 20 years, writer Wickie Stamps, has died. Jed continues film studies at San Francisco State University. A short film he and Wickie made together, Dropping Penny, has screened in the U.S., Australia, and Sweden and is on the festival circuit. Dan Gura is director of business development at AlgometRx, a medical device startup spun off from Children’s National Medical Center in D.C. The technology seeks to measure pain, just like heart rate or blood pressure. It makes measurements by tracking how pupils react, so that doctors don’t have to rely on patients’ subjective descriptions and can figure out what drug might work best. It’s in clinical trials, with a goal of getting devices to health care providers by early 2021. Dan got involved after a health care investor contacted him. He describes the experience as “amazing and blessed.” Many of you already know about my addiction to running. Now I have a new one: movies (bit.ly/ NickFilmFan). I saw 200 movies in theaters last year (201 if you count watching the Mamma Mia sequel twice). And I’ve seen 90 this year through the end of March. That’s meant I had to cut back my running to 3,000 miles last year. Sigh. It’s probably all my 50-year-old body can take anyway. Sigh. 1995 Sally Chin sallypchin@gmail.com Erik Thoen erik_thoen@alum.swarthmore.edu Greetings from N.Y.! Some news from classmates across the U.S.: Suzanna Bräuer was promoted to full professor of biology at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. The title officially conferred on July 1. Beth Bruch is mourning the loss of her beloved companion of 19 years, her fluffy, smart, and talented cat, Yo-Yo, aleha hashalom, who transitioned in January. Beth enjoys being a high school librarian and also rabble-rousing with Jewish Voice for Peace–Triangle NC chapter, the Demilitarize: Durham2Palestine campaign, and the Movement to End Racism and Islamophobia. Matt Cohen is now a full professor at the University of Florida and has spent the past year raising kids, building a house, and taking a sabbatical to work in Antarctica and (soon) Spain and France. Sampriti Ganguli joined Swarthmore’s Alumni Council and has had a wonderful time getting SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 61 class notes reacquainted with the College and its curriculum in motion, and hosting a trivia night with freshmen. They bonded over a mutual love of ABBA (for her, the band; for them, the movie). During free time, she helps register new voters and was appointed an officer of election in her Arlington, Va., precinct. She looks forward to our 25th Reunion and is looking for a few good folks to be on the Reunion Committee. Hunter Gehlbach is swapping coasts (again)—this time trading Santa Barbara, Calif., for Baltimore, where he will be vice dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education (and will have much easier access to the 25th Reunion). He encourages any and all to drop him a line next time they are in Charm City. Carolyn Harp writes: “After 13 years home with the kids and lots of volunteering, I have returned to the paid working world. I am our school district’s newest occupational therapist and am so happy to have this position! Plus, having the same vacations as my kids is a huge benefit.” Caitlin Killian teaches sociology at Drew University and was very happy to see fellow sociologists from Swarthmore last summer at the dinner of the American Sociological Association meeting in Philly. An article she coauthored, “Beyond Color-Blind and Color-Conscious: Approaches to Racial Socialization Among Parents of Transracially Adopted Children,” was published in the journal Family Relations. Over spring break, Caitlin went to Turkey as a U.N. consultant on gender mainstreaming in livelihood programming for Syrian refugees. A colleague from Drew did interviews in Jordan and Lebanon, and they are working on their report about the response in the three primary host countries. Caitlin has a son graduating from high school, a son in seventh grade, a stepson in fourth grade, and a stepdaughter in second grade. And this from Youngjae Lee on Brett Kavanaugh and the future of the Supreme Court: bit.ly/Youngjae Gene Sonn hosted another extern at his WHYY office in January and 62 Swarthmore College Bulletin / early March. He and his family returned to campus to cheer on the men’s basketball team in its epic trouncing of MIT in the NCAA Tournament. In April, Gene was back on campus to join a panel of Swattie journalists talking about the present and future of local news, which “was an opportunity for me to brag a bit about a collaborative journalism project in our area. It’s called Resolve Philadelphia, doing solutionsoriented journalism (where we look for ways to fix problems, not just depress everyone with bad news). Our current project, brokeinphilly. org, just got a shout-out from the folks who put out the Pulitzer Prize (though not to be confused with actually winning that prestigious award): bit.ly/NewsSurvival.” Gene adds that he is now super busy, as sons Sam, 8, and Eli, 11, are doing Little League for the first time. As for me, Sally Chin, last year I won the Hamilton lottery and got to see the musical on Broadway from the front row for only $10. It was amazing—and a year on, I am still playing the lottery to try to see it again. I highly recommend the lottery app! I also highly recommend getting in touch with Sampriti to plan for our 25th Reunion! 1997 Lauren Jacobi laurenjacobi@hotmail.com Justin Herring and his wife have lived in Harlem for five years with their son, almost 3. He loves raising a child in the city but finds it’s very different from where he grew up—in rural Alaska! Justin works in Newark, N.J., as a federal prosecutor and chief of the Cybercrimes Unit. He’s fortunate enough to see some Swatties regularly, including Phil Spector, Joseph Khan, Joseph Goodman, Damon Taaffe ’99, and Gene Yoshida ’98. And, of course, his sister, Stephanie Herring ’99! Lena Loewenthal Lewis SUMMER 2019 GARNET SNAPSHOT Ben Schall ’97, A.J. Shanley ’97, Aaron Bond ’97, and Jeff Greeson ’97 cheered on the Garnet men’s basketball team in March during their Final Four game against Christopher Newport University in Fort Wayne, Ind. completed a master of public policy at the University of Virginia and now works on energy and climate policy for the Nature Conservancy Virginia Chapter. She and husband Dave Lewis live in Charlottesville, Va., with sons River, 12, and Zeke, 9. Katie Jozwicki Morgan has been acting in local stage plays and comedy shows, covering themes ranging from the celebration of famous African-Americans to ’80s pop culture. She lives in Houston with her husband and son, 5. Johanna Peters-Burton Greeson reports that a healthy contingent of ’97ers headed to Fort Wayne, Ind., in March to cheer on the Swat men’s basketball team in their Division III Final Four appearance against Christopher Newport University. The team subsequently lost to the University of Wisconsin– Oshkosh, but not for a “valiant and admirable effort.” Those present were Johanna and husband Jeff Greeson, Aaron Bond, Eric and Kate Dempsey Walton ’95, David Sacker, Ben Schall, and A.J. Shanley. On a related note, Eric reports that he and Kate are in their 12th year in Ann Arbor, Mich., and notes how “incredible it was to be able to make it down to watch the Swat men’s basketball team. … The fact that so many from the administration came to show their support seems to indicate that the school truly turned a corner regarding appreciating athletics.” After almost 12 years in the Social Security Administration’s Office of the General Counsel, Uri Ko Yoo joined the Government Accountability Office’s Procurement Law group. She lives in Silver Spring, Md., with her husband and two boys. Martin Carrillo is proud to be finishing two years of designing event and installation sound for L.A.’s Broad Museum. In April, he was on the mix team that brought Karen O and Danger Mouse’s new collaborative work to the Marciano Art Foundation for seven sold-out surround-sound, multisensory presentations. Also, daughter Sonia Margot won the Glendale District Spelling Bee. Briana Maley finally dusted off her longtime dream of writing fiction. She’s had a few short stories published so far and was named the 2019 winner of Lilith Magazine’s annual fiction contest. Her winning story was to be published in their spring issue. Kasia Anderson lives in SoCal, is executive editor of Truthdig, and teaches journalism M.S. students at USC, where she received a communication Ph.D. last year. She looks forward to seeing a couple of Swatties at her wedding to Boris Trifunovic this October. Hannah and Robin Mandel welcomed baby Iris Briggs Mandel in early February. She joins brother Arlo, born in September 2016. Last November, Robin had a solo show of sculpture and video installations at Swat’s List Gallery and got to see professors Randy Exon, Brian Meunier, Syd Carpenter, and Connie Hungerford. Marianne Yeung works at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and is a clinical assistant professor at Stanford. She recently took on a new role as associate chief of staff for specialty and hospital-based services, in which she oversees daily operations of the emergency department, inpatient areas, and ICUs. She and her family— including three spirited kids—live in the Santa Cruz Mountains with their 26 chickens! She hopes to get together with Kate Harrod-Kim again soon. Abby Swingen was appointed associate vice president for research at Texas Tech University, where she is an associate professor in the history department. In her new position, she will manage Texas Tech’s internal funding programs and research awards, as well as provide outreach from the Office of Research & Innovation to humanities disciplines on campus. Our condolences to the family of Bryan Berg, who died Jan. 25, 2018. Bryan was living in Florida at the time of his passing. 1999 Melissa Morrell melrel99@hotmail.com Alex Robinson, an assistant professor in USC’s Landscape Architecture and Urbanism graduate program and a principal of the Office of Outdoor Research, had his book The Spoils of Dust: Reinventing the Lake that Made Los Angeles (pg. 7) reviewed in November’s issue of Nature. Swarthmore professor Daniel Laurison was interviewed for the February issue of The Atlantic about his recent book The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to Be Privileged. Erin Denney-Koelsch was promoted to associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center. A palliative doctor for all ages, Erin loves teaching and researching in perinatal palliative care (how to best care for the sickest of babies). By summer, she will have completed designing, editing, partly writing, and publishing the first-ever book on the subject! She and husband Matt are raising two amazing kids, an organic garden, and a flock of happy chickens. Play and opera director Michal Zadara and wife Barbara Wysocka, an actress and director, have three kids and work in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. “We will both be Cornell visiting professors at Swarthmore next school year, teaching theater and multimedia performance and Greek tragedy.” Deborah Stein and husband Andy Horwitz welcomed son Jacob Arthur in December. “We’re over the moon and deliriously sleep-deprived, and can’t wait to show Jacob around Swarthmore someday.” Chloe Dowley is completing her third year working in the kindergarten at Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport, Maine, where she fills her day with outdoor work, cooking, and songs. She was excited to cut the rug with you at our reunion in June. In the meantime, she is soaking up momtime with