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SPRING 2017
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
EMPATHY & ARABIC
p8
BIKER MAMA
p11
WALL STREET WOMEN
p34
ISSUE
III
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
VOLUME
CXIV
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
LAURENCE KESTERSON
SPRING 2017
COME BACK TO THE BEACH!
Alumni Weekend/Memorial Day Weekend, May 26–28
alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu
Impact
in this issue
26
WRITE WHERE YOU ARE
Words With
Friends
Making an impact on
others through the
wonder of writing.
DAN Z. JOHNSON
by Elizabeth Slocum
MOMENT IN TIME
In honor of those who have
suffered injustice,
Brandon Bennett Guallpa ’20
participated in a Martin Luther
King Jr. Day candlelight vigil.
18
38
40
FEATURES
A Spark, Then Room
to Grow
The Lang Center’s people
embody its mission of
making a more just world.
by Kate Campbell
Making a
Difference 2.0
by Rio Akasaka ’09 and
Kendell Byrd ’17
Righteous Among
Nations
They escaped the darkness
of Nazism without losing
their light.
2
DIALOGUE
Editor’s Column
Letters
Community Voices
Andrea Packard ’85
Rewind
Richard Kuhta ’73
Books
Global Thinking
Brendan Work ’10
9
COMMON GOOD
Swarthmore Stories
Learning Curve
Marc Hofstadter ’67
Liberal Arts Lives
Michael Forster Rothbart ’94
A’Dorian Murray-Thomas ’16
45
CLASS NOTES
72
SPOKEN WORD
Valerie Smith
WEB
EXCLUSIVES
BULLETIN.SWARTHMORE.EDU
TYPEWRITER RODEO
Saddle up, buckaroos, for a video
that’s just “write.”
ROMANCE VS. REALITY
Susan Cotts Watkins ’60 on AIDS
altruism in Africa.
WORLD CHANGERS
Discover more about the Lang
Center’s people and projects.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Learn about Louise Hawes ’65
and The Language of Stars.
BRAND-NEW BLOG
Read what Center for Innovation
and Learning students are doing
in their own words.
DIGITAL DO-GOODERS
Dial up a gallery of tech-savvy,
world-saving Swatties.
ON THE COVER
Amelia Estrada ’17’s dance class
photographed by Laurence Kesterson
Alumni News and
Events
Profiles
Kevin Radell ’77
and Raissa Radell ’85
by Michael Agresta
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
1
dialogue
EDITOR’S COLUMN
LETTERS
We’re All Ears ... and Halloween Bats
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Editor
Jonathan Riggs
Managing Editor
Kate Campbell
Class Notes Editor
Elizabeth Slocum
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Administrative/Editorial Assistant
Michelle Crumsho
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Editorial Assistants
Cody McElhinny ’17
Eishna Ranganathan ’20
Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
by
JONATHAN
RIGGS
Editor
ASK YOURSELF: What’s my impact?
No matter how you answer, I bet the truth is this:
much bigger than you realize.
At the Bulletin, we’re lucky to not only hear how we’re
doing—I’m still jubilant over our winter LGBTQ issue
touching so many—but also to hear how (and what)
you’re doing. After all, when it comes to the Swarthmore
community, “impact” is a way of life.
It’s also the first of four themes the Bulletin will focus
on this year—there are as many definitions of it as there are
readers of this magazine.
So what’s your impact? Tell us everything.
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
facebook.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
instagram.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8435
We welcome letters on subjects covered
in the magazine. We reserve the right to
edit letters for length, clarity, and style.
Views expressed in this magazine do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the
editors or the official views or policies of
the College.
Send letters and story ideas to
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Send address changes to
records@swarthmore.edu
pr inted w
i
th
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2017
©2017 Swarthmore College.
Printed in USA.
nd
e
2
Printed with agri-based inks.
Please recycle after reading.
e c o-fri
I greatly enjoyed Elizabeth Vogdes’s “The Poetry of Pen and Ink” (winter 2016), and can
testify to the tactile pleasure fountain pens provide. Using one connects the mind with
the body in the act of writing. I can’t say the same for ballpoints.
Nevertheless, I’m a ballpoint enthusiast and a collector, mostly of vintage Paper
Mates. They are nearly as elegant in their way, more reliable, and require a lot less maintenance. Mine are mostly from the 1950s and early ’60s.
I was introduced to Paper Mates at the Swarthmore Bookstore (then located in the
basement of Parrish), where they cost $2 in the 1970s. Now, you’re lucky to get a used
one for $20; new—or rather, mint unused—ones go for more. They replaced the 19-cent
Bic pens I had used in high school, which made excellent delivery systems for spitballs.
Swarthmore classes, I discovered, didn’t require many spitballs.
Admittedly, I’m guilty of reverse snobbery. Along with my princely Paper Mates, I also
have (thanks to eBay) dozens of cheaper ballpoints, old dowagers whose lives I like to
think I’m extending and improving.
The elegance of fountain pens can also present a challenge. There’s nothing more
frustrating for a writer than having a fine pen in hand and anticipating the mental and
physical, if not spiritual, joy of incising great thoughts on paper, only to realize that you
have nothing to say.
—JEFF SCHEUER ’75, New York, N.Y.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
CXIV, number III, is published in October,
January, April, and July by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore,
PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage
paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional
mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620.
Postmaster: Send address changes to
Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College
Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.
ly
H-UV
I was pleased with the winter 2017 issue’s LGBTQ
focus. The 1973 student-run course on homosexuality organized by Jesse Ford ’73 and Tina Crosby ’74 with faculty support from Jeanne Marecek
was a turning point in my life. I was conscious of gay
feelings as early as I can remember and, sadly, conscious of the need to hide them almost as early. I tried
to change myself, without success, and then sought
help from a succession of psychiatrists to no avail. I
was depressed and suicidal, wondering how I could
get through life, only playacting at love, but never experiencing it. My psychiatrist never said outright that
I was sick. Nevertheless, he delved with great energy
into the psychic factors that had shaped my sickness.
An intelligent kid from a liberal, well-educated family,
it never occurred to me that this was not my problem.
Then I heard about this course. I had shared with
my girlfriend my “bisexual feelings” and together
we decided to enroll. The class—and indeed the gay
movement on campus at the time—was almost entirely female, a reflection of the greater support provided to women by the feminist movement. Although this
was hardly the best context for me to “find a date,”
having a political rather than a sexual introduction to
the topic was just what I needed. It was the first time
I had ever read a political analysis of homophobia, the
first time I had seen psychiatry’s studies of homosexual pathology methodologically criticized, and the
first time I had shared my experiences with a group of
people like me.
My psychological transformation was rapid and dramatic. By the time the course was over, I had fired
my psychiatrist and come out to my classmates and
parents. I had turned self-hatred and depression into anger, activism, and a vision for the future. Most
important, I discovered I was strong, and brave, and
ready to build relationships based in honesty. And the
story has another happy ending: I did find “real love”
and am married to the man I met 43 years ago, soon
after completing the course that provided such excellent preparation. Together we have continued the
struggle for LGBTQ liberation.
—JOHN WHYTE ’74, Philadelphia, Pa.
MANY BRANCHES
After reading “Deeply Rooted” (winter 2017), I
remembered how my grandmother used to laugh
about how my uncle Robert Miller Stabler ’27
could study even with the radio on. (He was the
brother of Laurence, who was married to Sarah
Stabler ’22.) He later got his doctorate, and he and
his wife did important research in ornithology,
isolating a bird disease.
—RHODA WESLEY, via bulletin.swarthmore.edu
ks
PEN ULTIMATE
HEARTFELT, HOPEFUL, HAPPY
in
+ WRITE TO US: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Planter Of Seeds
I enjoyed “Deeply Rooted” (winter 2017), in part because I count myself
a seedling of the Swarthmore family tree of Ida Palmer Stabler, Class
of 1898. Lois Kelly Stabler ’49 was my high school history teacher. Mrs.
Stabler opened up wider worlds for students in our public high school in
Keene, N.H. She took us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; introduced
us to Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic religious traditions; and had us
research and debate current issues, from abortion to the Vietnam War.
Lois Stabler encouraged her students to be educated and aware citizens,
and she encouraged me to apply to Swarthmore. My family’s income was
low enough to qualify for a precursor of the Perkins Loan program, but
Mrs. Stabler assured me that would be no barrier.
Sadly, Lois Stabler died in 2007. A decade later, we have a president hostile to the respect for facts—and for all human beings—that I learned in
her classes. But Mrs. Stabler, and the Swarthmore education she helped
me gain, also gave me the tools to fight back.
On Jan. 21, I joined three Swarthmore classmates (all us of educators), and over half a million other people, at the Women’s March on
Washington. As we stood near the White House chanting, “This is what
democracy looks like,” I silently thanked Mrs. Stabler, and all the other
teachers who have made a difference in my life.
—MARY BATTENFELD ’80, Jamaica Plain, Mass.
CONSCIENTIOUS
OBJECTION
I am troubled by Arthur “Arky”
Ciancutti ’65’s attitude toward
those who have fought in wars
(“First Do No Harm,” winter 2017).
I am a Vietnam veteran myself,
though I am in no way a hero. I did
my duty and was lucky enough to
come home intact. Others in my
unit did not.
I agree with him that the
Vietnam War was completely
unjustified and unwinnable. But
there are other wars that do not fit
that characterization. Our Civil
War was fought over the issue of
whether all men and women are
created equal or whether some
should be masters and others
slaves. World War II was fought
against one regime that believed
there should be a master race with
all others subservient or exterminated. I doubt that those few who
were rescued from Dachau would
agree that that war was unjustified.
The older I get, the less I accept
sweeping generalizations on complex topics.
—PETER COFFIN ’71, Berkeley,
Calif.
LINCOLN’S LETTER
Regarding Arthur Ciancutti ’65’s
letter that all wars and their participants are evil (“First Do No
Harm”), I recommend for his
reflection the beautiful letter
Abraham Lincoln wrote to the
Quaker Eliza P. Gurney during
the Civil War:
Your people—the Friends—have
had, and are having, a very great
trial. On principle, and faith,
opposed to both war and oppression, they can only practically
oppose oppression by war. In this
hard dilemma, some have chosen
one horn, and some the other. For
those appealing to me on conscientious grounds, I have done, and
shall do, the best I could and can,
in my own conscience, under my
oath to the law. That you believe
this I doubt not; and believing it, I
shall still receive, for our country
and myself, your earnest prayers
to our Father in heaven.
Arky, I served. I believe Gurney
and Lincoln would understand.
—RALPH LEE SMITH ’51, Reston,
Va.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
3
dialogue
COMMUNITY VOICES
PETER ARKLE
AN ARTFUL MILESTONE
I
N SEPTEMBER
so much creativity dilute the “rigor” of
1981, when I took
one’s Swarthmore education.
my swim test at
I pursued postbaccalaureate and gradSwarthmore, the pool
uate art studies after Swarthmore, but
was located in nearly
when I returned to direct the List Gallery
the same place as the
in 1996, the Lang Performing Arts Center
List Gallery is today, near the entrance
was 5 years old and students could finally
to the Lang Performing Arts Center. I
truly major in the arts.
would’ve laughed to think that I would
The gallery’s proximity to the Theater,
eventually devote more than 20 years
Dance, and English departments
to the same length of
inspired numerous collabby
space, working with some
orations, including one of
of the most interesting
my first curatorial projects,
artists of our time.
an exhibition of Polish theIn the early 1980s,
ater posters selected from
Kohlberg Hall, Ware Pool,
the collection of Professor
the Matchbox, the Science
Allen Kuharski. Another
Center, and numerinterdisciplinary exhibit,
ous other buildings did not exist. The
History, Memory, and Representation:
Florence Wilcox Gallery, as our exhiResponses to Genocide, presented exembition space was known then, conplary paintings, sculptures,and photosisted of a hallway in Pearson Hall. By
graphs while also informing a course
the time I graduated, it had moved to
on the Holocaust taught by Professors
a converted second-floor classroom in
Robert Weinberg and Marion Faber.
Beardsley Hall. The faculty brought in
Similarly, an exhibition of art by Carmen
strong artists, including woodworker
Lomas Garza was integral to a course on
George Nakashima, but security was
Chicano culture, and I trained students
provisional, the gallery lacked visito lead gallery tours and papel picado
bility, and gems in the College’s perworkshops for more than 400 visiting
manent collection, such as Edward
schoolchildren.
Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom, languished
A survey of works by Robert Turner
in storage. Students were allowed to
’36, one of the most important American
take only five courses for credit in stuceramic artists and teachers of the 20th
dio art, dance, music, or theater, lest
century, also earned regional attention.
ANDREA
PACKARD ’85
Director
“Art connects us to our humanity,
expresses global concerns, and
sparks innovation.”
4
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
Turner, a lifelong Quaker and a conscientious objector during World War II,
modeled the way art connects us to our
humanity, expresses global concerns,
and sparks innovation.
Turner and other artists who have
exhibited at Swarthmore do not share a
particular style, but instead demonstrate
high standards of conceptual integrity,
craft, and social engagement. Whether
we look at Buzz Spector’s artist books
documenting peaceful protests, Alison
Saar’s critiques of racial stereotypes,
Daniel Heyman’s humanizing portraits
of victims of torture, or the painterly
abstractions of Ying Li, a survivor of the
Chinese Cultural Revolution, we study
rigorous peacemaking.
I have also been honored to assist studio majors who spend their senior year
developing a coherent body of work,
learning how to professionally install
and light a solo exhibition in the gallery, and crafting their first artist’s statement. Most art programs only offer
group shows, but Swarthmore’s Senior
Thesis Exhibition Series raises the bar.
Memorable thesis exhibits have included
the first “collection” presented by fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra ’05, and
an installation of drawings and paintings
by Njideka Akunyili-Crosby ’04, who has
earned prestigious international prizes
and museum exhibitions.
The next time you’re near the List
Gallery, I invite you to dive into this
ever-changing space. It may carry you
out of your depth, challenge habits of
seeing, or offer renewed buoyancy.
ANDREA PACKARD ’85 is director of
the List Gallery.
+ SEE PAST SHOWS AND LEARN MORE:
bit.ly/ListGallery
FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
Happy 25th anniversary to Swarthmore’s List Gallery
REWIND: ‘MY LIBRARY WAS
DUKEDOM LARGE ENOUGH’
On journeying from Swarthmore to Shakespeare
McCABE LIBRARY was the
beginning.
It was all so different—I saw
beautiful stone, polished wood, comfortable seating, miles of books, and
red-carpeted stairs. My first time
there, I slowly circled every floor,
stopped to gaze at huge trees through
slim vertical windows, and felt a stillness that, for me, was
unknown.
by
After four years of
military service, I felt
’73
so grateful, and classes
hadn’t even started yet.
I had flown military standby into
Philadelphia, stood at the bottom of
Magill Walk that first night, and cried.
The next day I went to the Office of
Financial Aid, where a lovely woman
said, “I’ve been waiting for you.” It was
overwhelming, going from a difficult,
loud, lonely time to a place where kind
people spoke quietly in complete sentences and talked about everything,
upright or sprawled in deeply cushioned lounge areas of the library. I
made a friend who was a real poet, and
still is. Another could recite King Lear,
front to back. People read Thomas
Mann in German, for fun. I learned
about Einstein’s trains,
listened to a prepared
piano, and saw W.H.
Auden give a reading in
his bedroom slippers.
Soon my days began
and ended in McCabe: my touchstone, a
place of solace and concentration. I saw
that other students had their routines:
preferred corners, favorite chairs, reading in comfortable postures or gazing out
those same windows, thinking. I’d never
known anything like that privacy and
RICHARD KUHTA
calm. Between classes I bent over exhibition cases or walked through the stacks
picking up books, smelling them, books
I knew about and wanted to read, along
with unfamiliar titles. It changed my life
to know that I could reach out and touch
anything I wanted.
I became interested in how libraries
work, and why they don’t. I became a student of library operations, not just the
mechanics of collecting and circulating resources, but in the care and management of those resources, the details
of conservation and bibliographic control, and, most important, in the feel of a
place. It was in McCabe that I learned to
appreciate the vitality of research environments, without knowing that creating them would become my life’s work.
I went on to spend 15 years as librarian
of the Folger Shakespeare Library and
am often asked what it was like.
It was a privilege. I worked with talented, remarkable people who gave
everything to their work, who lived it.
For all of us, the thrill of being at the
Folger was living every day with that
peerless collection, which included the
largest holdings of early English printed
books in North America, from Caxton to
Dryden, with rare editions of Spenser,
Marlowe, Jonson, Milton, Donne—from
the Tudor-Stuart period through the
Restoration—and of course everything
by and about Shakespeare from the 16th
century to date.
Alas, scholarship is a lonely business.
At times, even people who love you don’t
want to hear about it anymore. That’s
where librarians come in. We listen, discuss, and provide resources that scholars know about, and others they don’t.
We are their support system. It’s why we
unlock the doors in the morning, with
a simple commitment to support study
and research. It’s the integrity of the
work that draws us.
For me, everything began at
Swarthmore, in my classes and in the
McCabe Library, and it makes perfect
sense, in retrospect, that it led to a career
in librarianship.
That respect for learning and love of
the resources that sustain it, the physical objects as well as the content—
it ultimately lit my path, as I hope it
does and always will for all patrons of
Swarthmore’s libraries.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
5
dialogue
BOOK REVIEW
AUTHOR Q&A
SHE’S A REBEL
SONG OF A STARGAZER:
LOUISE HAWES ’65
by Adrián Gras-Velázquez
AFTER THE DEATH of his Mennonite-turned-Marxist mother, Peter
Andreas ’87 discovered more than a hundred of her journals from the late
’60s to the mid-’80s, detailing her thoughts, fears, and adventures. Piecing
together her words and his memories, Andreas wrote Rebel Mother: My
Childhood Chasing the Revolution (Simon & Schuster), painting a vivid
portrait of a mother-son relationship that spans continents and cultures.
The John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University,
Andreas excels at illuminating the historical and political climate of 1970s
Latin America writ large as well as at the level of family relations, unconventional motherly love, and childhood innocence. You feel as if you are
in the same room as these people and their world: Life in communes and
Peruvian slums, the Chilean coup, his parents’ custody battles, and his
mother’s sexual escapades are all engrossingly told. And yet, for all the
Latin American political history that the book covers, you never lose sight
of Andreas’s voice as a child attempting to make sense of it all.
Although Andreas skims over some tantalizingly fascinating periods—
such as his time spent traveling Peru as a street performer—Rebel Mother is
a highly compelling and rewarding read—as well as a resonant reminder of
what, for many, is one of life’s most formative relationships.
What inspired you?
I happened to stumble
on a newspaper article
about a group of teens
caught throwing a party
in Robert Frost’s historically preserved summer
home. They’d vandalized
and set fire to the place,
but few of them were
over 18. A resourceful
judge sentenced them to
take a course in Frost’s
poetry, and my writer’s
“what-if” machinery
kicked in.
ADRIÁN GRAS-VELÁZQUEZ is a visiting assistant professor in the
Spanish Department.
Sarah has to write a love
poem to herself. What
would yours be?
Here is the first verse
of “Reflection: A Tough
Love Poem”: “If you
could see me, as I see
you. / If my words could
find you, / stones hurled
toward a far shore.”
How did being on the
faculty of the Vermont
College of Fine Arts
shape you and this book?
I am forever enlivened
and recharged by the
writers I work with in
the program I helped
found some 20 years
ago. Whenever I’ve flirted with despair, with
the notion that writing
is less useful, less important, and oh-my-aching-heart far less easy
than other work, my students have shown me
why I persist. They give
me courage. In my book,
I think that this same
rededication happens for
KATE MITCHELL
Louise Hawes weaves poetry throughout The Language
of Stars (Margaret K. McElderry Books), a fictional story
inspired by a true event. At once lonely and lyrical, her
protagonist Sarah embarks on a journey of self-discovery,
gaining confidence through writing and self-reflection.
my Frost stand-in Rufus
Baylor when he encounters Sarah and borrows
most of his class exercises from yours truly.
From writing with music,
to field walks, to blind
typing, there isn’t one
of Baylor’s “odd” pedagogical approaches that
hasn’t been used by this
“odd” mentor!
+
READ MORE bulletin.
swarthmore.edu
HOT TYPE: NEW BOOKS BY SWARTHMOREANS
Jocelyn Roberts Davis ’84
The Greats on Leadership
Nicholas Brealey Publishing
6
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING
SPRING 2017
2017
Illuminating the practical
wisdom of sages across the
ages, Davis imagines how
history’s greatest minds
would navigate 20 modern
workplace obstacles. Her
esteemed classical guides
include Jane Austen on
talent-mining and Hannibal
on handling competition. She
dubs Shakespeare’s Henry
V “the learning king,” noting
that “he never suffers from
analysis paralysis. Rather,
he asks questions in order to
learn and then applies that
learning, quickly, to the
situation at hand.”
Ken Moskowitz ’76
Adaptation in Bulgaria
Penny-a-Page Press
Retired diplomat Moskowitz,
exploring new productions of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest, Angels in America, and
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?,
approached this book with
one driving question: What
determines if these current
Bulgarian adaptations are
successful? “What I have
not done is probe for literary,
social, political, or symbolic
meanings, or write about
possible interpretations,” he
notes. “My purpose was only
to learn what critics and audiences understand or feel … in
the U.S. and Bulgaria.”
Drawing on his long career
in medicine, Holtzman
delves into the competitive
world of scientific research
in his fourth novel. When
lead character Jason Pearce
makes compromises to ensure
funding for his Alzheimer’s
research, one of his subjects
dies, setting the stage for a
complicated ethical journey.
“Readers who were riveted by
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks will be drawn in,”
reviewers rave.
Tony Holtzman ’55
Blame
Cloudsplitter Press
Megan Crowley-Matoka ’92
Delineating the fiercely
familial kidney transplantation industry in Guadalajara,
Mexico, Crowley-Matoka
writes with sensitivity and
precision about the patients
and professionals existing at
the center of it all. “We may
not have operating rooms or
money or all the medications
that we need, but our people
will do anything for their
families; we can get more live
donors than you’ll ever see in
the United States,” she reports
one doctor saying. “That’s
what keeps us going.”
Domesticating Organ
Transplant
Duke University Press
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
7
common good
dialogue
SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE
GLOBAL THINKING
SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE
His immersion in Arabic became a lesson in empathy
BRENDAN WORK ’10 jokingly tells
his students that they are learning “an
enemy language.”
“They sometimes ask, ‘Why is there
so much politics in Arabic class?’”
says Work, a high-school teacher in
Missoula, Mont. “Well, when you’re
learning Spanish or French, there just
isn’t an international conflict with the
U.S. that involves those speakers now.”
This is important context for his
students, who must work through so
much history and tension tied up in
the study of the language through class
discussions on the Israel-Palestine
conflict, the Iraq War, and Syrian refugees. He seeks to offer them a point
of view beyond bias or preconceived
notions that he honed as a reporter.
“I knew I wanted to find employment
at the intersection of Arabic and journalism,” says Work, who studied the
language at the College as a comparative literature major. “I was looking
for the big story, so I bought a one-way
ticket into the occupied territory,” at
a time when Palestine was submitting
its statehood bid to the U.N.
Work secured a job at a small
press agency in Bethlehem where
he improved his language skills
in-house—“It was no secret I was
Swarthmore’s worst Arabic student
for all four years,” he laughs—before
heading into the field as a reporter and
photographer. As Work detailed the
struggles of those in the conflict zone,
he realized the Arab narrative was
often told from a limited perspective.
For example, while covering a
planned protest near the West Bank
wall on the day of the statehood bid, a
clash escalated and a Palestinian teen
was struck by a tear-gas canister. (A
Reuters photographer captured an
image of Work aiding the boy moments
8
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
after the violence.) Denied access to
the nearest hospital because it was on
the other side of the wall, the youth
ultimately lost his eye.
Later, out of concern, Work met with
the teen’s parents.
“You’ll see in comments sections
of articles, ‘Why didn’t these parents
keep their kid at home?’ That feeds
into this idea that people we’re warring
against don’t care about their kids,”
Work says. “That idea that human life
is somehow more sacred to us—that we
would protect our kids— harshly came
into contact with reality after hearing
those parents: ‘We encouraged him to
go, he’s our son and he’s our hero, and
we agree with him.’
“Their thinking was, ‘Resistance is
our reality.’ In America, I thought, protests happened out of a sense—rather
than a reality— of injustice.”
Work brought this empathy back
to his Montana hometown, where
an Arabic teaching position opened
shortly after his return. In the classroom, he encourages students to see
past stereotypes and to instead learn
the cultures and customs of Arabic
speakers. In fact, Work is planning a
visit to Morocco this spring—the first
Missoula school trip to an Arab nation.
Compassion, he teaches, is key. He
and his students were instrumental
in helping two Syrian families resettle in Missoula, mere weeks before
LAURENCE KESTERSON
by Elizabeth Slocum
BRENDAN WORK ’10
Teacher
President Trump’s refugee ban.
“The community wanted to do something, they contacted the International
Rescue Committee, and they convinced them to set up an office here,”
Work says. “It’s really a great example
of what concerned moms can do in an
isolated place like Missoula.”
The prospect of refugee children
attending public school in Missoula
excites Work. So does the idea of building a community of native Arabic
speakers from whom his own students
can learn. Already, his young charges
are challenging their families to consider the many sides of the Arabic—
and ultimately, the human—story.
“They enjoy the responsibility
of being their family FAQ,” he says.
“When their dad sees something about
Iraq on the television, they love being
in the room so they can say, ‘Here’s
what I learned in Arabic today.’”
ON
THE
WEB
LOOK, UP IN THE SKY
Astronomer Eric Jensen
on the new planets
discovered “right around
the block of our galactic
neighborhood.”
+ EXPLORE
bit.ly/EJSpace
ART LIVES
Music and dance alumni
trace vibrantly varied
career trajectories.
+ HEAR THEIR JOURNEYS
bit.ly/CreativePaths
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Educator Nelson Flores
’03 gave the keynote
address at a Public
Discourse & Democracy
series event.
+ LISTEN AND LEARN
bit.ly/Flores03
BUILDING BLOCKS
Lego immortalizes iconic
astronomer Nancy Grace
Roman ’46, H’76 in a
Women of NASA set,
which also features the
first American woman in
space, Sally Ride ’72.
+ HEAR HER REFLECT
bit.ly/RomanLEGO
“I knew I wanted to find
employment at the intersection
of Arabic and journalism.”
SWAT O’CLOCK
Time to
Make Change,
Together
by Emily Weisgrau
art by Phillip Stern ’84
SOCIAL ACTION. Academics. Athletics.
When Swarthmoreans unite around a goal, our
collective strength makes anything possible.
That’s how “Changing Lives, Changing the
World” (pg. 72) will succeed—as an inclusive effort.
On April 26 at noon EDT, join forces for a
special challenge honoring the College’s founding:
1,864 donors in 1,864 minutes. If the goal is met
before 7:04 p.m. April 27, an anonymous Board
of Managers member and spouse will donate $1
million.
Will you be the change?
+ JOIN THE CHALLENGE: swarthmore.edu/challenge
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
9
common good
GO WITH THE FLOW
GUINNESS GODDESS
When Desireé Melonas began teaching yoga at Swarthmore,
she set an intention: to create a community, emphasis on the
om.
“I’d never taught consistently outside of a studio space, so
I wondered how that would work,” says the visiting assistant
professor of political science, a certified yoga instructor and
former studio owner. “And it turned out to be one of the most
lovely communities—something special happens here.”
Every Monday at lunchtime, Melonas leads student, staff,
and faculty yogis of all ability levels in a Vinyasa flow series
as part of the free SwatFit wellness program. The takeaway
from each class—renewed focus and serenity—she hopes, is
the same for everyone, herself included.
“Time spent away from our desks doesn’t make us any less
as workers,” she says. “The more that we tend to other aspects of being human, the more present and thoughtful and
creative and kind and more interesting we become.”
—ELIZABETH SLOCUM
+ FEELING TENSE? Try these tips from Desireé:
LARRY MANIERI
bulletin.swarthmore.edu.
Movie Man
Pianist Annette DiMedio ’75 took second in the
American Prize Lorin Hollander Award competition.
+ HEAR HER PLAY: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
10
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2017
iTunes, GooglePlay, and Amazon
Video. Response has been encouraging: Page Six has repeatedly called
Johnson a noteworthy up-and-coming filmmaker, and he’s already hard at
work on two movies with Tony Awardwinning producer John Hart.
“I want to make entertaining films
that are challenging and new,” Johnson
says. “What excites me is talking to people who are on their fifth movie and how
much more they know than I do—I can’t
wait to learn all that for myself.”
—JONATHAN RIGGS
LAURENCE KESTERSON
DURING HIS four years at
Swarthmore, Grant Johnson ’14 was
too busy to watch movies, let alone
make one.
After graduation, however, the art
history major achieved his lifelong
dream when he wrote, directed, and
produced his feature debut, the subversive dark comedy Frat Star.
“Wearing every hat on set, I learned
so much every day about filmmaking
and the industry,” he says. “This was
my grad school and rite of passage.”
Budgeted at $200,000, Frat Star is
available on 20 platforms, including
“I believe we all can do so much more and for so much longer than we think we can,” Lynn West Salvo ’71 said at the triumphant end of her ride.
Life Is Like a Bike
I
’VE BEEN living on
my bike since spring
2015,” jokes Lynn
West Salvo ’71, who
set a Guinness World
Record as the oldest
woman to cross America by bicycle.
To do so, she spent September
and October cycling coast-to-coast
across the United States: a 3,163-mile,
13-state, 59-day trek from Oceanside,
Calif., to Bethany Beach, Del.
Though cycling has been one of her
longtime passions, it was not until
September 2014 when Salvo sold
MathTree—a business she incorporated that offers summer math camps
to children—that she felt free to pursue
more ambitious rides. She became fixated on the prospect of a cross-country cycling endeavor echoing the Race
Across America route and trained rigorously, preparing her mind and body.
“I repeated to myself an Eleanor
Roosevelt quote: ‘Do the thing you think
you cannot do,’” she says, and she did
just that—everything from changing her
own flat tires to riding on traffic-heavy
roads to keeping a blog of her adventures: lifeislikeabike.wordpress.com.
“I wanted to enjoy an incredible route
on my own terms,” says Salvo, “while
meeting the rigorous requirements to
set a world record.”
And she’s not stopping there—Salvo
is applying to attempt another record by
biking across Canada in 2018.
— CODY McELHINNY ’17
+ SEE her journey: bit.ly/LWSRecord
and her interview at the Guinness World
Records office: bit.ly/LWSGWR
LYNN’S FOUR P’S:
BIKE/LIFE TIPS
1. Places: I constantly drew inspiration from
all the stunning, diverse scenery I traveled.
2. People: I assembled the best support
team, saw old friends along the way, and met
wonderful new people.
3. Preparation: I cycled more than 6,000
miles in 2016 to train, planned my daily route
with contingencies months beforehand,
and referred constantly to my prep work in
a 3-inch-thick binder that traveled in the
support car.
4. Prevention: I avoided issues like
heatstroke on 100-degree desert days by
pouring cold water over myself and tucking
ice in my pockets every mile or so.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
11
common good
THE NAPKIN
CHRONICLES
Brokered
Dreams,
Broken
Hearts
SNUGLY TUCKED into the collar or
draped across the knees, the hardworking napkin lives to serve. At Swarthmore,
this industrious tool has one more role:
messenger. For decades, many Swarthmoreans—maybe even you—have tacked
up napkins bearing questions and
requests about the Sharples menu on the
dining hall bulletin board.
Dining Services Director Linda
McDougall, the answer maven who
responds to each napkin, shares a few
more answers with us.
—KATE CAMPBELL
The Pirate Prince of Publishers
LAURENCE KESTERSON
THOMAS BIRD MOSHER was an unlikely person to become America’s
first publisher of beautiful limited editions of fine literature at affordable
prices. Born in 1852 as the son of a Maine clipper ship captain, Mosher
ended his formal education at eighth grade. By his early teens, he’d rounded Cape Horn four times in his father’s ship, voraciously reading English
literature by the light of a dim oil lamp. He ultimately published hundreds
of jewel-like books, principally by late Victorian authors, with and without
their permission. I recently donated my father’s collection of 58 Mosher
books to Swarthmore, so drop by McCabe Library to take a look.
—RALPH LEE SMITH ’51
SPRING 2017
JAMES GATHANY, CDC
“On Jan. 20, I assumed the roles
of acting director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and
acting administrator, Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry,” says Anne Schuchat ’80,
H’05. “I view this as a privilege as
well as a great responsibility, and
one I will do my best to meet.”
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
authors: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Ralph Lee Smith ’51 showcases his gift of Mosher books to McCabe Library.