her rapidly growing sons and trying to live the cliché “Life begins at 40.” Tobie Barton ended her 20-year acting hiatus and excitedly joined the cast of a local production of the musical Fun Home, as the understudy for Alison and Helen. Daughters Zoa and Polly spend most of their time on stage, too, and her husband tolerates a lot of singing and dancing around the house. Tobie works for the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness and was looking forward to taking her kayak up to nearby Lake Tahoe when the snow melted. Roger Bock was excited to speak about his work to Rich Wicentowski’s Natural Language Processing class and finds it fascinating that computer science has grown from something you couldn’t major in to one of the biggest departments at Swat. He loved that the students (in true Swattie fashion) asked deep questions about things like ethics in AI, and he couldn’t wait to see familiar faces at the reunion. Vanessa Carter has “officially entered the sandwich generation, taking care of my parents living with Alzheimer’s and my beautiful baby Westley, who joined us Jan. 29. They all teach me so much every day.” In anticipation of his birth, many a Swattie gathered last fall: Leena Kansal, Tim Bragg, Mac Funk, Emily Hanawalt, Hallie Taylor ’02, Meredith Weems ’00, Richard Vezina, and Ilmi Granoff came from near and far with partners and kiddos for a heartwarming mini reunion. “I won’t be back for our 20th, but please reach out if you’re in the Bay Area. Parental leave is lovely!” Stacey Bearden quit her job last September to stay home with son Glen. “We’re going to the library, the local space and science museum, and playgrounds together, plus having fun at home with treasure hunts and tickle fights. It’s not all fun and games: I’ve also gotten him un-addicted to YouTube videos, and got him picking up after himself and helping with chores (a little bit). I plan to stay home at least until he starts kindergarten in September. My spouse is doing repairs and other work on our house, so this means we are a no-income family for now. Worth it, though—I’m glad I was focused on saving while working.” This past year, I, Melissa Morrell, have been busy volunteering at my daughter’s school as a math and reading tutor and at a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness in Seattle. I’ve also been traveling all over the dirt roads of the West. I keep finding myself in Death Valley, the Mojave, and, most recently, the AnzaBorrego Desert. Besides being warm there when it is cold and raining (or snowing!) in Seattle, the majesty of the desert—the foliage and geology especially—keeps drawing me back. Tragically, Reuben Canada died April 24 after a battle with mental illness. Rebecca Louie wrote this touching tribute: “Reuben was one of the most vibrant, intelligent, intuitive, and charismatic human beings I have ever met. He has been a rock, a sounding board, an inspiration, and too, too much fun these last few years since we reconnected after college. All of the colors were brighter when he was in a room, and he could power a city with the light in his smile. (We were once pulled over for speeding in his new fancy convertible, and he somehow flashed those pearly whites and charmed the pants off the cop and walked away with no ticket and a new Jin+Ja customer. Classic!) I love you, Ru, and am so grateful for the times (and FaceTimes!) we’ve had. Your friendship was a gift that changed my life. I’m devastated you’re gone, but I hope you are at peace and that your spirit soars to the heights and happiness your soul was made for. Thank you for everything.” 2001 Claudia Zambra claudiazambra@gmail.com CJ Riley grew up an only child but recently discovered 11 half siblings with whom he shares a donor father. Bonnie French is a sociology professor at Caldwell University in New Jersey and at Essex County Correctional Facility, and she recently published her first book. She is so grateful for Swarthmore friends and experiences that started her on this path! Darren Wood welcomed son Owen Harcourt Wood on Oct. 4. At 6 months, he’s doing great and is a delight to his terrifically helpful and caring big brother and sister. Ilya Leskov finally finished his medical training and started his retinal surgery practice as an assistant professor of ophthalmology at SUNY Downstate SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 63 class notes ALUMNI PROFILE 64 Swarthmore College Bulletin / his office and for his support of youth-focused refugee educational programs, with a particular interest in anti-bullying initiatives. 2003 Robin Smith Petruzielo robinleslie@alum.swarthmore.edu Jeremy Schifeling joined the full-time coaching world, helping people break into tech jobs at breakinto.tech. Jeremy recently saw Kai Xu in the Bay Area and is super envious of his jet-setting, ski-the-world lifestyle. Eric Schober Maya teaches tenthgrade geometry at the Columbus School in Medellín, Colombia, where he enjoys living closer to his parents and brother. John Fort is delighted to teach geology and honors chemistry at the historic Chaffey High School in Southern California. Daughter Amelie is starting to look at colleges. John enjoyed meeting up with Kate Hurster and her daughter last fall. Davita Burkhead-Weiner is a child, adolescent, and young adult psychiatrist in Ann Arbor, Mich. She raced in the Aquabike World Championship in Spain after a great experience last September racing in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in South Africa. Laurel Eckhouse started a faculty job at the University of Denver. Amelia Hoover Green’s book The Commander’s Dilemma was published, and she has almost completed the tenure process at Drexel. Amelia and husband Jarrod still sing with PhilHarmonia, the choir they helped found several years ago. They live in West Philly with son Henry, 3, housemate Angelo, and three dogs. William Tran appeared on the May 31 episode of Jeopardy! Laura Zager and husband Kieran are in Portland, Ore., raising their daughter, age 4. Kieran has a guitar-making business (Downes Guitars), and Laura is a patent lawyer. SUMMER 2019 Paul Wulfsberg is in D.C. until September learning French before starting his next State Department job as spokesperson of the U.S. Embassy in Algeria. Wife Rana and children Reema and Zade live in Boston but join him during the summers. After three years as data librarian, David Conners Isaak began a new role as Reed College Library’s director of collection services. Gabriel Hankins celebrated the birth of Stengrim Virgil, who turned 1 in April. David January and his children have been making lots of fun dishes and desserts, including naan, cream puffs, chicken tikka masala, sticky toffee pudding, and coconut shrimp. He’s learned that his 9-year-old makes better gnocchi than he does! Tim Applebee became a registered architect in Vermont and Connecticut. He works on independent education, public, and higher education projects around the country, and he adjuncts in the University of Hartford’s master of architecture program. Krista Marshall Cooke and husband Cleve welcomed her father as the latest addition to their home. He joins their three adorably rambunctious kids (ages 9 months, 4, and 6), a rabbit-hunting hairy dog, home hospice caregivers, and a motley crew of Sunday visitors. Patty Park is in her second year as an assistant professor of creative writing in American University’s MFA program. She is working on her second novel, EL CHINO, about a Korean Argentine boy who falls in love with jazz during the Dirty War. Todd Gillette and wife Laura are returning to the D.C. area, where Todd looks forward to taking on a new position in machine learning. The couple visited Grand Bahama in January, where Todd won the tie-breaking round of a resort dance-off and took home the top limbo prize. Todd has a side project, Democracy onAir, building an open-access knowledge network and set of university chapters to promote democratic engagement at the local and state levels. They provide a platform for engaging residents, candidates, and elected officials, starting with Virginia onAir at va.onair.cc. Feedback and technical/organizational help welcome! Robin Smith Petruzielo and husband Frank welcomed son Emory in November. Emory enjoys playing with his cousin Cameron Weisel, son of Robin’s sister Hillary Smith, who recently started as assistant professor of physics at Swarthmore. 2005 Jessica Zagory jazagory@alum.swarthmore.edu Books and babies were the theme for these class notes. Raghu Karnad’s book, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (pg. 7), received a Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction from Yale University’s Beinecke library. The committee called it “an epic of un-forgetting” that combines “forensic archival research with imaginative fire.” Raghu will be at Yale in late September for a festival where he will collect the prize, which includes a $165,000 grant, and would love to catch up with any ’05ers there. In October, Elena Cuffari and George Fourlas, and son Niketas, welcomed Felix Ioannis to the family. Somewhere around the same time (a bit overshadowed by Felix’s delightful presence!), Elena’s co-authored book Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity Between Life and Language came out from MIT Press. She enjoyed a lessproductive but no-less-busy spring with these new creations. Matt Wallaert writes: “New book, Start at the End, is up on Amazon for preorder and comes out June 13 from Penguin. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the new Computer Science Endowment to support attendance of underrepresented students at professional events to promote diversity in the field. Other than that, all the usual troublemaking JAMILAH KING Medical Center in Brooklyn. He would love to reconnect with area Swatties! Claire Feldman-Riordan Robbins and research collaborator Rosemary Perez (Iowa State) were awarded a Spencer Foundation grant to study the role of graduate colleges in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion at public universities. Claire also received the Diamond Honoree award from ACPA–College Student Educators International for her contributions to student affairs practice and higher education research. Aryani Manring is in Yangon, Myanmar, with her spouse, Scott, and two kids. She is the U.S. Embassy spokesperson, while Scott heads up the Embassy’s political unit. They welcome visitors before their assignment ends in 2021. Kate Fama and Alexander Tzschentke welcomed daughter Hannah Margaret Fama on Jan 21. Hannah enjoys giggling, long spring walks, and Skyping with baby Tamar (Sari Altschuler and husband Chris’s new addition). On Jan. 29, Xanthi Carras and husband Dan welcomed Ryan Erick Hsu. Kiara, 5, loves her big-sister role. Ken Kim stays busy in the South, working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as an associate professor in gynecologic oncology and director of multispecialty robotic surgical education and training. Most recently, Ken was appointed the national scientific program chair for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology. His 6-year-old twins keep him even busier, though! Rich Aleong moved from Evanston, Ill., back to Chicago, settling on a new home in Bucktown, with the youngest having graduated a semester early from high school. Rich still works at Comcast, helping to improve internet and home security product reliability. Jared Solomon, a lawyer and PA state representative from Northeast Philly, received a Golden Door Award for advocacy from HIAS Pennsylvania. Among other things, Jared was recognized for the hiring of immigrants in “Nearly every interaction at my school is an