Congratulations
12
+ READ a first-person essay by the
LAURENCE KESTERSON
• “As long as I have been here, 25 years,
the napkin board has been in existence.”
• “I’m trying to respond every week.”
• “People ask us anything, from requesting
specific cereals to taking certain items
off the menu.”
• “We love when students compliment a
recipe or employee. We always share
feedback and shout-outs with staff. We
need to celebrate our successes!”
• “After we answer the question, all the
napkins go in the compost bin.”
• “I’m fine if my identity is no longer secret.
Keep those questions coming!”
Fantasy and mixed signals aren’t just the
stuff of romance—they’re also part of international altruism, as Susan Cotts Watkins
’60 and Ann Swidler discovered over years
of research in Malawi, a tiny country with a
massive AIDS epidemic.
tle sense these make in the lives of most
Malawians,” says Watkins. “Rural Malawians must depend on each other to survive,
and African women are far from the passive
victims that donors imagine.”
In the end, the authors conclude, these
supposedly “sustainable” programs sustain
only the jobs of the westerners who plan
the projects and the salaries of African brokers.
This led Watkins to form a romantic
vision of her own: that her book will open
the eyes of donors.
“They are too far away to understand the
circumstances and motivations of the villagers they want to help,” she says, “and too
far away to understand all the things that
are likely to go wrong when their dreams
are actually implemented.”
—CARA EHLENFELDT ’16
Their new book, A Fraught Embrace:
The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa (Princeton University Press),
explores the complicated love triangle of
global donor organizations, impoverished
Malawian recipients, and local “brokers”
who serve as salaried go-betweens.
“We saw that, like a romance, all parties
dream of finding a perfect partner,” Watkins
explains, “but then there are difficulties, disappointments, and betrayals.”
In shabby motels in rural Malawi, where
bun-and-soda breaks punctuate donorsponsored, broker-run training sessions,
Watkins and Swidler were amazed to discover a fraught disconnect between dreams
and realities.
“These trainings on AIDS emphasize human rights, especially the empowerment
of women, personal autonomy, and gender
equality, but if the donors knew anything
about the villagers, they would see how lit-
Swat [Outside the Box] is a blog sponsored by the Center for
Innovation and Leadership and designed to highlight how students and alumni are making changes in their chosen fields.
Get inspired by stories of success, creativity, and resilience
like Christina Hui ’17’s account of traveling to Morocco for a
climate-change conference: bit.ly/SwatOTB
ONE FOR THE BOOKS!
The Swarthmore men’s basketball
team made history, winning the program’s first Centennial Conference
championship and earning its first
automatic berth to the NCAA Division III Tournament. The Garnet fell
to Christopher Newport University,
77-67, in the tournament’s second
round—but not before Cam Wiley
’19 (above) set his own team record,
with 537 points in the season.
+ NOTHING BUT NET … AND A GALLERY
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
13
common good
BASKETBALL
Lindsay O’Sullivan ’20
ranked second in freethrow percentage in the
Centennial Conference.
SWIMMING
Liz Staton ’19 broke a
20-year-old school record in
the 200-yard breaststroke
at the Gettysburg Invite.
Christina Labows ’18, Rachel Bronkema ’18, Anna Scheibmeir ’18, and Lily Wushanley ’18
protest on the National Mall.
Student-Athlete-Activists
by Roy Greim ’14
Clare Cushing ’20 was voted
Most Outstanding Rookie at
the Centennial Conference
championship.
By an amazing 120 points,
men’s swimming won its
first conference title.
TRACK & FIELD
On Jan. 21, millions of people globally joined
together in Women’s Marches to show support for progressive causes. An estimated
500,000 demonstrators descended on our
nation’s capital for the main march alone.
Among them were Swarthmore studentathletes who, like their sisters across the
country, can trace part of their empowerment to Title IX, the groundbreaking federal
legislation that outlawed sex-based discrimination in education and fostered immense
growth of women’s athletics. This year
marks its 45th anniversary.
“If not for Title IX, we wouldn’t be competing in the same capacity we are today,”
says Christina Labows ’18, a women’s lacrosse team member. “It is important to me
that our country does not take steps backward with regards to equality for women.”
“What motivated me to participate in
14
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
the march was this really intense collective
feeling I had to take part in the resistance
against Trump’s presidency,” says field
hockey player Clare Perez ’18. “I was tired
of just feeling angry about everything, and
I wanted to actually take action and be part
of something.”
“I used to let other people take the activist stand because I was afraid of taking
it myself,” adds teammate Lizzy Stant ’19,
“but at this point, I’m more afraid of what’s
going to happen to our country and planet if
we just sit around.”
“People often forget that Title IX is only 45 years old. I am so privileged not just
to have access to the education at Swarthmore, but also to be able to play softball for
all four years,” says Sara Planthaber ’17.
“People in positions of privilege need to be
more aware and stand up.”
Maggie O’Neil ’17 won the
Coach I Open shotput and
Centennial Conference
Athlete of the Week.
John Gagnon ’17 set a
program record in the
3,000-meter run by nearly
10 seconds.
LEARNING CURVE
WRITE THIS WAY
Poetry powered—and saved—Marc Hofstadter ’67’s life
by Gina Myers
IT WAS NOT SURPRISING that Marc Hofstadter ’67
originally intended to become a professor—he was raised in
a family of scholars, including an uncle who won the Nobel
Prize and two cousins who won Pulitzers.
What was surprising was that, after returning from
teaching overseas at the Universite d’Orleans and Tel Aviv
University, he decided to chuck the academy in favor of
pursuing poetry.
“I found the academic world exceedingly competitive and
goal-oriented,” he explains. “In the world of poetry, I could
create however I chose without caring as much whether I
won awards.”
Hofstadter credits two “favorable accidents” for cementing his decision: One, he was turned down for a tenure-track
position, and two, he came out as a gay man and soon after
was diagnosed with HIV. Determined to achieve his dreams,
he completed a second master’s and became a librarian, first
at Rand Information Systems and then part time at the San
Francisco Municipal Railway.
“That was a perfect job,” he says, “because it was inherently
interesting, yet gave me plenty of time to write.”
Today, Hofstadter is the author of six books of poetry and a
collection of essays. While much of his work has focused on
simple, direct language, he has recently begun to challenge
structural and thematic conventions.
“For many years I was not an experimental writer but used
ordinary sentences, spoke of people and events, and tried to
express ideas,” he says. “However, in the past several years
I’ve begun writing more avant-garde poems, poems that
aren’t ‘about’ anything but that are linguistic and imagistic
explorations.”
LYDIA DANILLER
In order to celebrate
Black History Month,
we honored a few of our
community members
whose character and
contributions enriched
Swarthmore Athletics’s
history, on and off the
field: bit.ly/SwatBHM
His next book, Autumnal, focuses on “late life” issues.
“I feel immensely lucky to have lived to age 71, of having
lived with my dark brother of HIV for 34 years,” he says. “I
don’t know if Autumnal will be my last book, but it might be.
Or maybe I’ll live to write its sequel, Wintry.”
“When I write, the world comes into focus.
I feel alive and rejoice in the process!”
SPRING 2017/
Swarthmore College Bulletin
15
common good
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
MICHAEL FORSTER
ROTHBART ’94
Michael Forster Rothbart ’94 took this self-portrait in a destroyed building near his
apartment in Donetsk Oblast. “In Ukraine,” he says, “I do feel like my witnessing, sharing
people’s stories and portraits with outside viewers, does some incremental good.”
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
AN EMPATHETIC EYE
He looks at the world and sees hope
by Carol Brévart-Demm
16
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
“Creative people are out of their minds,”
laughs Michael Forster Rothbart ’94 in his
TEDx talk “Boxing Outside the Think” (bit.
ly/MFR-TED). In the most socially conscious ways, he’s his own perfect example.
After Swarthmore, he traveled India and
China, photographing areas of conflict, including a World Bank-financed dam, to expose the impact on displaced communities.
Later projects included documentaries
on hydrofracking and on rural life and democracy movements in Central Asia, as well
as a travel book about his two years living in
Kazakhstan.
From 2007 to 2009, Forster Rothbart
spent time on a Fulbright grant in Sukachi,
a village in Ukraine next to the Chernobyl
Exclusion Zone, interviewing and recording the lives of Chernobyl residents a generation after the nuclear meltdown. Five
years later, he began a parallel project on
Fukushima, Japan, photographing plant
workers, refugees, and residents returning after a similar disaster. To better communicate the motivation of the people who
live and work in these areas, Forster Rothbart produced a 2013 exhibit and TED book,
Would You Stay?, composed of personal
narratives, photos, maps, and interviews.
Last fall, Forster Rothbart began to
monitor the cease-fire agreement between
Ukraine and the separatist Donetsk republic
during six months with a special monitoring
mission for the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe. “It’s not quite
a peace treaty, because they continue to attack each other, but it is an important step
in working toward peace here,” he says.
When he’s not behind the camera, Forster Rothbart writes stories, designs maps
and games, and plays with his two kids—
activities that support his desire to use
creativity as a tool for building community.
“Swarthmore helped me develop the
most important skills an artist and journalist needs,” he says, “like the ability to talk
and listen to anyone, compassion for those
who are suffering, a tendency to think critically and look for hidden structures, and a
belief that anything is possible.”
WINNIE AU
Documentary Photographer
“We want to offer our SHE Wins! students enrichment experiences,” says A’Dorian Murray-Thomas ’16. “That could be anything from a workplace
tour to a lunchtime conversation—anything that gives our girls more learning opportunities is greatly appreciated.”
JOY AND
STRENGTH
She’s proving that when
‘SHE Wins!’ … we all do
by Jonathan Riggs
PERSPECTIVE—and a sense of
humor—is crucial to connect with high
school and younger-aged students.
“My girls call me an old lady,” laughs
A’Dorian Murray-Thomas ’16, at once
exuberantly optimistic and fiercely
pragmatic. Despite her advanced age
(21), she has wisdom, empathy, and
vision to spare, all of which she’s putting to use on behalf of her charges.
By day, she works directly with
at-risk or suspended high schoolers
in Newark, N.J., helping them develop
social, academic, and emotional strategies to succeed. By night—and weekends (and always, really)—she serves
as founder and executive director of
SHE Wins! (shewins.org), her Lang
Opportunity Project turned sustainable real-world nonprofit that helps
girls whose lives have been affected by
violence to excel in and out of school.
It’s a mission dear to MurrayThomas’s heart—when she was 7, her
father was murdered.
“My goal is for my girls to learn how
to become more in tune with their
strengths, gifts, and potential,” she
says. “I want them to know that, no
matter what they have gone through,
they can achieve their goals.”
Part of this comes through community-service projects, networking sessions, mentorship and
leadership programs, and poetry and
public-speaking workshops MurrayThomas organizes; part of this comes
from the living, breathing example she
provides as a warm and attentive role
model, friend, and fellow traveler.
“Ensuring that SHE Wins! remains
an organization that’s not just doing
things for girls, but with them, giving
them the opportunity to take control
and have a real say, is crucial to me,”
she says. “From the moment I started
this, I knew that creating a space for
girls to feel safe and empowered and
loved and believed-in is something I
had to do.”
+ WATCH her “Black Girl Magic” episode:
bit.ly/AMTESSENCE
A’DORIAN
MURRAY-THOMAS ’16
Community Leader
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
17
A SPARK,
THEN ROOM
TO GROW
Since 2001, Swarthmore’s Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility has built
on the pioneering vision of philanthropist Eugene M. Lang ’38, H’81. The singular
goal of this son of Hungarian immigrants was to enhance the connections among
coursework, fieldwork, and citizenship. His commitment to growing a more just and
beautiful world continues to be cultivated—and then some.
by Kate Campbell
T
HERE ARE ALWAYS
flowers for those who
want to see them,”
Henri Matisse said.
Swarthmore, especially, produces these
gardeners of the common good—artists and architects of a better world
who see life’s beauty, not necessarily
as it is, but how it might be. They are
gripping ladders, scrambling to city
rooftops, and converting sunlight into
power. They are constructing robots in
rural Ghanaian schoolrooms and tech
hubs in Nepalese farming communities. They are rerouting Philadelphia’s
storm water to force blooms in bare
patches, harnessing steam to minimize
carbon footprints, and caring for the
Crum Woods to measure the forest’s
health. Their vision is grounded in
18
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
study and coursework so their hearts
and hands can change the world.
Much of this remarkable scholarship and service springs forth from
the same place—Swarthmore College’s
Lang Center for Civic and Social
Responsibility, a light-filled building
on the north end of campus.
A recipient of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, Eugene M. Lang
’38, H’81 created the “I Have a Dream”
Foundation and Project Pericles.
“Gene Lang was ahead of his time,”
says Ben Berger, associate professor of
political science and the Lang Center’s
executive director. “He praised the
connection between the liberal arts
curriculum, the intensive classroom, and the pursuit of responsible
citizenship.
“The Lang Center has been refining
and advancing his vision ever since.”
Ultimately, Berger sees the center as
an incubator.
“We provide stakeholders with financial, social, and human capital,” he says.
“Engaged scholarship requires funding, and we assist with that, but just as
importantly, we connect students, faculty, and staff to mentors, collaborators,
and community partners. Our staff provides expert advising and strategic
planning to help our constituencies
achieve their goals.”
The Lang Center’s success comes
from recognizing the potential in students’ ideas, adds Nimesh Ghimire
’16, who received a Davis Projects for
Peace Award for his work in western
Nepal. And part of that success stems
from giving these students, these
seeds, room to grow.
Sedinam Worlanyo ’17 (left), winner of a Lang Opportunity Scholarship to study, plan, establish, and assess a sustainable project that
addresses community needs in Ghana, wanted to make a stronger
connection between her robotics lessons and her students’ daily realities.
Worlanyo invited scholar Jessica Quaye (right) to speak to the class.
Photo by Yaw Owusu-Ansah.
SPRING 2017/
Swarthmore College Bulletin
19
GLOBAL ROOTS
semester,” says Worlanyo, who grew up
in metropolitan Accra, two hours from
the school in Odoben. “It was a reality
check that made me reflect on my own
privilege.”
Worlanyo, a Lang Scholar, realized
she wanted to make a stronger connection between her robotics lessons and
her students’ daily realities.
“For the rest of the program,” she
says, “I tried to emphasize that even
though robotics was fun, it was a vehicle for getting them to think about
issues they face every day while exposing them to wider opportunities.”
It’s this process of listening, collaborating, and learning that exemplifies what the Lang Center is all about:
“responsive and responsible project design through engaged scholarship,” says Jennifer Magee, associate
director of the Lang Center.
Although Worlanyo faced cultural
and gender barriers in creating YenAra
Odoben Robotics—YenAra means “Our
Very Own” in Twi—Worlanyo’s threemonth course ultimately inspired
everyone involved.
“In addition to building the EV3
robots, we had a design-thinking workshop and a leadership workshop, which
our students really loved,” she says,
noting that the girls became bolder and
more vocal than usual in their robotics
classes—and Worlanyo herself couldn’t
help but feed off their excitement.
“I love facilitating workshops and
connecting people with ideas,” she
says. “I would always light up during
my sessions with the girls.”
LAURENCE KESTERSON
A
FTER A LIVELY
start, Sedinam
Worlanyo ’17 was
surprised when she
walked into the classroom for her all-girls
robotics pilot program in rural Ghana
and realized some of her students were
missing. It was her third week teaching
engineering, science, technology, and
math concepts to 25 students at the
Odoben Senior High School of Ghana.
“I was a bit taken aback, because
they had been consistently showing up
to class,” says Worlanyo, who quickly
learned the reason for the empty seats:
The primarily agricultural community
was having an important farming day.
“The missing students had to help
support their parents to earn money
for their tuition for the coming
Partnering in storm-water management are (clockwise from left) Jerome Shabazz of the Overbrook Environmental Education Center, Professor Art
McGarity, engineering major Jonathan Cohen ’17, Lang Center Scholar-in-Residence Arto Woodley, Temple University’s Christina Rosan, and
engineering major Alexandra Philyaw ’17.
FROM SCRUB, NEW GROWTH
YAW OWUSU-ANSAH
L
Instead of rote memorization, Sedinam Worlanyo ’17 wanted her high school students to learn problem-solving and criticalthinking skills that she believes are instrumental for Ghanaian youth to carry forward to their communities.
20
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
ESS THAN 24 hours
after a freak midwinter deluge, Professor
of Engineering and
Environmental
Studies Art McGarity
sits at his desk peering closely at the
city website that monitors sewer-
runoff hot spots.
“Those red triangles,” he says, tapping at a cluster of blinking signals,
“show locations of combined sewer
overflows in Philadelphia that will spill
into the Delaware River, the Schuylkill
River, Tacony Creek, and Cobbs Creek
whenever it rains more than a quarterinch or so in one day.”
The alarms are virtual evidence of
an urban center’s very real aging infrastructure that includes 3,000 miles of
sewers and 79,000 storm-water inlets
in the Philadelphia area. Working
with students, faculty, and community
members to discover ways to manage
those waterways winding and coursing
through the Delaware River Watershed
and its seven main subwatersheds is
McGarity’s passion.
“We want to inspire engineering
students to make a social impact,”
says McGarity. He and colleagues,
including Christina Rosan of Temple
University, have created projects that
present Philadelphia as a model for
water management. “We’re hoping the
work we’re doing will become a model
nationwide.”
When McGarity learned in 2013
that he had been awarded a $1 million
four-year research grant from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to
lead water projects that would control Philadelphia’s storm-water runoff, he was ecstatic. It allowed him to
create simulations so city planners
can choose which green infrastructure
technologies to use in public spaces
and which ones to incentivize on private properties, as well as to build
new alliances, including with the
Overbrook Environmental Education
Center (OEEC) in West Philadelphia.
Arto Woodley of the Lang Center
shared insights and expertise that
helped to actualize some of McGarity’s
community partnerships.
“Art’s StormWise program will
help us monetize and put value on
storm-water management in our area,”
says OEEC director Jerome Shabazz,
who will work with Swarthmore students this summer. “If we want to
encourage green infrastructure development, we have to be able to justify
the value of open space. By pulling in
academia and local stakeholders, we
can get the job done.”
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
21
DANCE FLOWERS
E
ARLY ON a January
Saturday, a light snow
fell outside the Lang
Performing Arts
Center. For the most
part, the campus
was still. But inside the dance studio,
Amelia Estrada ’17 was already in a
full sweat, charging across the smooth
floor demonstrating athletic leaps
and scissorlike steps to her young
dance troupe. In an unintended tribute to Degas, the clutch of 10-year-olds
observed her in varying states of concentration. One looped herself across
the long wooden bar; another gazed at
her reflection in the wall of mirrors,
lost in thought.
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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“Step, kick—I want to see straight
legs,” Estrada called out cheerily. “Try
your best. Clean, straight lines. Nice!”
Wearing T-shirts emblazened with
slogans like Born2Shine and Stargazer,
the girls raced to fashion their movements after Estrada’s, reflecting her
distilled energy.
Since September, Estrada, an honors dance and classics major, has
been leading the students every weekend under the guidance of Sharon
Friedler, professor emerita of dance.
The 16 girls, all members of Chester
Children’s Chorus, are learning a
Horton-based modern dance curriculum. The class is the core of Estrada’s
honors thesis and brings to life her
A GARDEN OF GOOD IDEAS
W
ITH 15 minutes left
in her Sustainability
Research Methods
class, English
Professor Betsy
Bolton dashed a few
final notes on the board.
“It’s been remarkable,” Bolton says
as her students collaborate, some with
heads bent low in conversation, others
exuberantly trading ideas. “This has
been our first year and we’ve exceeded
expectations.”
The yearlong course is part of the
President’s Sustainability Research
Fellowship (PSRF)—a rigorous new
program created by Bolton, Ben
Berger, and Director of Sustainability
Aurora Winslade, and sponsored by
the President’s Office, the Lang Center,
the Office of Sustainability, and the
Environmental Studies Program—
where students seek real-world solutions for complex sustainability issues.
“Within the PSRF program, students
learn to lead by leading,” says Bolton.
With a stream of projects in motion,
the work can sometimes feel frenetic.
And faculty, too, accustomed to being
in charge, must learn a new role of letting the students take the reins. “There
are times when it can feel a little like a
three-ring circus,” she laughs. “But the
students are doing amazing work.”
One of those students is biology and
studio art major Gavriela Mallory ’17,
who hopes to pursue farm-based education after graduation. She recently
led the Crum Woods Stewardship
Committee to articulate best forestry
practices for Swarthmore.
“I built a document that will serve
as a framework for institutional management of the woods going forward,”
Mallory says. “That’s a pretty rewarding contribution to make.”
The PSRF program has also allowed
the College to implement changes
beyond the classroom with the hiring of Climate Action Senior Fellow
Nathan Graf ’16. Graf works closely
with Aaron Metheny ’18, an economics major, and Steve Golub, the
Franklin and Betty Barr Professor of
Economics, to construct a model for
how the College will most effectively
enact carbon charging. (This involves
internal audits that “tax” each department based on their production of carbon emissions. Revenues from the
charge will be applied toward renewables, efficiency, metering, and education projects.)
Swarthmore is one of a few schools,
like Yale and Vassar, leading the way
on carbon charging; the College hosted
a conference on the topic in January.
In fact, Swarthmore has committed
to being carbon-neutral by 2035. But
that’s the long view.
Meanwhile, Graf, Golub, and
Metheny meet weekly in the Lang
Center to discuss and develop strategies for the College’s carbon-charge
blueprint. In addition to working
through articles in a class-directed
reading, they look at carbon pricing
in the private sector. The answers are
rarely simple, but the group remains
optimistic.
“It’s still a work in progress,”
says Graf. “Carbon pricing is a fair,
feasible, and powerful solution to the
climate crisis, and Swarthmore is
taking a valuable leadership role in
moving that solution forward.”
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Amelia Estrada ’17 uses dance as a tool for empowerment as she works with students from
Chester to create an original piece for a recital this spring. “You can help young people discover a
way to be active, to be physically creative and also learn the discipline that comes from dance and
apply that to other areas of their lives,” she says.
belief that dance—and the arts in general—can transform disenfranchised
communities.
“The act of dancing,” says Pallabi
Chakravorty, associate professor and
director of the dance program, “allows
us to collectively imagine and then
take action for a better future.”
Friedler agrees, and the retired professor so believed in Estrada that she
returned to guide the student through
her thesis. The two planned the dance
course curriculum for eight months
on a grant from the Lang Center’s
Swarthmore Fund. In fact, Friedler’s
outstanding career inspired the Lang
Center to establish Arts and Social
Action, which Chakravorty now heads,
as one of four faculty-led initiatives
that empower professors to innovate and collaborate in their areas of
expertise—including on projects like
Estrada’s.
“Amelia’s work is important for a
thousand reasons,” Friedler says. “As
a young woman of color, she wants to
empower her students through dance.
When challenges happen in their lives,
they can be heard, and work through
them, via the discipline of the arts.”
Growing up in Boxborough, Mass.,
Estrada was one of the only Latina
students in her mostly white suburban community, which heightened her
awareness of race and class. Adding to
her worldview was a diagnosis of dyslexia that prevented her from being
able to read until third grade.
“My dyslexia is part of the reason I
am creative,” says Estrada, whose parents eventually advocated for a move to
a different school where she bloomed.
“Dance as a release is a wonderful tool
that makes me feel vulnerable and open
in a positive way as opposed to being
graded or judged. My students have the
ability to transfer that energy.”
As the Saturday class ended, Estrada
called the young dancers to the center of the room. They joined hands in a
circle, thanking each other for participating. To close the session, they began
singing a well-rehearsed piece from the
Children’s Chorus, their voices tied in
ethereal harmony. Then, in a blur, they
were through the door and out into the
world.
Aaron Metheny ’18, Professor Steve Golub, and Climate Action Senior Fellow Nathan Graf ’16
discuss constructing a model for how the College will most effectively enact carbon charging.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
23
GROWING TOWARD THE LIGHT
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Denise Crossan is the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change. “I’m
a huge advocate of experiential learning,” says Crossan, who taught at Trinity College Dublin
before coming to Swarthmore. Crossan teaches courses on social innovation and is building a
new makers’ space, the Social Innovation Lab at the Lang Center. “We want to give students a
chance to see themselves as social innovators. Covering the theory is not enough—they have to
have exposure to how it works in the field.”
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
“I am well-aware of the neglect
that this neighborhood faces,” says
Houston. “I had just moved to campus and was getting accustomed to
what, to me, was this fancy institution.
Then I came across this group of people with the audacity to envision that
the disinvested and neglected North
Philly neighborhood that I grew up
in could create its own cycle of urban
revitalization.”
He was so inspired, he says, that he
joined the project.
Working with community members
has been extremely gratifying, adds
Everbach, “because they are genuinely interested in learning about new
things that would benefit their neighborhood. We have learned so much
from them, too—Serenity Soular is a
true partnership of mutualism, community, and love.”
In fact, two neighbors who started
as apprentices, Ky Sanders and Robert
Crawford, are now fully trained as
solar installers.
“We have this vision of creating a
solarized community that fights the
historic pattern of gentrification with a
steady stream of good, green jobs,” says
Di Chiro. “Through all this work we
are demonstrating place-making and a
step together toward sustainable economic development and against displacement of a beloved community.”
“The Lang Center
supplies resources;
colleagues, students,
and community partners supply dreams.
Together we’re
redefining higher
education.”
—Ben Berger, executive
director
LAURENCE KESTERSON
from the Swarthmore Project Pericles
Fund, established by Eugene Lang and
administered by the Lang Center, put
the project on solid ground.
Laura Rigell ’16 began working with
Serenity Soular her freshman year.
“I’ve been involved ever since,” she
says. Her work with Serenity Soular
helped Rigell to “figure out what climate justice means on the ground.
We are working to ensure that these
residents, who have faced decades
of structural racism and disinvestment, are able to participate in and
benefit from the growing green economy. I have learned that by working
across our differences, we can create
miracles.”
Patrick Houston ’17 grew up in
Hunting Park, just three miles north of
Serenity House.
Among those who power the Lang Center (from left): Assistant Director for Co-Curricular Programming and Outreach
Katie Price; Scholar-in-Residence Arto Woodley; Associate Director Jennifer Magee; Administrative Assistant Delores
Robinson; Executive Director and Associate Professor of Political Science Ben Berger; and Civic Education and Engagement
Fellow Hana Lehmann ’13.
BEAUTY AND A BETTER WORLD BLOSSOM
N
ENGRAVINGS © CAN STOCK PHOTO / MORPHART
O
N A WARM SPRING
night in 2013, a group
of Swarthmore students and professors
Giovanna Di Chiro
and Carr Everbach
made their way to North Philadelphia.
The destination was Serenity House,
an outreach center where they planned
to share a dinner with residents and
talk about ways to build sustainable practices and help reconstitute
vibrancy in the struggling West Lehigh
Avenue neighborhood.
Eventually, a consensus was
reached. In an effort to cut electricity
costs at the center, the group decided
to explore transitioning to solar
power—without losing the “soul” of the
community—and the Serenity Soular
Project was born. A three-year grant
OW 81, Edgar Cahn
’56 has spent a lifetime fiercely sowing
the seeds of justice.
“Democracy is not
a spectator sport,”
says Cahn, who was a speechwriter
for Robert Kennedy. (He discussed his
career in a 2015 campus lecture: bit.ly/
Cahn56.) Still devoted to law and teaching—and still working with Lang Center
students each summer on social-justice
projects such as Youth Courts and Time
Banking—Cahn sees Henri Matisse’s
flowers and how Swarthmorean roots
help them grow.
“It’s not enough to be an elite island
and citadel of learning—hope and possibility come from brainstorming how
to change things we don’t want to tolerate,” says Cahn. “The meaning of
what’s learned only realizes its potential if it’s radiating out, and the Lang
Center seeks to bridge all worlds.”
Every fall since 1968, Cahn has
hand-planted thousands of bulbs—
crocuses, irises, and tulips—in front of
the Washington, D.C., house he bought
with his wife, Jean Camper ’57, whom
he met at Swarthmore. The racism
of that era didn’t stop them from
marrying—Camper was black; Cahn
is white—or from embarking on
careers devoted to improving access
to the legal system for all Americans,
especially those living in poverty.
Camper died from breast cancer at
55. Her flowers—their flowers—make
Cahn think about hope and promise. He recognizes that rare beauty—
real and metaphorical—as he reflects
on all he’s planted and tended over the
course of his life.
“The joy of gardening is something I
learned at Swarthmore—just believing
good things can happen. We are a good
and caring species; it’s wired into us,”
he says. “It has never occurred to me
to give up. What I see is a world that is
capable of producing abundance.”
That same sense of optimism also
shimmers in a short film about Eugene
Lang. In it, he looks into the camera
and describes how, when it comes to a
changing world, Swarthmore has been
“a lodestar” and “remarkably constructive in considering ideas.”
During that filming decades ago,
Lang likely had no idea the ways in
which, on campus and beyond, his
vision for the Lang Center would
evolve into a stunning global reality.
Today, around the world, the scholarship and service of students, faculty,
and alumni is blooming—like so many
flowers.
+ MORE VOICES FROM THE LANG CENTER
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
25
WORDS
WITH
FRIENDS
Making an impact on others through
the wonder of writing
by Elizabeth Slocum
photography by Laurence Kesterson
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
27
A VOICE FROM THE VOICELESS
Without poetry, Haydil Henriquez ’14 may never have left
the South Bronx. She also may never have returned.
“As a young woman of color growing up in a historically
disadvantaged community, I didn’t see reflections of myself
in the media, or in academia, or in anything that was claimed
successful,” says Henriquez, a daughter of Dominican immigrants. “Through poetry and being exposed to other writers, I
realized, This isn’t the only world that I know. The Bronx isn’t
the only world that exists.”
Henriquez embraced poetry as a way to share “an untold
story that was very alive, that was eating me up inside.”
As a student at an upstart performing-arts high school,
Henriquez stood out at poetry slams, received an award in
the name of poet Martín Espada—and caught the attention of
Swarthmore.
“When I visited the campus, I had never been in a space
outside of Central Park that had that many trees, and I went
nuts,” says Henriquez, the first in her family to attend college. “I thought, This is amazing. I can breathe.”
Swarthmore was the kind of place that inspired
Henriquez’s writing, but also made it necessary for her to
write. She found her niche through the student writing
“In order for us to fill voids within us, we need
to speak, we need to feel community, we need
to share our stories.”
—Haydil Henriquez ’14
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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collective OASIS (Our Art Spoken in Soul), which allowed
her to “maintain sanity” through her rigorous course load.
“OASIS was really a healing force for me,” she says. “It’s
something so basic, but we often forget we’re humans. In
order for us to fill voids within us, we need to speak, we need
to feel community, we need to share our stories.”
After graduating, Henriquez chose to return to her South
Bronx community—where she now helps high schoolers
share their stories. As manager of outreach and college advising for DreamYard Art Center, a community organization
affiliated with her former high school, she connects students
to colleges through their personal essays, homing in on periods of resilience and growth.
“Folks forget how much truth is in the personal statement,” Henriquez says. “They’ll have a story, which is often
My father wasn’t around, or I had all these responsibilities at
home, or I immigrated into this country, and they’ll feel that
those are such typical stories that there is no value in them.
I’ve been challenged with allowing young people to see how
a story’s power is maximized when you hear it in a way that
provides an authentic voice.”
PHILLIP STERN ’84
I
T’S THE SKEPTICS who
are the most fun for Jodi
Sherman Egerton ’97, the
challenging ones who
wait in line just to find out
what all the laughing and
crying and frenetic rat-a-tat-tat-DINGs! are all about. What
do you mean you’re writing free poems on the spot?
“Come on, give me one word,” Egerton prods. She promises
not to disappoint.
“They’ll go, ‘All right, well, how about dragon or spatula,”
she says. “Those are always my favorites because there’s
so much you can do. And then they love it and realize that
poetry can be for anyone.”
But sometimes, through that one word—or one sentence
or one-minute-long conversation—Egerton’s typewriter taps
into something deeper: Can you give me a poem about my
brother? We’ve been distant for 10 years, and he’s coming to
town. I’m really nervous about it.
“Then all of a sudden, there’s this intimate moment where
they’ve let you into the biggest struggle that they’re dealing with,” Egerton says. “I’ve been given this amazing gift: I
get to be honest and say, ‘This is going to be powerful and fun
and hard, but wait till you see the other side’—without actually saying it. I write this all down and then hand them these
words that hopefully capture something they connect with.”
That’s where Typewriter Rodeo—Egerton and her troupe
of typists—shines. Hired at events to write customized
poems for guests, these friends with backgrounds in writing and improv become three-minute therapists, using the
power of their words for the greater good.
And they’re not alone in embracing that Quaker ideal:
Many Swarthmorean writers, in looking out for their fellow
humans, have set out to prove just how mighty the pen—or
typewriter or computer keyboard—can truly be.
“Oftentimes, when it comes to Bronx youth, the
story is, ‘They’re delinquents, they’re violent, they go
to college and drop out,’” says Haydil Henriquez ’14.
“I want to challenge that message because it’s not the
truth. There are other things—barriers—that impede
young people from reaching success.”
SPRING 2017/
Swarthmore College Bulletin
29
PHILLIP STERN ’84
Mendez has “a great deal of academic background that
is relevant to almost nothing except for these games,” he
quips: He studied West African religion, English literature, and Brazilian and North Indian dance at Swarthmore,
and received a master’s degree in Eastern classics, covering Japan, China, and India, from St. John’s College in New
Mexico. All of which, combined with his Filipino-American
heritage, made him an ideal writing candidate for RPG companies looking to diversify.
As a staff writer with John Wick Presents, a producer of
tabletop RPGs, the New York-based Mendez casts a liberal
arts eye to find the “most interesting and characterful and
important things relative to the setting we’re working on,”
whether it’s Imperial Mali, the Aztec Empire, or the Dutch
West India Company. But Mendez never claims to be an
expert on any culture but his own.
“I know a lot about people of many different backgrounds,
but I’m still a person with only my background,” he says. “It’s
important to me to make sure that I check anything that I
create against a real person from that culture.”
His cultural research and creativity also come into play in
his side project, converting Homer’s The Iliad into a modern-day hip-hop epic.
“Rap was the original format of The Iliad,” says Mendez,
who as “MC Lula” is crowdfunding the translation at bit.ly/
IliadRap. “The poem had a very set rhythm and meter, but a
lot of it was actually freestyled. And contentwise, it’s all about
booty and machismo and a lot of the most frustrating and also
captivating elements of hip-hop culture. So I wanted to translate it from its original format, into its original format.”
Through the power of imagination and words, Mendez
believes we all can transcend and connect.
“I want people to feel like they can engage with subjects
where they were worried about being inaccurate or offending someone, by playing a game and having fun in that setting,” Mendez says. “Swarthmore taught me that every topic
was worth exploring, even the really scary ones—especially
the really scary ones.”
“Swarthmore was full of people who were not afraid
to do something super weird because they were really
interested in it,” says James Mendez Hodes ’08. “Swarthmore was a place where it was safe to care too much.”
Just as she discovered a world beyond the Bronx, she
encourages her students to take a broad view.
“Their guidance counselors are telling them, ‘Just apply
to all these local colleges,’ when there are other places that
would actually tickle your brain,” she says. “That’s one thing
that Swarthmore does really, really well—it builds activists
who are challenging the world, it builds character, it builds
writers.”
PLAYING HIS ROLE
James Mendez Hodes ’08 brings new perspectives to the
table—literally.
As a freshman at Swarthmore, Mendez began playing
tabletop role-playing games, or RPGs, in which participants take on a character and advance a storyline based on
a fictional setting, à la Dungeons & Dragons. For Mendez, a
“I know a lot about people of many different
backgrounds, but I’m still a person with only
my background.”
—James Mendez Hodes ’08
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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religion major with interests in theater and poetry, the games
provided a perfect mix of acting and writing. But these RPG
worlds—traditionally dreamed up, played, and promoted by
white, straight, cisgender men—often lacked the diversity
and authenticity of the actual world, he says.
“Historically, most role-playing games were set in a
Tolkien-like fantasy or Europe,” says Mendez, who made a
career of his hobby by becoming an RPG writer. “But these
days, there’s a lot more attention paid to having authentic research—and not having people get mad at you on the
internet.”
WHOSE LAND IS IT ANYWAY?
In the introduction to This Land Is Our Land, her recent
book tracing the 400-plus-year history of American immigration, Linda Barrett Osborne ’71 poses a question to her
young readers:
“Is it our land, the land of the people who already live here,
who were once but are no longer immigrants? Or is it our
land, including the people who still come here for opportunity and freedom to make the United States their home?”
Ultimately, she lets her readers decide.
“I want them to have a fair and clear-eyed view of our history, to counter the divisive, hate-filled rhetoric we hear
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31
“It’s realizing that this collection of words and
symbols touches something inside of you.”
—Jodi Sherman Egerton ’97
JUST THE RIGHT TYPE
Typewriter Rodeo was never meant to be more than a onetime gig. Jodi Sherman Egerton ’97 simply hoped to enter the
Maker Faire—a celebration of all things artisan—as it landed
in Austin, Texas, in 2013.
“I gathered up a couple of good friends and antique typewriters. We had this tiny, little booth and we said, ‘OK, we’ll have
one person going and we’ll trade off every few hours—it’ll be
fine,’” she remembers. “‘We’ll write a few poems or a couple of
stories, and we’ll see.’ Within a half-hour of us starting, there
were three of us typing, and we had lines 20 people deep.”
She realized, in that typewriter bonanza, that something
had clicked.
“A couple of hours in, someone asked if we did events.
We turned and looked at each other and said, ‘Yup, we do!’”
she says. “At some point, some random person walked by
and said, ‘Whoa! That looks like a typewriter rodeo!’ And I
thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s our name.’ It must have been six
or eight hours that we typed, and it was amazing and so much
fun. I went home that night and bought the domain name for
typewriterrodeo.com.”
Ever since, the group has been available for hire for wedding receptions, corporate parties, and other events—always
with at least two writers typing in tandem to feed off each
other’s energy. One memorable gig brought them to Willie
“We talk about fake
news; I’m against
fake history.”
—Linda Barrett Osborne ’71
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
behind the image of America as one big happy melting pot.
Osborne’s books—which also cover slavery, segregation,
and other aspects of black history—have been wellreceived by teachers and education groups, “I think because
they honestly deal with the negative parts of American
history,” Osborne says, “but they also show how people—
whether immigrants or African-Americans—have overcome
huge obstacles to succeed.” This Land received high praise
from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and
was a finalist for the American Library Association’s 2017
Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award.
As an English major at Swarthmore, Osborne never
expected to write for a young audience, but she recently completed her fifth text for kids, Come On In, America, marking
the 100th anniversary of the country’s entry into World War I.
“I do it because there are cracks and spaces in the history
I learned growing up—and in what we hear now—and I’m
obsessive about filling in the story,” she says. “Kids pick up
information everywhere, a lot of it incorrect, incomplete, or
oversimplified.
“But I also think kids have a sense of what is true or reasonable and what is propaganda when they are presented
with narratives that are backed up with facts and personal
stories. They just need to know what they are and see them
explained in an engaging way.”
+ DO-SI-DO WITH TYPEWRITER RODEO: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
“I love being able to be a force that’s like, ‘You’ve
got this,’” says Jodi Sherman Egerton ’97. “‘We—the
greater we—are all behind you. You can do this.’”
TYPEWRITER RODEO
today,” says Osborne, a former senior writer/editor for the
Library of Congress. “We talk about fake news; I’m against
fake history.”
After working on a book on Italian-Americans for the
Library of Congress, Osborne set out to write This Land,
inspired by the experiences of her eight great-grandparents,
who all emigrated from Italy in the late 19th century.
“I hadn’t realized how vicious and demeaning the language
used by politicians, the press, and the public against them
was,” she says. “This has been true at some point for nearly
all ethnic groups immigrating to America. Obviously, some
immigrant groups are being denigrated today.”
Using memoirs, letters, and interviews—plus vivid artwork and historic photographs—Osborne shares the stories of these immigrants to present the more complex reality
PHILLIP STERN ’84
“I hope that kids come to understand that we are a nation of immigrants or descendants of immigrants—the Pilgrims as
much as my Italian great-grandparents,” says Linda Barrett Osborne ’71. “I want kids to see that they have a choice: to treat
immigrants with fear and contempt, or to treat them with respect and compassion.”
Nelson’s ranch during the South by Southwest festival,
where they typed nonstop for nine hours.
“That was the first time where actually I thought, I can’t
continue. I am in so much pain,” Egerton laughs.
Despite having sent thousands of poems out into the
world—enough for the group to land a book deal, with plans
to publish next spring—Egerton rarely suffers from writer’s
block.
“A lot of it is momentum,” says Egerton, who also has a
Ph.D. in English. “It’s like diving in and just going with it.
The improv part of me is very big and exuberant and performative and enthusiastic, and so I get in it and I’m like, ‘Yes!
Bring on the next poem! I can’t wait to do this!”
The whole Rodeo experience, from that “one word” to
printed poem, typically takes just minutes. It’s enough time,
though, for Egerton to put into words what others can’t—to
translate the intangibility of humanity onto the page.
“It’s realizing that this collection of words and symbols
touches something inside of you, and maybe it’s inspiring
or soothing or commiserating or challenging or encouraging,” Egerton says. “If I can just do that for tons of people
out there, for whatever their next life journey is, it feels like
we’re doing something good.”
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33
WALL
STREET
WOMEN
Helping ‘leading ladies from the liberal
arts’ get in—and win—the game
by Jonathan Riggs
photography by Laurence Kesterson
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
“Seeing women collaborating, sharing their successes and
failures, and lifting each other up is so poignant and powerful,”
says Christine Kim ’17. “It’s beautiful to see the mechanics of
Redefine Her Street in action.”
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35
T
HE WAY ONTO WALL STREET can be
challenging, especially for women—and especially
for liberal arts women.
Christine Kim ’17 experienced this firsthand
her junior year while trying to lock in an investment banking internship. What she lacked in ready-made inroads, she
made up for with resourcefulness and persistence. With
support from the Korea Finance Society and Swarthmore
alumni whom she tracked down on LinkedIn, Kim achieved
her goal: She spent the summer doing trading comparables
and drafting company overviews at Bank of America Merrill
Lynch. Her success there led to an offer of a post-graduation
job on their leveraged finance team.
“Not being from a target school for the big banks, it was
fairly unheard of for someone like me to get that opportunity, and I had seen other students face the struggle, too,” the
political science major says. “The only thing that was really
blocking us, I realized, was information asymmetry—we just
needed more support and resources.”
So she opted to immediately pay her success forward.
Mere weeks after she received that coveted internship offer,
Kim presided over the initial interest meeting for Redefine
Her Street (RHS), a new student organization aimed at
equipping women from liberal arts colleges for careers in the
financial sector.
The mission of RHS is twofold: to create a community of
“leading ladies from the liberal arts” who are interested in
being the next principals of finance, consulting, and business; and to give them hands-on support navigating the complex and demanding recruiting process necessary to land
their dream jobs.
“We’ve appreciated the efforts of RHS members to raise
awareness of the wide range of meaningful for-profit careers
available to Swarthmore students,” says Nancy Burkett,
director of career services. “It’s exciting to see our students
discovering creative ways to prove there’s no limit to where a
36
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
liberal arts education can take you.”
The inaugural RHS Swarthmore College chapter is going
strong, with close to 30 members. Kim chairs the board of
directors, which also includes chapter co-founders Irene
Xiang ’18 and Karen Nguyen ’18, as well as Keana Bloomfield,
a Bryn Mawr junior. The organization is in the process of
being registered as a national 501(c)(3), and Bloomfield is
leading the launch of a chapter on Bryn Mawr’s campus next
fall.
Now in its second year, RHS has systematized its programming. Expert- and student-led workshops such as Financial
Institutions and Investments 101 help lay a foundation,
while twice-monthly chapter meetings provide women with
space to compare notes and ask questions of their peers. An
annual Economic & Finance Forum brings distinguished
alumni to campus to share insights gained in the field.
Students accepted into the by-application-only RHS
Finance Fellows Program receive guidance throughout
the internship- and job-recruiting processes from mentors in their area of interest. In the Peer 2 Peer Mentorship
Program, upperclasswomen are paired with younger students to help them investigate business career opportunities.
Women 2 Women events, which have included brunches in
Philadelphia and movie screenings, build community among
RHS members.
Kim herself has benefited from the mentorship of the RHS
national board of directors, which she also chairs. These
board members include Wall Street execs Jaky Joseph ’06,
Robert Steelman ’92, and Donna McCormick ’84.
“Donna is my first woman mentor in this field, and it has
meant so much to me on both a personal and professional level
to learn from her,” Kim says. “RHS really opened my eyes to
the fact that there just aren’t enough women in this industry.”
Xiang realized the disparity after attending the inaugural
summer intensive program of Girls Who Invest, a nonprofit
dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio
management and executive leadership.
“When you manage a portfolio of securities,” Xiang
explains, “you want to diversify as much as possible across
asset classes and across industries. Why don’t we also advocate for more diversified investment teams?”
McCormick agrees. “The field’s senior people are still predominantly male,” says the managing director of Bank of
America Merrill Lynch, “but it goes beyond gender—having everybody with a finance or accounting major is not very
diverse.”
A classics major, McCormick credits her Swarthmore
study of Plato, Homer, and Euripides with cultivating her
curiosity, pushing her to seek deeper, more creative liberal
arts answers beyond the obvious.
“I’m constantly amazed at how brilliantly and out-of-thebox Swarthmore students think about things—they add value
in ways no one else can,” Kim says. “I’m especially proud of
how RHS is helping liberal arts students tailor their skills to
get to where they want to go.”
Coming from an institution like Swarthmore, however, can
prove challenging to aspiring Wall Street titans. Xiang, who
originally intended to go to medical school, has had peers
“Financial services is considered the very epitome of power and yet
it remains one of the toughest industries for women to climb to the top,”
says Irene Xiang ’18, a chemistry and math major. “Changing the balance
of power and money will ultimately remedy gender inequality issues.”
question her change in direction. Kim notes that freshmen at
the fall activity fair wondered whether Wall Street wasn’t “a
bad name to be associated with” on Swarthmore’s progressive
campus.
“We need to acknowledge what’s contributed to Wall
Street’s bad reputation,” Kim says, “but also what the good is,
and how we can fix things.”
“What many don’t understand,” Xiang adds, “is that
there’s a whole other part of finance where you can actually
implement social change.”
Impact investment is the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return. For example, impact
investors might loan money to a fair-trade coffee cooperative or a provider of affordable housing for low-income families. It’s what expert Morgan Simon ’04 calls “the world’s
hottest trend in philanthropy and development.”
“This is the trillion-dollar trend that most people have
never heard of,” she says. “Still, compared to traditional
finance, you see a lot more women in social investment
because it’s a great opportunity to have a deep impact.”
Opening minds and doors to Swatties interested in impact
investment is important to the success of RHS, but it’s just
part of a larger change the organization is spearheading in
the way liberal arts alumni perceive the role and value of
money.
“The bottom line is that you don’t have to go into finance
to benefit from understanding how capital works—successful nonprofits and activism rely on it,” Kim says. “RHS is
about more than encouraging women to go into finance, it’s
about inspiring our community to talk about how capital
moves in the world and how we can make it play the role we
want it to.”
That goes for alumni, too—Kim is actively searching for
board members and volunteers to expand and deepen the
resources and support that RHS offers its members.
As excited as she is to join Bank of America Merrill
Lynch full time after graduation, Kim is perhaps even more
inspired by the momentum of the movement she’s helped
start.
“Redefine Her Street is about changing Wall Street from the
inside out,” she says. “Yes, we need Swatties out there protesting, but we also need Swatties who are willing to go into the
belly of the beast to use their wonderful, critical liberal arts
thinking to revolutionize this industry for the better.”
—Sophia (Katharine) Merow ’06 contributed to this story.
IMPACT INVESTMENT
“We’re all connected to money one way
or another,” says Morgan Simon ’04. “We
need to think about the leverage point
where we can create changes.”
As a Swarthmore senior, Simon
co-founded—along with fellow student
activists from Barnard, Duke, Penn, and
Williams—the Responsible Endowments
Coalition (REC).
Now a presence on 100 campuses nationwide, REC empowers students to
challenge their institutions of higher education to invest responsibly and proactively, thereby bringing socially and
environmentally responsible investment
practices to endowment funds totaling in
the tens of billions.
The author of Real Impact: The New
Economics of Social Change, Simon
founded two other leading impact investment players: Toniic and Transform Finance.
The former bills itself as “an action
community for global impact investment”
while the latter supports investors, communities, and entrepreneurs in a broad
range of efforts to use finance as a positive tool for equity and shared prosperity.
Reflecting on her decade-plus of wielding the powerful tool of finance to effect
social change, Simon says it remains to be
seen whether impact investment will live
up to its full world-improving potential.
“Are we going to make people slightly better off but keep the pre-existing
power structures in terms of haves and
have-nots and general disrespect for the
environment?” she wonders. “Or are we
going to seize this moment to really lead
to systemic change in the way we make
our investments?”
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
37
KENDELL BYRD ’17: Hey, Rio. How’d you first become interested in tech?
RIO AKASAKA ’09: Growing up, I had the liberty to play around with—and
break—gadgets, which allowed me to think about how our ability to understand
and interact with tech is equally as important as tech itself. How’d you start?
My senior year of high school, I did a research project on using robotics
and EEG (electroencephalogram) to aid in communication for people
with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). My research adviser was also
in charge of my school’s entrepreneurship program, where students were
allowed to go to this startup incubator called 1871 and work with companies. During the second semester of my senior year, I visited 1871 and
completely fell in love with the environment. It was so cool seeing how all
these worlds interacted, and made me determined to learn coding and go
into computer science.
Very cool. After I graduated from Swarthmore, I spent a year working in Boston
as a user-interface engineer before I realized I wanted to define features rather
than build them. I went to grad school for computer science, engineering, and linguistics, and then joined Google, where I worked on YouTube apps, Google Maps,
and Google Drive.
38
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2017
I like the ways tech can bring people together
from different fields and experiences, and how
we can use everything we’re interested in with
our tech work. Even in my economics course,
we’re talking about Google and Microsoft and
market power and competition. It’s exciting
that so much of tech is about collaboration and
not being afraid to fail.
I completely agree, and that reminds me of how,
when I was with Google Maps, I got the chance to
start thinking about accessibility—not on an official team, but as something I was interested in and
wanted to learn more about. Even though I’ve moved
to Google Drive here in Boulder, Colo., I’m still invested in the work I started at Maps, and I’m still
working with a globally situated team of engineers,
product managers, and user-experience designers
to increase accessibility.
That’s a reason I’m going to Buzzfeed. I love
theater and am in our sketch-comedy troupe
Boy Meets Tractor, and right off the bat, Buzzfeed gave me the opportunity to do programming and work on videos, too. I am happy to be
in a broad environment where people have a
variety of interests. I’m learning as much as I
can about it all—a lot like here at Swarthmore.
Exactly! I’m working on a bunch of neat features for
Google Drive. What excites me is devoting whatever extra time I have to improving the accessibility of Google Maps, whether that’s for users who are
in wheelchairs or are visually impaired. I see an opportunity for us to design for better discovery and
more reassurance for these individuals, and I want
to continue doing this kind of work even further.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Kendell Byrd ’17 and Rio Akasaka ’09
talk tech
That’s great. I remember that feeling of being so eager and excited to build something and get involved
myself. A really cool thing about being in the tech
sector is that it’s easy to say, “I have an idea—let me
try it!” and then to put it front of people. Swarthmore and its community really fostered that; I remember working on a website for the Global Health
Forum that helped inspire a lot of people.
ELIZABETH CROW
MAKING A
DIFFERENCE
2.0
I’m studying computer science and economics. I’ve done research with the engineering
department and internships at Jawbone, JP
Morgan, and Facebook. After graduation, I will
be working at Buzzfeed doing software engineering on their video tools team, combining
entertainment and technology.
“I like to believe that one of the most powerful transformations for technology is for it to do good, to be a force for change, for more transparency
and awareness,” says Rio Akasaka ’09. Kendell Byrd ’17 agrees. “Throughout my time in tech,” she adds, “I have learned that my struggles don’t define
me—the ways in which I overcome them do.”
I’m really inspired by how tech can improve the
quality of the human condition, whether that’s
virtual reality or self-driving cars, and it’s cool
how, today, it’s easier than ever for anyone to
access the tech itself to do it. Swatties I know are
making apps for late-night food deliveries and
shared scooter rentals, and that’s just on campus.
Tech today feels a lot like Lego: You’ve got so much
infrastructure, it can’t be used as an excuse that
you can’t build something. What’s important for
us to remember, though, is that tech can also be a
source of education. Not everyone needs wheelchair accessibility from Google Maps, but if knowing that we’ve made it a feature sparks even one
out of 1,000 users to think about the needs of others and how to make a positive difference for them,
tech has done some of its job.
I agree. One of the biggest challenges in the
industry that I see, though, is diversity—several times, I have been the only black or female
engineer on a team. There’s a lot of important
work to be done increasing diverse represen-
tation at companies and during the recruiting process. My tech hero is
Laura Weidman Powers, CEO and co-founder of Code2040, for dedicating
herself to this cause.
Yes—tech can be problematic, especially when we restrict ourselves to designing
only for the space we see. Plus, the most successful technologies we rely on have
created individual silos—you’re staring at your own phone, pursuing your own reality—but more people are understanding how it’s really just creating division. It’s
like you say, Kendell: We all need to break ourselves out of that bubble and keep
a broad, diverse focus about who we’re designing for—and designing with—so
that we’re as inclusive as possible.
For sure. I’ve come to see that one of my main goals in tech, and in life, is
what we learn at Swarthmore—it’s our responsibility to better not just
ourselves, but the rest of the world.
Part of the reason we come here in the first place is because we want to do good.
It might sound clichéd, but when I wake up, I ask myself, “What is the most impactful thing I can do today?” Yes, technology makes it possible to have a huge
impact, but I also want to remember that I can make a difference in other ways,
too, big and small.
+ VIEW A GALLERY of tech-savvy, world-changing Swatties: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
39
RIGHTEOUS
AMONG
NATIONS
As the Nazi shadow spread across Europe, two future Swarthmoreans experienced
the worst—and the best—of humanity
by Michael Agresta
Photography by Laurence Kesterson
I
N JULY 1938, a
7-year-old Jewish
boy boarded a train
in Vienna, bound for
Brussels. First, he
would have to pass all
the way through Nazi Germany.
The boy, Franz Leichter ’52, carried
false travel documents belonging to a
different child. The woman with whom
he traveled, a Gentile family friend,
instructed Franz to call her “Mutti”
(“Mommy”) in the presence of German
40
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
authorities. Just hours before, Franz
had left the arms of his own mother. He
would never see her alive again.
Frightened and confused, Franz
could not fully comprehend the threat,
nor the subterfuge required to pass
through the Nazi heartland unharmed.
In a swirl of emotion, Franz forgot his
instructions. “Irma!” he shouted, calling his guardian by first name.
“If we had been discovered, the consequences would have been very serious,” Franz says, nearly 80 years later.
By some unknowable combination
of good fortune, preparedness, and the
benevolence of others, Franz arrived
safely in Brussels. Along with his
father and brother, Henry Leichter ’48,
he would escape.
So would France Juliard Pruitt ’56,
who survived the Nazi occupation of
her native Belgium by hiding with her
family in the remote Cévennes mountains of southern France.
“We were saved by people who didn’t
even know us,” France says. “It’s a
Franz Leichter ’52 and his older brother,
Henry ’48, escaped the Nazi occupation.
ISSUE
SPRING
YEAR
2017
/ Swarthmore
College
Bulletin
41
Their
mother,
Käthe, died
in Ravensbrück.
beautiful story: of love, of freedom, and
of careful planning. My parents knew
that if we stayed in Belgium, like 64
other members of our family did, there
was no hope.”
Both Franz and France would go on
to create meaningful lives and careers
in America, “minding the light,” to
quote an unofficial Swarthmore motto,
despite the darkness they survived.
‘FORTUNATE’ SON
When Nazi Germany annexed Austria
in 1938, Franz’s parents, Otto and
Käthe, found themselves among the
Gestapo’s most wanted. Not only did
they share Jewish heritage, they were
also prominent members of the banned
Social Democratic Party of Austria.
“The real risk at first was as socialists
and anti-fascists,” Franz says. “My parents were in immediate danger when
the Nazi occupation occurred.”
Within days, the Gestapo came looking for Otto, who slipped out of the
country with a false passport. Käthe
perhaps should have left then, too, but
she stayed in Vienna to arrange safe
passage for her mother and two young
sons. For Franz’s escape, she accepted
the help of Irma Turnsek, a friend,
political associate, and housekeeper
for the Leichter family.
Irma had applied for—and received—
visas for herself and her son, Helmut,
to resettle in England. Franz, age 7, was
to impersonate Helmut, his beloved
playmate, as he crossed Germany to
meet his father in Brussels. Käthe
planned to follow weeks later. Then
Irma would return to Vienna to
retrieve the real Helmut.
Why would Irma endanger herself and her son to help save his life?
“She had a great friendship with my
mother,” Franz says. “She wanted to be
as helpful as she could.”
Irma’s smuggling of Franz into
Brussels was ultimately successful,
but the night before Käthe was to leave
Vienna to join Franz, she was betrayed
by an associate and arrested.
Around that time, the Gestapo
learned of Irma’s ruse and barred her
return. “She was not able to pick up
her son until 1947,” Franz says, with an
audible burden of guilt. “Meanwhile,
Helmut spent a miserable eight years
42
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
France Juliard Pruitt ’56 was only 5 when she was forced into hiding. “My parents knew,” she
says, “that if we stayed in Belgium, like 64 other members of our family did, there was no hope.”
“I would call myself a lucky person,” says France, who will speak at a Righteous Among
Nations ceremony in July honoring those who sheltered her family.
in foster care and orphanages.”
As for Franz, his brother Henry, and
their father, they remained hunted
people on an increasingly hostile continent. After settling in Paris, they
had to flee when Nazi tanks rolled in.
They briefly found refuge in the Zone
Libre of southern France, a poorer,
less industrial part of the country
that Hitler’s army largely ignored.
The three took refuge in the city of
Montauban as part of a group of two
dozen prominent Austrian socialists. They’d been there for about three
months when the entire group was
suddenly offered visas to resettle in the
United States, thanks largely to social
connections between Austrian socialist émigrés and the White House.
By the end of 1940, young Franz was
on a ship bound for America. For a
third time—after his mother and Irma
mother had died of typhoid. But that
was a lie. She was gassed.”
Franz survived, but he lost his
mother, his nationality, and his childhood to the Nazis. “It’s one of the millions of stories of what people endured
in these difficult years,” he says. “I was
one of the fortunate ones.”
Turnsek—one woman’s conscience and
willingness to work against the grain of
a racist system had helped save his life.
This champion exemplified an important, if uneven, tradition of courageous
American leaders accepting wartime
refugees over the xenophobic complaints of their countrymen.
“The State Department was very
anti-Semitic and didn’t want to
admit Jews,” Franz says, referencing historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s
No Ordinary Time. “But Eleanor
Roosevelt leaned on FDR, and he
leaned on the State Department.”
Two years later, in boarding school
in Darien, Conn., Franz received
word that his mother had died in
Ravensbrück. “The Nazis were always
trying to disguise what they’d done,” he
says. “There was still an aunt of hers
living in Vienna, and she heard my
LEARNING TO LIE
As the Leichters and their fellow
Austrian refugees cut across southern France in late 1940, they may have
passed within miles of 5-year-old
France Juliard (now Pruitt). Lacking
the international political connections
of the Leichters, France’s family took
a different approach to survival: They
sought deep cover.
The seeds of their escape were planted
in the early 1930s, when France’s father,
a chemist, traveled to the United States
and happened to sit next to Albert
Einstein on a train. In conversation,
the famous German-born physicist
spoke of the dangers on the horizon for
Europeans of Jewish descent.
Returning home to Belgium determined to plan for the safety of his
family, France’s father scoured maps
of Europe and came to focus on the
Cévennes mountains, a Huguenot
homeland and longtime bastion for
victims of religious persecution.
France’s earliest memories are of the
days following the Nazi occupation of
Belgium in May 1940. Her family—her
parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle,
and cousins, including Chantal Juliard
Astore ’56—fled Brussels immediately.
France dimly recalls spending a night
outdoors at the French border, unable
to cross because of a large mass of refugees. The family slept on the grass
near a canal, she says, and she nearly
rolled down into the water during the
night but was rescued by her mother.
The next day, her father was wrongly
accused of theft. “We were all in the
family Buick, with a trailer in back,
surrounded by the police, because the
car of the king had been stolen,” she
recalls. This primordial scene of persecution, suspicion, and danger would
set the template for the next several
years of her life.
After proving their ownership of the
vehicle, France’s family immediately
made for the south of France, where
they settled in a small valley village.
They found the locals welcoming and
even willing to help them learn to farm.
“The whole family had never
touched dirt,” she explains. “But my
father helped the farmers turn their
plums into prunes. They never had
done that. Later on, my father taught
people how to make soap out of fat. It
was a win-win. My parents learned
how to grow carrots, and they were the
best in the town, because they used
chemical fertilizer.”
As the Nazis continued their string
of early victories, France’s parents
began to look for refuge even deeper in
the mountains, taking up residence on
an abandoned farm with no running
water. For food, they kept goats, rabbits, and a pair of pigs named—without
affection—Goebbels and Göring.
One day, word came that decrees had
gone out to round up Jews.
“I still remember the face of the
woman who came running up from
the village to warn us,” she says, emotion in her voice. “That night, we had to
empty the farm.”
Their escape came at a very personal cost for young France and her
cousin Chantal. They had adopted a
dog, which accompanied and protected
them as they hiked the mountain path
to the village and its one-room schoolhouse. That night, the family decided
that, to keep their tracks hidden as
they sought cover, they would have to
shoot the dog—a heartbreaking sacrifice for the children.
A couple active in the French
Resistance hid the younger adult
men—France’s father and uncle—in
an unheated barn for a year and a half,
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
43
Franz Leichter ’52 went on to a career in politics, fighting for civil rights and the public
good as a New York state assemblyman and state senator from 1968 to 1998.
while France and her mother were
sheltered by a widow two mountains
away. After hiding for a year, France
attended school, but under a false
name. “I was a new person, France
Millard instead of France Juliard,” she
says. “I had to learn to lie at age 8.”
Still, she says, her situation was
easy compared to that of Chantal, who
hid in a teacher’s apartment above a
schoolhouse. Chantal was not allowed
to move during the day, for fear of provoking the students’ suspicions.
France and her family received help
from a large number of families and
individuals over the course of the war,
each acting for their own reasons.
Some, she thinks, were motivated by
their Huguenot heritage of resistance
and respect for religious freedom.
Others were Quakers, the first she ever
met, and from whom she learned values she would forever hold dear. Her
greatest help, she says, was her own
resilient character. “I would call myself
a lucky person,” France says. “I tend to
remember only the positive things.”
BROKEN BRIDGES
When Berlin fell in May 1945, the
extraordinary threat to the lives of
European Jews ended, but France and
Franz faced uncertain futures. France
remembers traveling with her family
back to Belgium over a scarred landscape. “Most of the railroad bridges
had been blown up by the Resistance,
44
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
trying to stop the German retreat,” she
says. “It was quite a sad adventure.”
Eventually, the family resettled in
the United States, where her father
accepted a position as one of the first
Fulbright professors of chemistry at
the University of Pennsylvania, choosing a place with a strong tradition of
religious freedom and tolerance. “They
decided to come to Philadelphia,” she
says, “because this was the City of
Brotherly Love with Quakers.”
In college, Franz preferred not to
look back, but to instead focus on
improving the future. “My parents’
commitment to a political life, and also
to social justice, had a deep influence
on me,” he says, “which was heightened at Swarthmore.”
As a New York state assemblyman
and state senator from 1968 to 1998,
Franz made a career fighting for civil
rights and the public good. His legacy includes an early statewide abortion legalization that influenced Roe
v. Wade; important bills on LGBT
marriage, tenants’ rights, campaign
finance, and consumer protection; and
two New York City parks—Riverbank
State Park in upper Manhattan and
Hudson River Park from the Battery
to 59th Street. (His brother and fellow alum, Henry, would serve in World
War II as a combat medic as well as a
U.S. soldier, earning two Purple Hearts
and a Bronze Star for heroism. He died
in 2010.)
Over the years, Franz fell out of contact with Irma and Helmut Turnsek.
That changed in 2013, when the
Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in
Jerusalem let him know that it was
considering bestowing on the recently
deceased Irma the designation of
Righteous Among Nations, awarded
to people who risked their lives to
save Jews during the war. When Franz
learned that Helmut was still alive—
albeit very ill—in London, he rushed
across the Atlantic to visit the man
whose identity he’d once borrowed to
escape certain death.
“Of course, I promised I’d do everything I could,” he says, and Irma was
officially honored in 2015 with a ceremony in London with her surviving relatives. (Sadly, Helmut died one
week after Franz’s visit.)