opportunity to build cross-cultural understanding,” says Rita Kamani-Renedo ’08, a teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. LESSONS IN LANGUAGE She’s building community in the classroom by Kate Campbell NOT TOO MUCH SURPRISES Rita Kamani-Renedo ’08. After eight years of working with New York City teenagers, the high school humanities teacher still relishes every opportunity to watch her students uncover new ways of seeing themselves or one another. On any given day, she interacts with 88 young people at International High School at Prospect Heights, each with a range of educational experiences. The students come from more than 10 countries and speak more than 15 languages. The needs of each student vary, says Kamani-Renedo, who teaches English language arts and English as a new language at the Brooklyn public high school, which serves newcomer immigrant and refugee youths. “My students trust that I’m there to help them reach their fullest potential, and I trust that they will be willing to try whatever I’ve cooked up for them tomorrow, even if today didn’t go as planned.” The humanities are critically important, Kamani-Renedo says, because they reveal the world in its deepest complexity. “They give us the language and space to understand ourselves, and encourage us to see and think about the world from a different perspective,” she says. “I’m lucky that in my time as a humanities teacher, I haven’t felt undervalued. The schools and organizations that I’ve worked in have been deeply invested in helping young people think critically about the world around them and in making connections between our past, present, and futures.” It’s rewarding work, she says, but “every day brings reminders of the systemic realities that limit our ability to meet our students’ needs, and of the global conditions that have led to the trauma and violence that pushed many of our students out of their homelands and into our schools.” Despite that reality, Kamani-Renedo strives to build more opportunities for the moments when students “can feel successful, feel seen, or feel like what they are learning in school is relevant to their lives.” As a language arts teacher, she uses poetry and stories as “windows” and “mirrors” for her students to see themselves reflected in what they are learning. Her career was inspired by classes in Swarthmore’s Educational Studies Department. “Those courses helped me see very clearly the connections between education and justice, between schooling and social stratification, between critical pedagogy and critical thinking,” she says. Kamani-Renedo knew she wanted to work in education, particularly with multilingual students. She lived in Chile for a year and then moved to New York for graduate school. She enjoyed working in an educational nonprofit that focused on human rights education and youth leadership development­—but something was missing. “I felt called to the classroom and wanted to be more stably rooted in a school community,” she says. “It took some time to land where I am now, but I am grateful to have found my school.” At Swarthmore, Kamani-Renedo was surrounded by people who were motivated by a vision for social justice and a critical understanding of how identities shape experience. Those relationships continue to inform her teaching and shape her life. “My Swarthmore community has mentored me, cheered me on, and supported me through the ups and downs,” she says. “Many of my closest friends are Swatties, and without the guidance of those people throughout these years, I am not sure I would still be teaching today.” SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 65 class notes applies: Chief behavioral officer at Clover Health; trying to get more men involved in gender equity; Bear is 3 and thus proving he can be more stubborn than me.” Daren and Emily Szydlowski Tedeschi welcomed second son Nathan last autumn and moved to Princeton Junction, N.J. Jawaad Hussain and his wife welcomed child No. 3, Aaliyah Mehvish Hussain. Lulu Miller is overjoyed to welcome son Jude into the family. He was born in September 2018 and is now a happy, healthy, smiling, and laughing bundle of joy. After almost a decade in Charlottesville, Va., and D.C., Lulu is moving to Chicago in June with her family. She finished writing a book, Why Fish Don’t Exist (Simon & Schuster, 2020), a nonfiction adventure story about when the desire to order the world turns to madness, and will file NPR stories remotely from Chi-town. Andrew ’06 and Samantha Brody Terker live in Nashville, Tenn., with sons Brody Eli, 5, Judah Hendrix, 3, and Ari Gabriel, 6 months. Andy is finishing a residency in Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s physician-scientist training program and is excited to get back to kidney physiology research. Sam enjoys working as a data scientist at Digital Reasoning. Jesse Young is in NYC full time but occasionally returns to Philly to hang out with sister Talia Young ’01 and nephew Max, 2. Jesse also sometimes sees Sam Breckenridge, and they go to Ikea together. Julie Lindenberg works in an alternative-to-incarceration program in the Bronx, and provides mental health and substance-use treatment and court advocacy for young adults in the criminal justice system. Philly resident Keerthi Potluri became an assistant professor in the University of Delaware’s English department, following work at the New Jersey ACLU and completion of a Ph.D. at UC–Berkeley. Chelsea Ferrell started a new job as assistant director of Harvard’s South Asia Institute. She would love to meet up with any Bostonarea Swatties! Viva Horowitz is finishing her third year as an 66 Swarthmore College Bulletin / assistant professor of physics at Hamilton College. Last summer, she conducted research at the University of Oregon, and the work was published in the journal Nano Letters. Viva plans to return to Eugene during her 2019–20 sabbatical year. Kira Alvarez lives in Berlin and works in the music industry. She also teaches at Freie Universität Berlin and holds seminars in former German concentration camps. Arthur Chalmers has had a pretty wild year: bought a house, went back to the Bay Area for an annual Thanksgiving feast with David Mister ’04, celebrated a year in psychiatry with his first international ski trip to Canada, and started a dog-walking and boarding business. “For the most part, I get along with the dogs much better then my patients, but I have a boarder here who might disagree. I just spent 30 minutes bribing this angry floof with cheese, and he still won’t let me put a leash on him. I look forward to cleaning his urine tomorrow morning (a task I usually get to delegate at work!).” Emiliano and Kelly O’Neil Rodriguez are settled in South Philly. Kelly loves working as a clinical psychologist in CHOP’s GI unit. Emiliano organizes low-wage food-service and hotel workers with UNITE HERE, and he’s become more involved in the local Democratic Party. The pair welcomed a new addition on March 7, Harlan O’Neil Rodriguez, who “is keeping us all good and tired, but he’s wonderful.” Harlan joins older brother Knox, 4. Emiliano also graciously agreed to cover Class Notes responsibilities for the next couple of columns, so please send him your news: erodrig1@gmail.com. Jorge Aguilar and Eugene Palatulan must not be doing much in their pediatric (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) and physical medicine and rehab (Columbia/Cornell) residencies, respectively. Instead of sending updates on being published (Jorge) or being recognized as resident of the month (Eugene), they are clearly too busy planning SUMMER 2019 next summer’s 15th Reunion. We can’t wait to see you all! 2007 Kristin Leitzel Hoy kleitzel@gmail.com Nathaniel Peters and wife Jane delightedly welcomed son John Henry Landon, born 8 pounds 10 ounces on Nov. 25. John is a happy, energetic, vocal little man. Nathaniel runs the Morningside Institute, which hosts lectures, conferences, seminars, and cultural outings for students and professors in NYC on topics in philosophy, religion, and the liberal arts. Jane is remotely finishing a Ph.D. from Marquette. Catherine Healy and Heather Canapary welcomed baby Mary Clare Canapary Healy in October. In the winter, they moved back to hometown Chicago, where Catherine was called as rector of the Church of St. Paul & the Redeemer in Hyde Park. Miriam Newman and Alex George ’09 welcomed baby Avi George Newman in June 2018. They live near Boston, where Miriam is an editor (recently promoted!) at Candlewick Press. Sonya Reynolds got married and took a new position as senior data and technology strategist at The Movement Cooperative. Duncan Gromko has lived in Freiburg, Germany, since 2016 with partner Aurora Munoz ’10. He uses his strategic location to regularly attend European soccer matches with former Garnet teammate Colton Bangs. In between, he works on agricultural sustainability projects in several countries, especially Kenya, Ethiopia, Laos, and Paraguay. Germany has been great, but Duncan and Aurora plan to move back to the USA in August. Philly is high on Duncan’s list of cities, so he’d love to hear from any Swatties still there. Juliet Braslow works on sustainable development with the United Nations in Santiago, Chile, and Carlos Villafuerte ’08 on his innovative training company, Cultum Vita. They spend days chasing after, traveling with, and laughing with growing baby Orion. Swattie visitors welcome! Caleb Ward lives in Berlin with partner Michele and daughter Béla, 2. He’s writing a philosophy dissertation on sexual consent, getting pretty good at German (thanks to the input of eight flatmates), and learning a lot about toddler communication norms. Sherelle Harmon received a clinical psychology Ph.D. from Florida State University. Kendra McDow, Ja’Dell Davis ’06, and Jaky Joseph ’06 attended the graduation. Sherelle is now a postdoctoral research fellow in Harvard’s psychology department. In July, Ben Thuronyi starts as an assistant professor of chemistry at Williams College, where he’s excited to teach organic chemistry and synthetic biology. With his research group, he hopes to teach a very fast-growing bacterium new tricks, like manufacturing biodegradable plastic. He and Katie Sauvain ’09 are eager for country life and access to everything the Berkshires offer. Longtime readers, first-time writers Ian Adelstein and Elizabeth Richey welcomed son Maxwell this year. They live in the East Rock section of New Haven, Conn., and work for Yale, where Ian teaches mathematics and Elizabeth practices general internal medicine. Alysia Chevalier lives the good life in the Bay Area. She has her dream job doing HR for Google and, between travels, is putting the finishing touches on the decor of her first home. 2009 Melanie Spaulding maspauld1@gmail.com Todd Friedman opened a law practice last summer. He focuses on plaintiff’s work, primarily representing families bringing wrongful-death claims against tobacco companies, investors who lost money in cryptocurrency scams, and businesses facing commercial litigation issues. In free time, he tells anyone who will listen that they should open a business and stop working for other people. Martha Marrazza works on refugee issues at the State Department, focusing on the Horn of Africa. She loves running into other State Department Swatties, including Sandra Clark ’78, Juan Martinez ’91, JeeYoung Oh ’08, and Kristin Caspar. She also got married on Sept. 29 to Sloan Holzman with numerous Swatties in attendance, including aunt Annette DiMedio ’75, Madeleine Case, Josh Cohen, Loretta Gary, Vivaan Nehru, Dan Perelstein, Sara Nawaz ’11, and Emily Bryant ’12. Charles Decker was elected to the New Haven (Conn.) Board of Alders (what most cities call City Council) in November 2017, representing Ward 9. This January, he introduced a substitute amendment that passed unanimously, establishing a Civilian Review Board to provide oversight of the New Haven Police Department. Jonathan Leung’s first (and possibly last) book, Standing Watch: American Submarine Veterans Remember the Cold War Era, was released in April, a decade after its turbulent birth in Trotter Hall. In his unrelated day/night job, Jonathan enjoys the challenge of ensuring that the hundreds of airplanes traversing the Hawaiian skies don’t collide with one another. Gerrit Straughter moved to Oakland, Calif., and loves it! Sasha Shahidi has been building her portfolio as an independent contractor in travel and tour management, handling the program management and logistics of shortterm study abroad programs for university students from the U.S. and Australia. Some of the past year’s destinations included L.A., San Francisco, France, Belgium, Costa Rica, and Hong Kong. Sasha loves the work: managing tours on the ground, teaching students about sustainable travel and cultural sensitivity, and expanding worldviews. Each course is different—from global health to history, tropical biology to aviation—so she gets to learn a lot and meet people all over the world. Sasha also attended Lisa Cabral’s wedding in Northern California in October with Farah Hussain, Jess Pritchett, and Celeste Abou Negm Kafri. It was beautiful! Jeff and Virginia Tice McManus had their first baby! Anna McManus was born at midnight Jan. 6; she has already applied early-early decision to Swarthmore. Reina Chano Murray switched jobs in November and is now the geospatial data curator and applications administrator at Johns Hopkins University, which is a long title for saying she manages the GIS systems and licenses, and also works on setting up a system to preserve and curate geospatial data so others can easily access it. “I’m based in the library, and I’m still not over the fact that students are now allowed to eat food of all kinds in here. Otherwise, it’s been nice to get back into an academic setting. School is certainly more pleasurable when you’re getting paid and you don’t have exams. My husband (Tom Murray ’07) and I are looking to move back into Baltimore and hope to connect with Swatties in the future.” Dylan Smith married Megan Fleming on Dec. 1 in Tarrytown, N.Y. They tore up the dance floor with Colin Aarons, Grant Yoshitsu, Jeff McManus, Raul Ordonez, Kevin Kooi, Nick Orton, Sam Faeder ’07, Evan Buxbaum ’06, and Noah Lang ’10. Dylan still works with the production company he founded with Evan and Noah, the Hexagon Studio. Check out thehexagonstudio.com! Jessica Hamilton is in the second year of a clinical psychology postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, studying social media, sleep, and adolescent suicide. She also married long-term FOLLOW US! Facebook and Instagram: @SwarthmoreBulletin #SwatBulletin partner Jordan Hoachlander last Labor Day weekend. Lots of ’09ers attended the “Camp Hamilander” wedding, including Kristin Caspar, Marissa Schaffer Sartori, Ami Belmont, Juliana Macri, Alexa Bensimhon, Jennie Park, Ben Young, David DeSimone, and Stelios Wilson. There was a lot of zip-lining, swimming, campfires, and dancing! Colin Aarons happily shares his first update since graduating. He informs us of the happenings of the inaugural season of the “Centennial Conference Hall of Famers” fantasy football league, made up of a Stranger Things-esque clique of Swatties (plenty of nerd, minus the telekinesis): Grant Yoshitsu, Tyler Wallace, Raul Ordonez, Kevin Kooi, Nick Orton, Sam Lacy ’11, Dylan Smith, JB Donnelly, and Noam Fliegelman ’08. “The stakes couldn’t have been higher this first season: Who wouldn’t want to walk away victorious as the firstever champion of the Centennial Conference HOF? And boy, the season didn’t disappoint. Tyler, using an apt team moniker (“First Place Team”), did indeed cruise to first place and remained atop the league for most of the regular season. Then the championship matchup was set, a veritable David vs. Goliath. Tyler, riding high from his impressive regular-season run, was the favorite to pummel the ever-scrappy, never-say-die Grant Yoshitsu. The battle raged, but at the end of the day, the heady strategy Grant employed propelled him to victory, thus enshrining him as our first—and, for the time being, only—champion.” Colin resides in Astoria, Queens, and is engaged to his lovely fiancée, Cathleen. I, Melanie, keep busy with my job at the New York State Department of Tax and Finance and volunteer position on the Schenectady County Environmental Advisory Council. I also became an aunt to baby Ronan in the fall! I went on a Scandinavian adventure in October, spending 10 days in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and biking the streets of Oslo. I plan to travel to San Francisco and Phoenix in April, and hope to have seen you all at reunion in May! 2011 Debbie Nguyen dnguyen616@gmail.com Ming Cai mcai223@gmail.com The Class of 2011 returns to Class Notes in full force. We hope you have not missed us too much while we’ve been doing cool things around the globe. Starting from far-flung places: Andrew Loh works with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in Abu Dhabi. Orion Sauter is in Annecy, France, searching for gravitational waves with the Virgo Collaboration. Serra Kornfilt works for a startup in Paris. Ben Van Zee is spending his fourth year of a history Ph.D. in Berlin conducting dissertation research. Shameika Black celebrated her 30th birthday in The Netherlands and Germany on her first solo trip. While there, she connected with a few older Swatties. Stateside, newlywed Jean Dahlquist is studying urban and regional planning and real estate at Portland State. Finn Black lives in the Bay Area, splitting time among health-justice activism, applying to nursing school, and doing homeless health outreach. Finn also got a medical geography master’s from San Francisco State, researching the intersection of gentrification and the HIV epidemic. Will Hopkins celebrated five years with Google. Bryan Baum, co-founder of the startup Blue Vision, now is part of Lyft’s team. Blaine O’Neill is completing a design media arts MFA at UCLA and is a DJ, graphic designer, and web developer. Kathryn Stockbower is completing a pediatric residency at Oregon Health & Science University and will start a pediatric sports medicine fellowship at the University of Colorado–Denver. Ernesto and Rachel Baumann Manzo welcomed a beautiful daughter to the world. Ernesto is finishing a molecular and cellular SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 67 class notes SPOTLIGHT ON … STEVE DEAN ’11 Steve Dean ’11, a dating consultant & matchmaker at Dateworking. com, is doing many cool things in the Big Apple, including hosting a live dating show, a podcast called Modern Connection, a biweekly speaker series (nycsalon.fun), and monthly gatherings for New Yorkers looking to make friends (hygge.nyc). “Creating genuine, heartfelt, lifelong connection is what I do. It’s what I live for,” says Steve. “My greatest joy comes when I can connect people so perfectly that their newfound interactions send positive ripples into the world.” + biology Ph.D. at the University of Arizona and will start a postdoctoral position at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Ore. Rachel finished a pediatrics residency and is completing a year as chief resident at the University of Arizona. She is excited to continue her pediatrician journey at a joint private practice in Oregon. Rebecca Woo is in the fourth year of a school psychology Ph.D. program at UT–Austin. Rebecca got married last year to a non-Swattie. She also takes singing lessons and plays the ukulele. Close friends Devon Novotnak and Sarah Lambert talk every day. Devon danced her way to Dallas to surprise Sarah on her 30th birthday, and Sarah ate squash rings and s’mores with Devon in Brooklyn for hers. They are planning a SoCal fall holiday for Disneyland and wineries. Fumiko Egawa will start a general surgery residency at Creighton University. Karen Shen is in year two of an internal medicine residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital at Washington University in St. Louis. Sara Lipshutz got an evolutionary biology Ph.D. and is a postdoctoral researcher at Indiana University. Sophia Uddin finished a neuroscience Ph.D. and is in year two of medical school at UChicago. She lives with Gabe Riccio and their cockatiel, Willow. In free time, Sophia plays music with Gabe and volunteers at a parrot shelter. Camilia Kamoun is finishing a pediatric residency in Cincinnati and heading to the Children’s 68 Swarthmore College Bulletin / CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu Hospital of Philadelphia for a pediatric endocrinology fellowship. Daniel Hwang studies cryptography and researches at Johns Hopkins. He also runs a startup that provides an onboarding platform for new cryptocurrency users. Sarah Bedolfe works for the international conservation NGO Oceana in the D.C. area. She is on the Science and Strategy team—and loves it. Emily Crawford is working on a documentary about gaming for mental health. After six years, Ambar La Forgia will graduate from Wharton’s Ph.D. program and join Columbia University as an assistant professor of health policy and management. Allison Goldberg is in the second year of a pediatrics residency at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philly. Alicia DeWitt and Josh Sokol got married in Scott Amphitheater last year. That same week, Josh also won the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for science writing. Caitlin Russell will start as a clinical genetic counselor at the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pa. Nell Bang-Jensen is a theater director in Philly. She finished an interim position as associate artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company and teaches directing at UArts. Joanie Jean was to graduate in May from Penn’s School of Dental Medicine and move to the University of Connecticut Health Center for a pediatric dentistry residency. Neena Cherayil will complete a neurology residency at SUMMER 2019 Penn this year and stay for a year of fellowship training. Alex Hollender lives in Brooklyn and is a designer and researcher for Wikipedia. Alex also collaborates with Yaeir Heber on the Field Semester program Yaeir is developing for Bay Area high schoolers. Eva Amessé manages learning and development for Sony Music and volunteers with the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. She lives in NYC with husband Matt Hamilton. Ruby Bhattacharya received a master’s in higher education from Harvard in 2017 and works in Barnard College’s admissions office. She was elected vice president of admissions and enrollment practices for the International Association for College Admission Counseling. Stephan Lefebvre is in an economics Ph.D. program at American University and will move to Ithaca College for a one-year teaching and research predoc. Kevin Labe defended a physics doctoral thesis at UChicago and is now a postdoc at Cornell working at Fermilab. Nicole Topich is a tenure-track faculty member at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, where she is the archivist and special collections librarian. She received the 2018 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Arline Custer Memorial Award and was elected to the Native American Archives Section Steering Committee and the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award Subcommittee of the Society of American Archivists. Nick Gabinet and Beck Ringle are together in New England. Nick is starting his final year of Brown medical school and plans to apply to general surgery programs. Beck is the sales manager of a small organic produce company in Massachusetts but spends a lot of time taking care of a new house and training their black Lab, Po. Nina Pelaez is acting associate director for academic and public engagement at the Williams College Museum of Art, overseeing public programs and interpretive strategies. She is also a member of the Association of Art Museum Interpretation’s steering committee. Leland Kusmer is preparing to defend a linguistics Ph.D. dissertation at UMass– Amherst. Last fall, the Mandelbrot String Quartet (Amy Langdon, Ben Dair, Sophia Uddin, and Leland) celebrated their 10th year of playing together with a little house concert in St. Louis. Susanna Mitro is in her third year of an epidemiology Ph.D. at Harvard’s School of Public Health. Sam Barrows is in law school at Boston College. Josh Abel and Debbie Nguyen celebrated their first year of marriage. Josh is finishing an economics Ph.D. program at Harvard and in free time plays pickup basketball. Debbie is a nonprofit strategy consultant and volunteers with youth-development organizations in Boston. 2013 Paige Grand Pre jpgrandpre@gmail.com Huge congrats to those who received graduate degrees this year! Emily Dolson completed a Ph.D. in March and moved to Ohio for a postdoctoral position at the Cleveland Clinic, studying ecoevolutionary dynamics in cancer. Rebecca Hammond graduated from Harvard Medical School in May. She plans to be a professional obstacle racer for at least a year, but when she goes into residency, it will be in psychiatry. This spring, Rebecca was a participant on the CBS show Million Dollar Mile, produced in part by LeBron James and hosted by Tim Tebow. Anna Rothschild earned a master’s this spring from Yale School of Architecture. She missed our 5th Reunion last summer because she was taking a monthlong drawing seminar in Rome. After the program, she visited Berlin and Provence, France, as well as Sweden and Norway. Anna’s last semester of studio and coursework took her to Peru to learn about architectural traditions and the relationship between the coastal desert and El Niño. In Cuba, Anna looked at the hybridity of influences in its architecture and urbanism, and in England, she studied the history of the British landscape in gardens and estates surrounding York, Oxford, and London. And, finally, Anna became an aunt in February! Emma Spady defended her dissertation, “Biosynthetic and Pharmacokinetic Approaches to Improve Steroid Therapeutics,” and received a chemical biology Ph.D. from Harvard this spring. Hannah Kurtz started as program coordinator for The Pilgrimage in D.C. and received a master’s in ethics, peace, and global affairs from American University’s School of International Service. Yin Guan received a master of theological studies in Buddhism from Harvard Divinity School and started working at MemTea, a Bostonbased tea company. She is excited to take this step toward making her tea dreams a reality. Malik Mubeen loves life in Hoboken, N.J. He’s in the second semester of a business intelligence and analytics MS program at Stevens Institute of Technology, and works part time in the Fire Department of New York’s analytics department. Moreover, Malik won the men’s doubles division of the Prospect Park Tennis Championship last fall in Brooklyn with another varsity tennis alum, Preston Poon ’14. Kyle Erf is now a multi-award-winning audiobook narrator. Daniela Jaeger was excited to move back to New Jersey, where she began a psychiatry residency at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Adam Schlegel repatriated back to the U.S. after nearly a year working in Dubai. He moved to Santa Monica, Calif., in April to begin a private equity job, and would love to catch up with area Swatties. Becky Painter was named to the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for the finance industry. Finally, mazel tov to those who’ve expanded their families! Sydni Adler married Feivel Rubinstein in April in Malibu, Calif., with Joanna Venator as a fantastic bridesmaid. In May, Sydni was ordained as a rabbi at L.A.’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, with Swarthmore professor Rabbi Helen Plotkin ’77 as her presenter. Lisa Sendrow married another Pennsylvania liberal arts college graduate on Aug. 3. Ben Kapilow, Aster Richardson, and Joanna Venator were in the wedding party, and many other Swatties attended. Eric Verhasselt and wife Christine welcomed first child Owen “The OG” Verhasselt, and are trying to figure out this whole parenting thing. Says Eric: “It is hard, but rewarding (that’s what she said).” 2015 Abigail Frank abigailcrfrank@gmail.com Nate Cheek nathan.n.cheek@gmail.com Emma Madarasz and Elyse Tierney got married this fall in Philly with 20 Swatties in attendance. Emma works in Residence Life at Ursinus after receiving a master’s from the University of Denver. Elyse is completing a master’s at Bryn Mawr and is an assistant lacrosse coach at Swarthmore. Julia Denney received a teaching master’s from USC and is now a long-term substitute at a projectbased learning high school in LA. Julia is creating a curriculum to help newcomer Englishlearner students compose their immigration stories for the national project “I Learn America.” Lucia Luna-Victoria Indacochea is halfway through a Latin American history Ph.D. program at UC–Davis and looks forward to a solo trip through Europe this summer—her first vacation in 10 years! Erin Kast studies philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and does ministry work at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center for his formation for priesthood in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Gabriela Campoverde is back in NYC—she couldn’t stay away. She is a technical program manager at Marquee—a fintech startup within Goldman Sachs—and loves it even though she never thought she would do this after getting art history and linguistics degrees! Paolo Debuque finished his first year teaching at a Minnesota private school and encourages area Swatties to reach out! Tamsin True-Alcalá is an editorial assistant in Boston, editing textbooks for students of Chinese. Lucy Peng gets facials, goes to Flywheel, and practices flossing. She lives in Brooklyn. Louise Spencer is in the second year of medical school in Jackson, Miss. Alis Anasal is an adjunct lecturer of remedial English at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn and finishing a master’s in adolescent special education at Hunter College. Karl Barkley is in Chengdu, China, finishing a year of running a youth basketball program, and hopes to move back to the Bay Area soon. Chelsea Matzko started a new job as a clinical research coordinator in orthopedic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC. Ian Hoffman leverages his English literature degree as a software engineer in San Francisco. He enjoys being a tech bro. Sabrina Singh is in the second year of Harvard Law. She studies international human rights law after working for two years with rural farmers and entrepreneurs in her home country, Nepal. Nikki Richards loves working at the American Friends Service Committee—finally realizing her childhood dream of being a professional Quaker. Danielle Delpeche is headed to Sanda, Japan, to teach math and history at YSE International School and pursue a master’s. Justin Cosentino enjoys graduate school at Beijing’s Tsinghua University but looks forward to returning to San Francisco—and the lovely Swatties who live there— for the summer. Danielle Fitzgerald received a master’s in education, culture, and society from Penn in May and will, hopefully, have a new job by the time you read this in July! Kimaya Diggs (pg. 19) put out her first album, Breastfed, in 2018, and spent much of the past year performing. She left her job as a high school choral director after suffering a vocal injury. Now, postsurgery, she’s preparing to record another album, managing a brewery, and volunteering for a hospice. She’s an enthusiastic tour guide if you ever find yourself in western Massachusetts! Adrian Wan is at Verily in Northern California, making health care better through advances in technology. He’s working on a new surgical robot, among other things. Sara Blazevic co-founded and is managing director of Sunrise Movement, which launched the Green New Deal campaign in November alongside U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shell Myers is getting a family therapy master’s at Drexel, so they are now a Swarthmore Phoenix and a Drexel Dragon. If you know other universities to attend with mythical mascots, let Shell know. After quitting her corporate job, Raisa Reyes realized there were people out there doing work they love. Seeing an epidemic of people struggling to find work that resonates with the deepest part of themselves, she created The Fire Within Podcast to share stories of female pioneers who started movements based on their conviction and soul-guided purpose. Rebekah Gelpi became a permanent resident of Canada. She has been a research assistant at a University of Toronto developmental psychology lab and, this autumn, will start an SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 69 class notes Last but also least, you can catch Abigail Frank reading away at a literary agency in NYC, while Nate Cheek is probably at the Wawa on Princeton’s campus. They would like to thank their parents, friends, secret admirers, and the Academy for the honor of being the new cosecretaries of the Class of 2015. GARNET SNAPSHOT 2017 Emily Wu emilywu1456@gmail.com Elyse Tierney ’15 and Emma Madarasz ’15 had 20 Swatties in attendance at their wedding last fall at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. M.A./Ph.D. program there to continue her research. Rebekah is also developing her plating and photography skills to start a cooking Instagram. Erika Cancio-Bello is pursuing an MFA in writing for children and a master of library and information science at Simmons University. Following a newly discovered love of rock climbing, she works part time at a rock gym and volunteers as a caller for visually impaired climbers at the Adaptive National Championship. Dyan Rizzo-Busack graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a master’s in Scottish ethnology, in which she looked at the emotional impact of performed folktales while directing plays with local companies. After having several short pieces accepted and produced, she’s excited to bring an original show, Never None (but She), to the Edinburgh Fringe this August. Erick White is a research specialist in HIV/SIV pathogenesis and therapeutic projects at Emory University. He will attend graduate school in the fall for a zoology Ph.D. Jay Wu lives in D.C., having just moved in with Margaret Hughes ’17. Jay works at the National Center for Transgender Equality, and has been director of communications since October. 