For France, who also chose to look
forward rather than back, her education at Swarthmore was a time of great
freedom and self-discovery. “I was a
child in a chocolate shop,” she says. “I’d
never had such opportunities.”
After college, France started a family—which went on to include Paul
Pruitt ’84 and Katherine Pruitt ’20—
and made a career in international
education. About 10 years ago, she published a memoir, Faith, Courage, and
Survival in a Time of Trouble, and she
is working on a new edition covering
the French Resistance.
Sharing her story, France emphasizes the compassion of those who
helped her, in particular the religious-minority communities of southern France. (In fact, the couple who hid
her father and uncle and the town that
sheltered them all have been named
Righteous Among Nations.)
So what inspired Irma Turnsek and
so many others to courageously risk
their lives to protect others in the face
of unimaginable horror?
France’s answer comes from her
understanding of the Quaker faith.
“Whether you’re a general or a
laborer or a child, whether you’re an
enemy or a friend, there’s a part of God
in each person, and you need to help
them survive,” she says. “Every human
being counts.”
class notes
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LAURENCE KESTERSON
ALUMNI
EVENTS
Do you want to build a snowman? Isabel Llosa ’20 and Peter Chong ’20 did, after a surprise squall coated Swarthmore’s
campus in snow in late January.
1935
Ken Hechler, former West
Virginia congressman and
author, died Dec. 10 at
home in Romney, W.Va.
Ken was a combat historian during World War II. He
was with the 9th Armored
Division when one of its
tank forces captured
the Ludendorff Bridge at
Remagen, Germany; his
book about that event, The
Bridge at Remagen, was
later turned into a movie
starring George Segal
and Robert Vaughn. After
serving as a White House
assistant to President Truman, Ken was elected to
Congress in 1958. He was
the only U.S. representative to march with Martin
Luther King Jr. at Selma,
Ala., and was the principal
author of the Coal Mine
Health and Safety Act
of 1969. Ken was West
Virginia secretary of state
from 1985 to 2001, and
remained an advocate for
miners’ safety well into
his 90s. He is survived by
wife Carol Kitzmiller, his
longtime companion whom
he married at age 98.
1936
Carolyn Keyes Cadwalla
der, a passionate volunteer and avid traveler, died
Jan. 1. Carolyn studied
history at Swarthmore,
where she met her future
husband, the late Sidney
Cadwallader. The pair
married in 1938 and first
resided in Langhorne, Pa.,
where Carolyn became
active in the Yardley
Friends Meeting, the
Junior Civic Club, and the
League of Women Voters.
She was secretary of the
George School committee for many years and
compiled Class Notes for
the B
ulletin for a decade.
A lifelong student, Carolyn
was rarely seen without
The New York Times at
her elbow, and she viewed
traveling and museum
visits as opportunities
to enhance her education. She is survived
by three children, eight
grandchildren, and seven
great-grandchildren.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
45
class notes
1937
Joseph Hafkenschiel
Jr., an Army Air Corps
veteran with a passion for
golf, died Oct. 26. Joseph
graduated from Johns
Hopkins Medical School
in 1941 and completed an
internship and medical
residency at the University of Pennsylvania. He
married Lucinda Thomas
’34 in July 1942. From
1943 to 1945, he served in
the Army Air Corps in the
China-Burma-India Theater, where he instructed
pilots on the use of oxygen
for high-altitude flights.
After the war, Joseph did
a cardiology fellowship at
Penn and in 1965 accepted a position as medical
director for Sandoz in San
Francisco. Joseph later
served on the staff of the
Stanford Cardiac Clinic,
Stanford Student Health,
the Menlo Park VA Hospital, and Agnews Hospital.
After Lucinda’s death in
1983, he was married to
Carol Rush for 20 years
before they divorced. He is
survived by sons Joseph
III ’68, Tom ’69, Mark
’72, and John ’75; four
grandchildren; and one
great-grandchild.
Frederick Wiest, an
attorney, Army Air Forces
veteran, and longtime
community servant, died
Jan. 18. Fred graduated
from Harvard Law in 1940
and went on to practice
law for 70 years, retiring
in 2012. In February
1942, Fred was inducted
into the Army Air Forces
and served mainly in the
Northern Pacific Theater
of World War II; he was
discharged as a captain in
1946. Known as a remarkable scholar and a true
46
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
gentleman, Fred was also
an avid reader, an amateur
dendrologist, and keenly
interested in astronomy
and the stock market. Fred
was preceded in death by
wife Elizabeth Hay Wiest
’38, son Frederick III, and
sister Jean Wiest ’40. He
is survived by children
Marian and Richard and
two grandsons.
1941
Libby Murch Livingston
lizliv33@gmail.com
I enjoyed a good chat with
David Oliver. He lives in
Solomons, Md., where he
has been for many years.
It sounds like one of the
especially fine retirement
communities that have
grown up over the past 30
or so years and are a boon
to us oldies and our families. Dave is well, though
sorry to be unable to drive,
as is true for so many our
age. He enjoys walking the
large, beautiful campus of
his home.
I was sorry not to be able
to talk to Walt Steuber
but had a good chat with
his son David, who cares
for him in their home just
outside Swarthmore. Although his physical health
limits him, Walt is busy on
his computer and has a
grand time “Skyping” with
many friends. Now that I
know this, I shall use my
daughter’s computer to
join the fun. I hope others
will contact Walt this way.
Amazing this “stuff”
that I stored away in this
not-too-big Maine cottage. I came upon a very
thought-provoking copy
of The Phoenix, our old
school paper, from Jan.
29, 1969. On the front
page was a black-edged
SPRING 2017
“In Memoriam,” a tribute
to College President
Courtney Smith, who died
unexpectedly in his office
Jan. 17. Inside the paper, a
special supplement headlined “Crisis ’69: Semester
of Misunderstanding
and Frustrations” gave
comprehensive coverage
of the occupation of the
admissions office and
other actions and opinions
of the board, the faculty,
and the students. Today, it
is almost eerie to view first
our time at Swarthmore
in the late ’30s and early
’40s, then this crisis that
evolved in the turbulent
’60s, which led to so
many changes. I would
not venture to express an
opinion, but it gave me
the perspective of time in
looking back on this issue.
1942
Mary Weintraub Delbanco
delbanco660@gmail.com
Let’s maintain our Class
Notes presence. Please
think how welcome an
update on your life and interests would be to those
who went through the
same four years as you.
Lucy Rickman Baruch
and husband Bernard celebrated 65 years of marriage and were honored to
receive a congratulatory
card from Queen Elizabeth
II. Bernard retired from
a psychiatry career and
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Lucy from volunteering
with young children. They
moved to a care home, Cliveden Manor, in Marlow,
England.
Lucy adds, “I had an
eventful Alumni Weekend
last June with our son
John because I very much
doubt that I can make our
75th Reunion this year,
but will be with you all in
spirit.” Thanks, Lucy, for
reminding us that this year
is a significant milestone.
Lucy Selligman Schnei
der has been my good
friend through these many
years. Until her retirement,
she was an editor of children’s books at Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich. Lucy
has lived in the same
apartment building almost
continuously since graduation, and I have been
her guest many times.
Last year, she had the
courage and the energy to
have her entire apartment
repainted.
I moved from New York
City to Baltimore six years
ago after the death of my
husband, Kurt. My home
now is in a retirement
community, Roland Park
Place, a few blocks from
my daughter, Janet
Felsten, and her family.
It is situated on a green
campus with many lovely
trees and ample space for
walking.
Ruth Wolf Page died Oct.
30 after an outstanding
career. Although a resident of Vermont, Ruth was
widely known beyond its
borders. Her early career
as a journalist began after
the purchase of a weekly
newspaper by Ruth and
husband Proc. Although
they later sold it, they
gained a wide knowledge
of and wrote about Vermont politics. Ruth also
became a commentator
on Vermont Public Radio
where she emphasized her
concerns for the natural
world. She received many
honors by her appointment to state boards
where her presence
served the public interest.
In retirement, Ruth was a
volunteer at an elementary school library where
she read to children and
shared with them her love
of the natural world. Ruth
is survived by children
Candace, Patti Ruth, and
Robert and their families.
We’ve had long lives
and have many memories
of significant moments.
Please become a recorder
and share your thoughts
with your classmates of
the past and present.
1943
ALUMNI IN ACTION
Hayden Dahmm ’15 and his Seeing Eye dog,
Fathom, met Queen Elizabeth II last semester
at Goodenough College in London, where
Hayden lived while pursuing his master’s degree. Her
Majesty was reportedly quite taken with Fathom.
Alumni gathered in Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 22 for
“Secret Gardens,” a performance on oboe and
English horn by Sara Fraker ’99.
Andrea Young ’76 debuted the book Andrew Young
and the Making of Modern Atlanta on Nov. 1 with
her co-authors at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
Author Emily Robbins ’07 and translator Lissie
Jaquette ’07 spoke in Philadelphia on Feb. 15 about
their Arabic scholarship and lauded publications.
President Valerie Smith traveled to Portland, Ore.,
and Seattle in February for the final leg of her first
set of alumni visits, “A Conversation with President
Valerie Smith.”
Betty Glenn Webber
bettywebber22@yahoo.com
616-245-2687
What is the world coming
to? With a January
birthday, I just renewed
my driver’s license. I
was given a card with a
few pertinent questions,
such as whether I have
episodes of dizziness
while driving. I haven’t, but
what’s to prevent my saying no, regardless? Following a cursory vision test,
the good lady said, “You’re
all set.” In Michigan, that
means I’m good to go for
four more years, until I’m
99—no questions asked!
My kids periodically check
my roadworthiness, but
the secretary of state has
no idea of my competence—how can she sleep
at night? I’m blessed by
the independence I can
enjoy, but the process
seems ridiculous. Is it the
same where you live?
We are saddened by
the death of Peggy Bebie
Thomson, one of my closest College friends. She
Swarthmorean faculty members at Choate
Rosemary Hall and spouses got together at the
holiday party for the Connecticut prep school. From
left: Tim Applebee ’03, Jessica Cuni ’00, Alex Curtis ’89,
Beth Fecko-Curtis ’89, and Marcia Landesman ’91.
John Mather ’68,
H’94 checks out a
New York Times
article from November
featuring the James
Webb Space Telescope,
for which he’s the senior
project scientist.
Susan Rudisill ’76 presents her painting North
Umpqua Narrows, which took top honors in
October’s 1859 Art Show in Oregon.
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles hosted a lecture Feb. 16 by critic and curator
Robert Storr ’72 on “The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois.”
+ SEND YOUR PHOTOS/BLURBS TO BULLETIN@SWARTHMORE.EDU
entered college at 16 and,
during freshman week,
met her future husband,
John Thomson. They
married in 1945 during a
furlough from Johnny’s
Navy duty. Peggy settled
into an NYC apartment
with Swarthmore friends;
her writing career started
there at Life magazine.
Postwar, Johnny took
his poli-sci Ph.D. to the
University of Wisconsin
where they lived until
a 1957 move to Chevy
Chase, Md., for his CIA
job. With children Christo
pher ’71, Hilary, and David
in school, Peggy wrote for
the Washington Post, Potomac magazine, and as a
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freelancer. One of her five
books for the Smithsonian
was an award-winner
for young-adult nonfiction. Social activism and
civil-rights involvement
marked the Thomsons’
Washington life. Summers
often brought trips to
the area of Switzerland
from which her parents
emigrated; later it was
Cape Cod, Mass., where
they vacationed. Peggy,
widowed in 1998, relocated in 2010 to Massachusetts to be near family; her
dementia, coupled with
a broken hip, took her to
assisted living in 2013.
My friendship with her
flourished during the three
years we roomed close
by at Swarthmore. I saw
firsthand her intellectual
prowess as she cranked
out papers in German and
French for her honors
seminars; she introduced
me to 4711 cologne, with
a few dabs for an event
to celebrate or a few to
empathize with a sadness.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
47
class notes
We were bridesmaids for
each other, we corresponded, and our families
visited back and forth. She
was a funny, thoughtful,
brilliant person, now
sorely missed.
We also received the sad
news that Bob Coleman
died Dec. 20. A Christmas
note had reported an unfortunate return of prostate cancer after a long
hiatus, and the disease
had spread to his bones.
Our deepest condolences
to Bob’s family.
We know everyone, pro
and con, is concerned to
see how the new presidential administration
evolves. We surely long
for a less-confrontational
atmosphere and a Washington that can replace
gridlock with constructive
progress.
Since you are reading
this, you are obviously interested in how the ’43ers
are doing. They, too, are
concerned about you, so
do send word, please.
1945
Verdenal Hoag Johnson
verdij76@comcast.net
Another era has passed.
After almost a year of not
being well, my Edward ’46
died at midnight Thanksgiving Day. We knew it was
going to happen; he had
been in the nursing center
for almost five months,
but we did not expect it
to happen so soon. He
must have known, though,
because he got to see
everyone in the family the
week before Thanksgiving.
Daughter Candy and I had
gone to St. Anne’s to have
Thanksgiving dinner with
him, and then we got the
phone call in the middle
48
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
of the night. People have
been telling me, “I’m sorry
for your loss.” I quickly
explain that all I lost was a
tired, old body that wasn’t
functioning well. After 70
years of marriage and two
years before that when
we could not marry (he
was in the ROTC, and the
Navy didn’t allow it), my
very being is imbued with
Edward’s spirit in each
and every cell. He wanted
to go so much that I could
not have been happier
when he got his wish.
I am sure his spirit will
hang around for as long as
I or any other of his loved
ones need him and then
it will be free to be “assigned” to another human
being. I am not sure when
each of us received our
soul, but I know someone
in the far future will meet
someone else and think:
I know this person from
somewhere. Our souls
were together at some
time in the distant past. I
am sure many of you have
had this experience. That
immediate rapport—that
“I know I know you”
feeling—has happened a
number of times in my life.
“… and we ourselves
shall be loved for a while
and forgotten. But the love
will have been enough;
all those impulses of love
return to the love that
made them.” —Thornton
Wilder, The Bridge of San
Luis Rey
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SPRING 2017
1946
Nancy Fitts Donaldson
n.f.donaldson@gmail.com
I hope those who read
this are doing well, as the
only news I usually receive
for this column is that
of classmates’ deaths.
Surely, some of you are
hale and hearty and can
send some good news of
the activities and things
in life that keep you going.
Do send me some cheery
notes.
I did, however, receive a
letter of thanks from the
College written by Michael
Tinti ’18, recipient of our
class scholarship.
Two classmates passed
away in the last few
months. Nancy Garver
Hoover died in the fall at
home in Roaring Spring,
Pa., where she had lived
all her life. She is survived
by four children, nine
grandchildren, and 18
great-grands.
Nancy was very active
in her community as a
founding member of the
town’s Girl Scout troop
and as a volunteer in many
organizations, including
the Red Cross.
Edward Johnson, who
came to Swarthmore as
part of the Navy V-12 and
there met Verdenal Hoag
’45, who became his wife
after her graduation, died
in November. Ed was a
high school guidance
counselor and swimming
coach who was made
a member of the New
Jersey Hall of Fame for
high school coaches. He
was an avid photographer
and very active in the
Episcopal Church. He
and Verdi opened an art
gallery, which they ran
for several years, and Ed
was active in many civic
organizations.
We send condolences
to the families of Nancy
and Ed.
1947
Marshall Schmidt
kinmarshal@aol.com
Our 70th Reunion is fast
approaching. If you are
planning to stay at the
brand-new Inn at Swarthmore, reserve early—there
are only 30 rooms. Drop
me a note if you think you
can make the 70th.
Jean Fischer Winch
writes from Kennett
Square, Pa.: “It has been
a good year for me. You
may recall that in 2015
after a hospital stay, I was
discharged on hospice
and moved to skilled
care (Firbank West) here
at Crosslands. It was a
difficult period, but so
many people reached out
with prayers, love, and
encouragement. In spring
2015, I was well enough to
be taken off hospice, and
in April, I moved back into
a beautiful little apartment
in Audland. What a joy.
In July I had a procedure
to repair my pacemaker
and have been regaining
strength and energy ever
since. I am even back to
exercising again … amazing. They tell me I am the
first resident to move into
Firbank and then back to
Audland. An answer to a
prayer.”
Jean goes on with a long
list of visits with children
and the impending arrival
of her 16th great-grandchild later this year. She
would love to hear from
friends: jeanfwinch@
gmail.com, 484-770-5715
(home), or 484-832-0571
(cell).
Demmie Affleck Carrell
sends an update via her
daughter’s email, since
she’s given up on computers, she says. “At age 90,
I decided it was time to
move into assisted living
in my Quaker retirement
community, Kendal at
Oberlin in Ohio. [The late]
Jep ’45 and I were founders of the community, and
there are several Swarthmoreans who live here
now. I’ve retreated from
civic engagement these
days, but the last thing
that Jep and I worked on
together, the Ninde Scholars Program (to encourage high school students
to become first-generation
college students), is moving along well. Last year,
Michelle Obama came
to Oberlin to present her
Reach Higher Initiative’s
first-place award to the
Ninde program. It really
was Jep’s commitment to
this program that made it
so successful; we wish he
could have been there to
hear Mrs. Obama sing its
praises.
“My children are all over
the U.S., from Seattle to
Phoenix to Bethlehem,
Pa., and grandchildren
there and in Denver, as
well. There are even three
great-grandchildren as of
this year, and counting—I
don’t travel at this point,
but photos and phone
calls keep me up to date.”
Sadly, Marjorie Howard
Johnson died in November. The daughter of the
editor of The Cleveland
News, Marjorie was a
lifelong reader who graduated from Swarthmore
with a French degree, then
received a master’s from
the University of Illinois
and a Ph.D. from the
University of California–
Berkeley. A Fulbright
Scholar, Marjorie went on
to teach, manage an art
gallery, model in Paris, and
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write fiction and poetry.
She is survived by sons
James ’79 and Nathaniel
and one grandchild.
especially the iconic
saddle shoes.
1950
1949
Marjorie Merwin Daggett
mmdaggett@verizon.net
The Class of ’49 is rather
shy of notes. Many of us
live in retirement communities. Our activities are
probably similar; still, we’d
like to hear about you and
them.
From Indiana, Roger
Birdsell writes, “I am
retired and in an independent-living apartment at
Holy Cross Village near
the University of Notre
Dame. I retired after a
career in newspaper
journalism, hospital public
relations, and fundraising.
Still reasonably active
and trying to adjust to the
recent election debacle.”
In November, I spoke
in NYC at the memorial service for Joanne
Donovan Banta, who died
in June. I just returned
to Concord, Mass., after
an almost three-week
holiday with family in Mill
Valley, Calif., and Seattle.
The flora of that part of
California is such a shock
after New England, though
a pleasant one with iris
and camellias blooming
and holly everywhere.
Seattle, in contrast, was
as cold as Concord.
On my return, I found
a Christmas card from
Nancy Burnholz Rawson
’48; it was a picture, taken
probably in 1947, of Nancy
and late husband Ed ’48
holding hands in front of
a tree at Swarthmore. It
brought back memories
of old friends, good times,
and the clothes we wore,
Robert Greenawalt died
Dec. 8 in Berlin, Vt. He
served in the Army Air
Corps after high school
and enrolled at Swarthmore under the GI Bill
after World War II. He met
his future wife, Barbara,
at his first job—as an
engineer with Fairbanks
Morse in Beloit, Wis. The
pair married in 1951, had
one child, Ann, and settled
in Barrington, R.I., where
Bob was an engineer for
55 years. In 2013, Bob
and Barbara moved to
Montpelier, Vt., to be close
to family. A quintessential
problem solver, Bob also
had a passion for music,
enjoyed sailing and flying,
and had been a member of
Toastmasters International. His wife preceded him
in death. He is survived
by his daughter and two
grandchildren.
Ross Eckler, a mathematician and wordsmith, died
Dec. 9. Ross graduated
from Swarthmore with
high honors and received
a mathematics Ph.D. from
Princeton in 1954. He
worked for Bell Telephone
Laboratories for 30 years,
and in 1970 launched a
second career as editor
and publisher of Word
Ways, a small journal
devoted to recreational
letterplay and wordplay.
He and wife Faith Wood
ward Eckler ’51, whom he
married on the day of her
Swarthmore graduation, enjoyed hiking and
explored major mountain
chains in the U.S. and the
British Isles. In addition
to Faith, he is survived
by daughters Margaret,
Lois, and Susan, and five
grandchildren, including
Alexa Malishchak ’09.
Charles Craver died
Dec. 30 in Pittsfield, Ill.
Charles graduated from
Swarthmore with an
English literature degree
and served in the Navy
during the Korean War,
running a courier office at
Moffett Field, Calif. From
1956 to 2016, he tended
the family farm and was
primarily known for his
herd of Arabian horses, of
which he produced nearly
600. Awards for his service included the Arabian
Breeders’ Association’s
first Foundation Breeder’s
Award. Throughout his
long life, Charles was best
friends with his Swarthmore roommate, the late
Andy Segal ’50. Charles is
survived by his wife of 42
years, Jeanne.
Editor’s note: 1950 is in
need of a class secretary.
If you are interested
in becoming the next
class scribe, please
contact Class Notes
Editor Elizabeth Slocum
at eslocum1@swarthmore.
edu.
1951
Elisabeth “Liesje”
Boessenkool Ketchel
eketchel@netscape.com
Ralph Lee Smith has
some words of wisdom:
“As liberals gird up for a
four- or eight-year battle,
a little magazine asked me
to recommend a couple
of books that anti-Trump
warriors might read. I
responded that it is good
to remember that America
has experienced heavy
assaults on its freedoms
before, notably during
the McCarthy era and
the ‘blacklisting’ attacks
on the entertainment
industry by the House
Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC). I recommended the April 1954
issue of The Progressive
magazine, which was entirely devoted to the article
‘McCarthy: A Documented
Record,’ and the book
by Victor Navasky ’54
entitled Naming Names,
which describes HUAC’s
blacklisting attacks. The
magazine asked for an
extended review of the article and the book, which I
will write for them.”
Woody Thomas writes
that wife Merrillan Murray
Thomas ’53 and their
daughter “enjoyed the
reunion, even though
the attendance of our
class was very small.
The campus was in good
shape, and there were
plenty of other classes
there. It was a pleasure
to shake hands with our
new president; it was clear
that that she was trying
to meet as many alums
as possible. That’s a good
start, I would say. We were
booked on the first floor
of the Alice Paul building,
which was a great help to
Merrillan, who has difficulty going up and down
stairs. A few months later,
we visited the Women’s
Rights National Historical
Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y.,
and found Alice Paul’s
plaque on the wall.
“We have, fortunately,
not much snow up here in
the part of the north land
where we live [Naples,
N.Y.], but plenty of snow
nearby. The temperature
outside last night was
down to 2 degrees. Hope
to be able to make it [to
the reunion] in five years.”
Walter Blass, ever the
traveler despite a torn
tendon in his foot, flew
to Europe for 25 days in
September. Everywhere,
he was questioned about
Trump, and he channeled
Churchill with his answer:
“Americans always do the
right thing, after they have
tried everything else.”
Since so few of you
wrote, I will fill in a bit with
my current life. I live in
a retirement community
where I am active in the
administration, serving on
two committees and the
resident council. My children being grown, grandchildren growing apace,
and great-grands—though
young—being distant, I
missed having children
in my life. So seven years
ago, I trained as a guardian ad litem and have
since represented more
than 50 children who are
in the court system due
to neglect or abuse. I find
this work rewarding and
fall in love with each child
I represent. For exercise,
I lawn-bowl, line-dance,
and walk my two Pekingese.
I heard from an alum’s
daughter that we have lost
another classmate. Lori
Lloyd writes on Dec. 1: “I
am sad to tell you that my
father, Alan Lloyd, died
in Kailua, Hawaii. He was
pleased with the article
and photo published about
him in Summer 2016’s
Class Notes” (bit.ly/
AlanLloyd).
1952
Barbara Wolff Searle
bsearle70@msn.com
Stephen Clark writes,
“My guess is that I’m the
only member of the Class
of 1952 to be a retired
Marine officer. My 61-year
marriage with Dolores
‘Dee’ Webster Clark ’54
takes us to the top [in
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
49
class notes
years] of Swarthmore
marriages. I would like
to say that my wife is the
best female athlete ever to
attend Swarthmore. She
was on varsity hockey,
basketball, and lacrosse
teams and captain of all
three.” Can anyone beat
that?
Sadly, I have several
deaths to report. Nancy
Parks Valelly died Nov.
29 in Charleston, S.C.,
after a brief illness. In
her 60s and 70s, she
became a successful
“outsider” artist and had
several shows of her
large, striking canvas
paintings of Negro League
baseball teams and
players, African-American
church bake sales, and
African-American jazz musicians. She was married
for more than 60 years to
the late Richard Valelly,
who spent his career in
the international division
of Citicorp. She is survived
by several children.
Roger Pott died Nov.
19 after a brief battle
with Alzheimer’s and a
subsequent stroke. A
native of Summit, N.J.,
he starred in three sports
in high school—baseball,
basketball, and soccer.
He continued with sports
at Swarthmore and at the
end of his sophomore year
was named All-American Goalkeeper. He also
continued his relationship with his high school
sweetheart, Nancy Pawell
Norris, whom he subsequently married. Although
they divorced after 22
years and Roger married
twice more, he and Nancy
were forever grateful for
their terrific shared gene
pool. Roger left Swarthmore at the end of his
sophomore year to enlist
in the Air Force (during
the Korean War). He was
assigned to Security Services and learned Russian.
He and Nancy married in
50
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
1952, and he served his
time in England. When he
was discharged, Roger
completed his undergraduate degree at Syracuse.
He became a lawyer and
spent most of his career in
private practice, continuing his active law practice
into his 80s. His lifelong
love of sports continued.
He became an avid golfer
and eventually switched
his full-time athletic participation to tennis. He is
survived by three children
and lots of grandchildren.
Frederic Jenkins died in
March 2016 in Champaign,
Ill. Fred received a
B.A. from Swarthmore,
followed by a master’s degree from the University of
California–Berkeley and a
Ph.D. from the University
of California–San Diego,
all in French. He was a
French professor at the
University of Illinois for
more than 33 years. Fred
was an avid bicyclist who,
along with his daughters,
participated in the 1976
Bikecentennial ride across
America, which led to the
formation of the Adventure Cycling Association.
He also enjoyed tennis,
badminton, and growing
pine trees from seedlings
in his backyard. He was
secretary of the American
Association of Teachers
of French for many years,
and made multiple trips
to France with his wife,
Shirley.
The College also reported
the deaths of Janet Letts
in December 2015, Eldon
Woodcock in January
2016, Hamilton Carson
in January 2016, Howard
Fussell in June 2016, and
Junetta Kemp Gillespie
in May 2016. I have no
further information about
any of them. Do you?
I’d love to hear from
you—about people I’ve
mentioned or about
yourself.
CAPTION THIS
YOUR CAPTION HERE!
Be creative! Submit a caption by June 16 to
bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
To see last issue’s cartoon with suggested captions,
go to Page 70.
SPRING 2017
1953
Carol Lange Davis
cldavis5@optonline.net
As the deadline for Class
Notes approached, I found
I had no news to report. A
desperate email to classmates produced some
great responses.
Clark Dean: “On Nov.
21 I suffered my third
stroke (Bastille Day 2006,
Cinco de Mayo 2009, and
Thanksgiving 2016). My
biggest problem this time
was double vision, but that
seems to have gone away.
An article I wrote will
appear in an early 2017
edition of the quarterly
American Genealogist.
‘Following George Washington’s Example’ is about
my ancestor Thomas Violett of Woodford County,
Ky., who freed his slaves
in his 1809 will, 10 years
after George Washington
did so in his own will.”
Bob Fetter: “I am
now home from a most
interesting and active
Swarthmore Alumni
College Abroad Authentic
Hawaii trip. Each of the six
days we moved out from
our ‘base camp’ in Hilo to
varied outdoor locales on
the Big Island. There were
just nine of us, including
two faculty, led by two
leaders from the China
Advocates touring company. At 85, I was the oldest,
with the other alums from
classes in the late 1960s
and 1970s. Lots of time
hiking around lava flows
and calderas past and
present, walking through
gardens and woodlands,
past ocean coves with
swimming opportunities—even slowly hiking
up an almost 10,000-foot
small peak on the side of
Mauna Kea. Back home in
Hilo, our ‘classes’ focused
on astronomy, birds, and
creative writing.
“Hawaii was my 50th
state to visit—and well
worth the trip. I benefited from reading about
Hawaii’s geology and
volcanoes and the arrival
of varied life forms—eventually with the human
settlement and development, and now a diverse,
multicultural population.
“I was surprised to find
out about the Big Island
railroads, functioning until
a major tsunami in 1946.
We picnicked one day
under a former rail trestle,
now used for a highway,
that easily matched
Swarthmore’s Crum Creek
rail trestle.”
Margy Morey Zabriskie:
“Writing now after the
elections from the land of
Bernie Sanders and Ben
and Jerry’s, I’ll probably
irritate some folks politically. But I’m working on a
project, ‘Building Bridges
with Friend Families.’
The idea is to develop
a personal relationship
with someone of another
culture, religion, or ethnic
group to reduce fear and
estrangement, and hopefully to counteract racism
and build trust. We have
a fair-sized Muslim and
Christian immigrant community in Burlington, Vt.
“I’m still trying to make
sense of the Bible Belt
voting for someone
who has been married
three times, says hateful
things about our minority
neighbors, and doesn’t
seem to support the minimum-wage hike despite
historic income inequality.
“Husband Sandy and
I had a lovely time over
dinner with Mary Jane
Winde Gentry at Wake
Robin [Shelburne, Vt.]
life-care community in
November. She continues
to be active and involved
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
Instagram: @swarthmorebulletin, #swatbulletin
with her family and others.
Wake Robin, which she
and late husband Stokes
’51 initiated, has been a
great success. Several
Swarthmoreans now
reside there.”
Tedd Osgood: “One of the
high points of this past
year was hosting the June
Higstock celebration at
Silver Lake, N.H., for the
first time. This was the
annual gathering of many
of wife Dorothy’s relatives.
We rented two adjoining
cottages (and bought a
second fridge) and, thus,
were able to accommodate
on the premises nearly all
of the 40 family members
who arrived for the
occasion.
“In May, together with
another couple from Kendal at Hanover, N.H., with
whom I had previously
journeyed abroad, I spent
a chilly but very rewarding
fortnight in Iceland. We
covered much of the
island from Akureyri (settled in the ninth century)
in the north to Selfoss
in the south, stopping at
innumerable waterfalls,
bubbling thermal springs,
and volcanic formations—
including the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge—in between.
“Early this fall, I filled in
a number of blanks in my
knowledge of the American landscape by joining
a bus tour from South Dakota to Utah, and another
excursion by boat up the
Columbia River. Along the
way I visited Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse
Memorial, Devils Tower,
Little Bighorn, Yellowstone
National Park, the Tetons,
and Salt Lake City.”
1954
Elizabeth Dun Colten
lizcolten@aol.com
The year 2017 … a “significant” birthday year
for many? Stand up and
be counted! Courtesy of
Judy Kahlenberg Hestoft,
I share the following Bob
Hope quote: “I don’t feel
old. I don’t feel anything
until noon. Then it’s time
for my nap.”
Raymond and Mary
Wren Swain celebrated
Ray’s 85th birthday with a
December trip to St. Lucia.
Corinne Lyman’s 2016
travels were mainly in the
U.S.: North Carolina, New
York, and Massachusetts.
In March 2016, Naomi
Lichtman Rose spent two
weeks in London with Cor
nelia Fuller (16 plays in 11
days), and in October took
three children to Churchill,
Manitoba, Canada, to
see polar bears. Fred and
Elena Sogan Kyle had one
major trip this past year,
Rome to Barcelona.
Jack and Ruth Maurer
Kelly continued their usual pattern, spending the
summer on Beaver Island,
Mich., and the rest of the
year on Jekyll Island, Ga.
They also revisited the
western national parks,
saw friends in Oregon and
Montana, and, in the fall,
flew to England to see
their daughter and then
went on to Prague. Their
house escaped Hurricane
Matthew (although they
were forced to evacuate),
but the pottery studio
where Ruth works was
under 2 feet of water.
A clarification from Bill
“Football” Jones. It was
Bill “Chemistry” Jones
whose 2006 death was
reported in the fall 2016
Bulletin. Bill and wife Mar
gery Paxson Jones ’56 live
in a retirement community
in Macon, Ga., and they
have three children and
five grandchildren. He
was drafted into the Army
in 1955, received an M.A.
from Penn in 1963, and
spent his business career
in investment management, retiring in 1995.