70 Swarthmore College Bulletin / Elisabeth Tawa tore herself away from Baltimore for bucolic Princeton, where she is a secondyear neuroscience Ph.D. student. She is pursuing (sub-)elite running and can often be found in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia—not the Department of Motor Vehicles). Dorothy Kim is a second-year nutritional sciences Ph.D. student at Cornell. Kate Wiseman, Julia Murphy, and Lauren Barlow are holding down the fort in Chicago. Julia is rocking her first year of Northwestern med school while lamenting Chicago’s lack of mountains. Lauren works at UChicago and completed her first marathon in Philly! Kate is readying to get 150 sophomores jazzed about Macbeth while performing in three improv groups. Harshil Sahai is a second-year Ph.D. student at UChicago, studying environmental and development economics. His adviser is a Swattie and he’s collaborating with two Swatties on research. You can leave Swat, but Swat can’t leave you. Emma Sindelar and Brady White lived in Philly while Brady pursued a mechanical engineering master’s at Penn and Emma worked at a prison education nonprofit. They’re heading west as Emma pursues a master of public administration at the University of Colorado–Denver. SUMMER 2019 Isabel Clay isabelmarieclay@gmail.com Stephen O’Hanlon won the 2018 Brower Youth Award. Congrats! Patrick Holland had worked in the Manhattan D.A.’s office for a year and a half, but in April he began hiking all 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail. After he’s done, he will head to law school this fall. David Ranshous finally expanded his wardrobe outside of Swarthmore swimming gear. Vinita Davey is finishing as a paralegal at Davis Polk & Wardwell in NYC and starting at Penn Law School this fall. Aaron Slepoi is moving to Charlottesville in August for law school at the University of Virginia. He can’t wait to be back in a classroom! Sarah Branch is a program coordinator at Opening Act, which uses theater and improvisation to teach social/emotional learning skills to youths. The nonprofit works with students attending NYC public high schools with less than a 30 percent graduation rate or no after-school arts programming. Check out openingact.org. Peter Daniels finished his 1L year at Harvard Law and is working for the California attorney general in Oakland this summer. Marissa Bradley received a BSN from Salisbury University in December and accepted a registered nurse position in critical care at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md. Briana Cox is a fellow with the Tennessee Playwrights Studio in Nashville. She is also pursuing a clinical speech pathology degree at Purdue University. Isabella Bellezza-Smull works for a human rights organization focused on U.S. defense oversight, drug policy, and forced migration. She will either move to Sicily for Fulbright-funded research on forced migration to the EU or start a political science Ph.D. at Brown this fall. Steve Sekula and Sam Lebryk, close friends and roommates of three years, are building and designing a trading-card game, Gem Blenders, which they hope to release on Kickstarter this summer or fall. What started as a small project has become a pretty intense endeavor. They play-test multiple times a week and bring it to Brooklyn gaming venues. Check out gemblenders.com and @gemblenders on Instagram. They are looking to share it with new people, especially leading up to their Kickstarter campaign. Margaret Hughes just wrapped up the Yes on 3 campaign in Massachusetts, where they won a statewide transgender nondiscrimination law at the ballot for the first time in history. She moved to D.C. to live with partner Jay Wu ’15 and is now baking a lot of popovers and looking for a job. Jigme Tobgyel will move to NYC this fall. Robert Abishek starts med school this summer at Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Joshua Goldstein spent the year at home but will start a math Ph.D. program this fall, possibly at Texas A&M. Christina Chen was admitted to the UC Berkeley–UCSF Joint Medical Program. She looks forward to spending the next five years in Bay Area sunshine training to become a physician while doing interdisciplinary research. Before she starts, she plans to travel to China and Japan with Brandon Chow to see friends and relatives, eat lots of good food, and hug pandas (hopefully at a discounted rate for Chinese citizens before she gives it up for U.S. citizenship!). She might also try to catch this summer’s total solar eclipse in Chile and visit her best friend from elementary school there. their light lives on our friends will never be forgotten expanded tributes at bulletin.swarthmore.edu Hertha Eisenmenger Flack ’38 Elizabeth Stubbs Cooper ’38 Elizabeth, a homemaker, Girl Scout leader, and avid golfer who shot her age at 86, died Feb. 25, 2019. Elizabeth read the News Virginian and New York Times every day and was fully up to date on current events and sports, especially the Virginia Cavaliers, New York Yankees, and PGA. A mother of four who enjoyed dance, music, art, and traveling, Hertha died March 23, 2019. “Tah” was a tireless hiker and published a book with her late husband about their exploits, Ambling and Scrambling on the Appalachian Trail. She also held her own in golf, horseback riding, and tennis (backhand notwithstanding), and helped to establish and support several organizations, including FENCE (Foothills Equestrian Nature Center), the Hospital Foundation, and the Community Foundation. Ethel Wolf Boyer ’41 A natural leader and devoted family matriarch, Ethel died March 25, 2016. Ethel’s efficient and effective organizational skills were put to use as national president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Auxiliary; president of the Women’s Board of Lankenau Hospital; docent and president of the Philadelphia Zoo Docent Council; and longtime volunteer at the Philadelphia Ethical Society. A Girl Scout leader for many years, Ethel also enjoyed ballroom dancing and playing bridge with husband Vincent Boyer ’39, who predeceased her. David Oliver ’41 David, a petroleum economist with Atlantic Refining Co. and the U.S. Department of Energy, died May 4, 2019. Dave served in the Army from 1943 to 1946, earning the European Service Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. He enjoyed tennis and woodworking, and was the widower of Charlotte Bolgiano Oliver ’41, who died in 2013. John Dugan Jr. ’43 A businessman and World War II Navy veteran, John died April 17, 2019. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 71 in memoriam Frost, died Feb. 14, 2019. A mother of six, Peggy was a charter member of the Habitat for Humanity of Kearsarge/Sunapee (N.H.), worked with the Council on Aging and the local garden club, and attended the First Baptist Church in New London. She loved travel and adventure, and enjoyed many years riding a tandem bicycle with husband Dave up and down the East Coast and through Ireland and Europe. Robert Ehrmann ’44 Sarah Lippincott Zimmerman ’42, M’50 Sarah, who broke ground in the use of astrometry to discover the character of binary stars and search for extrasolar planets, died Feb. 28, 2019. Sarah was a protégé and colleague of internationally recognized astronomer Peter van de Kamp for nearly 30 years before succeeding him as longtime director of Swarthmore’s Sproul Observatory. A professor of astronomy, Sarah published more than 100 academic papers and co-authored two books, Point to the Stars and Philadelphia: The Unexpected City. Among her numerous honors were the Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae Achievement Award in 1966, an honorary doctor of science from Villanova University in 1973, and election to the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania in 1976. After the war, Jack earned an MBA from Wharton and worked for 25 years in business, primarily with Johnson & Johnson, and 25 years in nonprofits, including as founder and president of The Buck Hill Conservation Foundation. A Navy reservist until 1961, Jack was also an avid sportsman, and was especially accomplished in golf, tennis, and paddle tennis. Margaret Keeler Bowen ’44 Margaret, a devoted volunteer with a passion for poetry, especially Robert 72 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 A gynecological pathologist who enjoyed gardening, photography, and world travel, Robert died Feb. 24, 2019. Robert studied at NYU College of Medicine and was later director of the Boston School of Cytotechnology. His accomplishments included participating in tissue culture research under the late Dr. George Gey, and authoring the text Benign to Malignant Progression in Cervical Squamous Epithelium. During World War II, Bob joined the V-12 program at Swarthmore and at Duke, where “The Bulldozer” played for the national championship football team and won a Sugar Bowl gold football. As a scientist at IBM, he researched the physics of magnetic thin film, and subsequently helped develop technology used in the production of the early electroplated computer disk. Bob combined his passion for fitness and physics with the development of innovative exercise equipment decades before such devices became commonplace. Richard Landis ’46 Richard, a general practitioner who at his retirement in the ’80s was one of the few doctors still making “house calls,” died March 4, 2019. Dick’s time at as a premed student at Marcia Gauger ’44 A successful magazine editor who enjoyed volunteering and adventures, Nancy died April 4, 2019. Nancy “backed into a career” that started in New York assisting a foods publicist and ended up in San Francisco as senior editor of American Home. Along the way, employers included cosmetics queens Helena Rubenstein and Jacqueline Cochrane; magazines Successful Farming and Better Homes & Gardens; and “the Monarch of the Dailies,” The San Francisco Examiner. Robert Smith ’45 Robert, a pioneering physicist and brilliant inventor whose work resulted in 50 patents, died March 10, 2019. Dorothy Bowman Trippel ’46 Dorothy, who took an active role in local concerns in Illinois, including the integration of housing in Evanston, died March 9, 2019. A mother of six, Dorothy also co-founded the Dewey Community Conference; created an interdisciplinary psychology/ anthropology class at Evanston Township High School; managed a large Scandinavian design retail store; volunteered at the Evanston Ecology Center; and taught in Evanston’s adult literacy program. Frank Lockhart NV Marcia, a journalist and former New Delhi bureau chief for Time magazine, died May 14, 2018. Marcia began as a researcher for Time’s business section and later became a reporter, traveling widely in Europe, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, China, and India. Her papers are housed at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Nancy Carpenter Hewitt ’45 Swarthmore was interrupted by World War II and the need for doctors. He was sent to an accelerated program at the University of West Virginia, and completed med school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dick continued his military service through most of his medical career, retiring as a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1975. Dietrich Oberreit ’45 Dietrich, a “ski nut” who fulfilled his family’s dream of building and operating a ski lodge, died April 6, 2019. A mechanical engineer who participated in the Navy V-12 program, Dietrich and wife Anneliese moved their family from New Jersey to Wyoming in 1965 to open the Alpenhof Lodge, one of the first hotels at the newly developing Jackson Hole Ski Area. After selling the Alpenhof in 1988, Dietrich stayed active in the Rotary Club and skied until he was 90, always stopping for lunch at lodge’s “Dietrich’s Bar & Bistro.” Frank, who spent a year each at Duke, Drexel, and Swarthmore studying engineering in the Navy V-12, died Feb. 25, 2019. Frank started a family sand and gravel business, Lockhart Inc., later becoming president and CEO of Liberty Corp. when the companies merged. A golf enthusiast who shot four holesin-one over his amateur career, Frank also enjoyed singing in the choir at his beloved Christ Episcopal Church in La Crosse, Wis. Karl Moberg NV Karl, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946, died July 16, 2018. A longtime resident of Syracuse, N.Y., “Bud” was a skilled metal fabricator and woodworker who loved to golf and fish. William Tise NV William, who finished an engineering degree at Virginia Tech, died Nov. 29, 2017. After his Navy service, William pursued marketing management in the field of industrial rubber. He retired from his own company at age 72. Janet Tooley Kuhn ’47 A chemistry major whose many interests included pottery, photography, orchids, and minerals, Janet died Sept. 25, 2018. Janet loved to travel, especially to Disney’s Animal Kingdom lodge, where she could spend time among nature’s most beautiful creatures, her favorite being the giraffes. She also enjoyed watching movies, going out to eat, and living life to the fullest. Nancy Eberle Valtin ’47 A history major and one-half of a Quaker matchbox marriage, Nancy died March 15, 2019. Nancy and Rolf ’48 were married for 70 years, until his passing in August 2018. “Nancy was passionate about many things, including her family, her beloved pets, reading, politics, the beach, and the Baltimore Orioles,” her loved ones wrote. “We will miss her good humor, frankness, frugality, and compassion for the less fortunate.” Christine Dorsey Abram ’48 Christine, a passionate advocate who worked for many years on Capitol Hill, died Feb. 24, 2019. A quiet observer and lover of learning, Chris held a master’s in special education. She also enjoyed books, bugs, and nature, and in retirement volunteered at Selby Gardens in Anna Maria Island, Fla. Ann Thompson Miller ’48 Ann, who served in the Navy after graduating from Swarthmore, died Aug. 23 2016. Always involved in the community, Ann was a leader in the League of Women Voters, a volunteer for hospice, and very active at her local YMCA and Congregational church. Eloise Schlichting Twombly ’48 A professional musician and devoted Unitarian who enjoyed tennis, golf, swimming, and sailing, Eloise died March 31, 2019. Eloise played the cello with the Augusta Symphony for 48 years and taught piano for more than 25 years, mentoring students who won South Carolina state competitions. A founding member and first president of the Aiken County (S.C.) Council on Human Relations, Eloise was most proud of her accomplishments as a civil rights activist in the early 1960s. Frank Solomon Jr. ’50 A lawyer who built a successful real estate investment and management business, Frank died Feb. 16, 2019. Frank practiced law in San Francisco and Marin County, Calif., but gradually discovered a penchant for real estate transactions. Active in civic affairs, he was an elected member of the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District Board for 28 years, and served on the Marinwood Community Services District Board during the years that saw the establishment of the local community center, pool, and fire department. Richard Longaker ’49 Richard, a political science professor who became provost at Johns Hopkins University, died Sept. 22, 2018. A skilled mountain climber and skier, Richard served in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II. His achievements as provost and vice president of academic affairs at Hopkins included the establishment of the Nursing School, the Center for Talented Youth, and the JHU–Nanjing University Center in China. SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 73 in memoriam Kenneth Conrow ’54 Anne Thomas Moore ’51 Anne, a devoted Quaker and volunteer, died Jan. 24, 2019. While raising her three children in Lawrence, Kan., Anne served on the board of the American Friends Service Committee and was active with the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She was also a director of the Volunteer Clearing House, a supervisor of VISTA volunteers, and a founding member of Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice. A proud Quaker and accomplished chemist who became a pioneer in Kansas State University’s computer science department, Kenneth died March 18, 2019. Ken developed several computer programs, the most famous of which was Neater2, a reformatting program that was leased through the KSU Research Foundation. He was a repeated commodore of the Blue Valley Yacht Club, enjoyed biking to work, and was an avid stamp collector from a young age. David Dennison ’54 Patricia Meyer Battin ’51 Patricia, a pioneer in the digital library movement who was lauded for her contributions to book preservation, died April 22, 2019. A former director of library services and vice president for information services at Columbia University, Patricia went on to become the first president of the Commission on Preservation and Access. In that role, she led the commission’s comprehensive efforts to battle the acid paper problem, and in 1999 she received the National Humanities Medal for her “exemplary public service by organizing and leading a national campaign to save millions of brittle books in America’s libraries and archives.” Sally Shields Shane ’51 A research specialist, avid reader, and dedicated volunteer, Sally died Feb. 19, 2019. Born in Egypt to missionary parents, Sally fled the Nazi invasion with her brother at age 10 and was raised by relatives in Wisconsin. Always interested in biology, Sally worked with one of the early electron microscopes at Haverford College before later joining the Wistar Institute at Penn. Jacob Nachmias M’52 Jacob, a Penn professor emeritus of psychology with a specialty in visual perception, died March 2, 2019. Born in Greece, Jack left his home in Bulgaria with his family in 1939 to escape the Nazis; their departure on 74 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 the last ship to sail from Paris is the subject of family legend, documented online through the Holocaust Museum. Though legally blind his entire life, Jack refused to consider that a disability. He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard, followed by studies at Cambridge on a Fulbright scholarship. Joan Price Spencer ’53 Joan, a beloved teacher who specialized in remedial reading and English as a second language, died April 7, 2019. With a master of education from Northern Arizona University, Joan taught elementary students, college students, adult learners, immigrants, prisoners, and international students. A Quaker, she was also a caseworker for U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, was instrumental in the New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty, and volunteered for many organizations. David, who introduced generations of undergraduates to the biological sciences as a professor at Dartmouth, died March 10, 2019. With a biology Ph.D. from Caltech, David taught Dartmouth’s introductory “Bio 5” class as well as a popular freshman seminar. An active skier, hiker, and sailor, David also trained himself as a clockmaker and photographer, and maintained an interest in precision machinery. Bartlett Jones ’54 Bartlett, who taught history at colleges in Texas, Ohio, Florida, and Missouri, died Oct. 16, 2018. “B.C.” published 20 scholarly articles in his field, and had lifelong interests in gardening, duplicate bridge, golf, and tennis. In retirement, he developed a passion for Florida wildflowers and for writing one-act plays, which were performed locally. Patricia Bryson Van Pelt ’54 Patricia, whose combined pursuits of art history and education formed the basis for many achievements over six decades, died April 14, 2019. Patricia’s career started with volunteer work at the Katonah (N.Y.) Museum of Art and continued as art education officer for the Arts Council of Great Britain. She later founded a bookstore in Michigan, eventually donating it to Finlandia University, on whose board she served for 12 years. Albert Metcalfe ’54 Albert, who followed in his father’s footsteps to run Jordan Auto Co. in Natchez, Miss., died March 15, 2016. The consummate Southern gentleman, Albert was devoted to Natchez, his lifelong home. A Rotarian and 83-year member of First Presbyterian Church, he served in leadership roles with Britton & Koontz First National Bank, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and Trinity Episcopal Day School, while cheering on his beloved Ole Miss Rebels, Trinity Saints, Atlanta Braves, and New Orleans Saints. Timothy Coss ’55 A talented editor and tennis player who served in the Army for two years, Timothy died April 25, 2019. Timothy was an editor for the Civic Education Service and the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1955 to 1998, and for many years conducted a mail auction specializing in antique maps, newspapers, and prints. A skilled athlete, Timothy was a multiyear tennis champion for the Maryland/ Virginia/D.C. area as both a junior and an adult, a five-time participant in the U.S. Nationals (now U.S. Open), and champion of the Armed Services Tournament. sports fan, he also applied his analytical prowess to the study of baseball, inventing a new batting statistic (total production average) and publishing numerous articles in his retirement. William Walker ’55 William, who ultimately graduated from Babson College, died Nov. 16, 2013. A retired certified public accountant and father of three, William was a longtime resident of Johnsonville, S.C., where he was affectionately known as “Mr. Will.” Jean Herskovits ’56 Jean, a SUNY–Purchase historian with a lifelong interest in Africa, died Feb. 5, 2019. The daughter of a pioneer in the field Eugene Heaton Jr. ’55 A Korean War veteran and businessman who loved movies, music, and his dogs, Eugene died March 19, 2019. Eugene was a senior vice president in marketing and social research at Response Analysis Corp. and Opinion Research Corp. in Princeton, N.J. A lacrosse player and avid Baltimore Pat Niles Middlebrook ’57 A social psychologist who published two widely used textbooks in her principal field, Pat died March 13, 2019. Pat, who earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Yale, also owned and managed a 30-unit apartment complex in Bristol, Conn. She enjoyed horseback riding and golf, winning a nine-hole championship in 1974, and in retirement took up landscape photography in her beloved Virginia Beach, using a Leica camera for which she received special training in Germany. Edward Terres ’58 Laura Salas Flores ’55 An early computer programmer who was proud of her family’s Belgian heritage, Laura died Feb. 3, 2019. Laura received a master’s in 1960 and worked for IBM Corp. before starting a successful computer consulting business. A spiritual person who dedicated herself to helping people in need, she supported relief work through the Rotary Club after natural disasters, and was an active member of her local Congregational church. of African anthropology, Jean earned a doctorate in African history from Oxford, conducting research in Nigeria, and later became involved in the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. She was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Historical Society; on the board of directors of the Near East Foundation; and a founding member of the board of the TY Danjuma Foundation in Nigeria. Charles Miller ’59 Charles, who devoted his life to scholarship as a professor and author, died March 22, 2019. A professor emeritus at Lake Forest College, Chuck taught classes in law—both contemporary and ancient—as well as nature, foreign policy, civil liberties, history, and utopian communities. His interests were exceptionally broad, from musical improvisation to wordplay and contemporary politics, and he was especially dedicated to maintaining recognition for Camp Catawba, a summer boys camp he attended in the Blue Ridge Mountains celebrated in his book A Catawba Assembly. Edward, a computer science analyst and financial manager