Many have moved
recently to smaller quarters, to warmer climates,
or closer to supportive
families. Cornelia Fuller
and Lee Johnson are
“extremely happy in their
retirement home—MonteCedro, Altadena, Calif.”
Punky ’55 and Anne Chan
dler Fristrom enjoy musical programs and bridge
at their village in Spring
Valley, Calif. Anne is still in
charge of the Point Loma
Library book sale. Peter
and Pat Bryson Van Pelt
like Northampton, Mass.
Their community emphasizes independent living,
but they wish it were
closer to stores for more
walkability and less car
dependence. Lynn Barrera
Matzen feels well taken
care of at Founders Ridge,
with family members
nearby. Though, she says
that 3 1/2 years ago, she
never thought she would
leave New York, much less
end up in Minnesota.
After 51 years, Caryl and
Richard Carle left their
home in Derry, N.H., and
moved to an over-55
community in the adjacent
town of Londonderry.
This location allows them
to maintain friendships
and doctors. Caryl’s baby
grand piano is settled in
Derry’s Pinkerton Academy in the room where
Robert Frost once taught
English. Dick was enticed
to become a trustee of
that academy, replacing
astronaut Alan Shepard, a
Derry native.
Bob Merin’s wife, Barba-
ra, died Nov. 16. A graduate of Cornell University–
New York Hospital School
of Nursing, she was a
published author and
swimming champion. After
living in South Carolina
once Bob retired, in 2004
they moved to Dunwoody,
Newtown Square, Pa. We
send condolences to the
Merin family, including son
Michael and daughters
Jan ’85 and Sarah ’88.
Phyllis Hall Raymond
leads a quiet life on the
edge of Swarthmore’s
campus, enjoying College
concerts and theater, and
notes that it is exciting to
see new buildings appear.
Larry Franck enjoys sunny
Florida during the winter
months, with church and
yacht club activities, but
maintains a Maryland
home. In December, Jay
Ochroch received the Philadelphia Bar Association
PNC Achievement Award,
“presented annually to
honorees who have made
substantial and generous
contributions toward improving the administration
of justice.”
I noted 28 (!) 1954
names on the 25+ list of
consecutive donors to
the College, plus several
others mentioned in other
categories. Commendable,
especially considering
our advanced ages and
depleted ranks.
1955
Sally Schneckenburger
Rumbaugh
srumbaugh@san.rr.com
Mike Dukakis is still active
politically and has strongly
repeated his call to abolish
the Electoral College,
according to Politico.
Bernard and Ethel Smith
Webb ’58 have left their
Bernie-designed home of
25 years and moved into
the village of Keene Valley,
N.Y. “Quite a nice change
and much better connected to our friends.”
Anne and Ron Decker live
in Chicago in an 18th-floor
apartment overlooking
Lake Michigan, with a distant view of Wrigley Field.
While Anne works, Ron
engages in small historical
research projects and
makes travel arrangements. Last year besides
taking group tours to
Tanzania and Spain, they
made trips to Arlington,
Va., to visit daughter Alice
Decker Burke ’98 and her
family, and made their
annual August weekend
trip to Spring Green, Wis.,
“for the best outdoor
theater in the Midwest.” In
December, Ron participated as a founding member
in the 40th anniversary
of the Chicago Map
Society. Ron also sent me
spectacular photographs
he took in Tanzania; one
showed a lioness with a
scar on her side carrying a
piece of a dead antelope. “We watched her
dramatically steal it from a
cheetah who had killed the
antelope, then pick up the
carcass and carry it into
some brush.” Another, taken five years later, showed
the same lioness.
Sadly, we have lost three
classmates. Kate Sasse
Popenoe died Thanksgiving Day. After marrying
David Popenoe, whose
love and partnership
enriched her life until
the end, she received a
master’s in social work
from Bryn Mawr College.
The couple moved to
Princeton, N.J., and Kate
was a psychiatric social
worker before having
their two daughters. She
served in many volunteer
capacities including as
president of the Princeton
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
51
class notes
Family Service Agency
board in the 1970s, and
on the boards of Chapin
School, Family Service
Association of America,
and the Princeton Area
League of Women Voters.
After her children were
grown, she returned to
full-time work, first as a
senior admissions officer
at Princeton University
and later at the Lawrence
School, where she served
as an associate director of
college counseling and as
assistant headmaster, before her 1998 retirement.
“Kate had an insightful
intelligence; a renaissance
knowledge of art, language, and literature; and
was a beautiful writer,”
her obit says. “She was
also a talented drawer,
especially of people, and
played the piano with
feeling and verve right up
to a few months before
her death. … Even as the
dementia that marked the
last decade of her life advanced, she continued to
be engaged with life and
to show love and kindness
to all she encountered.”
Elizabeth Bomar Wallace
died Dec. 9 in Florence,
Ala. Having graduated
with history honors,
she earned a master’s
in history at Emory University. She enjoyed art,
gardening, sewing, and
volunteering. An active
member of the Florence
Episcopal Church, she was
involved in many community services, including
Meals on Wheels and the
soup kitchen.
Julie Lange Hall died
Dec. 10. She had family
ties to Swarthmore,
starting with her mother,
Barbara Pearson Lange
Godfrey ’31, who was born
in Benjamin West House
and devoted her life to
the College, including as
director of dramatics. Nevertheless, Julie started
52
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
at Oberlin, transferring
to Swarthmore as a
sophomore. Within a year
of receiving her B.A. in
English literature, she
married Parker Hall in the
Friends Meeting House on
campus. Julie pursued a
career in education and
held her first teaching
position at the Shady Hill
School in Cambridge,
Mass. She spent 23 years
at North Shore Country
Day School in Winnetka,
Ill., where she taught in
all three divisions and
served as middle school
head, academic dean,
field hockey coach, sex
education teacher, and
library program director
before being chosen, after
a national search, as the
first woman appointed
head of school. Julie and
her husband, who had a
successful finance career,
gave generously to many
institutions nationwide.
They were major contributors to the Swarthmore
Fund and the myriad
initiatives it supports, and
were instrumental in the
completion of the Lang
Performing Arts Center.
Given her and her family’s
devotion to the arts, it is
fitting that Pearson-Hall
Theatre is named for
them. They also endowed
Lange House—her
family’s home, now used
for College housing—and
supported the renovation
of Parrish Hall and Project
Pericles. Julie served on
the Chicago Women’s
Board and the boards of
Independent Schools of
the Central States, the
Chicago Shakespeare
Theater, the Laboratory
Schools of the University
of Chicago, Opportunity
International, and American Secondary Schools
for International Students
and Teachers. She joined
Swarthmore’s Board of
Managers in 1993, and
SPRING 2017
although she retired in
2007, she remained active
as an emerita member. In
recognition of her support
of the College, she received the Joseph Shane
’25 Award in 2000.
1956
Caro Luhrs
celuhrs@verizon.net
Although “a little slowed
down,” Sandy ’55 and
Ruth Cooper Lamb are still
involved in very pertinent
projects—aging in place,
sustainable farming,
gardening, and access to
locally grown food. They
had some nice trips last
year to visit their three
children, grandchildren,
and other family members
in various parts of the U.S.
Another beautiful
painting—of a saucy, little
red-bellied woodpecker—arrived on Mary
Lou Jones Toal’s 2016
Christmas card. Mary Lou
is a talented artist, and
each year I look forward to
a sample of her work. She
and husband John had a
lovely Danube river cruise
last year as well as a nice
trip to California.
Sally Pattullo McGar
ry notes that “living in
paradise” (Hilton Head
Island, S.C.) was like living
in hell after being hit by
Hurricane Matthew and
its attendant tornadoes.
Fortunately, her house
was not damaged but the
surrounding property took
a blow. Besides attending our 60th Reunion,
Sally took two trips last
year—to Scotland and the
Adriatic coast of Italy.
Ruthie Renfer Kitchin
was another serious traveler. She explored Kauai,
Hawaii, with granddaugh-
ter Kaila, 14.
Felicity Heath Hansen
had a serious stroke and
now lives at a life-care
center in Westminster,
Colo. Husband Jack lives
in their home close by.
Felicity writes that she is
fortunate to “keep all my
wits about me and to enjoy
TV and read good books
on Kindle.”
I am sad to report the
death of Susanna Perkins
Jaeger on June 17. Son
Jim lived near her in
Gorham, Maine, and would
love to be in touch with
old classmate friends.
Jim’s phone numbers are
207-839-4495 (farm) or
207-831-1706 (cell).
Lois Rostow Kuznets
Dowling died Nov. 14. She
came to our 60th Reunion
accompanied by daughter
Naomi Kuznets ’82. Lois
was very happy to be with
us and apparently knew
at that time that she was
really saying goodbye to
longtime friends. Lois
was a children’s literature
expert and had been
president of the Children’s
Literature Association.
She taught for many years
at Lehman College in New
York and San Diego State
University. Lois was predeceased in 2014 by her
husband of 40 years, Jim
Dowling. She leaves two
daughters, two grandsons,
and many other close family members. They suggest
that we honor her memory
by “reclining on a sofa
with good reading in hand
and a friendly mammal
within reach.”
Jeremy Stone ’57
died Jan. 1. He was
a remarkable person
and a good friend. To
see his impressive bio,
read his obits from The
Washington Post (bit.ly/
JStoneWaPo) and The
New York Times (bit.ly/
JStoneNYT). Although he
was not in our class, I am
reporting Jeremy’s death
because he joined us for
our 60th Reunion. His
wife of almost 60 years,
B.J. Yannet Stone ’57, had
died and he thought it
would be nice to be back
at Swarthmore and to be
part of our class; he didn’t
want to wait for his 60th
Reunion. I encouraged him
to come, and we adopted
him into our class. He had
a great time.
1957
Minna Newman Nathanson
jm@nathansons.net
Deborah Smith Dempsey
writes, “Chuck Torrey
’55 and I are happy to be
known as partners and
expect to be together until
one of us drops dead. We
won’t be in the same place
all the time, since by temperament that would probably make us crazy, but we
will spend time traveling
and in residence in St.
Paul, Minn., Philadelphia,
and Nova Scotia.”
In memory of Barba
ra Behnke De Laszlo,
husband Michael and
daughter Kathryn created
a book of writings by
and about her. Barbara’s
writing reminds one of her
whimsies, acute vision
and intelligent responses,
appreciation of beauty,
and irreverence for the
expected niceties. Friends’
reflections demonstrate
that she shared all those
traits with others and
always, as Norm Rush ’56
wrote, without judgment.
These memories of Bar
bara increase my regret
about being remiss in
maintaining relationships
and lead me to urge you to
come and revive some of
your college friendships at
our 60th Reunion.
Longtime class president
Jeremy Stone died Jan.
1 at home in California.
As president of the Federation of American Scientists—a near-dormant
organization he revived in
1970—he was an activist
in international nuclear
restraint, arms control,
and other areas involving
science and technology.
The New York Times noted
that although Jeremy
described the federation
as an “idea factory,” the
ideas were almost always
his own, and in the beginning, he was the factory’s
sole worker. These efforts
took him to meetings in
Russia and China (with
late wife B.J. Yannet
Stone to translate) and
to coordinate exchanges
with scientists in Iran and
North Korea. After leaving
the federation in 2000,
Jeremy launched Catalytic
Diplomacy to privately
pursue issues of international conflict resolution
and dietary studies.
I’ve enjoyed being asked
to create messages of
advice for my great-greatnieces to read on their
18th birthdays, a task that
not only will connect me
to adult versions of young
children I won’t be around
to see become adults, but
also allows me to reflect
on what has mattered
most in my own adult life.
1958
Vera Lundy Jones
549 East Ave.
Bay Head, NJ 08742
verajonesbayhead@
comcast.net
Janet Lewis Honecker
reports that her grandchildren are “in various
stages of life, including
law school, working at
Whitman College, and
attending West Liberty
University,” which is near
Janet’s house in Wheeling, W.Va., so she often
gets to see granddaughter
Whitney, a student there.
Janet and stepdaughter
Beth took a trip with
Country Walkers to
Slovakia in celebration of
Beth’s father and Janet’s
husband, Ben. It was their
16th trip together.
Tex Wyndham sent me a
flier about a performance
of his Red Lion Jazz Band
in Bethesda, Md. A critic
of his performance wrote
that the band “has been
dazzling and delighting
audiences for some 52
years now. … This fine
revivalist Dixieland combo
has gained a well-deserved reputation as one
of the best such Dixieland
bands in the land.”
David Goslin and wife
Nancy have moved to 35
Sundew Road in Savannah, Ga.
Janet Smith Warfield
reports, “At age 80, I’m
still going strong.” Janet
was recognized by the
International Association
of Top Professionals as
its 2016–17 Top Professional in Consciousness
Education. In September she facilitated an
interactive webinar with
the Association for Global
New Thought, and in November she participated in
the Integral Living Room
in Boulder, Colo. She was
one of two keynote speakers in December at the International Association of
Top Professionals awards
banquet in NYC and
planned to have breakfast
the next morning with Bob
Freedman.
Peter Durkson died in
November. He lived in
Washington City, Utah,
with wife Cindy Roy and
was stepfather to Joe and
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
Instagram: @swarthmorebulletin, #swatbulletin
Kori. Peter was a Navy
officer from 1959 to 1963
and later did graduate
work at Harvard. Peter
was a champion of environmental causes.
Carolyn Walch Slayman,
deputy dean for academic
and scientific affairs at
Yale, died in December.
Carolyn was a faculty
member and leader at
the medical school for
almost 50 years and
was the first woman to
head a department when
she was named chair of
human genetics in 1984.
Carolyn earned a Ph.D. in
biochemical genetics from
Rockefeller University; she
was the only woman in her
class. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge
University and joined Yale
in 1967. Carolyn is survived by husband Clifford
and children Andrew and
Rachel.
The class extends its
sympathy to Peter’s and
Carolyn’s families.
Correction: Christoph
Lohmann, who died in
2015, had been an English
professor at Indiana University. The wrong school
was provided in the winter
2016 Class Notes.
1959
Miriam Repp Staloff
staloff@verizon.net
Edward Keenan writes:
“My book Mathematical
Structures in Language
just came out. I’ve been
retired for four years
from UCLA’s linguistics
department, but I think I
should get a job so I can
work less.” Edward is also
proud of his new, feisty
granddaughter, Rilke.
In addition to a messy
but interesting life as a
painter, I, Miriam, have
been active with the library advisory board in my
New Jersey town. I look
forward to finishing my
latest painting, a two-year
project, and to assisting
with a library renovation
project, scheduled to
begin in early spring.
For those who regret the
paucity of notes, please
share something of your
lives with me.
1960
Jeanette Strasser Pfaff
jfalk2@mac.com
Our theme this time seems
to be staying and moving.
Dave and Getta Harrar
Denhardt moved from
Bridgewater, Conn., about
two years ago. Dave
writes, “We now live in
Greensboro, N.C. (where
our eldest daughter lives),
in good health, physically and mentally active.
Getta has an active social
life. I’m studying and
writing about stress and
epigenetics, including my
own genome (inherited
variants) and methyl epi
genome (consequence of
real-life experiences). I am
writing a review, ‘Effect of
Stress on Human Biology:
Epigenetics, Adaptation,
Inheritance and Social
Significance.’”
John Harbeson says he
put his fingers to work
counting the moves he
and wife Ann have made in
their 53 years together. He
must have used his toes,
too, because he came
up with 11. “We managed
to be in Kenya just after
independence (so we’ve
grown up, so to speak,
with independent Kenya),
in Ethiopia when the emperor was overthrown and
the empire more or less
dissolved, and in Washington, D.C., and Kenya
when I was on leave with
USAID at two very exciting
times.” In between were
several not-very-exciting
moves back to Wisconsin. Now, he and Ann are
enjoying their eighth year
near D.C. and have no
plans for more moves.
Sara Bolyard Chase
writes, “At this point, for
me, ordinary chores (especially in a yard that is
about one-quarter wooded
with white pines and maples—such rafts of brown
pine needles that I swear
those evergreens are in
fact deciduous) take a
little longer and recovery
from strenuous physical
activity takes about twice
as long as it used to. But
for me, at this point, the
more activity the better.
So, as long as my partner
is willing to be here in our
house, I’ll keep doing what
needs to be done.”
From Gil Harman: “Lucy
and I have been in our
house in Princeton, N.J.,
since 1976. (Before that
we lived in New York. I
commuted to Princeton.)
Our daughter Elizabeth
lives 2 1/2 blocks away
and teaches philosophy,
as I still do.”
Mary Lynne Ahroon
Poole shares, “I had lived
in my home in Providence,
R.I., for 27 years when,
in 2001, I received a fine
compliment from my
eldest son and his wife—
they invited me to move
to be near them … across
the country in Bellevue,
Wash. I had been divorced
for five years, but I had a
small computer consulting business and lots of
friends. I thanked them
and said, ‘Maybe in five
years.’ My daughter-inlaw was the wise one.
She said, ‘But if you wait,
the kids will be teenagers
and it will be harder to
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
53
class notes
bond with them.’ I knew
that there were nice
people everywhere and
that I knew how to make
friends. I quickly bought a
modern house a half-mile
from them and sold my
Providence Victorian. The
move has been very good
for all of us, including my
Washington and Oregon
grandchildren.”
Susan Turner writes
about another sort of
moving: “It’s hard to incorporate a truly life-changing event at our age, but
my weeklong workshop
with Joanna Macy with
a focus on the threat to
our environment has had
a major impact on my life.
Her exercises bring one
to a new way of knowing.
That makes the experience so indelible. It also
informs the approach I am
taking to work on personal
racism. I plan to take an
online training course,
37days.com/racism, and
hope by April that I will
have some new ways of
working on this insidious
evil in our culture.”
This column doesn’t
usually report on trips-tobe, but Peter Offenhartz’s
plan might inspire others.
“Barbara [Hopf Offen
hartz ’58] and I usually
spend our summers on
Eagle Island off the coast
of Maine, but this year
we have a different plan:
We’re flying to Seattle on
Aug. 16, renting a house
near Sunriver, Ore., and
flying back on the 25th,
all so we can see the
total eclipse of the sun
on the morning of Aug.
21. The last time we saw
a total eclipse was March
7, 1970, when I rented
a plane near Amherst,
Mass., and flew Barbara
and our two children out
past Nantucket, Mass.; it
was the experience of a
lifetime. The eclipse will
be visible from Georgia to
the West Coast, but we’re
54
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
hoping the east side of
the Oregon Cascades will
have the best chance of
cloudless skies. Wish us
good weather.”
I have the sad duty to report the October death of
Mary Gooden, one of the
pioneers in the computer
and IT field. She added a
second career when, after
age 50, she earned a law
degree. She was known
both for her intelligence
and her dry sense of
humor.
1961
Pat Myers Westine
pat@westinefamily.com
Outside my window, the
first snow of Virginia’s
winter is falling and it is
early January. My thanks
to those who not only
send me holiday letters
but also email me updates.
Holiday updates:
Emily and Bob Rowley
in Connecticut sent an
annual report on their
granddaughters: Amanda,
19, a member of the first
class at the Institute for
American Musical Theatre
in NYC; Robyn, 15, a high
school freshman whose
story was told in a People
magazine article on 9/11
children; and Casey, 12, a
competitive team cheerleader. Marilyn “Emmi”
Emerson Lanctot, still in
Bucks County, Pa., spent
the last year with husband
Paul traveling with their
“brand-new” camper to
bluegrass festivals, where
Paul played the banjo.
Marilyn still volunteers
at her library, quilts, and
helps a nursing home
resident with laundry and
finances. Jean Geil in
Hawaii has “relinquished
her responsibility” as
SPRING 2017
library committee chair at
her retirement community,
Craigside, and now—
among other activities—
reads to and visits with
her brother, a Parkinson’s
patient who lives at the
same community.
Two classmates included
family pictures. Louise
Todd Taylor wrote of her
delight at seeing friends
“from a lifetime ago” at
last spring’s reunion
and sent a picture of
grandchildren Vivian, 6,
and Landis, 2. Pat Clark
Kenschaft included a
family picture of three
generations. Pat’s been
working on getting solar
panels on public buildings
and a year-round ban
on leaf blowers. She is
co-clerk of the Peace and
Service Committee of
Montclair Meeting in New
Jersey and continues her
large garden that provides
most of their vegetables
year round.
Every year, Hugh Martin
sends a wonderfully
illustrated and comprehensive holiday letter
from his family with all of
his children adding their
own sections. The Martins
had a wedding and a new
grandchild this year. Hugh
earlier sent me notice of
the death of his first wife,
Susan Preston-Martin
’63. Sheila Maginniss Bell,
whom I was happy to see
and sit with at a Swarthmore College Orchestra
concert in early December,
wrote of two Road Scholar
trips this year: a 17-day
tour of Spain’s arts and
artists, and a 10-day adventure in the Galapagos
Islands with her grandson.
Sheila reads to primary
students at the Chester
Charter School for the
Arts, is a Scott Associate
at Swarthmore’s Scott
Arboretum, is secretary
of the Swarthmore Senior
Citizens Association,
and presents programs
through Art Goes to
School, which helps
students look closely, form
opinions, and appreciate
diverse artists.
Email responses: Dick
and Mary Sargent Coles
’62 still live in Hoene
Spring, Mo., in their
60-year-old house,
which they “are trying
to make elder friendly”
as they both deal with
mobility issues. Even
with a walker and newly
installed pacemaker, Dick
still birds several times a
week but without the more
extensive hiking he once
did. Their granddaughters
include a 25-year-old
Grinnell graduate working
as a “headhunter”; a
22-year-old graduate of
William Woods University
working as a microbiology research assistant
at Colorado State; and a
19-year-old biomedical
engineering freshman at
the Colorado School of
Mines. Dick won’t be able
to accompany Mary to her
55th Reunion this spring
as he will be a nature
counselor at the New
Hampshire camp he once
attended. Cecily Langdale
Davis’s last news update
included her husband’s
death and her serious fall
in Amsterdam, which necessitated three surgeries
and a prolonged recovery
period. After lengthy physical therapy, she is now
“genuinely on the mend.”
She has returned full time
to her art gallery, started
many years ago with her
husband and continued
after his death. Cecily
stays in touch with Ricki
Feingold Waldman and
Carolyn Goldberg Burke,
and enjoys New York’s
theater, opera, museums,
and movies.
My granddaughter Kira
Emmons ’20, with two engineering friends and the
financial backing of the
engineering department,
built a boat complete with
oars that won the annual
Crum Regatta (held in the
College pool, as the trestle
was being replaced in the
Crum). Happy 2017 to all
of you, and please keep
sending me your updates.
1962
Evelyn Edson
268 Springtree Lane
Scottsville, VA 24590
eedson@pvcc.edu
I spent the last few weeks
reading books by two
classmates. The first, The
Travails of Two Woodpeckers, co-written by
Noel Snyder, analyzes the
decline and disappearance of the ivory-billed
woodpecker (once
abundant in the American
Southeast and Cuba) and
the closely related imperial woodpecker of Mexico.
Noel thinks that recent
supposed sightings of the
ivory-bill are problematic
and that the bird is now
extinct. While most researchers have blamed its
decline on the destruction
of its habitat—swamp forests—Noel and his fellow
authors believe that its
numbers were already diminishing in the early 20th
century due to hunting.
Loud, large (2 feet long),
and relatively unafraid
of humans, the ivory-bill
was an easy mark for
hunters, who shot them
for trophies (its red crest
and ivory bill), for museum
and private collections,
for food, and generally for
target practice. Says Noel,
“They didn’t have much
of a chance for co-existence with our species.”
Among the illustrations
in the book, the most
heart-wrenching are those
of woodpecker skins laid
out on display. A 2004
book by Noel described
the similar, though earlier,
extinction of the colorful
Carolina parakeet. Faithful
readers will remember
that Noel was actively involved in the rescue of the
California condor. I had an
interesting conversation
with him at the bird walk
organized by John Solodar
at our 50th Reunion.
Speaking of which, our
55th Reunion is imminent.
I hope those of you who
can still walk and talk will
plan to attend.
My other book was
Arlie Russell Hochschild’s
Strangers in Their Own
Land: Anger and Mourning
on the American Right. If
you need some help in our
new political era, listen to
Arlie: bit.ly/ArlieRH
I notice that many of us
are taking Osher Lifelong
Learning Institute (OLLI)
classes. I am about to
embark on teaching my
first course in history of
cartography. I have been
teaching in the University
of Virginia’s adult degree
program, but it is going
toward online teaching,
something in which I definitely am not interested.
So I am moving to OLLI in
quest of live students. Any
tips? I have already been
advised that the students
are wonderful—but don’t
read. Is that true? It was
a surprise at a recent
meeting of OLLI teachers
to hear from Bernard
Beitman ’64. A Jungian
psychiatrist on the University of Virginia faculty, he
teaches “Connecting with
Coincidence: Using Synchronicity and Serendipity
in Your Life.” Sounded
very interesting.
It is my sad duty to report
the death of Frank Farlow
Dec. 30. Frank and wife
Martha “Marty” Anderson
Farlow ’63 lived in Brookline, Mass., where they
started an early childhood
education program.
Frank was very active in
local politics, serving as
a member of the town
meeting since 1986, where
he drafted several bylaws
and resolutions on a broad
range of liberal issues. He
was also deeply involved
in Brookline PAX, attending a weekly peace vigil
since 2003. His obituary
headline described him as
an “activist.” He sounded
like someone we need
now more than ever. Our
sympathies to Marty, his
brother and sister, and his
son Jed and daughter-inlaw Simone.
1963
Diana Judd Stevens
djsteven1@verizon.net
The day before these
notes were due, Dorothy
Earley Weitzman emailed
that Marty Anderson Far
low’s husband, Frank ’62,
died Dec. 30. Frank was a
Brookline, Mass., activist,
involved in town meeting
and Brookline PAX, a
liberal advocacy group.
Many of you know via
email that Susan Preston-
Martin died of breast
cancer Nov. 13. Susan was
the first female fellow at
the University of Southern
California and the first
woman to receive a
visiting scientist award at
the International Agency
for Research on Cancer.
She loved traveling with
husband David, spending
time with her grandchildren, and mentoring
junior faculty. On behalf
of our class, I sent notes
to Susan’s and Marty’s
families.
News from holiday
letters: Mike and Eugenia
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IN MEMORIAM
Alumni death notices received by the College from
Nov. 13, 2016, through Feb. 11, 2017.
View expanded memorials at bulletin.swarthmore.edu.
1935
1948
Ken Hechler
Dec. 12, 2016
Richard Held
Nov. 22, 2016
1936
Nancy Bowing Jahraus
Jan. 2, 2017
Michael Juviler
Jan. 20, 2017
Sue Williams Saul
Jan. 23, 2017
1957
Martha Spencer Burke
July 2, 2012
Carolyn Keyes
Cadwallader
Jan. 1, 2017
1937
Frederick Wiest Jr.
Jan. 18, 2017
1941
Barbara Newborg
Oct. 5, 2016
1942
Laurence Lohman
Dec. 4, 2016
1943
Robert Coleman
Dec. 20, 2016
1944
Irving Taylor Jr.
Oct. 14, 1999
1945
Richard Burrowes
Unknown
John Butler Jr.
Jan. 1, 2013
Charles Hewins
Dec. 24, 2016
Bruce Stewart
Dec. 25, 2016
1946
Warren Jacobs
June 15, 2012
Hildreth Strode
Dec. 14, 2016
Navy
Edward Johnson
Nov. 25, 2016
1947
Marjorie Howard
Johnson
Nov. 17, 2016
Elizabeth Bomar Wallace
Dec. 9, 2016
Carolyn Bryan Field
Dec. 21, 2016
1956
Lois Kuznets Dowling
Nov. 14, 2016
Jeremy Stone
Jan. 1, 2017
1949
1958
William Amis
Jan. 18, 2017
Peter Durkson
Nov. 24, 2016
1950
Charles Craver III
Dec. 30, 2016
Carolyn Walch Slayman
Dec. 27, 2016
Ross Eckler
Dec. 9, 2016
1960
Mary Gooden
Oct. 9, 2016
Robert Greenawalt
Dec. 8, 2016
1961
Lawrence Shepley
Dec. 30, 2016
Elizabeth Lockhart
Jan. 23, 2017
1962
Marion Harkness
Nentwig
Jan. 30, 2017
Frank Farlow
Dec. 30, 2016
1963
1951
Susan Preston-Martin
Nov. 13, 2016
Constance Merrill
Cameron
Sept. 11, 2014
1965
Mark Frankena
Jan. 11, 2017
Joseph Cary Jr.
Jan. 24, 2017
Alan Lloyd
Nov. 1, 2016
Keith MacAdam
Nov. 6, 2016
Setha Goodyear Olson
Jan. 13, 2017
1970
John Busillo
June 21, 2007
1952
Roger Pott
Nov. 19, 2016
Morton Winston
Jan. 13, 2017
Nancy Parks Valelly
Nov. 29, 2016
1972
Robert Kemp Jr.
Aug. 4, 2016
1955
1977
Julie Lange Hall
Dec. 10, 2016
Katharine Sasse Popenoe
Nov. 24, 2016
Jon Kaplan
April 6, 2016
1982
Colin Wightman
Oct. 17, 2016
WINTER
2017
SPRING 2017
// Swarthmore
Swarthmore College
College Bulletin
Bulletin
55
55
class notes
Margosian Becker were in
Vietnam and Cambodia in
late 2015; had their Salem,
Ore., house seismically
reinforced and outfitted
with a new kitchen; and
continue to volunteer.
Despite cardiomyopathy,
Eugenia teaches religious
education classes at the
Beckers’ Unitarian Universalist church and is an active birder. Mike mediates
landlord–tenant disputes
and leads a Community
Emergency Response
Team that covers 2 square
miles.
Cay Hall Roberts’s femur
has broken twice since
late 2015 because of an
anti-osteoporosis drug
she took for too long.
Nevertheless, she and
husband Dick, active
Rotarians, stay busy at
Bristol Village retirement
community in Ohio. Dick
is a hospice volunteer and
sings in a men’s chorus.
Cay is vice president of
the computer club, serves
on the library board,
writes a column on recycling for the community’s
newsletter, counts birds,
sings, and plays the
recorder.
Last year, Linda and Bill
Steelman toured Utah
and Arizona’s national
parks and enjoyed visits
with family in New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and at their
Nantucket, Mass., home.
Bill’s recovery from a
stroke and heart attack
was overshadowed by a
Parkinson’s diagnosis.
Medication has lessened
the symptoms, so he
feels great and is fully
functioning as an associate minister of the First
Congregational Church,
Nantucket. Linda sings
and is a historical interpreter at the Nantucket
Whaling Museum.
Nancy Hall Colburn
Farrell responded well to
chemotherapy for multiple
myeloma. She and Jack
56
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
are preparing to move to
a retirement community
in Fort Myers, Fla., and
an apartment in Boulder,
Colo. Their 2016 travels
included Mexico, New
Mexico, and Wisconsin.
Highlights of 2016 for
Jane Jonas Srivastava:
visiting Toronto and Ottawa to celebrate grandson
Owen reaching double
digits; dancing; and being
near the Arctic Circle on a
trip to the Yukon Territory.
News in response to
emails I’ve sent: Seth
Armstrong is organizing a
response team to oppose
Trump policies as they
come up. Despite being
on dialysis three times a
week, Alice Handsaker
Kidder has time and energy to volunteer: helping to
establish the Values Over
Violence Institute and
working with Peace Action
on a campaign against
spending trillions on nuclear weapons upgrades.
Susan Potter Evangelista
is appalled by the actions
of Philippine President
Rodrigo Duterte filling
Manila Bay with corpses
as he said he would. Living
in Palawan, she is far from
the center of things and
continues her work providing female reproductive
health care and education.
Abby Pollak and Helen are
busy with grandchildren,
pets, gardens, editing, and
cooking. Abby teaches
writing to third-graders
and has returned to piano
lessons after a 60-year
hiatus.
On his book tour for
The African Svelte, Dan
Menaker connected
with Dave McLanahan in
Seattle. They remembered
each other after 53 years.
In D.C., Gail MacColl
heard Dan discuss his
book and was astounded
when he spelled “MacColl”
correctly. Gail and Connie
Kain Milner have attended
Kennedy Center perfor-
SPRING 2017
mances and will perform
in a quartet later this
year. After spinal surgery
removed a calcified disc,
Monica Pannwitt Bradsher
received three months of
rehabilitation therapy in
New York City. She and
Henry enjoyed seeing
their New York son and
family and their other
son’s family visiting from
Taiwan and were glad to
go home to Baton Rouge,
La., March 9.
Mary Williams Clark
and Jerry visited family
in Texas. Laurie and
Jerry Gelles traveled to
Sardinia. Austine Read
Wood Comarow was commissioned to do a Polage
for Maui Jim for China.
Two trips framed 2016 for
Barbara Daly Metcalf: Pakistan where she lectured
and Portugal with Road
Scholar. The year ended
with a family first: Both
sons, their families, and a
dog spent Christmas with
the Metcalfs in Berkeley,
Calif. Sandy McConnell
Condry was quoted in a
Rochester, N.Y., business
journal: “This city has so
much going on and at my
age there is no value in
putting things off.” Sandy
seems to do it all: exercises, makes jewelry, takes
classes, travels (Lebanon
and Oman earlier this
year). Mary Dewees
Pietris also travels. She
and John have taken
33 cruises with No. 34
planned for spring.
In 2017, I resolve to contact class members from
whom we have not heard
in a while. Many thanks
FOLLOW US
on Facebook at
facebook.com/
SwarthmoreBulletin
to each of you who have
written.
1964
Diana Bailey Harris
harris.diana@gmail.com
swarthmore64.com
Paul Booth observes,
“Looks like I won’t be
serving in the Clinton
administration. And I’m retiring from the union Feb.
28—after 42 years.”
Peter Freedman “just
started reading the paper
again, still not watching
the news (not even NPR)
since the disastrous
election. But I am back
fighting the fight on
Facebook. I’m mostly depressed about the state of
the nation—but Lynda and
I are healthy. I’ve joined
Bernie Sanders’s Our
Revolution, but have yet to
see where they (we?) are
really heading. Enjoying
(but not participating in)
the many anti-Trump—i.e.
pro-life in its true sense—
protests in Portland, Ore.
God bless the young. And
it’s their world, so they’ll
have to carry the burden
of making it a peaceful,
loving one.”
Steve and Sue Zinn
Eisinger explored Morocco
in late October. “The guide
shared so much of his
knowledge and feelings
about his country that
we learned more than we
might have expected in
eight days. The focus on
health care delivery was
especially interesting
to us.
“We were shocked and
dismayed by the national
election results. We struggle with our reaction, but
it seems that continuing
our positive contributions
to the community is even
more important.”
Peter Linebaugh has
a new book, about May
Day. “Who taught us U.S.
labor history in 1963 or
1964? I can’t remember.
That’s where I first learned
about Haymarket (1886)
and Merry Mount (1627).
Both stories are told in
my book, The Incomplete,
True, Authentic, and
Wonderful History of May
Day. I am confident that
some of you will agree that
we need these stories with
their reminders of ‘the
power of the people.’”
“Mirabile dictu. Nes
nadol (great miracle):
The 40th anniversary
issue of the independent,
Jewish, and frankly
feminist magazine Lilith
is out.” Amy Stone, one of
the founding mothers, is
still a contributing editor
and blogger. “Subscribe,
please, but also check
out this issue at lilith.org:
fearless takes on gender,
power, sex, secrets,
disrupting stereotypes,
Torah, Yiddish, LGBTQ
inclusion, hamantaschen,
and more.”
Six True Things, about
growing up in the Manhattan Project town of
Oak Ridge, Tenn., is Robin
Smith Chapman’s new
book of poetry. And there’s
a connected solo show
of 20 of her paintings at
the Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences, Arts, and
Letters this spring: Trees,
Flowers, Fields, and
Woods.
Alan Feingold writes
that teaching science
in a Jewish elementary
school and getting kids
excited about learning is
like reliving his life. “I used
a toy gyroscope to illustrate how dreidels work
because I’d been given a
toy gyroscope when I was
9 years old. I used Faraday’s book that I read in
high school to teach how
a candle works. I taught
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about Rachel Carson and
her fight against DDT,
having read Silent Spring
in college. I’ve been teaching second-graders about
jellyfish, arthropods, and
mollusks—things learned
in Dr. Meinkoth’s Invertebrate Zoology course. I
use rocks collected from
volcanos or glacial rivers
on my vacations when I
teach geology.”
Peter Setlow celebrated
45 years as a faculty
member at UConn Health
Center in August, saying,
“I don’t know if I’ll make
50 years …”
Miki McCaslin Holden
reflects that “living on the
California central coast
has been wonderful. However, David and I have realized that managing and
maintaining 100 acres in
our mid-70s is more than
we enjoy doing. At the end
of January, we’ll move
to New Mexico. We look
forward to being near our
(so far) only grandchild,
Orin. Our new house is in
a rural canyon 20 minutes
outside Santa Fe, a little
way down a gravel road
from Orin’s family.”
Philip Morehead is
“settling into our new
location, Dwight, Ontario,
just west of Algonquin
Park. Pat plays oboe in
two orchestras, North
Bay Symphony and the
Haliburton Chamber
Orchestra. I conduct and
coach with the Highlands
Opera Studio, play piano
in the Muskoka Big Band,
sing tenor in the Loft
Singers, and, in February,
I’ll play piano in South
Pacific. We’ve joined the
Lions Club in Dwight and
one of the PROBUS clubs
in Huntsville.
“In January, we’ll take a
three-week cruise from
Buenos Aires, Argentina,
to Santiago, Chile, by way
of Antarctica. We may
survive.”
Anne Cochran Sloan
planned to “spend 10 days
over Christmas in Anacortes, Wash., with [son]
Ian, seeing a nephew or
two, plus one of the guys
I sponsored at the Naval
Academy and his wife and
toddler—closest I am to
come to grandkids, I fear.”
Jerry Blum reports, “Not
really much new, just lots
of dancing and hosting
the bands and callers from
nearby dances.”
1965
Kiki Skagen Munshi
kiki@skagenranch.com
smore65.com
Many of us continue to
lead active, busy lives and
to travel. Julie Bunce Elf
ving and a small group of
other students accompanied their taiji teacher to
her home village in China,
taiji’s birthplace. They also
visited several World Heritage Sites. One excursion
took them to a mountain
range where rivers carved
deep gorges through the
sandstone. Trails and
walkways have been developed along, down, and
through the gorges with
spectacular scenery. They
visited temple complexes
as well as an extensive
series of carved Buddhist
images in niches along
riverside cliffs.
Ron Hale writes that he
and Lynn spent Holy Week
in Oaxaca, Mexico, visiting
with artists in and around
the city. Meg and Earl Tar
ble took a weeklong Mississippi riverboat cruise
with friends to Memphis
from New Orleans in May.
Earl especially loved
going to the crossroads of
blues, Clarksdale, Miss. In
October they took a Viking
River Cruise from Amster-
dam to Budapest, going
through German Bavaria,
Austria, and Hungary.
Ruth and Walt Pinkus
went to California for
Thanksgiving; Myrtle
Beach, S.C., for a family
reunion in June; New
York for a wedding one
week later; Maine for
three weeks in August;
and several national parks
in Utah in September.
Kay and Warren “Tuck”
Forsythe enjoyed a week
hiking in Switzerland with
fabulous views, flowers,
trails, trams, and postbuses, followed by a week
in Paris. Peter Meyer
explored Bhutan in late
September–early October
with wife Kristen and her
friend: “Gross national
happiness lives and seems
to do more for people’s
lives that pursuit of GNP.”
Peter is still involved with
financing green development and climate-change
amelioration efforts, which
led him to Wuppertal,
Germany, in September for a meeting of an
outfit he hadn’t previously
known existed, the Low
Carbon Society Research
Network. He was the only
person from the United
States there, and he was
encouraged to get more
U.S. involvement.
Diana Burgin said the
best thing that happened
to her in 2016 was the
publication of Performing Life, her book on her
mother, Ruth Posselt. Ruth
was a violinist, and the
book traces her career
from her debut as a child
prodigy at New York’s
Carnegie Hall in 1923 to
her last appearance in the
1970s, detailing her struggles with the widespread
gender bias against female
violinists as well as the
lesser-known prejudice of
American audiences and
managers against American-born virtuosos. More:
bit.ly/RuthPosselt
On the downside, a number of us suffered injuries
and effected repairs to our
(No! Not us!) aging bodies.
Dick Grossman was hit
by a car while crossing a
street in a crosswalk. Injuries were amazingly minor,
he says, but still significant. Julie Bunce Elfving
had cataract surgery on
both eyes. One of the big
surprises was with color
perception—she hadn’t
realized how much hers
had deteriorated over the
years. Earl Tarble joined
those of us who set off
metal detectors because
of fake joints—in his case,
a knee. Tom Kramer set
his personal worst time in
the Marine Corps Marathon, but he finished—for
the 40th straight year.
Julie also writes that she
is moving to a Lifecare
community, not far
from her original home,
in Lenexa, Kan. Her
“cottage” is about 1,700
square feet (bigger than
my house), and she will be
able to garden around the
perimeter. The downside is
this means sifting through
a lifetime’s accumulation
of stuff.
Margaret Nelson still
works for a cooperative art gallery. She has
expanded beyond abstract
and digital works on paper
to a series of artist books.
These are “real” books,
and this year her public
library accepted six of
them into its new Local
Voices collection. The
other work taking a good
deal of her time is looking
after two elderly relatives
who have no one else to
oversee their care. She’s
sure this is familiar to
many of us. Nick Warren
and wife Kitty are involved
in singing—a folk trio and
the Five College Early
Music collegium. They
recently gave a concert
built around Nick’s favorite piece, William Byrd’s
Save the Date!
Alumni
Weekend 2017
May 26–28
Spend Memorial Day
weekend with your
fellow Swarthmoreans
alumniweekend.
swarthmore.edu
four-part Mass.
Ron Hale retired in
October from his contract
position as New Mexico
Alliance of Health Councils’ executive director. He
is continuing as the organization’s co-chair, as well
as serving on the board
of a nonprofit that brings
music into institutional
settings and produces
summer concerts on the
Santa Fe Plaza. Son Jesse
lives in Imperial Beach,
Calif., and is a full-time
Spanish and English
teacher at Chula Vista
High School, which Ron
attended 60 years ago.
Regretfully, we learned
that Mark Frankena died
Jan. 11 at home in Alexandria, Va. An obituary is at
smore65.com.
1966
Jill Robinson Grubb
jillgrubb44@gmail.com
swarthmore66.com
In response to November’s
chill from “he who shall
not be named,” Mike Fer
ber has been strategizing,
raising and sending money, and reconnecting with
old comrades. Some wise
political friends have sent
him good ideas; anyone
interested should email
mferber@unh.edu.
Turned into a radicalized
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
57
class notes
Unitarian Universalist,
Janet Griffin Abbott plans
to follow the “smart” lead
of tax avoidance. Using a
donor-advised fund, she’ll
take the maximum deduction while donating to our
Chester internship fund
and other worthy causes
the new administration
might neglect.
Deb Taylor is connecting
with political groups figuring out how best to stop
the Trump “terribleness.”
Anthony Loeb was active
during the run-up to the
election, making 1,400
calls for Hillary. He will
probably stay active in
the context of Russian
relations, as he still has
contacts (and interest)
there. Meanwhile, Tony’s
keeping busy with soonto-be college-aged sons.
From Seattle’s Office of
Policy Planning to an executive with a real estate
development company,
Barbara Jahnel Dingfield
moved into philanthropy in
the ’90s. After five years
as director of Microsoft’s
corporate giving, she
was involved in the early
development of the Gates
Foundation and then
became a consultant (for
10 years) to private and
corporate foundations. In
her varied career, Barbara
remembers being one of
the few—or only—women
in the room.
Good news. Alex Capron
and Barbara Jahnel Ding
field report our Class of
’66 Internship Fund holds
almost $120,000, with
$20,000 more pledged.
The fund has been invested in the College’s Fossil
Fuel-Free Fund. Thanks to
an extension of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant, the Science for
Kids (SFK) program will be
in full swing this summer.
Our fund’s investment
income will pay honoraria
for five student interns to
participate in SFK.
58
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
Before children, Dor
othy Woods Chronister
worked at the Institute
for Learning, part of
Hahnemann Medical
School in Philadelphia,
evaluating children with
learning disabilities. Once
her children were born,
Dorothy volunteered in
libraries, helped with early
computer education, and
worked for her church.
She later volunteered with
hospice and now assists
homeless people.
Dorothy remembers the
beauty of the College,
exploring Crum Woods,
moving to the new dining
hall, playing “stretch” after
meals, climbing Clothier
Tower, crawling around
on the roof of Parrish,
sneaking through the tunnel to explore Book & Key,
playing trombone in the
band at football games,
Dr. Haight’s chemistry
lectures, walking along
the trestle to tutor in Wallingford, the emotions of
the political turmoil of the
times, and—of course—
meeting Rod ’67 and starting a lifelong relationship
based on love.
John Wehmiller took
fifth place in the 2015
Photo Review competition.
That’s not surprising.
Pam Corbett Hoffer
writes that she and
Phil ’65 entered into a
dog-sharing agreement
with another family. Puppy
Quigley stays with them
during the week, bringing
pleasure to both and
stimulating Phil to take
Q on many walks a day.
Quigley’s other family has
him on weekends. Nancy
Cooley is also cherishing a
new puppy, Arwyn.
Ken Boyer is working
part time doing what he
loves: studying clinical infectious disease, teaching
students and residents,
researching toxoplasmosis and HIV, and growing
dahlias. Two of his and
SPRING 2017
Sue’s kids will be married
this year. He especially
remembers professors Ed
Fehnel, John Hunter, and
Hedley Rhys and coach
Jimmy McAdoo but thinks
his fellow students taught
him more.
When Wendy Prindle
Berlind was 7, she told
family members she
wanted to be a grandmother when she grew
up. Goal achieved. Three
grandchildren.
Beyond ecstatic, Liz
Probasco Kutchai has a
grandson, Lewis Ethan
Daisy, born Dec. 30.
Daughter Emma and Tim
brought him home New
Year’s Day, just as Liz arrived in Chicago to spend
the month. Her job was to
nurture the new parents.
On a sad note, Jules
Moskowitz lost his
beloved wife, Beti, to lymphoma in September.
Judy Walenta doesn’t
fight but dances with
cancer, a catalyst for her
to travel all over the world
investigating various
nontoxic treatments and
cures. She also takes on
bigotry, sexism, and other
deplorable prejudices and
was glad to be part of the
civil rights movement.
Jan Burgess Bays’s profile at swarthmore66.com
is so gorgeous you must
read the whole thing yourselves. Jan “loved studying early in the morning
in Martin Hall library …
the smell of the mimeo
machine … the daffodils in
Crum Meadow, my sweet
roommate Dorothy Woods
[Chronister] and our tiny
freshman dorm room in
Parrish Hall … the silence
of Quaker meeting, and
caving trips with Peter
Hartline ’64. … It was the
best of times. It was the
very best of times.”
1968
Katie Bode Darlington
katedarlington@gmail.com
There’s only about a
year to go until our 50th
Reunion. Come hear
John Mather describe
how NASA’s James Webb
Space Telescope will see
the first galaxies formed
in the universe—and new
galaxies forming now.
Can’t wait? Check out
John’s talks on YouTube
or a November New York
Times article on the telescope (bit.ly/MatherNYT).
Also in the spotlight
was Lynn Etheredge, who
received a tribute from
the National Academy of
Social Insurance for his
contributions to rapid-
learning health systems
that use “big data” to
tailor/personalize medical
practices and treatments.
Lynn was also recognized
for his 40-year involvement in uninsured-coverage initiatives. And, likely
inspired by garden tours
through Italy/England/
Japan, he planted 1,000
bluebells in one week.
Paul and Janet Cooper
Alexander in Monterey,
Calif., would gladly see
classmates. Janet writes,
“I took emerita status as
a professor at Stanford
Law School in summer
2016. I continue to follow
my fields of federal courts,
complex litigation, and the
war on terrorism, all of
which, sadly, seem likely
to see new, ghastly developments after Jan. 21.”
Also hoping to hear from
S’moreans are Maureen
“Mickey” Durham in Portland, Ore., and Caroline
Acker in the Bay Area.
Caroline is a professor
emerita of history at
Carnegie Mellon and lives
in Berkeley near her children and grandchildren.
She remains an engaged
scholar and drug-abuse
harm reductionist.
Emily Albrink Hartigan
taught Go Set a Watchman
in her St. Mary’s University School of Law course,
with its sense of backlash
against progress as seen
through the lens of Atticus
Finch. She made two
trips to Iran and has been
remodeling her kitchen:
“Every aspect of the job
has been messed up; being too old to do it myself
leads to more frustration
than I’d imagined. I’m sure
it’s a spiritual challenge.”
Dick Gregor’s physical
challenge is knee-surgery
recuperation, and he’s
reading Gratitude, appropriately. Jon Summerton,
whose knee is fine, retired
after 20 years in vacation-
rental real estate and
expects grandchildren to
take up all his extra time.
Dave Thoenen is sharpening his ice tools for a
winter trip to Ouray, Colo.,
and psyching himself up
to lead a climbing team to
Iran in the fall (and “hanging out with my grand girl
anytime, anyplace”).
Dan Botsford is exploring
other dimensions of living
besides medicine and neurology, returning to piano
lessons and reading more
history and fiction. Rich
ard Figiel writes, “I’ve sold
my vineyard and winery in
the Finger Lakes [N.Y.]—a
30-year adventure.
Farming is great. So is not
farming. It has given me
time for writing projects
and joining protests.”
Florence Battis Mini
and her husband moved
to Kendal at Longwood, a
Quaker continuing-care
retirement community in
Pennsylvania. She says,
“There is a sense that we
are all here to take care
of each other and a rueful
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
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acceptance of the increasing absent-mindedness
that afflicts all of us to an
extent.”
For several years, Peter
Fraser has been primary
caregiver to his father,
Herbert ’43. Peter’s
wife Soffia is a native
of C
olombia, where he
served part of his Peace
Corps tour from 1968 to
1970.
Jeff Carter sent an
eloquent email about
his career as a physical
therapist, adding, “I don’t
much like retirement.
There’s just so much
excitement you can milk
from the garden or repairing the roof.” But Jeff’s
satisfaction with making
pottery continues. “It’s a
simple, mechanical activity. When you’re done,
voila! Something is there.
It was a good balance to
the murkier results of my
day job.”
Many wrote movingly
about the outcome of
the presidential election.
Florence Battis Mini wrote
of “men and women of
courage and commitment
making daily decisions to
live lives of loving humanity. We can do that, too, no
matter who leads in Washington.” Bruce Rockwood
coordinated a showing
of the film Denial and
hosted a discussion on
the burgeoning fact-free
universe. John Schairer
provided psychiatric
advice: Prevent anger,
fear, and retribution from
controlling our actions.
Choose love, meaning,
life-giving, caring, truthful
action.
Likewise, Hal Kwalwas
ser writes, “As someone
who has known the Donald since he was 3, I am
beyond disbelief. That he
could become president
is just unfathomable. …
I spent October through
Election Day in Miami
working for Hillary. We
left the campaign HQ on
Tuesday night feeling as
if we had won, and then
it all just fell apart. We
were stunned … the next
four years will remind us,
in case we had forgotten,
why respect, honesty,
inclusiveness, and respect
for law and the truth are
so important to us.”
Nancy Bennett added
mindfulness and meditation to her counseling, and
hopes “we can somehow
lumber our way to our
50th with grace and
community.”
Here’s hoping we all
lumber our way to the
reunion, June 1–3, 2018.
1970
Margaret Nordstrom
hon.margi@comcast.net
Not much news to report,
but I’m happy to have
heard from two people
who have been quiet for a
while. I’d love to hear from
more of you, like the person who used to crochet
with me in Worth lounge.
You know who you are.
Aaron Schwartz is retiring from law but is carrying on as an actor and had
great fun doing a comedy
web series, My 90-YearOld Roommate. Although
he did not have the title
role, he says he felt like it
sometimes. You can see
an episode posted on our
class Facebook page or
check it out on YouTube
(bit.ly/90YearOld)—it
really is great fun. Aaron
also wants to know if “any
of you showbiz types got a
part for a curmudgeon.”
Two-and-a-half years
ago, Bruce Bush and wife
Rhoda moved to Frederick,
Md., a beautiful, historic
city. Rhoda is retired,
and Bruce plans to retire
in June. He has been a
custom woodworker for
30 years, the last few as a
sideline.
Bruce returned to college
for a master’s 18 years ago
and has been teaching
ever since—ESL in the
Frederick school system,
and Spanish and English
in a bilingual elementary
program. He, like many of
us, looks forward to retirement, but expects he will
miss his colleagues and
the wonderful children
he works with. Bruce also
looks forward to our 50th
Reunion, as I hope many
of you do.
We class agents have
already started to think
about it and would be
interested in hearing
about the events/programs/whatever that
would inspire you to visit
Swarthmore for the last
hurrah before we become
Garnet Sages.
I am grieved to report the
loss of Mort Winston, who
died suddenly in January
while on vacation in Peru.
Everyone who knew
Mort was aware of how
special he was. He was an
internationally recognized
human rights scholar, educator, and activist.
Mort joined the faculty of
the College of New Jersey
in 1979 where he taught
and developed courses on
bioethics; genocide and
human rights; environmental ethics; human
rights in international
relations; philosophy of
technology; and mind,
language, and computers.
He chaired the philosophy
department from 1982
to 1988, and again from
2005 to 2012.
Not surprisingly, Mort
was very active in human
rights organizations.
During the late 1980s, he
led the South Africa Country Group for Amnesty
International USA. He was
elected to the national
board of directors in 1991,
and was chairman from
1995 to 1997 and again
in 2012. These are but a
small part of his life accomplishments, which are
truly too many to mention.
Our hearts go out to his
family and friends. He will
be missed.
1972
Nan Waksman
Schanbacher
nanschanbacher@
comcast.net
Condolences to the family
of Robert “Butch” Kemp
Jr., who died in August
after a heroic two-year
battle with glioblastoma.
“Captain” Butch was
well-known for his love
of sailing, classic boats,
old-school navigation, and
storytelling, particularly
about his many adventures on land and sea.
Ernie Abbott continues
to practice and teach
federal disaster law in
D.C. “The unfortunate
increased frequency and
severity of disaster events
has meant that this is a
growing practice.” Ernie is
in his third year as board
president of the Cathedral
Choral Society, where
he also sings. He reports
that wife Cathy Good
Abbott enjoys her work
as district superintendent
for 50 United Methodist
churches and 78 clergy
in northern Virginia, and
takes every opportunity
to create art—currently,
cut-paper works with
themes from Ethiopian
icons and jewelry using
beads discovered wherever they travel. During
a recent trip to Thailand,
Ernie’s family was given
a tour by Chris Buffum
Tananone, who has lived
there for 30 years.
Congrats to Nancy Noble
Holland for finishing her
dissertation. Nancy will
receive her doctor of musical arts in choral music
this spring from USC’s
Thornton School of Music.
When he is not trying
to stop Spectra Energy’s
“needless, costly, dangerous, and environmentally
harmful” fracking expansion project, Paul Lauen
stein spends time trying to
get Massachusetts to join
the five states (Vermont,
California, Illinois, New
Jersey, and Rhode Island)
that have already called
constitutional-amendment
conventions to overturn
Citizens United v. FEC.
Saralinda Bernstein
Lichtblau happily reports
that last spring she was
named director of education at the Hudson River
Museum in Yonkers, N.Y.,
where she’s worked in
programming, interpretation, partnerships, and
community outreach for
12 years.
John Lubar has spent all
but six years since leaving
Swarthmore in Canada,
the last 12 on the west
coast of Newfoundland,
which is “generally an
excellent place to live.”
John is concerned with
the challenges faced by
rural coastal communities dependent on local
resources where climate
change is having an
impact.
Marianne McKenna is
celebrating 30 years in
practice with her own architectural firm in Toronto.
The firm has completed
“projects across academic, cultural, commercial,
and institutional sectors”
throughout Canada and
at Princeton, Dartmouth,
Northwestern (new
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
59
class notes
ALUMNI PROFILE
60
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
be found in their fusedglass studio making bowls,
plates, jewelry, and larger
pieces such as panels and
abstract sculptures. This
year, they were commissioned to design and
create illuminated glass
panels for the entrance of
a local Italian restaurant.
Predictably, Cigus Vanni
is busier in retirement
than when he worked in a
public school. He performs
neighborhood services,
volunteers in a couple
of schools, is actively
involved with his students’
families, and has become
involved with “a national
initiative to study admissions practices among our
institutions of higher ed
[where there are] many
potentially infectious
issues these days—widespread SAT/ACT cheating
in Asia, absurd number[s]
of students accepted early
decision, admissions officers [who] accept cash,
and perquisites to visit
China and recruit.”
1974
Randall Grometstein
rgrometstein@verizon.net
Congratulations to John
Whyte, who was inducted
into the National Academy
of Medicine for work in
brain-injury rehabilitation.
Claudia Kawas was on
60 Minutes for her work
researching Alzheimer’s
SPOTLIGHT ON …
MADELYN WESSEL ’76
Madelyn Wessel ’76 has been named university counsel
and secretary of the corporation for Cornell University—
the first woman to hold that position.
“What’s interesting is that I’ve been a ‘first’ in many
areas throughout my working life,” says Wessel, “which
points only to how relatively recently women (and
certainly also racial and religious minorities) have had
opportunities to participate fully in the life of this country.
I look forward to a time when ‘firsts’ can become irrelevant
because they’ve stopped being noteworthy.”
More: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
(bit.ly/CKawas).
John Morken was
selected by his peers for
inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2017. An
estate litigation partner,
John was also recognized
as a Leading Individual by
Chambers High Net Worth
2016.
Vaneese Thomas
dropped a new album, The
Long Journey Home, Sept.
16 (bit.ly/Vaneese).
While it’s wonderful
that our class continues
to prove our high school
guidance counselors
correct, please don’t be
intimidated if you haven’t
won a prize lately. We
would still love to hear
how you, and those dear
to you, are doing. Drop me
an email before June 1 and
tell us what sustains you.
1976
Fran Brokaw
fran.brokaw@gmail.com
FOLLOW US
on Facebook at
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SwarthmoreBulletin
SPRING 2017
Plenty of news to share!
Susan Rudisill missed
our reunion last year due
to the wedding of son Sky,
lead wildlife technician for
the Deschutes National
Forest, to Shawn Paulino.
Susan continues to paint
and teach art, and won
first prize from 1859
magazine for her painting
North Umpqua Narrows
(bit.ly/Rudisill). Since the
2015 shooting at Umpqua
Community College in
Oregon, Susan has worked
with a group on gun-
safety issues.
Swimmer Jackie
Heineman Gidas was
inducted into the Garnet
Athletics Hall of Fame. Did
you know that she was
the first female student-
athlete in Swarthmore
history to earn All-America
status? She held records
in five individual events
and factored into four top
relay times. Go, Jackie!
LeBris “Lee” Smith Quinn
retired after a career in
molecular endocrinology at the University of
Washington and VA Puget
Sound Health Care System. She remains emeritus faculty at UW. Lee
authored more than 60
peer-reviewed research
publications including one
of the first demonstrations
of stem cells in 1985. She
and her husband divide
time between their homes
on Puget Sound and near
Tucson, Ariz., enjoying
golf, sea kayaking, hiking,
and gardening.
Paul Schofield was so
surprised to see his name
in the fall Bulletin, he
sent more news. After
Swarthmore, Paul got
a master’s in nuclear
engineering from Oregon
State, and worked at San
Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California
from 1980 until retiring
last year. He has a son
and daughter from his first
marriage, and married wife
Edie in 2013, adding two
more daughters into the
family. He loves traveling.
In the past few years, he’s
visited Antarctica, hiked
the Inca Trail, cruised the
Galapagos Islands, honey
mooned in Tahiti, and
visited Israel and Jordan.
Since the reunion, he has
also visited Costa Rica,
Singapore, and Myanmar,
and planned a February
trip to Iceland and Norway
to see the northern lights.
An unexpected outcome
from the reunion was
reconnecting with Doug
Smith, and in October,
they toured Ireland
together. “If you had
asked me a year ago who I
would be traveling around
Ireland with, I doubt Doug
would have been in my
first 50 guesses. Had a lot
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
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LAURENCE KESTERSON
Kellogg School of Management), and the Brearley
School in NYC.
Patty O’Connor retired
from her office job last
year, but still teaches
piano and sings in a rock
band. Music from her
Swarthmore band, Phaedra, can now be accessed
through iTunes, Spotify,
and Collegeband.com.
Bill Prindle “was thinking
of semi-retiring next
year, but the election
has changed my plans.
My entire profession
[energy and environmental consulting] is coming
under attack, as are many
professions, and I will stay
on the front lines to fend
off the worst.”
Kizmin Reeves has
spent the last five years
rescuing tigers in the
U.S. and is now in the
middle of a large big-cat
rescue—“over 100 cats,
including 75 tigers,
working with a network
of 17 big-cat sanctuaries
to provide lifetime homes
with large enclosures,
excellent care including
nutrition, vet care, and
enrichment. … If you are
interested or want to help,
get in touch with Tigers in
America on Facebook” or
at tigersinamerica.org.
Tom Snyder claims he’ll
retire for the 17th time
at the end of this year.
Meanwhile, he continues
to “work either in educational software or comedy
animation.” Last year he
finished an audio musical,
Is Anyone All Right?,
about twentysomethings
who fail to leave their
college town. Find it on
Amazon or Audible.com.
Laurie Tompkins and
husband Larry Yager
spent last year traveling to
San Francisco, Colorado,
New Mexico, Atlanta,
Tennessee, Alaska (for the
Aurora Borealis), and New
Zealand (for an earthquake). At home, they can
“For Renée to succeed as a figurative oil painter from grass-roots America on talent alone
was quite an achievement,” say siblings Raissa ’85 and Kevin Radell ’77, with I and Thou.
BOLD STROKES
Honoring their artist mother’s legacy
by Elizabeth Redden ’05
GROWING UP as one of five kids in
a country home built by his father,
Kevin Radell ’77 took art classes from
his mother, painter Renée Radell, and
talked with her about mythology in her
studio. “Everybody in rural Michigan
sensed that she was different,” he says.
Kevin recently released a monograph about her career, Renée Radell:
Web of Circumstance, through his publishing company, Predmore Press,
named for the scenic road about 30
miles outside Detroit where the family
lived. The 220-page book—framed as a
celebration of underrecognized women
artists—catalogues Renée’s far-ranging oeuvre, which encompasses political commentaries, mural-scale works,
allegorically themed paintings, portraits, and landscapes.
In her introduction, art critic Eleanor
Heartney writes that family is a recurring theme in Renée’s works, although
she avoided sentimental conventions. “Instead,” Heartney writes, “she
imbued her paintings with a sense of
the tensions and obligations of motherhood and used the theme to examine more universal truths. For instance
I and Thou, painted two weeks after
the birth of Radell’s fifth child [Raissa
’85], presents a resolute mother clasping her child in her sturdy arms. Her
face is tipped upward, asking guidance,
perhaps, or expressing the anxiety that
comes with motherhood.”
An art history major at Swarthmore
who now runs a successful portrait
business, Raissa has I and Thou hanging in her home. She counts a summer
spent studying painting with Renée
at the Lacoste School of Art in France
and the years teaching alongside her at
Parsons School of Design in New York
City among her fondest memories.
“My mother’s art infiltrated every
part of her being,” says Raissa, who
after Swarthmore earned a BFA from
the University of Michigan and an MFA
from the New York Academy of Art.
Kevin holds master’s degrees from
the London School of Economics and
Political Science and Northwestern
University’s Kellogg School of
Management. He works as a corporate
finance and strategic planning consultant with particular expertise in private market transactions, alternative
assets, and Chinese alliances.
He has, along with his father, been
cataloging Renée’s art for the past
25 years. In addition to handling the
business of the book’s production, he
worked with his parents and Heartney
to select images from a body of work
that includes about 1,000 paintings.
“After this, I have tremendous
respect for editors and art book publishers,” says Kevin. “The detail, even
for a son and research enthusiast, is
seemingly endless, but ultimately it
was a very rewarding project. Her
artistic legacy needed to be recorded.”
The book focuses on Renée’s accomplishments as a pioneering socialcommentary painter as well as the
constraints she faced as an artist with
familial responsibilities who, early in
her career, used her refrigerator as an
easel. Renée, with more than 40 solo
exhibitions among her credentials,
moved from Michigan to New York City
in 1984, after her children were grown.
“Radell has achieved a great deal,
but it is hard not to imagine how much
smoother the ride might have been if
her circumstances were different, i.e.
if she had been a man, if she had been
free to move to New York when she
was just starting out,” Heartney writes.
“She never quits,” Kevin says of his
mother, now 87. “She has been able
to live in multiple dimensions: the
dimensions of a woman, of a mother,
an artist, and a philosopher. I learned
from her that we can multiprocess, and
I found that Swarthmore was the perfect place to develop that broad perspective.”