for the Navy, died Oct. 28, 2015. A graduate of American University, “Todd” was also an active volunteer, serving on the executive board of the California Strawberry Festival and as a Long-Term Care Ombudsman advocating for residents in assistedliving facilities. David Teller ’60 A nature lover and professor emeritus at the University of Washington, David died in early February 2019. David worked for 40 years in “physical biochemistry,” identifying the exact chemical structure of biological proteins; his research was capped by the definitive description of bloodclotting proteins, including Factor XIII, and rhodopsin—one of the proteins in the human eye that captures light. He knew the Cascades and Puget Sound well, and enjoyed skiing, backpacking, sailing, and fishing. Jane Dixon McCullam ’62 A bookseller with a passion for the SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 75 looking back in memoriam outdoors, Jane died April 25, 2019. Jane earned a psychology M.A. from Western Reserve University, and was active in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Native Plant Society of Northeast Ohio, the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, and the Cleveland Memorial Society. Since 1985, she and her husband had operated Cattermole 20th Century Children’s Books, specializing in used and out-ofprint kids’ books. A professor in the Department of Surgery at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, Warren was a pioneer in the development of instrumentation for minimally invasive surgery and the excimer laser for medical use. He also authored or co-authored more than 175 journal publications; held two dozen patents; and was a recipient of the Pierre Galleti award of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. David Walter ’62 Daniel Jinich ’76 David Morgan ’63 David, who committed himself to progressive causes to ensure a better world for all, died Feb. 26, 2019. For 35 years, David was a professor in the University of Northern Iowa’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, teaching introductory courses as well as the philosophy of science, Marxism, logic, and medical ethics. He was a founder and active member UNI’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, and he served as an officer and newsletter editor for his local Citizens for Peace. Russell Kimura ’67 An inquisitive soul who embarked on many career paths, including teaching, owning a solar business, public accounting, and banking, Russell died March 2, 2019. Responding to an ad for a teacher, Russ moved to Williamsport, Pa., in the 1970s, where he and his wife built a home on Sunshine Farm, one of his greatest sources of joy. Year-round, Russ could be found outside gardening, 76 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 Alice Mitchell Rivlin H’76 Alice, a master of budgetary policy who served as founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, died May 14, 2019. An economist known for her evenhanded analysis and unflappable demeanor, Alice weaved in and out of government service over a career spanning more than five decades. During her long affiliation with the Brookings Institution in Washington, she served as a moderating influence on politically driven ideologies. “She was the decathlete of public policy,” economist Robert Reischauer told The Washington Post. “There is almost no area of public policy where she wasn’t active and contributing at a very high level, and that’s extremely unusual.” cutting wood, hiking, or cross-country skiing. He retired as vice president and controller of Woodlands Bank. Warren Grundfest ’74 Warren, an internationally recognized surgeon, inventor, and bioengineer, died Dec. 28, 2018. A compassionate family doctor and team physician for Colorado Eagles hockey, Daniel died March 27, 2019. The son of a doctor, Dan learned as a small boy to treat the person rather than the illness. He was a former chair of the Larimer Humane Society and of 3Hopeful Hearts, a nonprofit that supports families after the loss of a child. Alexandre Namour ’86 Alexandre, a New York Police Department sergeant and one-half of a matchbox marriage to Leah Schanzer Namour ’92, died Feb. 3, 2019. A 22-year veteran of the NYPD, Alex also leaves behind a daughter, Ella. the formation of independent “Beanite” Quakerism, and their extensive writing collection— including sermons, 69 diary volumes, and more than 1,800 letters—is housed at FHL. What better place, then, for a desk than with its papers? Seeking a permanent home for the piece, Jones and wife Carolyn Ramm discovered the Beans’ Swarthmore connection. They reached out to Carolyn’s Swarthmorean cousin, Dorothy Ramm ’58, who helped coordinate the donation through the College’s Alumni and Parent Engagement Office. “The Joel Bean desk has been in the FHL Reading Room for just a few months now, but we cannot imagine a time that it did not sit in here, it fits so very well,” says curator Jordan Landes. “That it does not entirely conform to ideas of Quaker plainness is interesting, and it serves as an excellent artifact to accompany the library’s Joel and Hannah Bean Papers.” —ELIZABETH SLOCUM + EXPLORE: bit.ly/JoelBean Reuben Canada ’99 Reuben, a patent attorney who changed careers to become a successful beverage entrepreneur, died April 24, 2019. The CEO of Canada Enterprises, Reuben was the creator of Jin+Ja, an elixir named Outstanding Cold Beverage of the Year by the Specialty Food Association in 2013. He gained national acclaim through CNBC’s National Business Report, and his product was also featured on The Doctors, West Texas Investors Club, and in USA Today. Submit an obituary To report the death of an alum, email obituaries@swarthmore.edu. Please provide the class year (if known), the date of death, and a short biography or link to a published obituary. Newspaper obituaries may also be mailed to Elizabeth Slocum, Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081. LAURENCE KESTERSON David, an artist, athlete, dancer, musician, perfectionist, and relentless seeker of knowledge, died March 18, 2019. An All-American lacrosse player and gifted wrestler at Swarthmore, David majored in engineering and later studied at Princeton Theological Seminary. He returned to Swarthmore in the 1970s as a member of the Admissions Office, while also becoming a successful portrait painter with work hanging in numerous East Coast institutions. AN ORNATE ROLL-TOP DESK once owned by prominent Quaker ministers Joel and Hannah Bean— lovingly maintained and passed down from one generation to the next—made its way to Friends Historical Library this spring through a gift from the Beans’ greatgreat-grandson Oliver Jones. As clerk of the Iowa Yearly Meaning, Joel Bean (1825–1914) faced friction during a growing revivalist movement in the late 1800s. The couple’s teachings in response to the controversy drove SUMMER 2019 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 77 spoken word ENRICHING CONVERSATIONS by Kate Campbell THE NEW ASSOCIATE PROVOST of academic programs, Professor of French Studies Jean-Vincent Blanchard is a writer and specialist in early modern literature and culture. His teaching and research include the philosophy and anthropology of literature (“A History of the Five Senses”)and the medical humanities (“Literature and Medicine”). It all started, he says, with a great literature class. You moved a lot as a child; in what ways did those experiences inform who you are today? My family left Canada when I was a child, and we then traveled from country to country, mostly around the Mediterranean—my father was an 78 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SUMMER 2019 engineer. Our first stop was coastal Turkey; since then, I’ve always loved the seaside, especially when a blinding sun gives the scenery an abstract quality. Moving from school to school was difficult, however, and it makes me sympathetic toward the students who describe the social and cultural shock of arriving on campus. But I hasten to say that it’s an opportunity to become stronger. Adaptability while maintaining a strong sense of self is a most valuable skill in life. How did you first become interested in French literature? It happened in high school and, guess what, I hold an excellent French literature teacher responsible for that. Madame Vieville, if you read this, I salute you! In what ways are you working to build cross-cultural understanding in your department, and what are some misconceptions students have about French studies? One of the most widely spoken languages in the world, French What led you write your latest book, At the Edge of the World, and what were some surprising things you learned during the process? At the Edge of the World describes a formative and essential period in the history of the French Foreign Legion, from 1885 to about 1930. The Legion recruited foreign-born soldiers and used them to build France’s colonial empire. I soon discovered that the Legion was also a haven for marginal characters, folks who felt disillusioned in Europe after World War I and who very often had artistic dispositions— hence the number of excellent memoirs on which the book is based. Many Americans joined, too, including poet Alan Seeger. I tried to understand a contradiction, how some of these hired soldiers could be both highly sensitive and attracted to war. What book has been the most influential in the past year? Often, you reread a good book and you find a new aspect to appreciate; that never fails with Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I highly recommend the excellent translation of the first volume by Lydia Davis, Swann’s Way. Reading Proust is the perfect antidote to the numbing effect of time and habit, because that is the very subject of the novel: making art the key to unlock affective memory, those precious moments when the past surges back in vivid sensory impressions. LAURENCE KESTERSON LAURENCE KESTERSON continues to grow and evolve, especially in African countries. By focusing on the broad Francophone world, our program meets the needs of today’s students and is closely aligned with Black studies, Islamic studies, and global studies. Our approach is interdisciplinary. That said, I maintain that appreciating literature is important, especially in long forms such as the novel, and that such an appreciation requires an introduction by a competent teacher. Of course, you can fully enjoy a book by yourself, but I guarantee you that a great literature class will add a deeper, essential layer to the experience. in this issue FAMILY FARMING 40 Field Work Intergenerational cooperation guides the Rosenbaums of Winddrift Farms. by Michael Agresta MOMENT IN TIME Dakota Gibbs ’19, an economics and philosophy major from Newark, N.J., at Commencement on May 26. + MORE: bit.ly/WhySwat SUMMER 2019 SEEING HUMANITY p20 Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices FALLING FOR THE CLASSICS p30 CROWNING GLORY 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu am —Willi Shakespeare (from Troilus and Cressid a) KIN.” SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN O T E N “O E K S A T M H E E R W U T H A O N L E F O WORLD H C U SUMMER 2019 COME BACK FOR GARNET WEEKEND OCT. 4–5 Family Weekend Enjoy open houses, tours, and activities with your student. Homecoming All alumni are welcome back for special athletic and affinity programming. Advancement Volunteer Summit Alumni and parent volunteers will gather for their annual conference. All attendees are invited to the pep rally, annual McCabe Lecture, and closing reception with President Valerie Smith. Registration opens Sept. 2: swarthmore.edu/garnetweekend Rooted in Humanities p44