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
61
class notes
SPOTLIGHT ON …
SUSANNE WEIL ’80
Susanne Weil ’80, an English professor at Centralia College
in Washington state, received the Evergreen State College
2016 Teacher Excellence Award.
“While it’s always an honor to be recognized by peers,”
Weil says, “it means even more to be singled out by former
students as a teacher who made a difference in their lives—
after all, teaching is about them, not us!”
More: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
of fun, heard some great
pub bands, and consumed
our share of Guinness and
Irish whiskey.”
Liz Owens Dean reports
that becoming a composer
in later life has turned out
remarkably well. “There is
a niche for the small composer that is both friendly
and deeply satisfying,
a fact I could not have
foreseen when I returned
to Wellesley College 11
years ago to study music
theory. That small first
step changed my life. Now,
most days find me sitting
with my books and plants
writing music for amazingly talented musicians who,
almost to my astonishment, are delighted to
receive it. I am struck with
wonder by this.”
Ken Gibson, who teaches
high school physics in
Atlanta, reports that after
43 years, he enjoyed being
a student once again in a
class taught by Professor
John Boccio. John recently retired to Atlanta and
taught a course on Chaos,
Fractals, Self-Organiza-
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62
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
tion, and Emergence.
Robert Martin stays in
touch with several classmates, partly through a
fun Swarthmore book/film
club in NYC. Bob is still
deputy director of the legal services plan of a large
municipal labor union, DC
37 of AFSCME, in New
York. His job includes lots
of consumer work, like
organizing to keep payday
loans out of his state. He
is also involved in combating housing discrimination
as an officer in the main
fair-housing organization
in the New York area. Wife
Kate Abell ’78 recently
semiretired from teaching,
and they are traveling
more.
The Paul Newman household moved last year from
Oregon to upstate New
York. They are reconnecting with old friends
and family members in
the Northeast while Paul
finishes his career at
the chip manufacturer
GlobalFoundries. They live
in lovely Saratoga Springs
and invite area classmates
to get in touch.
Marian Evans Melnick
has lived around Boston
for 30 years. She retired
as a librarian three years
ago and enjoys the altered
rhythm of life by helping
provide day care for her
granddaughter. Daughter
Emily Melnick ’13 lives
in NYC working for a
SPRING 2017
nonprofit, and they enjoy
seeing her often.
We extend deep
condolences to Julie
Berger Hochstrasser and
husband Scott, whose
daughter Heidi was
killed in a car accident in
December. We hold you in
our hearts.
1978
Donna Caliendo Devlin
dmcdevlin@aol.com
No news to report—please
email me!
1980
Martin Fleisher
marty@meflaw.com
Barry Koster is now an
associate teaching professor of computer science at
Georgetown. He moved to
the D.C. area because his
fiancée, who is in the Mexican foreign service, was
posted to her embassy
there. Like many of us, he
reports feeling very lucky
on a lot of fronts.
Ida Oberman writes that
the Community School
for Creative Education,
the Oakland, Calif., school
she founded in 2011,
got renewed with flying
colors for another five
years. “We’re now ‘at size,’
serving transitional kindergarten to eighth grade,
and we’re the most diverse
school in the state and
the country’s first public
Waldorf school. My wife,
Lis, and I just celebrated our 21st anniversary
together. Swarthmore
friends continue to adorn
our lives—with a New York
visit to attend Richard
Mann ’79’s surprise 60th
birthday party and a viewing of Richard Osterweil
’74’s latest paintings as
recent high points.”
Internet freedom fighter
Eben Moglen delivered
part of the keynote speech
at the 2016 Re:publica
conference in Berlin,
touching on the nature
of the digital economy
and the tyranny of online
advertisers. His conclusions are not particularly
optimistic, to say the least
(bit.ly/EMoglen).
Effective with the
inauguration of President
Trump, Anne Schuchat
will be acting director of
the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
Readers of this column
know that she has been
principal deputy director
since 2015. We hope this
is a lifetime appointment.
On a personal note,
over the summer my
bridge team won the
Spingold, one of the two
or three major U.S. bridge
championships. Virtually
all the world’s top players
participated and it was a
great thrill to win (bit.ly/
Spingold).
On a somewhat less
exciting note, I was named
president of the U.S.
Bridge Federation, which
is charged with organizing the tournaments to
determine the U.S. teams
that enter the world
championship. The five
other eligible candidates
all declined to run.
1982
David Chapman
dchapman29@gmail.com
Greetings from Charlottesville, Va.!
Joe More shared
information about the
Swarthmore Football
Reunion Dinner, held Dec.
3 at the Inn at Swarthmore, with 36 people,
representing classes
1977 through 1986. “This
gathering has grown by
word of mouth from six
guys getting together
for dinner around the
holidays about 30 years
ago to what you see in the
photo,” Joe reports. “The
original group consisted
of me, Steve McGrath, Joe
Gallo, Bill Ellis, [the late]
Tony Burton, and Greg
Hansen.”
Anne Bauman Wightman
passed along terribly sad
news: “Colin Wightman
died unexpectedly Oct.
17. We had a memorial
service in Quincy, Mass.,
where we have lived for
just over a year. Both
our daughters, Evelyn
Wightman ’16 and Leslie
Wightman, were here, as
well as family and friends,
including Celia Gelfman,
Tom Sgouros, Anne-Marie
Sherry, Ruth Haas, David
Clemens, David Shaiken,
Martha Sielman, Patricia
Hazeltine ’83, Margaret
Gillespie, Jason Green
berg, Jacob Greenberg ’16,
Lisa “Hershey” Hirschkop,
and Alan Dixon.”
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Save the Date!
Alumni
Weekend 2017
May 26–28
Spend Memorial Day
weekend with your
fellow Swarthmoreans
alumniweekend.
swarthmore.edu
1984
Karen Linnea Searle
linnea.searle@gmail.com
Erik Guyot and Sharon
Chiang are delighted
that 1-year-old daughter
Christine Jean Guyot is a
healthy, happy baby. “We
hope more Swat friends
will visit Taiwan,” he
writes. “The island hosts
the finest Chinese art in
the world, arguably the
freest speech in Asia, and
the tallest mountains in
Asia, outside the Himalayas.”
Beth Armington sends
her greetings. She’s enjoyed getting together with
alumni in D.C. through the
Swarthmore Book Club
and hanging out with old
friends Christopher “Kit”
Mendelson and Mark
Handwerger ’85. Beth
celebrated the college
graduation of her son last
April. Work at the Department of Justice is busy
with the current merger
wave, and she’s looking
ahead with more than the
usual civil-servant anxiety
about her next boss.
Alan Rudy writes, “My
co-authored book, Environments, Natures, and
Social Theory: Towards a
Critical Hybridity, was released in fall 2015, finally
tipping the scales on tenure and promotion—late,
but incrementally calming,
nevertheless. I continue
to serve as an associate editor of the journal
Critical Sociology and am
organizing a celebration
of the 30th anniversary of
the working seminar from
which the articles in the
first issue of Capitalism
Nature Socialism were derived. The latter will possibly lead us back to Santa
Cruz, Calif., this summer
and the former to Cuba in
the fall. Particularly after
the election, it gets harder
and harder as a faculty
member to realize the
public mission of higher
education in a world of
fiscal crisis, instrumental
efficiencies, and students
seeking job skills rather
than an education.”
Alan continues, “After
plantar fasciitis and shoulder, knee, and partial-knee
replacement surgeries
over seven years, I finally
called it quits on soccer
coaching. To remain
overbusy, however, my
co-coach and I organized
a trip to Oneonta, N.Y.,
for our baseball U12 team
to play for a week at the
Cooperstown All-Star
Village last summer. I
actually survived living
in a one-room dorm with
Shea and 10 other 11- and
12-year-olds, and our community-based team won
two games out of seven
against teams from Texas
to California, Georgia to
Ohio. Aiden, our 14-yearold, appears to be surviving soccer, swimming,
baseball, marching band,
symphonic band, and jazz
band—as well as academics—in his freshman year
of high school. We’ll see if
anything gets dropped as
time moves forward.”
Alan concludes, “Over
the last year, I’ve missed
opportunities to see
Miriam Wallace and Eben
Weitzman but have stayed
in touch with a good
number of alumni—ahh,
Facebook—including a
very enjoyable reconnection with Bruce Venarde.”
Mary Spayne writes, “I
immigrated to Toronto
about 10 years ago and am
happy to report I’m now
SPOTLIGHT ON …
TOM BUTCAVAGE ’82
Tom Butcavage ’82, vice president and leader of the Higher
Education Studio at the architecture firm SmithGroupJJR,
was elevated to the American Institute of Architects’
College of Fellows.
“I am grateful for this recognition,” Butcavage says, “for
my work based on my belief in the power of innovative
architecture to engage and inspire students.”
More: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
a proud Canadian (not a
moment too soon). I am an
epidemiologist and scientific writer, which enables
me to marry my love of
writing and my scientific
skills. Also, I freelance,
in the company of my
cat—an even happier
match. I love this solitary
work; I also love plein air
watercolor painting, which
I do once a week with a
group of friends around
the city and everywhere
else I happen to be. My
husband, Bill, and I travel
a lot: remote canoe tripping in Canada’s northern
wilderness, which I love;
hiking in France; and
frequent visits to Portugal,
where I grew up. Hugs
to all my Swarthmore
friends.”
As for me, Linnea, I still
live in Carlsbad, Calif. I
just joined Playwrights
Project, a nonprofit in
San Diego that conducts
playwriting residencies
in schools and for more
marginalized populations,
including at-risk kids,
foster youth, and the incarcerated. My older son,
Calder, is experiencing his
first real winter at the University of Chicago, and his
younger brother, Powell,
is celebrating his newly
acquired driver’s license
(as are his parents).
I look forward to hearing
from you soon!
1986
Karen Leidy Gerstel
kgerstel@msn.com
Jessica Russo Perez-Mesa
jessicaperezmesa@
yahoo.com
Leading the charge for
the ’86ers who have abstained from contributing
to the Bulletin for many
decades, Drew Newitt
writes that he and wife
Jennifer Wilson Newitt
’85 have lived for eight
years in Bayville, N.Y.,
where he is an admissions
counselor for Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University and she teaches
biology at the Friends
Academy. Daughter Julia
attends Brown, while son
Tyler is at Embry-Riddle in
Florida. When not working
or dealing with aging
parents, Drew is riding
his new recumbent bike
or piloting his flying club’s
plane. Although sorry he
missed our 30th Reunion,
he proudly wears his
garnet “Swarthmore 1986”
sweatshirt—thanks, Neal
Finkelstein!
Alexander Gavis is senior
vice president and deputy
general counsel at Fidelity
Investments in Boston,
where his family has met
annually with five other
Swat families for 20 years.
He has launched one son
to college (UChicago), and
the next son will be off in
a year. “Visit if you’re in
Boston.”
Another new contributor,
Ashley Cross, lives in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., in a
little green Sears cottage
with daughter Jasmine,
11. She is a full professor
of English at Manhattan
College. Congrats on her
latest book, Mary Robinson and the Genesis of
Romanticism.
Also out with a new
book, Cinema, Democracy,
and Perfectionism, and
reporting from LA is Josh
ua Dienstag. He and wife
Jennifer Mnookin teach
at UCLA, where she is law
school dean. Daughter
Sophia is a high school
senior, and son Isaac is in
eighth grade.
Sticking with the college-
professor-couples theme,
David Cateforis is an art
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
63
class notes
history professor at the
University of Kansas,
where wife Beth teaches
law. He is proud of son
Alex, a KU sophomore who
has grown to enjoy visiting
museums with Dad.
Jonathan Alger is in his
fifth year as president of
James Madison University
in Virginia and wonders
where the time went now
that daughter Eleanor is a
high school senior.
Extending another
invitation to come visit
is Amy McMichael. She
lives in Greensboro, N.C.,
with husband Ralph and a
son who is a high school
junior; their daughter is
a freshman at Vanderbilt.
Amy is the dermatology
department chair at Wake
Forest Medical Center in
Winston–Salem, N.C.
Deirdre Bell missed our
reunion by just days, getting deployed to the U.S.
Naval Hospital Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for a oneyear rotation, where she is
an anesthesiologist. She
looks forward to her transfer this summer to the
Naval Hospital Bremerton
in Washington state.
Tamara Payne-Alex
reports from San Jose,
Calif., where she is a
manager with KinderCare
Education and husband
Mike teaches high school
English. Daughter Kalaya
graduates from Amherst
this spring, and son Sias is
a sophomore at Skidmore.
Catherine Paplin’s
big news is that she
married Susan Hazelrig
last summer, with John
Huitema as best man. She
credits Gwen Riles ’88 for
introducing them 21 years
ago. With stepson Cooper,
they are moving from
Staten Island to Brooklyn,
N.Y., where Catherine is
seeking a new role as an
architect after owning a
firm for 10 years.
Bettina Lauf Forbes is
also in transition, from
64
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
co-founder of the infantand maternal-healthand-happiness nonprofit
Bestforbabes.org to an
advisory role as she eyes
her next social entrepreneurial project. Along with
two teens, two cats, two
birds, and one very patient
husband, she lives in Red
Bank, N.J.
David Vinjamuri and his
family live in Pleasantville,
N.Y., with three kids under
7. He teaches marketing
at NYU and writes the
occasional Forbes column.
A few years ago and
quite by accident, one
article brought him to the
attention of the American
Library Association. He
has traveled the country
ever since training librarians on how to unite to
discover and promote new
authors.
Adam Summers teaches
biomechanics at the
University of Washington’s
Friday Harbor Laboratories. As a rather nifty
result of spending much of
his life studying how fish
move, he is Pixar’s “fabulous fish guy,” advising
on ichthyology for Finding
Nemo and Finding Dory.
Many thanks to Cynthia
Richie Terrell, the first
to respond to my plea for
updates. She and husband
Robert live outside D.C.,
where they run FairVote, a
nonprofit that advocates
for fairer voting systems,
a national popular vote
for president, universal
voter registration, and
other reforms. Does that
get any more timely? She
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SPRING 2017
also runs Representation20/20, which focuses
on winning gender parity
for women in elected
office through institutional
reforms to the recruitment process and voting
system. They are parents
to a recent college graduate and two Haverford
students.
A huge thank-you to
all who responded to
our pleas for contributions—we love catching
up with classmates. I,
Karen, am guilty of having
“abstained” for these past
30 years and now am
co-class secretary. Irony,
karma, poetic justice?
1990
Jim Sailer
jim.sailer@gmail.com
Sad news: Bridget Drury
died in August. Bridget
was a primary-care physician in Elk Grove Village,
Ill., and is survived by husband Thomas Mathy Jr.
and their three children.
Tributes to Bridget show
that she was a caring and
dedicated professional.
As one patient wrote, “I
will remember Dr. Drury
as an excellent doctor and
a kind soul.” Our deepest
condolences to Brid
get’s family, friends, and
patients.
We also had news of
two weddings. Sharon
Marroquin married Miguel
Marroquin (yes, same last
name!) in 2014, although
they had known each
other since they danced
for the same company
25 years ago. Sharon still
lives in Austin, Texas, is a
dual-language elementary
teacher, and choreographs
and performs whenever
she can. She is an
artist-in-residence at the
Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural
Center and is creating an
evening-length piece, “Las
Cuatro Estaciones.”
Karin Wagner married
Bernard Mohr in August
in Petit Manan, Maine. A
number of Swarthmoreans
were there, including
Carolyn Comiskey, Dave
Feinstein, Charlotte Gill,
Susan “Suma” McGourty,
Lise Wagner ’85 (sister
of the bride), Arthur Fink
’68, and Rudy and Libby
Charles Amann ’57. Car
olyn made a three-tiered,
flower-bedecked, lemon-
buttercream cake that one
observer reported was
“amazing” and was much
admired by all attendees.
Ruth Brown Walkup
lives in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia and
consults on international organizational and
professional development
issues, much of it with
the U.S. government.
She returned from three
months in Delhi, India,
serving as the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services’ interim
health attaché. During
the short posting, Ruth
worked on air quality and
health, integrative care
with traditional Indian
medical systems and
Western medicine, and the
enormous social impact
that the Indian aging
population will have in the
coming decades.
Ruth is in touch with
Cigdem Oktem, who performed again in the D.C.
Capital Fringe festival with
her one-woman show,
The Human Algorithm,
which got rave reviews
(one such review called
it “wonderfully entertaining”).
Lisa Byrne Miller writes:
“Ed ’91 and I live outside
Hanover, N.H. He’s a professor in Dartmouth’s history department, and I run
study-abroad programs
at Tuck, Dartmouth’s
business school. We travel
frequently for work, and
our family (kids Sophia,
16, and Sean, 11) had the
opportunity to spend
extended periods in Vietnam and France while Ed
did research. I feel more
connected to Swarthmore
than ever—at Tuck, I work
closely with Kerry Laufer
’94; every year we have
wonderful Tuck students
who are Swat alumni, and
now Sophia is interested
in visiting Swarthmore
as she starts to look at
colleges.”
Andy Mouer founded a
general business-services
law firm that expanded and is now called
MouerHuston PC. Andy’s
specialty is mergers and
acquisitions, and the
firm’s expansion allows
them to do more litigation.
They are based in Houston, in Andy’s home state
of Texas. Congrats, Andy!
Kevin and Rachael Hen
riques Porter celebrated
their 22nd wedding anniversary in 2016. Kevin was
bitten by the triathlon bug;
he did his first in 2015 and
is training for another.
Rachael and Kevin’s sons
are now high schoolers,
and college visits began
last fall for their eldest,
a junior. They also went
to Jamaica to attend the
100th birthday party of
Rachael’s grandmother.
We picked up media updates—Martin Hunt was
hired as a managing director by Emerging Growth
Equities in King of Prussia,
Pa. Congrats, Marty!
Danielle Moss Lee was
interviewed in the “Corner
Office” business feature
in The New York Times,.
Danielle is CEO of the
YWCA of the City of New
York.
Sonja Fritts wrote in with
a great update, her first
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
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ever: “I live on Bainbridge Island, Wash.—a
35-minute ferry ride from
downtown Seattle—with
my husband, Mike Griffin,
and our four children,
Kieran, 13, Ingrid, 11, Elsa,
9, and Anya, 6. I graduated from New York Law
School in 1995, and after
practicing for nine years,
stayed home with my
children while they were
young. During that time, I
volunteered extensively,
practiced yoga, traveled
to India, and participated
in our Seattle Swarthmore
Book Club, which kept me
sane when I craved intellectual conversation. Most
recently, I returned to work
full time, practicing labor
and employment law in the
Seattle office of national
law firm Ogletree, Deakins,
Nash, Smoak & Stewart.
I love living in the woods
on Bainbridge, where we
can observe wildlife such
as owls teaching their
young to fly and hunt,
while easily accessing
Seattle city life. If ever in
the neighborhood, please
let me know.”
Class of 1992, Dena Rin
gold. Dena, husband David
Gossett, and daughter
Melissa, 3 1/2, welcomed
Leah Ringold Gossett on
Dec. 29. I’m always awaiting news of even younger
offspring.
Congratulations to
Adam Haslett, whose
2016 novel, Imagine Me
Gone, was on the longlist
for the National Book
Award for fiction. (I even
recommended it to my
mother-in-law.) Congrats
also to Dana Calvo, whose
television drama Good
Girls Revolt was named a
best new show of 2016 by
Newsweek.
And we’ll hope that
congratulations are in
order by next year for
Stephanie Hirsch, who is
running to be alderman
(alderperson?) at-large for
Somerville, Mass., where
she has lived and worked
for 13 years.
I hope to see many of you
at our 25th Reunion this
Memorial Day Weekend!
1994
1992
Joanna Vondrasek
joanna.vondrasek@gmail.com
Libby Starling
libbystarling@comcast.net
Can you believe we are
about to have our 25th
Reunion? Or that those
whippersnappers in the
Class of 2017 were born
well after we graduated
by giving nametags to
President Al Bloom? Fortunately, you’re only as old
as you feel.
Demonstrating our continued youth is our latest
winner in the Class Notes
competition of youngest
child of a member of the
Our class was busy writing
during the past year. Joe
McGinniss received critical acclaim for his novel
Carousel Court and also
penned “Lessons From
My Father”—a touching
tribute published in The
New Yorker.
Kari Hong reflected on
the “sacred aspect of
LGBT bars” and called
for gun control after the
Orlando, Fla., shootings
on the Cognoscenti blog
for WBUR, Boston’s NPR
station.
Shanalyna Palmer’s new
TV show, Miss Winn’s
Garden, was recognized
with a Diamond Award in
the Television Production Competition of the
California Film Awards.
Shanalyna produced
and directed a script by
Lucy Fazely with Brenda
Porter (as Miss Winn)
leading the cast to victory.
“There is more in store for
this wonderful heartfelt
project that takes a look
at one foster-care family’s
journey towards love and
understanding,” Shanaly
na wrote on our class
Facebook page. “Watch
our trailer and find out
more: misswinnsgarden.
strikingly.com.”
Although I, Joanna, did
not see any ’94ers in
2016, I managed to see
quite a few ’95 folks.
Guian McKee ’92 and I
had a lovely visit with
Matt Peck ’95, Laura
Bartley ’95, and their
children in Charlottesville,
Va., last summer, as Matt
and Laura were on an
East Coast car trip. The
fact that their Oklahoma
license plate was stolen
from their car in front of
our house, while unfortunate, did provide us with a
bonus visit day while they
replaced it. We also had
an impromptu brunch with
Melissa Kreider ’95 at a
diner near Elizabethtown,
Pa., in June. Just before
Christmas, I took my son
to get his hair cut, and
as we entered his name
on the waitlist, I saw the
previous name was “Rohit
M.” I spent a few minutes
wondering if there could
be another Rohit M. in
Charlottesville when Rohit
Malhotra ’95 wandered in,
and we had a nice chat.
1996 1998
Gerardo Aquino
aquinonyc@yahoo.com
Rani Shankar
rani_shankar@yahoo.com
Melissa Clark
melissa.a.clark@gmail.com
Amita Sudhir
amitasudhir@gmail.com
In October, Jove Graham,
Dom Sagolla, Ken Wil
liams, Chris Henry, Jon
Birge, and Scott Friesen
’97 joined dozens of
others alums for the 35th
anniversary of the a cappella group Sixteen Feet.
This included a reunion
concert in the Lang Performing Arts Center and
multiple trips to the Tom
Jones Diner.
A few months prior, Jove
directed a production
of Of Thee I Sing, his
first Gershwin musical;
his 8-year-old daughter
played Sonia Sotomayor.
Jove looks forward to
puppeteering the role of
Nicky in a production of
Avenue Q.
Marc Pachon started a
job as legal counsel for the
Department of Homeland
Security’s Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties Section.
Jason Zengerle participated in a PBS Frontline
miniseries, “Divided States
of America” (bit.ly/DividedStates).
There is not much
news to report, however,
many of us stay in touch
through social media. We
had so much fun at our
20th Reunion that many
of us have talked about
crashing the party for the
Class of ’97 (and any other class that will allow us
to play Prince’s “7” at their
dance party). If interested,
Alumni Weekend is May
26–28. Save the date.
Howdy and happy New
Year, folks. We start with
some uplifting news from
Jamie Duckman: “Since
my stroke (actually, two
strokes and the accompanying seizures) on May
27, 2014, I have been going
to rehab. What I lost was
nearly of all my speech
and the right side of body.
(Hello, left hand!) After 2
1/2 years I returned to my
job (municipal bonds with
Bank of America Merrill
Lynch). I can’t thank my
family, co-workers, and
friends enough. My wife,
Emily, and Charley and
Eala are doing fantastic.”
Since 2004, Robert
Monk has lived in West
Philadelphia in a communal household where he’s
started hosting a monthly
music jam. He recently
returned to Swarthmore
as master electrician
for Solar-States.com, a
solar- and smart-energy
electrical installer serving
Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
and New York.
Mary Elizabeth Alvarez is
moving to Milwaukee for a
job at the Medical College
of Wisconsin heading up
their primary-care behavioral health integration
project. “I’m taking a break
now to enjoy my last Mardi
Gras as a New Orleanian.”
Party on, Mary Elizabeth!
Also on the academic
track is Noah Daniels. He
is an assistant professor
of computer science at
the University of Rhode
Island and lives in North
Kingstown, R.I., with his
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
65
class notes
wife and three ferrets.
Jessica Howington sends
an update from Louisville,
Ky.: “Nancy Benson-Nicol
moved from Louisville to
Houston in the summer.
Still, every time I see a
bright-blue car (she had a
blue Subaru), I get excited
and then disappointed.
In the last year, I’ve seen
several ’96ers: Daniel
Gottlieb in Durango,
Colo.; Jonathan Evans,
who visited Louisville
twice for work; and Matt
Trebelhorn, who lives in
Lexington, Ky. My job as
a behavior analyst is still
amazing and lets me do
all sorts of things: 1:1 dialectical behavior therapy,
remote tele-supervision
with a client in Hawaii,
and homework help for
overwhelmed parents of
overloaded elementary-
school kids. It’s always
something different.”
Rachel Breitman commiserated postelection
with Shirley Salmeron,
Tamala Montgomery, and
Cat Laine in New York.
The group planned to reconvene for the Women’s
March on Washington in
January. Vincent Jones
visited Rachel and her
family in D.C., and they
all went museum-hopping. Others who greeted
Vincent included Sharon
Coleman and Giridhar
Srinivasan.
Also planning to march
(in Des Moines, Iowa)
in January was Emily
Willits. I, Rani, was lucky
to see her and her family
over Thanksgiving when
they visited the Delaware
shore. Emily is an attorney
and lives in Des Moines
with husband Craig and
sons Charlie and Owen.
Graham Lucks claims
to have spent most of
the fall and winter at
the Sacred Stone Camp
on the Missouri River in
North Dakota working as a
66
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
private security contractor for Energy Transfer
Partners. “While it was
ultimately demoralizing to
have the Obama administration reroute the Dakota
Access Pipeline, we did
shoot a firehose at some
hippies—was happy to
check that off my bucket
list,” Graham writes.
2000
Michaela DeSoucey
mdesoucey@gmail.com
Emily Shu
emily.n.shu@gmail.com
Nice to hear from some
first-time contributors.
After Swat, Rafael Luna
“took on many odd jobs,
including with Barnes
& Noble and Citibank. I
went to grad school in
2004 for a master’s in
special education. I also
trained to be a Dahn yoga
instructor and did that
for three years.” This is
now his 12th year as a
special education teacher
in Brooklyn, N.Y. Christina
Sornito Carter, newly
installed as an assistant
professor of anthropology at Appalachian State
University in Boone, N.C.,
is co-directing the launch
of the Appalachian State
Ethnography Lab. She
writes, “I also am the mom
of Pancho, the sweetest
German shepherd mix that
ever chased a squirrel.”
George Flaherty was
promoted with tenure
to associate professor
of Latin American and
U.S. Latino art history at
the University of Texas
at Austin. His first book
came out in August, Hotel
Mexico: Dwelling on the
’68 Movement.
Samira Mehta, an assis-
SPRING 2017
tant professor of religious
studies at Albright College,
was awarded a fellowship
at the Library of Congress
to research contraception
and American religion.
Jocelyn Kea Manigo
completed an educational
leadership doctorate at
Widener University, where
she is an academic coach.
Kat Vidal is happily
working in New York City
again after spending five
years in New Jersey.
She works at the Speyer
Legacy School and would
love to hang out with
nearby Swattie educators.
In Connecticut, Jessica
Cuni, visual arts program
head at Choate Rosemary
Hall, and husband Tim
Applebee ’03 celebrated
the holidays with Choate
colleagues Marcia Landes
man ’91 and Alex Curtis
’89 and Alex’s wife, Beth
Fecko-Curtis ’89.
Alison Young is a marine
biologist and co-leader
of Citizen Science at the
California Academy of
Sciences. She and her
co-leader received the
2017 Local Heroes for
Environmental Education
Award from Bay Nature.
Alison reports, “I live with
my partner in Sonoma,
where I have a backyard
food garden that’s slightly
too large, and spend
many weekends hiking
and kayaking in the area.”
Isiuwa Iyahen still lives
in Barbados, “working to
promote gender equality
and women’s empowerment with U.N. Women.”
Class of 2000 families
continue to grow. I, Mi
chaela DeSoucey, husband
John, and son Jasper
welcomed Zachary in
September. On leave, I did
PR for my book, Contested
Tastes: Foie Gras and the
Politics of Food. We joke
that I had two babies in
one year.
Nadia and Jerry Meli
char had Rose Rai in May,
who joined brother Luke.
The couple hired their
first babysitter to attend
Sarah Archer’s Manhattan
book signing for Midcentury Christmas. Jerry
shifted careers into digital
advertising operations
at Carrot Creative, Vice
Media’s digital agency. He
occasionally sees Victor
Pineiro, who works in the
same building.
Dana Nashaat-Liu and
husband Sean Drewett
had son Alistair in July.
Leslie Young and family
had daughter Parker in
November. Leslie works in
Copenhagen with the U.N.
Refugee Agency. Dean
and Reena Vaidya Krishna
had daughter Ellora, to the
delight of siblings Asha
and Veer.
Morgan Adam became
a dad in November. “Debatably influenced by that
day’s supermoon, Skylar
Rose was born three
weeks and 18 hours ahead
of schedule, derailing
Mom and Dad’s plan for
a home birth. Due to her
cuteness, Mom and Dad
are finding it impossible
to hold a grudge.” Eva
Allan writes, “Our rainbow
baby, Kai August, was
born healthy in July after
a fraught pregnancy. He
is adored by his older siblings and all who see him.
I’m taking time off from a
postdoc to cherish some
baby time. He came home
from the hospital on the
first anniversary of buying
our house, a fixer-upper in
Berkeley, Calif.”
Pete and Becca Newlin
Hutchinson moved near
Portland, Maine, and had
Violet, who joins sibs Xander and Eloise. Pete is an
orthopedic hand surgeon,
and Becca is a hospice
and palliative care doctor.
In another full household,
Sean and Catherine Mont
gomery Hearne had son
Isaac, who joins Charlotte,
Save the Date!
Alumni
Weekend 2017
May 26–28
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weekend with your
fellow Swarthmoreans
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Gavin, Patrick, three cats,
and several race cars.
Rochelle Arms married
Daniel Nerenberg in the
fall. Rochelle is in her
fourth year of a Ph.D.
program in conflict
analysis and resolution at
George Mason University
and is a proud auntie to
Brooklyn neighbor Prachi
Patankar’s baby. Prachi is
a senior program officer
at Brooklyn Community
Foundation. She and her
partner had their baby
in the fall and visited
Prachi’s family in India in
December.
Finally, Lars Jan’s
global art and activism
project, Holoscenes, has
been widely featured.
Enjoy a preview at bit.ly/
Holoscenes.
2002
Tanya Wansom
swarthmore2002@gmail.com
Despite getting together
many years post-Swat,
Ariel Kobylak writes that
the Quaker matchbox
struck again, as she and
Chris Conaway married
in September in a small
beach ceremony in Ocean
City, Md. They live in
Philly, where Chris works
at the Red Cross and
Ariel is at the Children’s
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Hospital of Philadelphia.
Delonte Gholston ’03 married Claire Wiggins Oct. 3
amid Hurricane Matthew
in Durham, N.C.; they live
in Pasadena, Calif.
In baby news, Melanie
Hirsch and Michael
Sanders had Alden
Sanders-Hirsch on Sept.
5. Alden made his first
visit to Swarthmore just
three months later. Ben
Schweigert and Samara
Freemark had Emmeline
Rose Schweigert on Oct.
28. They write that she’s
adorable and much adored
by brother Theodore.
Damian and Jeanne
Gardner Gutierrez had
Elise Emerson on Sept. 1.
Jeanne is taking a break
from dissertation work
at the Graduate Center
of the City University of
New York, but continuing
part-time research for the
new Center for Women’s
History at the New-York
Historical Society. Patrick
Dostal is very busy with
babies, now with three
under 3, after welcoming
Jacob Lawrence Dostal
in December. Siblings
Kaitlyn, 2, and Andrew, 1,
seem to approve. Zenebe
and Mitzie-Ann Davis
Woldegebriel had Joshua
Zenebe, who joins sister
Blen-Rose. Mitzie is chief
of gynecologic oncology at
Piedmont Fayette Hospital
in Atlanta, where she
started working in August.
Andrew Alderete works
publicity at a company
that produces concerts in
which an orchestra plays
a score live in a concert
hall as an entire film is
shown. He has been immersed in the Harry Potter
Film Concert Series,
Dreamworks Animation,
Gladiator Live, and more.
He also likes to run in the
mountains with William,
his new golden retriever. Zhiling Trowbridge
practices family medicine
and acupuncture in Grand
Rapids, Mich. She and
her husband bought an
old Victorian house. “We
are enjoying fixing it up
and taking care of a new
puppy, Amos, who likes to
play Frisbee,” she writes.
Charles Muntz’s first
book, Diodorus Siculus
and the World of the Late
Roman Republic, has been
published.
Keetje Kuipers writes
that she, wife Sarah
Fritsch Kuipers ’04, and
daughter Nela are enjoying the mountains and the
Puget Sound after moving
to Seattle. Keetje teaches
at the nonprofit Hugo
House for writers and is
an associate editor for
Poetry Northwest. Mimi
Hanaoka is an assistant
professor of religious
studies at the University
of Richmond. She earned
a Ph.D. from Columbia in
2011 and specializes in
Islamic history, Iran, and
Middle East–East Asia relations. Her book, Authority and Identity in Medieval
Islamic Historiography:
Persian Histories from
the Peripheries, was published in September.
I, Tanya Wansom, still live
in Bangkok with my family.
In addition to serving as
a study physician for
individuals with acute HIV
infection, I also work with
academic and government
partners to set up cohorts
of men who have sex with
men and transgender
women to measure HIV
incidence in three cities in
Thailand.
Finally, friends of the late
Alice Hershey are raising
funds for a scholarship.
If you are interested in
donating, please visit gift.
swarthmore.edu and list
the Alice Hershey ’02
Memorial Fund as your gift
designation.
2004
Daniel Loss
Rebecca Rogers
swat04classnotes@gmail.com
Many thanks to Njideka
Akunyili Crosby for compiling the Class Notes for
the last 12 years.
Abigail Frost works at
the U.S. Consulate in Erbil,
Iraq.
Brendan Moriarty writes,
“I became a father last
December to Avery Hewitt
Moriarty. He’s healthy and
amazing, and I love being
a father. I continue to
manage the San Francisco
Bay Area conservation
program for the Trust for
Public Land, going on my
seventh year. It remains
rewarding and challenging
work.” He was on hand
to celebrate the wedding
of Matthew Goldstein.
Matt got married in
September to “the love
of my life, Myra Sack, in
the beautiful mountains
of Vermont.” He lives in
Boston and leads translational medicine at Neon
Therapeutics, a company
developing cancer immunotherapies.
Jake Beckman teaches
art and design full time at
the Community College
of Philadelphia and is
settling into a new West
Philly home with wife
Lizzy and daughter Cleo,
2, who loves painting,
watching otters swim at
the zoo, and eating olives.
Jake also works on public
art projects and other
gallery-based projects out
of his Philly studio.
Marielena Velez de
Brown graduated from a
preventive medicine and
public health residency
in June with a master’s
of public health and is
now the deputy commissioner of public health
for Monroe County, N.Y.
She writes, “I’m happy to
host Swattie visitors to
Rochester, N.Y., if anyone
wants to come play in the
snow or at the National
Museum of Play (a great
place to bring kids of all
ages or adults who are still
kids at heart). Rochester
is actually quite a lovely
place in the summer with
lots of water activities
(sailing, jet-skiing, kayaking, etc.) on Lake Ontario,
the Genesee River, or the
Erie Canal.”
Former Hallowell roommates Khadijah White
and Elaina Barroso each
welcomed happy baby
boys this year. Elaina’s son
Xavier and Khadijah’s son
Akinsunmade are already
planning a takeover of
“The Big Chair.”
Amir Jaima finished
his philosophy Ph.D.
from SUNY–Stony Brook
in 2014 and landed a
tenure-track gig in Texas
A&M’s philosophy department; he started there in
the fall. In November 2015,
he and partner Amma
had son Manu Abudu
Asare-Jaima.
Elinore Kaufman and
Maria Alvarez are back in
NYC, where Elinore loves
life as a surgery resident,
Maria moves her clients
toward self-actualization as a hairstylist, and
Maggie, 2, enjoys every
cement mixer and backhoe in the Second Avenue
subway construction.
Recent highlights include
visits from Maggie’s Uncle
Kellan Baker, glimpses
of Dan Shargel and his
awesome son Isaak,
1, and a recent trip to
Portland, Ore., to visit
David Conners Isaak ’03
and meet the exquisitely
delightful Franny. Elinore
was thrilled to be part of
the welcoming committee
for Talia Young ’01’s new
adorable baby, Max, along
with Jenny Lunstead ’03
and Jesse Young ’05.
Elinore and Maria have
enjoyed reuniting in NYC
with Sarah Hughes and
Jonah Gold, though they
do miss Philly and their
many feasts with Talia,
Anna Morgan, and Sa’ed
Atshan ’06. Anna, for her
part, misses Elinore’s
home-cooked meals, and
notes that her “level of
self-actualization has
dropped since Maria left,
and I’ve put my hair in the
hands of a much-less-talented stylist.”
Adrienne Mackey got
married in October to
her partner of 10 years,
Bradley.
Stephanie Gironde married Robert Jackson Best
III in August in Camden,
Maine. The ceremony took
place in an amphitheater
reminiscent of Swarthmore’s. Amy Robinson and
Andrew Gregory helped
the happy couple celebrate. That weekend, Amy
introduced her newborn
son to summer road trips,
and Andrew was memorably bumped from his
spot on a harbor cruise by
members of the legendary
pop band UB40.
After more than eight
years together, Evan
Moses married Susanne
Cooper in April 2016 in
a ceremony in San Fran
cisco. They had a fantastic
time dancing and partying
with guests, including Art
Yelsey ’73 and best man
SPRING 2017
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67
class notes
SPOTLIGHT ON …
EVAN TRAGER ’08
Evan Trager ’08 received the Resident Training Award in
Substance Abuse Disorders from the National Institute
on Drug Abuse and the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry.
“Ever since my wife, Catalina Martinez ’08, and I became
foster parents to two young children, I’ve been aligning my
career towards researching ways to improve the mental
health of foster children and children in the juvenile justice
setting,” he says. “This award allows me to further my
professional training, learning skills and techniques for the
generation and analysis of clinical data.”
More: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Aaron Cantor ’06.
Sachin Kale got married
in August. Rebecca Rog
ers, Danny Loss, Rasika
Teredesai, Kirsten Van
nice, Elaina Barroso, and
Anna Morgan attended.
We, Rebecca Rogers and
Danny Loss, still live in
Somerville, Mass., where
Rebecca is a primary-care
physician and Danny
teaches in Harvard’s
history and literature
program. Mostly, though,
we read books about owls,
play with trains, and pretend to be in a marching
band—all thanks to son
Gabriel, 2.
2006
Wee Chua
wchua1@gmail.com
I hope this set of Class
Notes finds you well in this
brave new world. It has
been wonderful serving as
class secretary—can’t believe it has been 10 years. I
look forward to continuing
to serve the Class of ’06.
I’m still in Seattle, where
our Pacific Northwest
68
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
presence continues to
grow.
James Madden moved
away from Boston for the
first time since leaving
for Swarthmore almost 15
years ago. He accepted
a job with Enterprise
Community Partners to
work on Seattle’s housing
crisis by providing funding
and technical assistance
to community developers creating affordable,
mixed-use housing.
William ’05 and Anisha
Chandra Schwarz are in
Seattle. Anisha will finish
a pediatric neurology residency at Seattle Children’s
Hospital in 2018, while Bil
ly supports the family as
a public defender for King
County. They recently
introduced son Narayan,
1, to Taiwanese food with
the help of myself, Wee
Chua, who frequently
sees Anisha at work in his
capacity as the hospital’s
emergency medicine
fellow. Anisha reports that
residency + motherhood =
missing many Swat-related milestones, including
Rebecca Brubaker’s
wedding, Raghu Karnad
’05’s Seattle book signing,
hosting traveling Swatties
(Amara Telleen and Ber
nadette Baird-Zars), and
SPRING 2017
our 10th Reunion. If you
are in Seattle, please stop
by the hospital and say hi.
In March 2015, Cortland
“Blake” Setlow Tölva
and Karen Rustad Tölva
married in Marin County,
Calif., with eight Swatties
attending. Karen and
Blake had their first child,
Bjorn James Wulfric
Tölva, Oct. 15. They live
in Redwood City, Calif.,
where Blake is an iOS
system charging engineer
with Apple.
Katia Lom’s film Double
Note (bit.ly/KatiaLom)
was an official selection of
the Sarasota Film Festival
and Bay Area International
Children’s Film Festival.
Miriam Zoila Pérez
wrote about her nuanced
feelings about the death of
Fidel Castro on Fusion.net
(bit.ly/MiriamPerez).
Krista Spiller married
Ross Aikins in December
in Philadelphia with many
Swatties tearing it up on
the dance floor, including
Rhiannon Graybill (who
also emceed the ceremony), Sonali Shahi Nii ’04
and Patrice Berry Addy,
Simone Boyle ’07, Anna
Ruff ’09, Vanessa Wells
Torti ’08, Cassie Barnum,
Catharine Parnell, Erica
George Baugh ’07, Jesse
Young ’05, Anna Morgan
’04, and Professor Allen
Schneider.
Patrick Hart and Scott
Storm ’08 moved to
Brooklyn, where they
enjoy hanging out with
neighborhood Swatties.
Patrick started a job at the
CUNY Institute for State
and Local Governance
providing support, oversight, and technical assistance to programs that
improve opportunities for
young people in high-poverty NYC neighborhoods.
Maddox Holden Piper
was born punctually on
his due date, Dec. 9.
Parents Christi and Mark
Piper are thrilled with
their firstborn.
Jon Greenberg migrated
a couple of miles east
from San Francisco to Alameda, Calif. He loves living
on the water and enjoys
commuting via ferry each
day. He is busy preparing
for his first kid and his
last Frisbee season but
welcomes all visitors to
the Bay Area.
Sa’ed Atshan completed
his annual class trip with
his Swarthmore students
to Israel and Palestine.
He’ll continue to inspire
future generations as an
assistant professor of
peace and conflict studies.
Emily Wistar and Dan
Hammer ’07 welcomed
Lilian Ada Hammer, Class
of 2038, into their family.
Emily is on the faculty at
UC–San Francisco Medical School, but took six
months off to teach Lily
to sing. Dan returned to
UC–Berkeley after a yearlong stint in the Obama
administration. He will
spend his waking hours
teaching Lily to ignore
Emily and especially her
singing instructions.
Hope 2017 is off to a
good start. Please send
updates. I hope our paths
will cross this year.
2008
Mark Dlugash
mark.dlugash@gmail.com
From D.C. to Florianópolis—working life: Camila
Harrigan-Labarca stills
lives near D.C. and
works in international
development at Creative
Associates International.
There, she writes budgets
for proposals submitted
to USAID and the State
Department.
After a lovely stint in
San Diego, Marissa Davis
moved to New York to
become network lead at
an awesome organization
called DataKind. She has
enjoyed reconnecting with
classmates in the city.
Rasa Petrauskaite is in
the Bay Area working at
Merrill Lynch as a financial adviser.
Matthew Kurman has
been in Seattle for six
years. He was on the
founding team at Convoy,
an Uber-for-trucking company now in its second
year of operations. Mat
thew is always looking for
smart people to help on
his mission, so if anyone
is interested in applying,
email matt@convoy.com.
Rita Kamani-Renedo
lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. She
teaches 11th-grade U.S.
history and English at the
International High School
at Prospect Heights, a
public high school serving
recently arrived immigrant
youths. She is grateful for
her Swat community in
and out of NYC.
Anna Mello still lives in
Florianópolis, Brazil, working as a science teacher at
a bilingual middle school.
She met up with sister
Maria Mello and Patrick
Lindsey in Nashville,
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Tenn., in July for some
good beer and food.
Doctors and fellows:
Allison Barlow Chaney
finished her computer science Ph.D. at Princeton.
Ishita Kharode moved
to NYC in July to start a
pediatric endocrinology
fellowship at New York–
Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
Medical Center.
In the news: Nicole Nfo
noyim-Hara was awarded
a Loft Mentor Series
award for fiction (bit.ly/
NicoleN-H).
Matthew Armstead
received the 2016 Frankel-Adair Scholarship for
higher ed. In a profile on
the open platform Medium,
he discussed queer
activism, working with the
American Civil Liberties
Union, and issues facing
the LGBTQ community
(bit.ly/MArmstead).
Celebrations: Chris
and Laura Cass Caruso’s
daughter Gillian Christina
was born Dec. 9, at 7
pounds, 8 ounces, and 21
inches.
John ’06 and Rachel
Turner Egan had their first
son, Olin Turner Egan, Nov.
30. Rachel also received
a certification in hand
therapy in May.
Yafeng Li and Wenxin Du
had son Marcus Pingxin Li
May 12. He lives in Philly
and visited Swarthmore
at least four times with
parents and/or grandparents in his first six months,
enjoying it more each
time. Yafeng finishes his
M.D.–Ph.D. program at
Penn this year. Wenxin is
a senior economist at the
Federal Reserve Board in
D.C. They always welcome
the opportunity to connect
with Swatties visiting
Philly or D.C.
The year 2016 was great
for Cristina Schrum-
Herrera. In June she
gave birth to Nina Rosa
Schrum-Herrera, who
smiles incessantly and has
a ravenous appetite like
her mother. Cristina also
graduated from law school
and got a great job at a
plaintiff-side employment
law firm in San Francisco.
She hopes to learn a new
dance form this year. She
still hikes and travels with
husband Ryan and friends,
cooks Asian and Latin
American cuisines, and
salsa dances on weekends. Salseros should hit
her up on Facebook to go
clubbing.
Joseph Borkowski and
Genevra Pittman had
Elise Dale Borkowski on
May 26. Elise is named, in
part, after her very excited
great-grandmother Dale
Shoup Mayer ’47, who
talks about her Swarthmore days every visit.
Genevra has worked at the
New England Journal of
Medicine for three years,
and Joseph has been
at Harvard’s Language
Resource Center for two.
They live in Somerville,
Mass., with two cats.
Finally, George Dahl enjoys his job as a machine
learning research scientist
on the Google Brain team.
An article about his team
was published in The New
York Times Magazine (bit.
ly/GDahl).
2010
Brendan Work
theworkzone@gmail.com
Once in the beautiful yore,
this space was full of 20X
alumni, prancing and gamboling in the arbor. Now,
the wildlife numbers but 14
specimens, ambling blankly through the wood. Look
at their lonely expressions!
Their very existence,
enchanting though they
are, is endangered by their
inability to write back to
their class secretary.
Yes, well-spotted! In the
distance you can faintly
glimpse Jenny Akchin
working with John Krinsky
’91 in New York to publish
a revisionist interpretation of the Red Brigades’
kidnapping and murder of
Aldo Moro through close
readings of the Lincoln assassination as it appears
in postwar Italian highschool textbooks. Nearby
you can just make out
Hannah Epstein, teaching
music at Community Partnership Charter School
in Brooklyn, and the
unmistakable outline of a
Matt Thurm. Matt’s latest
effort, Crown Heights, had
its world premiere in the
narrative competition at
the 2017 Sundance Film
Festival, while his present-day urban-Western
parable 11:55 hits theaters
this summer.
Truly, young wilderness scouts, this barren
shore we call “the East
Coast” once teemed with
Swatties eagerly writing in
to say what they’d done.
Now only the hardiest
denizens can manage this
task, such as the rugged
Kathryn Riley, who is the
volunteer softball coach
for the alma mater and has
reconnected with other
(theoretical) classmates
around Philadelphia,
and the robust Roseanna
Sommers, who moved to
Cambridge, Mass., for a
one-year research fellowship with the Behavioral
Insights Group at Harvard.
This habitat even boasted
the likes of Ashley Miniet,
but now that she’s graduated from Temple’s Lewis
Katz School of Medicine,
she’s migrated south and
started a pediatric medicine residency at Emory.
In such balmy climes,
you’re likely to observe the
peripatetic Justin diFelici
antonio, erstwhile substi-
tute teacher in southwest
Georgia, ashram graduate,
and recent visitor to
Serbia and Kathmandu.
Few are the wild
creatures left in the
western steppe, replete
though it once was with
Swarthmorean species.
Liz Lopez graduated
from UC–Davis School
of Medicine in June and
decided to pursue a career
in anesthesiology, moving
up to Portland, Ore., with
her fiancé to complete
an intern year in internal
medicine, though she’ll
be in Boston this summer.
The rarely sighted capoeira artist Caitlin O’Neil
moved to Sacramento for
a job with the California
legislative analyst’s office
providing nonpartisan
budget and policy advice
to the Legislature on
California’s prisons, jails,
and sentencing laws, and
Madeleine Laupheimer
graduated from Stanford
Law School in June. After
moving to Massachusetts
to take the bar, she started clerking for a judge on
the Federal Circuit Court
of Appeals in D.C. and was
privileged to be the maid
of honor at the wedding of
Ariel Horowitz and Garth
Griffin ’09. This startling
specimen then helped
Helen Stott move into her
new house in New Jersey
along with Simone Fried.
Can you hear that soft
rustling in the grass?
That’s G Patrick, Pittsburgh practitioner doing
his clinical rotations in
trauma surgery. He notes
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that he can resist the
temptation to take bites
of his patients for up to
30 minutes in the OR, and
deeply misses the salsa
scene. Farther west, you
will see the tracks of a
very successful predator:
none other than Stephanie
Appiah. She joined the
startup casino company
JACK Entertainment
to buy and flip Caesars
properties in Ohio, having
turned around three
casinos and rehired 3,200
people in six months.
And those magnificent
birds in the sky? That’s
Nicco Moretti and Marina
Tempelsman, whose
brilliant play Room 4 was
a Critic’s Pick and called
“very funny” by The New
York Times.
It has been observed
among these endangered
beasts that while they
neglect to write to their
class officers, they do
conduct informal reunions
under the guise of their
wedding celebrations.
This year Anne Miller
was wed to Daniel Ueda
with Carey Pietsch, Kaz
Uyehara, Michele Perch,
Pam Costello, Charlie Mo,
Jaymes Fairfax-Columbo,
Johanna Bond, Omari
Faakye, Nadja Mencin,
Ben Good, Helen Hougen,
Caitlin O’Neil, Julia Wro
bel, Casey Osborn, Danny
Friel, Reid Wilkening,
and Dina Kopansky ’11 in
attendance. Out in Philadelphia, Dylan Langley
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
69
class notes
married wife Jennifer with
Morgan Langley ’11, Pat
rick Christmas ’08, Rory
Stackpole ’09, JP Faunes
’08, Mike Bonesteel ’08,
Evan Nesterak ’09, Alex
Imas, Andres Freire ’11,
Matt Allen, Brendan Grady
’09, Omari Faakye, Ray
Zuniga ’11, and Margot
Adams in the crowd. Finally, the lowly secretary to
whom these missives were
addressed was married
himself—Brendan Work to
Jessi Cahoon—and was
supernaturally fortunate
to have seen the following
wild critters: Alyssa Work
’08, Alex Friedman ’09,
Chris Compton ’09, Luke
Rampersad, Nicco Moretti,
Marina Tempelsman, Su
zanne Winter, Claire Noble
’14, Brigette Davis, and
all the way from literally
Antarctica, the irrepressible Wiley Archibald.
Congratulations to all!
There once was a time
when everything that
crawled or swam or flew
would faithfully write in to
its class secretary. But do
not shed a tear, little explorers, though that time
is gone. It is just the way.
2012
Maia Gerlinger
maiagerlinger@gmail.com
Not to get #political, but
it’s January and sometimes it’s difficult to feel
FOLLOW US
on Facebook at
facebook.com/
SwarthmoreBulletin
70
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
as though not everything
is terrible all the time. To
reassure you, here’s a list
of what your incredibly
accomplished classmates
are up to. You are all superheroes. Be responsible
and actively use your powers for good.
New England: Adam
Chuong begins a master of
industrial design program
at the Rhode Island
School of Design. Solange
Hilfinger-Pardo graduates
from Yale Law School in
May, after which she will
be an honors attorney for
the Consumer Protection
Bureau—“assuming it
still exists,” she says. She
defends homeowners in
foreclosure through her
law school clinic.
Boston: Natalia CoteMuñoz lives in Cambridge,
Mass., where she is
pursuing a public policy
master’s at the Harvard
Kennedy School. Julian
Leland and Avery Davis
are still going to school.
Gabriela Morales is a
second-year associate
at Goodwin Procter. She
specializes in corporate
work for technology and
life-sciences companies.
New York: Callie Feingold
lives in Harlem and is a
human resources specialist at the 2nd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. William
Campbell is finishing his
MBA at Columbia, as is
Joseph O’Hara. Hanna
Kozlowska lives in Brooklyn, where she is finishing
up coverage of the 2016
presidential election cycle
for Quartz Media. She has
a kitten. Kara Stoever is at
the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine, doing rotations and trying to decide
what kind of doctor she
will be. Ben Hattem wrote
about abuse and neglect
inside New York psychiatric wards on BuzzFeed
(bit.ly/BHattem).
Philadelphia/D.C./Baltimore: Zachary Weiner
SPRING 2017
is learning to be a rabbi
while simultaneously
working as a “baby-chaplain,” a term that is very
confusing to me. “I wear
ugly ergonomic shoes but
a cute bowtie,” he adds,
helpfully. Margret Lenfest
is in her second year of
vet school. Adam Bortner
is enjoying the clinical
years of medical school.
Sara Blanco is pursuing
her master of public policy
at George Washington
University, where she cochairs the Women’s Leadership Fellows Program.
She works at Running
Start, training young women to run for office.
California: Jonathan
Gluck finished grad
school at the University of
Maryland and now works
for Apple and lives in San
Jose. Arsean Maqami
is leaving WeWork after
three years to become the
development director for
a residential developer
in San Francisco. Tania
Doles left UC–San Diego
with a master’s and moved
to LA to open a small business with her partner that
specializes in professional
audio equipment. Andreas
Bastian works on large
3-D printers at Autodesk.
He travels frequently to
Haiti to develop low-cost
3-D-printable upper-limb
prostheses. Andrew
Stromme lived in Taiwan
from June to September
and left Google in December for his own language
startup. He lives in San
Francisco. Katharine
Clark is the marketing and
communications manager
at Khan Lab School,
an independent school
associated with the Khan
Academy.
Misc.: Nicholas Rhinehart
is still in graduate school
at Carnegie Mellon. He
does not have any pets.
Jennifer Yi continues to
work on a clinical psychol-
ogy Ph.D. at the University
of North Carolina and,
more important, is now a
proud dog mom. Frances
Hunter is in the Navy,
stationed at Pearl Harbor.
I, Maia Gerlinger, alternately cajole and threaten
13-year-olds to try to
get them to read. Elan
Silverblatt-Buser works
on a farm with his brother
outside Albuquerque, N.M.
Their work was featured in
an article about inspiring
innovations in greenhouse
farming (bit.ly/ElanS-B).
International: Brice
Jordan joined the Foreign
Service as a consular
officer and is in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia. He wants
visitors. Michael Xu left
his job at Strikingly and
the city of Shanghai and
now lives in Beijing.
CAPTIONED!
“The housing shortage on campus must be more
severe than I thought.”
—Judith Leeds Inskeep ’60
“Having ‘green’ buildings is getting a little
out of hand, isn’t it?”
—Geralyn Esposito P’16
“Do you really think that this new dorm will
attract more applicants from Greenland?”
—Bob Cushman ’71
“Hmm. They must be converting the
Sproul Observatory dome to a changing room on
Parrish Beach.”
—Deborah Maraziti Skapik ’91
“With so many students applying and enrolling,
we needed to do something to cool the place off.”
—Alexander Gavis ’86
+ See more captions: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Share your pics—on campus and off—on
Instagram: @swarthmorebulletin, #swatbulletin
2014
Brone Lobichusky
blobichusky@gmail.com
The first column of the
new year finds the Class
of 2014 making significant career changes and
advancing in their graduate studies. I am always
immensely impressed to
learn about my classmates’ academic undertakings, inspiring careers,
and exciting adventures.
Western U.S.: Imoleayo
Abel left his job at
Epic Systems in wintry
Wisconsin and moved to
sunny San Diego to start
a mechanical engineering
Ph.D. at UC–San Diego.
Josh Hallquist is still
at Intersection and was
promoted to marketing
manager.
Frank Mondelli entered a
Stanford doctoral program
for Japanese literature,
while his lovely wife, Riana
Shah, works on an education-technology startup
and is looking for a technical co-founder. If you are
a technical co-founder,
reach out to Riana.
Middle U.S.: Paul Cato
is in his second year of
struggling for a Ph.D. at
the University of Chicago’s
Committee on Social
Thought (along with
Danielle Charette, who is
a year ahead). In the fall,
the epilepsy-awareness
group he co-founded
released a series of
videos about its members’
experiences with seizures
and epilepsy. Paul’s video
focuses on his struggles
with albeism.
Katie Lytle is in her first
year of the MBA/master of
sports administration program at Ohio University.
She will receive her MBA
in June after a two-week
trip to Italy to complete a
consulting project. Next
spring, she will graduate
from the MSA program.
Eastern U.S.: Carolyn
Anderson is working on
a linguistics Ph.D. at
UMass–Amherst.
After two years of
apprenticeships and
entry-level positions,
Madeline Charne is now
a successful freelance
theater artist in Philadelphia. She loves her new
work and is primarily a
dramaturge, stage manager, and teaching artist. At
the Philly Fringe Festival,
she performed in Scarlet
Letters with Patrick Ross
’15, Kimaya Diggs ’15, and
Michaela Shuchman ’16.
Most recently, she was in
New York presenting Holden, a piece that was highly
recommended by The
New York Times and Time
Out. She plans to pursue
a graduate program in the
next year.
Marian Firke is back
in the classroom as an
apprentice teacher at
the Sheridan School in
D.C., teaching lower-
school homeroom and
middle-school science.
Previously, Marian was
the program coordinator
at the Maryland Coalition
Against Sexual Assault,
supporting statewide
sexual-assault prevention
programs related to child
sexual abuse, college sexual and dating violence,
and the military. She
trained hundreds of college administrators across
the state and represented
Maryland at a meeting
convened as part of the
White House Task Force
to Protect Students from
Sexual Assault. She is very
proud of all the progress
survivors and advocates
in Maryland have made in
changing state law.
Cameron French started
Save the Date!
Alumni
Weekend 2017
May 26–28
Spend Memorial Day
weekend with your
fellow Swarthmoreans
alumniweekend.
swarthmore.edu
working in the Penn psych
lab of psychologist and
science writer Angela
Duckworth. He is also the
editor for Behavioral Scientist, a startup created
by Swatties.
In the fall, Danny
Hirschel-Burns started
a political science Ph.D.
at Yale. He is studying
comparative politics,
specifically state-building
and violence. He hopes
to obtain a grant to
study French and begin
dissertation research in
Francophone West Africa
this summer.
Stephanie Lechich is
wrapping up her first year
in the clinical psychology
Ph.D. program at Long Island University–Brooklyn.
Another Epic Systems
alum, David Nahmias is
now in his second year of
an electrical engineering
program at the University
of Maryland–College Park.
He is researching at the
FDA on neuro-prosthetics
for amputees and understanding brain signals
through electrophysiology.
He still plays volleyball
and always has fun
meeting up with D.C.-area
Swatties.
Melissa O’Connor has
a kitten named Tux, who
wants to be a puppy.
Arya Palakurthi joined
Edgemont Capital Partners
in New York, a midmarket
investment bank focused
on health-care services,
sell-side mergers, and
acquisitions.
Aarthi Reddy is in her
first year of medical
school at George Washington University. She is
becoming more familiar
with the five-minute walk
from her apartment to
class, but anatomy lab
keeps her pretty busy.
Alison Ryland moved
near Boston with her
two cats and works for
Ted Chan ’02 at a small
study-app company in
Cambridge, Mass. She
plans to apply to grad
school in the fall.
Sarah Timreck completed
her first year as a master’s
candidate at the Elliott
School at George Washington. She is pursuing
an M.A. in Middle East
studies and is working at
the Middle East Institute
this spring while taking
classes and exploring everything D.C. has to offer.
Abroad: After a summer
of racing in the USA
Triathlon Collegiate Recruitment Program, Robert
Fain left D.C. to begin a
master’s in public health
at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine, where he ran
into Will Schulz ’13.
Stuart Russell is in Dakar, Senegal, for a year as
a Princeton in Africa fellow with the public-health
nongovernmental organization Population Services
International.
After two years at the
Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing,
Collin Smith began a
graduate program at the
Hopkins–Nanjing Center
in September. He expects
to graduate in June with a
certificate in Chinese and
American studies.
The author: In addition to
her Temple medical school
studies, Brone Lobichusky
also organized the medical
school’s annual formal, set
up regular health screen-
ings at homeless shelters
in North Philadelphia,
and attended her first (of,
hopefully, many) Mummers Parade. She was last
seen in the Temple library
double-fisting Starbucks
venti espressos. She plans
to rejoin the human world
(and her third year of
medical school) on May
1 upon the completion of
Step One, the first (of,
unfortunately, many)
standardized medical
licensing exams. Brone
looks forward to learning
clinical procedures during
her third and fourth years
of medical school.
2016
Editor’s note: Your class
needs a scribe! If you are
interested in becoming
2016’s class secretary,
please contact Class
Notes Editor Elizabeth
Slocum at eslocum1@
swarthmore.edu.
SPRING 2017
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
71
spoken word
We need to invest in strengthening the
core academic mission of the College
with a special focus on connecting the
liberal arts disciplines and engineering
to each other and to the outside world.
Third, increased access and inclusion.
We need to invest more resources in
financial aid and in the programs and
funds that help us to meet the “hidden
costs” of a Swarthmore education.
Fourth, creating vital spaces. We need
to invest in campus facilities to ensure
that they more adequately support the
values of a Swarthmore education.
MAKING
AN IMPACT
by Jonathan Riggs
A YEAR AND A HALF after her
arrival, Swarthmore President
Valerie Smith’s enthusiasm for her
work remains palpable. Whether you
bump into her at an alumni gathering
in Hong Kong, making a speech in
Denver, or even taking a quiet stroll up
Magill Walk, her ever-present smile
is her trademark. It’s fully on display
today as she describes the College’s
historic new campaign, “Changing
Lives, Changing the World.”
Why is now a good time to launch
the campaign?
More than ever, we need to support the
College’s core mission: to teach students to think critically, to distinguish
fact from fiction and valid arguments
from specious claims, to write and to
speak persuasively, to solve problems,
to work collaboratively, to contribute
to the common good, and to participate
actively in democratic society.
How are all of our community
members informing your vision?
They share a sense of curiosity about
ideas and about the world. I hear how
proud they are of the College’s efforts
to provide educational opportunities
to all qualified students, whatever their
financial circumstances. I also hear
that they yearn for more opportunities
to spend time with other members of
the Swarthmore community.
What are the campaign’s priorities?
First, enhancing our social impact. We
need to invest in our ability to enhance
the common good, a principle upon
which the College was founded.
Second, connecting the liberal arts.
72
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2017
While the campaign will make lots
of new opportunities and positive
campus changes possible, what
won’t change about the College?
Swarthmore will remain defined by its
commitment to inclusivity, to academic rigor, and to preparing people
to value the importance of learning
throughout their lives. I look forward
to seeing the impact this campaign will
have on our ability to continue to be
bold and innovative.
Anything else you’d like to say?
When you invest in Swarthmore, your
dollars have an exponential impact.
Just as the investment previous generations made in your education allowed
you to go out into the world and change
lives, so, too, will your donations—
combined with others’—create opportunities for future students to make a
difference in the world around them.
Giving to an institution that has
shaped your life and the lives of your
loved ones is a joy and an opportunity.
As Maya Angelou once wrote, “Giving
liberates the soul of the giver.”
+ MORE: lifechanging.swarthmore.edu
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
How can we better engage with
both the campaign and the College?
Attend events, connect with one
another, and encourage friends and
family to give. The campaign will
succeed only if we all commit to giving
as generously as our means allow. This
campaign is not just for the wealthiest
members of our community; this campaign is for everyone.
in this issue
26
WRITE WHERE YOU ARE
Words With
Friends
Making an impact on
others through the
wonder of writing.
DAN Z. JOHNSON
by Elizabeth Slocum
MOMENT IN TIME
In honor of those who have
suffered injustice,
Brandon Bennett Guallpa ’20
participated in a Martin Luther
King Jr. Day candlelight vigil.
SPRING 2017
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
EMPATHY & ARABIC
p8
BIKER MAMA
p11
WALL STREET WOMEN
p34
ISSUE
III
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
VOLUME
CXIV
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
LAURENCE KESTERSON
SPRING 2017
COME BACK TO THE BEACH!
Alumni Weekend/Memorial Day Weekend, May 26–28
alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu
Impact
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2017-04-01
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
2017-04-01
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.